Well why...the pattern for your life (generally speaking) is laid out in the first 7 years and of course the brain development in the first 2 years is phenomenally important. Get it wrong there and children can grow up to be and do anything. Can I recommend a very good book called 'They fuck you up' if you really are interested in the whys being explained in a basic way?

At the risk of putting my head in the Lion's mouth consider that true compassion could be extended to both the parents and child and whilst I agree they need to not be allowed freedom to do this again - no one is winning here. Enter Pat with his trauma triangle dramas, winners and losers, wetbacks and drybacks, heroes and villains a la the wild west, for a damning indictment of Mick's amoral compass. Beware Pat the more educated opinion of Reg will track you here if you awry. And then there's Brad...