Mom gone 20 mins = kids get taken away?

[summer]

Mashable

In 2011, Lilia Gonzalez* nearly lost her three young children. She considered herself a loving, attentive mother, but one day she made a seemingly harmless mistake that turned into a two-year battle to convince the state of Illinois that she hadn’t — and wouldn’t — maliciously neglect her children.



The ordeal began on a June morning when Gonzalez, then 36, awoke at 7:30 a.m., startled and groggy. Her 16-month-old son had been sick, and Gonzalez slept fitfully; her husband left earlier to start the first of his two jobs. Like most parents, Gonzalez’s mind immediately settled on the day’s many tasks, including taking the children to walk her four-year-old son to the bus stop. And that’s when the panic surged — she had overslept and the bus had already departed.



As her eight-year-old daughter dressed for school, Gonzalez and her son rushed down the stairs from their third-floor apartment in Schaumburg, Illinois, and looked for the bus. Seeing an empty street, Gonzalez quickly decided to drive the two miles to school.



When she returned home after a 20-minute absence, Gonzalez found her toddler son watching television in bed and her daughter ready to attend school. She regretted impulsively leaving them alone, but felt grateful nothing tragic had happened.



The next day, Gonzalez mentioned the incident to her therapist, a clinic student who helped treat her for depression. “I did something probably stupid,” Gonzalez recalls saying. Her therapist remained silent then, but a few hours later, Gonzalez’s phone rang.



“I talked to my supervisor,” her therapist said, “and I explained to her what you just told me, and we have to call [Department of Children and Family Services].” Gonzalez hadn’t heard of 
the child welfare agency, but was terrified. “She started telling me that they were probably going to come and interview and probably they would take the children away.” 


That phone call marked the beginning of Gonzalez’s “nightmare.” With a single offhand comment, she found herself at the mercy of cultural, social and legal forces that increasingly define parenting as a superhuman feat of constant monitoring. Children, according to this perspective, are only ever truly safe from harm when at their parents’ side.



This standard, a few decades in the making, is largely derived from a cocktail of dread: fear that our children might be injured or kidnapped, anxiety that junior might not be academically or socially successful in the absence of constant supervision, and worry that not tending to a child’s every need will somehow lead to irreparable psychological damage.



As a remedy, some parents have embraced intensive parenting styles that are endlessly caricatured, but have nonetheless shifted the collective expectation of what it means to be a responsible, devoted parent.

Long before American children were put on lockdown, they were expected to cultivate independence at an early age. Paula Fass, professor emerita of history at the University of California at Berkeley, traces this tradition back to the 1800s in the book Reinventing Childhood After World War II. Young men, in particular, enjoyed a uniquely American brand of independence, embodied by experiences like Ulysses S. Grant's, a man who began plowing his father’s land at age 11 and traveled by horse for dozens of miles as a teenager.



Fass said the obsession over “something lurking around the corner” goes back just three decades. As more mothers left home for full-time jobs, it “burdened them with fear.” Parents were no longer within sprinting distance if a child fell on the playground, and they didn’t always trust caregivers.



As the 1980s and '90s unfolded, parents also looked on in horror as child abductions dominated an increasingly 24-hour, national news cycle: Etan Patz in 1979, Adam Walsh in 1981, Jaycee Dugard in 1991 and Polly Klaas in 1993. It seemed as if predators regularly prowled the streets, waiting to snatch the nearest unattended child.



In fact, the violent crime rate has steadily decreased since the 1990s, and there’s no evidence to show children are more frequently abducted than in years past. Every day countless children survive being on their own.



Yet the possibility of kidnapping was a major concern among respondents who completed a recent Mashable and SurveyMonkey poll. Of a representative sample of 533 Americans, 19% said they thought an unsupervised child in a public place might be abducted. The largest group — 28% of participants — worried an unattended child could be lost or abandoned.



