The mother of a six-year-old boy who spent two days in hospital hallucinating because he had ingested meth has been jailed for a year.

BC Provincial Court Judge Lisa Wyatt said the 33-year-old had poisoned her son through her own criminal negligence.

“What makes it worse… is that she deliberately failed to disclose the source of the child’s sudden and serious illness to any family members or to medical professionals who were treating him and were trying to find out the reason for his sudden illness and serious symptoms,” Judge Wyatt told a Kelowna courtroom today, June 15. “She put her own interests, being her fear of consequences to herself, ahead of the well-being of her son.”

In total, the six-year-old was awake for 40 hours straight.

“Throughout the entire two days that (the boy) was under the influence of methamphetamines, he experienced hallucinations… At times, he believed there were dragons flying all around him and that one of his doctors was an octopus. At other times, he described spiders and ants coming out of the walls and sometimes that the walls were breathing. He briefly thought he was in a video game. He picked at his skin because it looked weird to him,” the Judge said.

“In the more severe stages, he hallucinated that people were watching him and that someone was trying to kill him… when he finally fell asleep in the hospital, he was shaking and talking in his sleep.”

The case dates back to Thanksgiving 2024, when the mother was visiting her six-year-old son at his aunt’s home. iNFOnews.ca is not naming the woman to protect the identity of her son, whose name is covered under a court-ordered publication ban.

The boy’s father, who has full custody, had dropped the boy off at his aunt’s for the Thanksgiving weekend. The mom, who had suffered from addiction issues for several years, had said she was sober, which was the only reason she was allowed into the home.

However, on the day of the poisoning, she had visited a friend’s house and smoked a bowl of meth. The friend had given her some leftover meth, which she briefly stored in an M&M tube.

She later divided up some M&Ms and passed the contaminated tube to her son and another tube to her nephew.

Crown prosecutor Jordan Schroeder described it as akin to giving a child a drink from a container that once contained bleach.

When the six-year-old boy started acting strangely, the mom realized what had happened, but kept quiet.

The boy wouldn’t settle that night and began hallucinating. He got progressively worse.

“At that point, she knew that the tube must have been contaminated,” the judge said. “He was upset, saying that he had seen dragons.”

The next day, the aunt told the mom to call the boy’s father, but she didn’t.

“(He) continued hallucinating about dragons being in the yard, and he was unusually hyperactive,” Judge Wyatt said.

When the boy’s father arrived later that day, he was suspicious that his son had ingested drugs.

“(The mom) denied this was possible. Instead, she lied and said that it was due to him not having slept the night before,” the judge said.

The dad took the boy to the hospital, and a urine sample was taken. While doctors questioned what was going on, the mom kept her mouth shut.

When the urine test came back positive, the mom lied again, saying it must have come from residue on her backpack from when she was using.

“She did not tell anyone because she feared for the consequences of what would happen,” the judge said.

It was only three months later that she went to police and made a tearful confession about what had taken place. She was charged with criminal negligence causing bodily harm and failure to perform the necessities of life.

She pleaded guilty to criminal negligence causing bodily harm.

The Crown argued for 12 to 18 months jail, while defence lawyer Lorna Fadden said house arrest was more appropriate, saying that the 33-year-old had been in rehab.

The court heard the mom had lost custody of all three of her children. She struggled with mental health issues since childhood and began drinking alcohol at 13. By her mid-20s, she was using meth and later fentanyl. She has no prior criminal record and has been in rehab since.

“The remorse I have is endless… the guilt, shame and self-hate I carry on a daily basis is incredibly overwhelming… I wish I could go back and change it, but I simply can’t,” the mom had told the court at an earlier appearance. “I can’t say I forgive myself for what happened, and I don’t expect anyone else to either.”

Judge Wyatt said the woman had multiple opportunities to confess and explain why the child was so unwell, but didn’t.

The Judge said house arrest would not adequately achieve the principles of deterrence and denunciation and sent the woman to jail for a year.