Let’s Chat: Step up and be a parent

By Linda Tooth on October 15, 2025.

As I work my way toward a big birthday next year I have been doing a lot of reflecting on my life and the work I have been doing. I have come to realize how very blessed I am. Let me explain further.

I was born to loving parents who worked very hard to provide a stable home for me and my brothers. We were not well-off financially but we were well-off in stability and love. We had a roof over our heads and enough food to eat at every meal. We were not a perfect family by any stretch of the imagination, but we were a family with loving parents. For that I will always be grateful.

I am currently working my way through Gary Garrison’s novel Raising Grandkids – Inside Skipped-Generation Families. I can only read one chapter at a time and then I have to put the book down as I am so angry and sad at the true stories Garrison is sharing regarding women and men who have had children and then due to their poor life choices are not a part of their upbringing.

The trauma the children have faced at such young ages is something I can not imagine facing. Parents who are addicted to drugs and alcohol, violence they have witnessed before someone stepped in to remove them from their homes, sexual assaults, the list goes on.

The next chapter I am due to read is on grandparenting for children who are Indigenous. It is going to be gut-wrenching I know.

Chapter six ends with the following passage “Indigenous peoples in Canada and around the world have for thousands of years embodied cultural practices rooted in children’s attachment to their extended families, and until colonization their networks of family support and connection were vibrant and strong.”

I recently met a young couple who have decided to become foster-parents to a young girl. I do not know the young girl’s story other than her biological mother is not in the picture and her biological father is trying to get his life sorted out. Thanks to their willingness to open their home and their hearts this young girl stands a chance of a loving and nurturing home.

Children are a gift and if you are going to have them you need to step up to the plate and be mature and responsible enough for them.

Relying on others, whether that is foster parents, grandparents, youth workers or any others dedicated to helping young people to do what you should be doing, and that is raising the child or children that you decided to have is sometimes asking too much.

Have a Meowtastic Day and keep reading!

Linda Tooth is a philanthropy and youth support worker, YMCA of Southeastern Alberta