But the respondents' answers also reflected resentment: A quarter said an unmonitored child might indicate a parent neglecting his or her responsibilities.



That might sound familiar to Debra Harrell, a South Carolina mother arrested this summer when a bystander noticed her nine-year-old daughter playing alone at a park. In a video of Harrell’s police interview, she explained that her daughter was supposed to meet a friend.

“So you leave her at the park unsupervised?” an official asked.



"Yeah, but I thought, you know, everybody's there," Harrell replied. "You know, I didn't feel like that I needed to be up there, sitting up there with her..."



“You’re her mother, right?”



“Yes, sir.”



“You understand you’re in charge of that child’s well-being?”



“Yes, sir.”



“It’s not other people’s job to do so.”



Harrell, who was working at McDonald’s while her daughter played at the park, later explained that burglars recently stole a television from her home. “You know, so, she don't have no TV or nothing to look at no more,” Harrell said. “I thought [the park] would be the safest place for her."



Thirty years ago, a nine-year-old alone at a park probably wouldn’t have led to a mother’s arrest, but expectations have changed. In the same Mashable/SurveyMonkey Audience poll, nearly 40% of respondents said they were permitted to play outside unsupervised while in pre-school or kindergarten. Yet, only 13% said they would allow their own children to play unsupervised at that age. And even though a majority of the respondents were allowed outside alone prior to middle school as children, a third said they would wait until their kids reached that age to let them venture outside on their own to play.



As Lilia Gonzalez discovered, the new standards for parental responsibility can be brutally subjective.



When the case for neglect was opened against Gonzalez, her daughter told the investigator she hadn’t been afraid during her mother’s absence; she knew when to open the door if someone knocked and had been previously instructed to call 911 in the event of an emergency. The children’s pediatrician told the investigator that Gonzalez and her husband had been exemplary parents, and that he had no reason to suspect neglect or abuse.



Still, the investigator and his supervisor recommended “indicating” the allegation of neglect — a finding that would put Gonzalez’s name in the state’s central registry for five years, barring her from jobs in child care, teaching or in-home health care, and placing her under a kind of semi-permanent suspicion in the eyes of the agency. Officials argued that Gonzalez’s daughter might have been able to make a decision on her own behalf in a hypothetical emergency during those 20 minutes, but that it was beyond her ability to do the same for her 16-month-old brother. This constituted inadequate supervision, and therefore, neglect.



The administrative law judge who reviewed her case, however, disagreed, and could find no credible evidence that Gonzalez’s daughter lacked the maturity cited by the agency. He recommended expunging the finding against Gonzalez. It would have been a victory, had the agency’s director not rejected the judge’s recommendation.



“The fact that no calamity occurred during the 20 minutes,” the director wrote, “...does not mean that it was proper to leave an eight-year-old child to be the primary caregiver for a 16-month-old.”



The reversal was a devastating blow for Gonzalez. “I was feeling like I was a criminal,” she told Mashable. "I didn’t leave to party or drink. As a mom, I try to do my best. I’m not perfect. There are so many moms, even though they know they’re doing something wrong, they keep doing it — I’m not.”



In Gonzalez’s case, a second investigation for neglect began just months after the first. She called the police to report an incident of domestic violence when her husband threw an aerosol can at her during an argument. Gonzalez told the officers her children were not in the same room during the fight, but they involved the child welfare agency nonetheless. Officials cited her previous case and ultimately accused her of creating an “injurious environment” by exposing her children to domestic violence.



Gonzalez was despondent until finding the Family Defense Center, a Chicago-based nonprofit that advocates for families in the child welfare system.



“They saved my life — and my kids’ lives,” “They saved my life — and my kids’ lives,” she said.



Diane Redleaf, the center’s executive director, estimates more than 70% of their clients are low-income; between 3% and 5% can afford to pay market-rate for the organization’s legal services. Regardless, they all face the vexing subjectivity about what constitutes inadequate child supervision or neglect.



