Baby steps

Not the pampered, doted-on and adored stuff of Norman Rockwell perfection, two toddlers in Plymouth, England, learned misery the hard way when their mother, grandmother and two aunts ordered them into a no-holds-barred scrap in their nan’s living room.

According to court testimony, the adults formed a circle around the children, a three-year-old girl and two-year-old boy, and ordered them into combat while their 21-year-old mother, Zara Care, videotaped the events. The tape shows the women encouraging the children to attack each other, and trash-talking them when they’d cry or plead for it to stop.

The video was discovered when the children’s father returned from serving in Iraq and took the camera expecting to catch up on tender family moments. He brought the film to social services, who called police.

Citing the obvious remorse of the mother and aunts, the judge chose to hand the four a suspended one-year sentence and 100 hours of community service. The grandmother, however, remained unrepentant, saying, “I couldn’t see any harm in toughening them up. I done the same with my children.”

by Scott Saxon