Dad's Pregnant Girlfriend Shot Dead By His Son?

Police say an 11-year-old boy shot his father's live-in, eight month pregnant girlfriend once at point-blank range, killing her and her unborn child. This happened in western Pennsylvania. The boy is being charged with criminal homicide and homicide of an unborn child. The victim, Kenzie Marie Houk, was 26 years old and had a four-year-old daughter who found her mother dead in her bed on Friday.

This is just awful. So sad.

For those of us who have seen violence from a stepchild, this hits too close to home. I used to worry that one of my children were going to be permanently harmed or worse when a stepchild was becoming violent (trying to stomp on a baby's head, pounding the crap out of a sibling, "dead stares" from the stepchild, no remorse or empathy, just to name a few - we have logs of behaviors like this). When it was to the point that I was taking my block of knives off the counter and hiding them whenever my stepchildren were due to arrive and worried about going to sleep at night, it became unbearable. When I had to put baby monitors in the bedrooms of older children, it became unbearable. When my stepchild's pediatrician, who was also my children's pediatrician, warned me when I was pregnant with my last child that she feared that I was going to get hurt, it became unbearable.

Violent behavior from a stepchild is downright scary. The newspaper does not indicate whether there was other violence in the home from this child or have any reports of child abuse. I guess we will all wait for further reports to be made public. In our case, my stepchild's therapist confirmed what we already knew to be the problem (his mother).

I don't know what happened in the case of this boy murdering his father's pregnant girlfriend, but I do know what my own stepchildren went through and the damage that occurred because of it. Children don't belong in the middle of a parent's emotional warfare towards the other parent and other parent's family. It tears them apart and messes them up. If you do this to a child, then you don't know how to parent or love a child appropriately. Any parent who does this is grossly selfish and should seek professional help immediately before you irreparably harm your child.