Columnist Susan Snyder: They need a place to go

Tuesday, March 7, 2000 | 9 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Tuesdays and Sundays. Reach her at snyder@vegas.com or 259-4082.

The words seem most desperate when spoken by a child.

"I had nowhere to go."

They're from an essay written by a 17-year-old who is jailed in a youth detention center for his part in an armed robbery. He gave a ride to a kid he didn't know very well, and that kid robbed a couple outside a convenience store.

The piece is deeply personal, telling how he wandered his own neighborhood in the rain at night because his father -- a term that in this case is biological at best -- locked him out. He was 16 at the time.

"I had nowhere to go."

Now imagine those four words applied to a 6-year-old. A child whose father is in jail. A child whose mother's life is in limbo.

A child who at the end of a day spent learning his letters, playing duck-duck-goose and coloring pictures, heads to a house that has drugs, loaded guns and strangers but no place for a 6-year-old to sleep.

"I had nowhere to go."

Nowhere to go for the comfort and security of an adult who can talk about the day's playground argument. Nowhere to find refuge from its lingering anger.

Nowhere to find a solution to keep that anger from turning to hate.

Last week's tragedy in Michigan reaches beyond a family grieving the loss of one child and the filthy home and tattered life of a second child.

How many children right now, right here in Nevada, have nowhere to go? How many feel that way without being able to put it into words? How many of them do you know?

According to the "2000 Kids Count Nevada Data Book" published by UNLV, Nevada has the nation's highest percentage of high school dropouts. About 22 percent of children aren't read to at home.

Our teen birth rate increased 35 percent. At least 22 percent of our teens seriously considered suicide, and 15 percent had a plan.

More than a third of Nevada's two-parent families live in poverty. And 8,014 Nevada children were abused or neglected in 1998 -- that we know of.

How many of these children live in North Las Vegas or Summerlin or Henderson or Boulder City? How many live in nice homes with parents who work? How many feel as stressed and weary as the adults they live with?

Road rage and shooting rampages are symptoms of a frustrated society adults have created. It's a society cluttered by work, financial and social obligations that make us frantic.

Our kids are waiting for the school bus before 6 a.m., and some of them aren't finished with classes, club duties, sports practice or day care until 6 p.m. Then there's homework. You do the math.

The lives of a teenager forced out on the street and a Michigan 6-year-old who fatally shot a classmate may not be so different from the lives our own children lead daily -- not in the children's eyes.

"I had nowhere to go."

They are the hopeless words of youngsters who are frustrated and confused. The words of inexperienced people for whom all solutions eventually seem drastic.

"I had nowhere to go."

Our children are screaming. Do we hear them?