Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for the question. I know there will not be enough time to answer it. It is a difficult question to answer, but not in all cases.
I can only give examples. I remember little Eddie whose grade 1 teacher brought him to me. He had been kicking her in the shins and had pulled a knife on her. That was an indication there could be a problem. We identified that there was a serious problem with little Eddie. I tried to bring in the family, the mother and the father. I said we had to begin the process of helping this young fellow out.
Unfortunately there was no father and the mother worked all the time, and worked hard. He had no supervision. That was a shame. No supervision is not good for young people, especially at six years of age. We had lots of problems in that area where supervision seemed to be unavailable and therefore kids would lean into trouble.
Another problem that came up quite often was caused by low self-esteem, kids put down by peers and in some cases put down by teachers and parents. They had low self-esteem and needed recognition to become somebody. Especially if they had any brute strength, to be a bully was the way to be, to do something that would attract some attention. I have seen these very same kids break into tears when we began working with them because that is not what they wanted. It is a cry for help.
The list can go on. Sometimes some kids are just rotten to the core and I do not know why. There is no excuse for it. I have had parents ask “What am I going to do? He will not listen to us. We tell him he can't go out. He breaks the window and goes out and he doesn't come home until the next morning. If we try to punish him, he goes to the police and cries child abuse”.
It goes on and on. It is really a tough one to answer. I had better not take much more time or Madam Speaker will cut me right off.