In one case, a mother allowed her nine-and-a-half-year-old daughter to walk three blocks to a safe park with her 20-month-old sister. In their tight-knit Orthodox Jewish community, this was a common practice, but a bystander saw the girls, escorted them back home, then called the child welfare hotline to report their mother.



Similar to Gonzalez’s case, a judge dismissed the agency’s finding of inadequate supervision, but the director also overruled that decision, citing the looming threat of what didn’t happen: "Any number of issues could have arisen during her unsupervised walk," he wrote.



In another case, a mother taking courses at school lost her childcare at the last moment. She opted to take her 11-year-old son with her to class. When he left the room to retrieve a book from her car, a police officer asked why he was alone and reported his mother to the child welfare agency.



“The agency is free to define neglect specifically,” Redleaf said. “They’ve created factors that investigators are to look at, but it becomes extremely subjective.”



Both findings against Gonzalez would have remained on the state’s registry had the Family Defense Center not helped her appeal the decisions. Her case moved through the courts over two years, and the emotional limbo consumed Gonzalez. She felt authorities might remove her children at any moment; in fact, the agency threatened as much if she did not agree to supervision in her caretaking duties and to remove her husband from their apartment during the second investigation.



“As far as I understand, they are supposed to help people to keep families together,” she said of the agency. “But at the end, I have to protect my children from them.”



Redleaf has observed an anecdotal spike in cases like Gonzalez’s in recent years. Child welfare investigators, she said, may lean toward preemptively judging a parent guilty, lest they miss cases of escalating neglect and abuse that ends up on the evening news, perhaps when a child dies. In South Carolina and Massachusetts, for example, state officials are facing scrutiny after receiving reports of neglect regarding parents who allegedly went on to murder their children.



The risk is similar for mandated reporters — professionals like teachers, therapists and police officers — who can lose their license and face criminal charges if they fail to report suspected maltreatment. The guidelines for reporting aren't always clear, either, said Redleaf, so those charged with performing this duty don't want to "guess wrong."



Many of the center’s cases, though, involve the unpredictable gaps between childcare and work that low-income parents often experience. During an investigation, the state child welfare agency, Redleaf said, rarely helps parents who could benefit from assistance with finding and paying for quality childcare. As in Debra Harrell’s case, many of the center’s clients work in low-wage industries like retail and food service where weekly schedules are assigned last-minute.

We see mostly poor people in these situations because they don’t have the resources to protect their children — richer families can hire people to watch their children," Annette R. Appell, a professor of law and director of the Children and Family Advocacy Clinic at Washington University, told Mashable.



Regardless, it's not clear that reporting “inadequate supervision” benefits anyone in some cases, Appell said. Research has shown that children placed in foster care, for example, can experience physical or sexual abuse in their new homes. Many also leave the system with post-traumatic stress disorder, perhaps because of maltreatment and the forced separation from their families. But these scenarios don’t immediately occur to bystanders.



Further, reports can go beyond simple safety concerns. Bystanders may fixate on the idea that only an ever-present parent can raise a child properly.



Appell has sensed this shift as well: “It does seem to me that…there’s more at stake somehow in parenting.”

When parents like Gonzalez are punished harshly for leaving a child unsupervised, it's clear they're being judged by a new standard for time-intensive parenting. In fact, parents have been devoting more energy to their kids since the mid-1990s, according to an analysis of time-use surveys. The contrast between college-educated and less educated mothers, however, is striking: By 2007, the former group spent eight more hours per week on childcare activities than they did in 1975, while the latter spent four more hours per week. Parents spent much of this time coordinating activities for their older children and shuttling them to each commitment.



Some mothers appear to devote themselves wholly to their children’s development earlier in life. In one survey of 275 mostly white, college-educated, married mothers, about 30% said they hadn’t left their infant with anyone during the child’s first year, including the child’s father.



