12 ms·

A few years ago at a baseball tournament my son’s team did phenomenally well, and ended up beating a really great team from out of state. A few days later we g

A few years ago at a baseball tournament my son’s team did phenomenally well, and ended up beating a really great team from out of state. A few days later we get a knock on the door from our state’s version of DCF. Someone had complained that they didn’t like the way my wife had walked our daughter to the bathroom. After an interview the state worker said it sounded like retaliation for our son and his team doing so well, and all but hinted it was an opposing team’s parent who called in the complaint. Sadly the law says they have to investigate every complaint, no matter how trivial, so we had to go through a couple interviews and they apparently interviewed others as well. Just annoying for us, but other workers have told us about horror stories (our kids are adopted and we got to know that arm of the agency well). Obviously these agencies are vital, but they need well balanced laws and regulations and some common sense injected into them so stupid complaints don’t end up sucking up resources and potentially disrupting lives for nothing.

williamcotton 4y ago
The problem with trying to punish people for false complaints is that disincentives to reporting child abuse is probably not worth the annoyances. By the time it transitions from a mere annoyance (having to talk to someone from the CPS for an hour and that's it) to something much more impactful (someone producing enough fraudulent evidence that you are arrested and put on trial) they've moved away from merely abusing a reporting system and into full-blown felonious behavior that will not be ignored! Kudos to my wife for explaining this to me after she told how a coworker teacher of hers was being harassed by a parent who had called CPS in retaliation for some nonsensical disagreement about (is there a pattern here?) kids on a school sports team. I was angry! I wanted that parent to be punished! But my wife is right. Cue Will Ferrell yelling at kids: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=junIx1T8A5I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=junIx1T8A5I
- williamcotton 4y ago
  Are the downvotes for the SNL skit? Or?
  - pc86 4y ago
    Probably for the insane suggestion that we shouldn't punish false reporting because it will somehow disincentive reporting actual abuse. Initiating a CPS investigation can be incredibly traumatizing for both the parents and the children, and due process can take months or years in the event the initial investigation ends in an incorrect decision to remove the children. This story is proof that even if the police aren't involved (or drop their involvement) CPS is its own entity and their investigations are not just having a chat for an hour. Multiple meetings, interviews, over the course of weeks or months. False reports, especially those used for retaliation, should be a felony and result in jail time.
    - williamcotton 4y ago
      Ok, so this is just a case of something that a primarily male demographic between 19-35 and a background in STEM agree with... which was also my initial, emotionally charged reaction! Meanwhile, the conversation amongst the staff at the public school my wife works at came to a different conclusion. They seem to be a better representation of society in general. So I guess it all works out!
      - rootusrootus 4y ago
        > the conversation amongst the staff at the public school my wife works at came to a different conclusion. They seem to be a better representation of society in general. That's the saddest thing I've read this morning, assuming it is accurate. For every great staff member at school, I've met at least one other than was barely able to function in adult society. I don't know which direction the causal effect is going, but there's a correlation between working all day with young children and being able to relate to other adults. My son's elementary school is more like a prison now, after a huge transformation in the last two years, and I can't wait for him to move up to the middle school. Which thankfully isn't quite so authoritarian. Yet. I'm right on the edge of pulling both kids out of school and going online with it, and probably would have except my daughter really didn't fare well during the pandemic version of online school. My son would be quite happy though. Make it self-paced and he'd have his high school diploma at 12.
RicoElectrico 4y ago
> they didn’t like the way my wife had walked our daughter to the bathroom. Sorry, this sounds so absurd you can't just leave us hanging to guess what was specifically claimed ;) In a similar vein, in my family we had a complaint to social care worker that our Grandma (who was immobile in a bed and without verbal contact because of terminal Alzheimer) was improperly taken care of. But as my mom is a nurse who did all the feeding, cleaning 2x a day and installed anti bedsore mattress, no fucking way. We know 99% that the complaint was from one of the people in the family, as almost nobody else knew or cared what was going on.
- Scubabear68 4y ago
  My daughter was having a very bad day, very pouty and whiny. Around age 8 or so. My wife had put her in a timeout, and then our daughter kept “needing” to go to the bathroom over and over again (usually to play in the sink). Fed up with this, my exasperated wife force marched her to the bathroom with her hand on her back to ensure she went to the bathroom and wasn’t loitering about playing. A parent from the other team was sitting in our group and disapproved loudly of the timeout and the forced bathroom match, she almost certainly was the one who complained.
  - wil421 4y ago
    I have a 3 year old. She hates going to bet and was having a tantrum for a while last night. She’s smart and figured out we will take her out of the bedroom if she says she has to pee pee. After 4 times of playing around in the bathroom and only one time actually using it she finally went to bed after asking me to adjust the covers 30 times. All of this is normal kid stuff. What kind of parent is so spiteful they will call child services on an opposing teams parents?
