Yesterday, as I sat with my daughter Nia in the waiting room at her doctor’s office, we met a charming toddler named Liberty.

She was a winsome wisp of a girl, with light brown hair, a flowery headband and a sweet smile. “She turns one next month,” her mother told me as our two girls played peek-a-boo.

“She’s adorable,” I said. “My youngest is four, I remember those days.”

Soon, others sitting nearby chimed in about Liberty’s cuteness, the Terrible Twos and other stages to watch out for, reaffirming the universal dilemmas we all face while parenting our kids. Sometimes, however, there are some issues that all of the love, effort and ‘on-the-job-training’ experience can’t fix. There are problems that exceed our skill sets, exhaust our resources and can leave families battered and broken.

That’s what appears to be the case for Lisa and Cleveland Cox, an Ohio couple recently charged with two misdemeanor counts of “nonsupport of dependents” after returning their 9-year-old adopted son to the county last month.

In a story that’s now national news, the Coxes, according to daytondailynews.com, had raised the child since infancy. In recent years, they’ve reported multiple incidents of aggressive behaviors, some that even led to bouts of hospitalization. The outbursts, although frequent, didn’t prepare the family for the attack they suffered on Aug. 9, when sheriffs intervened after the boy brandished a knife and “threatened to kill everyone in the house.”

Despite the disturbing allegations, the family has received little sympathy in the court of public opinion. “When you are the parent and you recklessly abandon a child or children, there are criminal consequences,” County Prosecutor Michael Gmoser said. “These children don’t have a return-to-sender stamp emblazoned on their forehead.”

The Coxes aren’t the first family to have reconsidered their choice to adopt a child, of course. In 2010, a TN woman stunned the world when she put her 7-year-old adopted son back on a plane to his native Moscow, accompanied only with a note (?!) detailing his violent propensities and her desire to no longer raise him. It’s a move that’s negatively impacted international adoptions ever since.

There seems to be two opinions about the Cox drama, with little variance in-between: either the parents are expected to shoulder the weight of a problem child, no matter what, or all parents need to be held to fairer non-superhuman standards.

The heartbreaking scenario, at least for now, uncovers more questions than answers. If a mother or father has exhausted every available resource and done whatever’s possible to manage mental illnesses or violent tendencies, what else are they expected to do? How much more can be sacrificed of themselves or other family members living in the crossfire if there’s little hope of change to be found?

Since the court date isn’t until next week, the answers remain a mystery, but what I do know for sure is that in my home, all the sweet smiles and fond memories in the world wouldn’t make it acceptable to live with a child who’s pulled a weapon and threatened my well-being. No matter how fiercely I love my son and daughters, if a day comes when we can no longer live peaceably together, there will be no choice but to make any change necessary to manage the problem or, worst case scenario, remove the threat.

If the judge decides that the couple had their son’s best interests at heart, then that finding would make them—like most of us—improvising along the way and applying our imperfect instincts to the children we love and raise.

But if society continues to demand perfection while parenting, or else, it also, by default, predicates an expectation for equally “perfect” children. And since no one can claim either title, then everyone, even Nia and little Liberty, is automatically destined to fail.

(Click here to read more about adoptions gone wrong, different cases and possible causes.)