Miriam N. Liss, a professor of psychology at the University of Mary Washington who studies parenting and feminism, said women increasingly feel pressure to parent intensively, though it’s not clear why.



In a counter-intuitive study published in 2012, Liss found that women who identify as feminists are more supportive of time-intensive attachment parenting practices.



“It almost feels a little like a backlash to me,” she said. “Just as women are seeking social equality, the romanticizing of intensive parenting ramps up.”



One possible explanation, she said, is that as women entered the workforce a few decades ago and tried to balance career and family, they were forced out by unfriendly policies or felt they had to choose between the two. Either way, they channeled the same drive and motivation they’d applied to their professional lives into childrearing.



That dynamic, Liss said, has set high expectations for mothers of the same class and culture, and exerted downward pressure on parents who have fewer resources to be constantly present.



But helicopter parenting in general has little to do with gender — both mothers and fathers are spending more time with their children, who, for a number of reasons, have less unstructured, unsupervised time.



That overwhelming desire to hover — whether to make sure a task is done perfectly or help them avoid rejection from top universities — can actually make that child unhappier and less confident over the long-term. Larry Nelson, a professor of family life at Brigham Young University, said an over-involved parent might resort to behavioral and psychological means to control a child, stripping him or her of autonomy and independence.



“I would like to think that more and more parents see that you can teach [children] how to fail,” Nelson said. “You can teach them that they might get hurt, but you don’t have to be the one to intentionally leave the scars on the child.”



Lilia Gonzalez became, in her own way, a helicopter parent following the long ordeal with the Illinois child welfare agency. Though she never left her children unattended for longer than a few minutes prior to that June morning in 2011 and hasn’t since, she's become even more dedicated to their needs.



“I’m never home,” she said, describing her children's many scheduled activities. “I’m always driving from here to there — I’m the taxi mom. I like them to be exploring, learning and growing.” 

his role has given Gonzalez newfound satisfaction as a mother who was once seen by authorities as a bad parent. But she and her children still live apprehensively. Gonzalez said she’d never call the police again for any reason, and she hasn’t returned to counseling yet.



“I thought it was a good thing to trust somebody,” she said. Her children feel similarly. “They don’t know how to trust adults because of [the investigations]. Even though we won the case, they’re still afraid.”

[summer]

Come the fuck on! Seriously?


"In another case, a mother taking courses at school lost her childcare at the last moment. She opted to take her 11-year-old son with her to class. When he left the room to retrieve a book from her car, a police officer asked why he was alone and reported his mother to the child welfare agency."

[irishbride2]

I will say that it can be hard for mandatory reporters. Every training I've ever been to, they have pushed the idea that it is always better to report when you are unsure (not only for the safety of the child, but for our own liability). Then let the "experts" figure out if it is an issue or not.

Now obviously I've heard of enough stories to know this isn't the case.

[IIOY]

This is the logical extension of those people who think you can't leave a 7yo child home alone for any reason whatsoever, no matter what. Parenting has become a giant exercise in paranoia and infantilism. People have lost their damn minds.

ETA: I would leave my 8yo in charge of a toddler in a nanosecond. She is mature and intelligent and can reach me at any time thanks to that marvelous invention called a "phone." My son? Not so much, not because he is 7, but because he lacks my daughter's maturity. I would have left my DD in charge at 7 as well.

[orangeblossom]

Sept 29, 2014 3:46:38 GMT -5 summer said:

Come the fuck on! Seriously?


"In another case, a mother taking courses at school lost her childcare at the last moment. She opted to take her 11-year-old son with her to class. When he left the room to retrieve a book from her car, a police officer asked why he was alone and reported his mother to the child welfare agency."

All of the examples are crazy, and especially the one you quoted.

When does the madness end? You're telling me an 11yo can't go get something from a car. Please.

Anecdotes, anecdotes, but I was walking over a mile to the bus stop for school starting at ten, and then catching he bus way across town, and there was nothing neglectful about it. Hell, the school provided the bus tickets.