    - spoils19 4y ago
      [flagged]
      - callalex 4y ago
lawkwok 4y ago
Sorry you had to go through that. I am having a hard time thinking of a way how someone could walk their child to the bathroom wrong. Could you share some more details if you are comfortable?
rashkov 4y ago
I'm glad it worked out for you. If anyone finds themselves in this situation, please do not talk to protective services without a lawyer. Treat it like you're talking to the cops who are investigating you. They can make your life hell and take your children away. They do it for things as minor as possessing marijuana in your home, and they do it every day to people who are poor. You just don't hear about it because those stories don't make it into the news.
locustous 4y ago
> Obviously these agencies are vital Are they? Seems that they do more harm than good.
- ninjagoo 4y ago
  > Are they? Seems that they do more harm than good. Do you have any evidence to back this statement?
  - MichaelDickens 4y ago
    OP asserted without evidence: "Obviously these agencies are vital." GP questioned, and made a contrary assertion without evidence: "Are they? Seems that they do more harm than good." Seems unfair to call out GP for not providing evidence, but not OP, especially since GP's claim was more moderate).
    - ninjagoo 4y ago
      These agencies were instituted on public demand to reduce abuse at a societal level, and their missions were constituted with those harms in mind - hence the obviousness of those agencies being vital, at least at the time when they were instituted, with plenty of evidence back then for their necessity [1]. If they are no longer meeting those mission parameters and causing more harm than good, then we should demand evidence for that as well, should we not? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_protective_services#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_protective_services#Hist...
      - bluGill 4y ago
        They are not causing more harm than good on balance. However they are causing a lot of harm. they need to be reformed, but we need them.
    - Scubabear68 4y ago
      Anecdotal, but I think I mentioned our kids were adopted. We adopted through the State, and underwent 6 months of training before being approved. The stories of abuse and neglect were hair raising, and our kids had their own fair share before they came to us. CPS exists as an alternative to cops doing this kind of work. When done right, they are compassionate and understand how to deal with kids in a variety of sm high stress situations. They do evaluations. They take kids out of homes safely. They do transport to foster care or elsewhere. They evaluate potential adoptive families. When all done right. We know some fabulous workers doing incredibly hard work here. We also know it’s easy to abuse the system, and they could use a lot more checks and balances.
temporallobe 4y ago
The insidious aspect of doing something like this is that there’s no way of knowing who made the report, and there seems to be no repercussion for making frivolous or false claims, otherwise you could retaliate against them in the same way.
- ranger_danger 4y ago
  >otherwise but having no consequences means they CAN retaliate the same way
  - temporallobe 4y ago
    Right, but whom would you make the report about? All of the parents on the opposing team?
eweise 4y ago
Not as bad as your story, but my wife drove to our local community center parking lot, with our infant in the back. She got out of the car and started talking to a friend about 20 feet from the car (windows down, not hot). Another woman called the police complaining that the kid was in the car unattended. They came and threatened to get CPS involved. In the end nothing happened, but it was scary how the situation escalated so quickly.
- LenoreSkenazy 4y ago
  I am so sorry that this happened. People love to feel like THEY care more about your own kid than you do. And the problem is: with cell phones it is almost effortless to get the authorities involved. LS (I wrote Free-Range Kids and run the nonprofit Let Grow)
  - eweise 4y ago
    Thanks. I haven't read your book but glad you bring awareness to this issue. We never put limits on how far our kids could roam. The farthest they would pedal, was the mall about four miles away. Only thing I ever feared were cars so most of our instruction was around being safe around traffic.
Octokiddie 4y ago
This sounds like the parental version of swatting someone. Hideous.
- aidenn0 4y ago
  Happens enough that CPS basically ignores reports from ex-boyfriends/ex-girlfriends around here.
devwastaken 4y ago
Don't talk to state workers. Same as don't talk to the police. Anything you say cannot be used to help you in court, it is heresay. It can only be used against you. The interviews are to determine if the DA has enough evidence to prosecute you and if human services meets the vague requirements to steal your kids.
LenoreSkenazy 4y ago
Hi. I'm Lenore Skenazy. I wrote that article and run Let Grow, a nonprofit promoting childhood independence, which grew out of the Free-Range Kids movement. (I wrote Free-Range Kids.) At Let Grow we are working to change state neglect laws so they clarify that neglect is ONLY when you put your kid in serious, obvious and likely danger -- not ANY TIME you take your eyes off them, or anytime someone doesn't like your parenting style. Four states have passed these "Reasonable Childhood Independence" laws and five states are considering them this year. Find out more (and, if you'd like, help out) at LetGrow.org . Click on "Advocacy."
mcv 4y ago
What's bizarre to me is how common both these sort of stories are, but also stories of American parents beating their kids as if that's a normal thing. Where are these child protection services in cases of actual child abuse?