Something needs to change. I understand most agencies are under tremendous scrutiny to poorly handled cases that have ended in serious harm or death, but come on use some discretion and common sense.

[summer]

The other thing is that putting the kids in temporary foster care is not the end all be all for every situation. If you are a caseworker, you are lucky to have good temp homes at your disposal. The ones I had were shitty and I cried more than once leaving a fragile, emotional child with a home I knew was maybe a bit better than the one they were taken from.

Seriously, no disrespect, many foster parents are amazing, but I didn't have them on my caseload. The best, most stable family I had on my roster? On my last day at the job the foster mother came in all beaten up, saying she couldn't keep the kids and was leaving her husband. He had been beating her for years. And I had been placing abused children in that home. I hadn't approved it, it was just on my list, but maybe I wouldn't have caught the signs either if I had approved it.

I digress, just to say we should not be placing children in care willy-nilly like it's always safe and awesome.

[jeaniebueller]

There has to be more to the story, because in my experience in working in child welfare, we would not put kids in foster care based on one incident like that.

[downtoearth]

Sept 29, 2014 5:44:24 GMT -5 jeaniebueller said:

There has to be more to the story, because in my experience in working in child welfare, we would not put kids in foster care based on one incident like that.

See not in my experience working at a youth home and parenting. I keep coming across more and more strict consequences and lawyering-up instances for obvious cases with no neglect. Do you currently work for CPS services, bc I'd like to be wrong and think it's only CO and MT?

In the last couple years I have seen three investigations of friends - upper middle class uber parents who admit to "not watching the kids out back" or minor ish like that who go through a full investigation. Which is not just one call and a "oh misunderstanding," but people saying in closed doors "we could take your kids" as one of the first sentences!

Conversely, I also know about a non-CPS daycare incident where a woman had 4 complaints prior but they were wiped bc the state licensing was "overwhelmed" with complaints and hadn't investigated and then a friend's kid broke his skull for her not watching closely - and lied and still has a license!

This all just seems backward! I think nosy neighbors and communities should ban together to raise kids and not look to an authority for enforcing uber-parenting norms, but instead just retrieve said kid and be happy that most community members are good.

[EloiseWeenie]

This has gone too far.

I've been tempted to set up the iPad in Amelia's room while she's napping, and facetime my phone, so I can run to the bus stop down the street to get Hunter. I'll never do this, because I'm terrified someone would call CPS. I've tried changing up her naptime, but she won't budge. We just deal with a cranky almost 3 year old until bedtime, and I wake her up after 10 minutes to go walk to the bus stop.

[blink]

I'm just waiting for the day that it will be illegal for 16, 17, 18 year olds to stay home or go out by themselves. I mean if 11yo is too young to walk to a car by oneself this can't be too far away.

I just don't see the point in criminalizing every single behavior or why punishment instead of support is the only logical conclusion. Maybe there is support offered and we just don't hear about it?

[jeaniebueller]

Sept 29, 2014 6:03:11 GMT -5 downtoearth said:

Sept 29, 2014 5:44:24 GMT -5 jeaniebueller said:

There has to be more to the story, because in my experience in working in child welfare, we would not put kids in foster care based on one incident like that.

See not in my experience working at a youth home and parenting. I keep coming across more and more strict consequences and lawyering-up instances for obvious cases with no neglect. Do you currently work for CPS services, bc I'd like to be wrong and think it's only CO and MT?

In the last couple years I have seen three investigations of friends - upper middle class uber parents who admit to "not watching the kids out back" or minor ish like that who go through a full investigation. Which is not just one call and a "oh misunderstanding," but people saying in closed doors "we could take your kids" as one of the first sentences!

Conversely, I also know about a non-CPS daycare incident where a woman had 4 complaints prior but they were wiped bc the state licensing was "overwhelmed" with complaints and hadn't investigated and then a friend's kid broke his skull for her not watching closely - and lied and still has a license!

This all just seems backward! I think nosy neighbors and communities should ban together to raise kids and not look to an authority for enforcing uber-parenting norms, but instead just retrieve said kid and be happy that most community members are good.

I don't work for CPS, but work in conjunction with them, I guess you could say. I have worked on cases where kids have been placed in foster care due to lack of supervision but in nearly every case, there were other factors at play (e.g. not the first time, or the circumstances were way too risky due to the kid's circumstances, deplorable hoarder-esque home conditions, drug use in the home, etc.). We are required by federal and state law to provide reasonable efforts prior to asking the court to order kids out of their home and the workers I deal with take that pretty seriously.

[taratru]

Almost five percent of people surveyed want jail time for this kind of thing? Did they survey on the bump?

This kind of shit is making me crazy. Isn't there a name for this kind of phenomenon, when the media is kind of feeding the problem and making it grow? Because I even find myself thinking "oh, maybe I shouldn't be letting my kids go to the park without me" and "maybe I should sit outside" before I realize NO, I'm not doing anything wrong.

[Deleted]

Parenting classes do not teach what you think they do. Just an FYI.

[ohyouknow]

Sept 29, 2014 9:01:40 GMT -5 taratru said:

Because I even find myself thinking "oh, maybe I shouldn't be letting my kids go to the park without me" and "maybe I should sit outside" before I realize NO, I'm not doing anything wrong.

This exactly.  I know my kids and their abilities, and I let them play in my backyard with other neighbor kids while I'm inside, just looking outside periodically. I know the parents of the other kids out there playing are all doing the same periodic peeks, but no one is sitting out there with them. It's sad that I'm more scared of someone turning us into authorities instead of the kids getting kidnapped.

[meshaliuknits]

Sept 29, 2014 9:02:25 GMT -5 @helenabonhamcarter said:

Parenting classes do not teach what you think they do. Just an FYI.

Do they teach you that you have to feed the baby and bathe her and put the trash in the trash can? That's what I learned on the Simpsons.

[doobeedoo]

These stories are appalling. And they just keep on coming. Don't we have real criminals and obvious neglect/abuse cases to pursue?

[sparkythelawyer]

At 12 and 13 I used to babysit not just my sibling, but other people's children, while living in Illinois, all the time. Now? You need a master's degree in early child development before the neighbor feels comfortable letting you watch her kid for an evening. The world has lost its damn mind.

[ijack]

Sept 29, 2014 10:14:45 GMT -5 sparkythelawyer said:

At 12 and 13 I used to babysit not just my sibling, but other people's children, while living in Illinois, all the time. Now? You need a master's degree in early child development before the neighbor feels comfortable letting you watch her kid for an evening. The world has lost its damn mind.

When I was 12 I babysat for a family where the mother worked at the safeway bakery and had to be at work at 4am. She would come pick me up at 3:30 and drop me off at her house (just realized her kids were probably on their own during that time, huh) and I would go back to sleep and wake up with the kids and go about the day. Her kids were 2 and 4.

[redheadbaker]

"30% said they hadn't left the baby with anyone, including the baby's father for the entire first year."

That is fucking insane. Why have a child with someone if you don't trust him to parent?

[Deleted]

Sept 29, 2014 10:14:45 GMT -5 sparkythelawyer said:

At 12 and 13 I used to babysit not just my sibling, but other people's children, while living in Illinois, all the time. Now? You need a master's degree in early child development before the neighbor feels comfortable letting you watch her kid for an evening. The world has lost its damn mind.

Just don't expect a salary that reflects a degree though. Because that would just be too much.

[meshaliuknits]

Sept 29, 2014 10:33:16 GMT -5 redheadbaker said:

"30% said they hadn't left the baby with anyone, including the baby's father for the entire first year."

That is fucking insane. Why have a child with someone if you don't trust him to parent?