williamcotton 4y ago

The problem with trying to punish people for false complaints is that disincentives to reporting child abuse is probably not worth the annoyances. By the time it transitions from a mere annoyance (having to talk to someone from the CPS for an hour and that's it) to something much more impactful (someone producing enough fraudulent evidence that you are arrested and put on trial) they've moved away from merely abusing a reporting system and into full-blown felonious behavior that will not be ignored! Kudos to my wife for explaining this to me after she told how a coworker teacher of hers was being harassed by a parent who had called CPS in retaliation for some nonsensical disagreement about (is there a pattern here?) kids on a school sports team. I was angry! I wanted that parent to be punished! But my wife is right. Cue Will Ferrell yelling at kids: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=junIx1T8A5I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=junIx1T8A5I

williamcotton 4y ago
Are the downvotes for the SNL skit? Or?
- pc86 4y ago
  Probably for the insane suggestion that we shouldn't punish false reporting because it will somehow disincentive reporting actual abuse. Initiating a CPS investigation can be incredibly traumatizing for both the parents and the children, and due process can take months or years in the event the initial investigation ends in an incorrect decision to remove the children. This story is proof that even if the police aren't involved (or drop their involvement) CPS is its own entity and their investigations are not just having a chat for an hour. Multiple meetings, interviews, over the course of weeks or months. False reports, especially those used for retaliation, should be a felony and result in jail time.
  - williamcotton 4y ago
    Ok, so this is just a case of something that a primarily male demographic between 19-35 and a background in STEM agree with... which was also my initial, emotionally charged reaction! Meanwhile, the conversation amongst the staff at the public school my wife works at came to a different conclusion. They seem to be a better representation of society in general. So I guess it all works out!
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      > the conversation amongst the staff at the public school my wife works at came to a different conclusion. They seem to be a better representation of society in general. That's the saddest thing I've read this morning, assuming it is accurate. For every great staff member at school, I've met at least one other than was barely able to function in adult society. I don't know which direction the causal effect is going, but there's a correlation between working all day with young children and being able to relate to other adults. My son's elementary school is more like a prison now, after a huge transformation in the last two years, and I can't wait for him to move up to the middle school. Which thankfully isn't quite so authoritarian. Yet. I'm right on the edge of pulling both kids out of school and going online with it, and probably would have except my daughter really didn't fare well during the pandemic version of online school. My son would be quite happy though. Make it self-paced and he'd have his high school diploma at 12.