I think this confirms it was the Bump that was polled.

[MrsAxilla]

Sept 29, 2014 7:23:19 GMT -5 EloiseWeenie said:

This has gone too far.

I've been tempted to set up the iPad in Amelia's room while she's napping, and facetime my phone, so I can run to the bus stop down the street to get Hunter. I'll never do this, because I'm terrified someone would call CPS. I've tried changing up her naptime, but she won't budge. We just deal with a cranky almost 3 year old until bedtime, and I wake her up after 10 minutes to go walk to the bus stop.

Is this a good or bad place to confess that I've left my infant alone to pick my son up from school across the street?  Usually her nap time is over when it's time to get him, but once or twice it didn't work out that way.  I can almost see my house from the school.  There's a fence and some trees, so I can't technically see it, but it's literally a six or seven round trip walk (I have it timed perfectly). The monitor actually works until the last 500 ft or so.  Even if a fire spontaneously broke out, the fire station is one block away and her window is accessible from outside.  She's almost safer in her crib than crossing the street with me.  


I stared at this post for like ten minutes trying to decide whether to hit post.  Don't call CPS on me!!!

[redheadbaker]

Sept 29, 2014 11:00:40 GMT -5 MrsAxilla said:

Sept 29, 2014 7:23:19 GMT -5 EloiseWeenie said:

This has gone too far.

I've been tempted to set up the iPad in Amelia's room while she's napping, and facetime my phone, so I can run to the bus stop down the street to get Hunter. I'll never do this, because I'm terrified someone would call CPS. I've tried changing up her naptime, but she won't budge. We just deal with a cranky almost 3 year old until bedtime, and I wake her up after 10 minutes to go walk to the bus stop.

Is this a good or bad place to confess that I've left my infant alone to pick my son up from school across the street?  Usually her nap time is over when it's time to get him, but once or twice it didn't work out that way.  I can almost see my house from the school.  There's a fence and some trees, so I can't technically see it, but it's literally a six or seven round trip walk (I have it timed perfectly). The monitor actually works until the last 500 ft or so.  Even if a fire spontaneously broke out, the fire station is one block away and her window is accessible from outside.  She's almost safer in her crib than crossing the street with me.  


I stared at this post for like ten minutes trying to decide whether to hit post.  Don't call CPS on me!!!

I've left DS asleep in his crib tp walk the dogs around the apartment building. Once a year, S.O. has to go out of town to a conference for work. Dogs still need to go out before bed.

[downtoearth]

Sept 29, 2014 8:51:54 GMT -5 jeaniebueller said:

Sept 29, 2014 6:03:11 GMT -5 downtoearth said:

See not in my experience working at a youth home and parenting. I keep coming across more and more strict consequences and lawyering-up instances for obvious cases with no neglect. Do you currently work for CPS services, bc I'd like to be wrong and think it's only CO and MT?

In the last couple years I have seen three investigations of friends - upper middle class uber parents who admit to "not watching the kids out back" or minor ish like that who go through a full investigation. Which is not just one call and a "oh misunderstanding," but people saying in closed doors "we could take your kids" as one of the first sentences!

Conversely, I also know about a non-CPS daycare incident where a woman had 4 complaints prior but they were wiped bc the state licensing was "overwhelmed" with complaints and hadn't investigated and then a friend's kid broke his skull for her not watching closely - and lied and still has a license!

This all just seems backward! I think nosy neighbors and communities should ban together to raise kids and not look to an authority for enforcing uber-parenting norms, but instead just retrieve said kid and be happy that most community members are good.

I don't work for CPS, but work in conjunction with them, I guess you could say. I have worked on cases where kids have been placed in foster care due to lack of supervision but in nearly every case, there were other factors at play (e.g. not the first time, or the circumstances were way too risky due to the kid's circumstances, deplorable hoarder-esque home conditions, drug use in the home, etc.). We are required by federal and state law to provide reasonable efforts prior to asking the court to order kids out of their home and the workers I deal with take that pretty seriously.

I'm not being snarky, I just really would like to know what someone who is involved in child neglect cases thinks of these increased parenting patrols.

So none of the investigations of people I know resulted in having kids removed or even court, but instead just numerous interviews and random home visits and lawyers at interviews. Still unnecessary IMO bc they were so intrusive and heavy handed language like, "you can choose to not participate, but the court doesn't look favorably" or "I've had to take kids for lesser reasons." But are these just CPS outliers that act so authoritarian and persur cases like the one in this article or have you seen investigations, but maybe not removal, for infractions this minor?

[overture]

This didn't warrant even a slap on the wrists. It warranted nothing more than noting that she thought it was a "stupid" thing to do.

I'm just so tired of all of this. What have we done to ourselves? Why, in our quest to be educated, evidence-based parents, do we ignore all the research on the importance of unsupervised play? Because it doesn't fit with our guilt?

It makes me really sad to think that my kid and her friends won't have the kind of experiences I had as a kid: riding my bike to a friend's house with no notice and no agenda, walking in a pack down to the river to play in the mud, going to the park alone just to see who else was there, walking a mile to the store for candy with a friend, getting dropped off at the movies.

I mean, for fuck's sake, people wonder now if they should leave their elementary school kids at a friend's birthday party, or stay the whole time. Are we serious with this?

I do not want to participate in this bullshit. I can't wait until we're all old and being taken care of by a generation with stunted executive function skills. In the mean time, I'll be over here, letting my not-yet-three-year-old play on the back patio alone. Because she's fucking FINE.

[cattledogkisses]

In another case, a mother taking courses at school lost her childcare at the last moment. She opted to take her 11-year-old son with her to class. When he left the room to retrieve a book from her car, a police officer asked why he was alone and reported his mother to the child welfare agency.


This is utterly insane.  I was babysitting at 11 years old.

[Dumbledork]

Okay, but did she seriously leave with one child for 20 minutes and didn't even let her other kids know? Because there's a difference, IMO, in

"Suzie, keep an eye on your toddler brother while I drive your other brother to school real fast. I'll be back within 30 minutes and then I'll take you to school."

And

Just leaving the house with one kid, leaving the other with a sick toddler and no real idea where momma went for 20 minutes.

She shouldn't have lost her kids, but I have a problem with her just leaving without telling her kids what's going on.

[Michelle]

Sept 29, 2014 11:49:59 GMT -5 Dumbledork said:

Okay, but did she seriously leave with one child for 20 minutes and didn't even let her other kids know? Because there's a difference, IMO, in

"Suzie, keep an eye on your toddler brother while I drive your other brother to school real fast. I'll be back within 30 minutes and then I'll take you to school."

And

Just leaving the house with one kid, leaving the other with a sick toddler and no real idea where momma went for 20 minutes.

She shouldn't have lost her kids, but I have a problem with her just leaving without telling her kids what's going on.

this could be distracted thinking attributed to her depression. I imagine her state of depression must have factored into the case too.

Struggling with it myself right now and am actively looking for a therapist but this story has sufficiently freaked me the fuck out.

[AJL]

Sept 29, 2014 10:33:16 GMT -5 redheadbaker said:

"30% said they hadn't left the baby with anyone, including the baby's father for the entire first year."

This is nuts!

Judge if anyone wants, but I left my 3 week old with DH so I could go to the movies with my friend. I was going out of my mind and needed to get the fuck out of the house. DH did a great job because he's a great dad. I didn't worry for a second.

[sillygoosegirl]

Sept 29, 2014 10:33:16 GMT -5 redheadbaker said:

"30% said they hadn't left the baby with anyone, including the baby's father for the entire first year."

That is fucking insane. Why have a child with someone if you don't trust him to parent?

That is heartbreaking.