RicoElectrico 4y ago

> they didn’t like the way my wife had walked our daughter to the bathroom. Sorry, this sounds so absurd you can't just leave us hanging to guess what was specifically claimed ;) In a similar vein, in my family we had a complaint to social care worker that our Grandma (who was immobile in a bed and without verbal contact because of terminal Alzheimer) was improperly taken care of. But as my mom is a nurse who did all the feeding, cleaning 2x a day and installed anti bedsore mattress, no fucking way. We know 99% that the complaint was from one of the people in the family, as almost nobody else knew or cared what was going on.

Scubabear68 4y ago
My daughter was having a very bad day, very pouty and whiny. Around age 8 or so. My wife had put her in a timeout, and then our daughter kept “needing” to go to the bathroom over and over again (usually to play in the sink). Fed up with this, my exasperated wife force marched her to the bathroom with her hand on her back to ensure she went to the bathroom and wasn’t loitering about playing. A parent from the other team was sitting in our group and disapproved loudly of the timeout and the forced bathroom match, she almost certainly was the one who complained.
- wil421 4y ago
  I have a 3 year old. She hates going to bet and was having a tantrum for a while last night. She’s smart and figured out we will take her out of the bedroom if she says she has to pee pee. After 4 times of playing around in the bathroom and only one time actually using it she finally went to bed after asking me to adjust the covers 30 times. All of this is normal kid stuff. What kind of parent is so spiteful they will call child services on an opposing teams parents?
  - spoils19 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - callalex 4y ago

lawkwok 4y ago

Sorry you had to go through that. I am having a hard time thinking of a way how someone could walk their child to the bathroom wrong. Could you share some more details if you are comfortable?

rashkov 4y ago

I'm glad it worked out for you. If anyone finds themselves in this situation, please do not talk to protective services without a lawyer. Treat it like you're talking to the cops who are investigating you. They can make your life hell and take your children away. They do it for things as minor as possessing marijuana in your home, and they do it every day to people who are poor. You just don't hear about it because those stories don't make it into the news.

locustous 4y ago

> Obviously these agencies are vital Are they? Seems that they do more harm than good.

ninjagoo 4y ago
> Are they? Seems that they do more harm than good. Do you have any evidence to back this statement?
- MichaelDickens 4y ago
  OP asserted without evidence: "Obviously these agencies are vital." GP questioned, and made a contrary assertion without evidence: "Are they? Seems that they do more harm than good." Seems unfair to call out GP for not providing evidence, but not OP, especially since GP's claim was more moderate).
  - ninjagoo 4y ago
    These agencies were instituted on public demand to reduce abuse at a societal level, and their missions were constituted with those harms in mind - hence the obviousness of those agencies being vital, at least at the time when they were instituted, with plenty of evidence back then for their necessity [1]. If they are no longer meeting those mission parameters and causing more harm than good, then we should demand evidence for that as well, should we not? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_protective_services#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_protective_services#Hist...
    - bluGill 4y ago
      They are not causing more harm than good on balance. However they are causing a lot of harm. they need to be reformed, but we need them.
  - Scubabear68 4y ago
    Anecdotal, but I think I mentioned our kids were adopted. We adopted through the State, and underwent 6 months of training before being approved. The stories of abuse and neglect were hair raising, and our kids had their own fair share before they came to us. CPS exists as an alternative to cops doing this kind of work. When done right, they are compassionate and understand how to deal with kids in a variety of sm high stress situations. They do evaluations. They take kids out of homes safely. They do transport to foster care or elsewhere. They evaluate potential adoptive families. When all done right. We know some fabulous workers doing incredibly hard work here. We also know it’s easy to abuse the system, and they could use a lot more checks and balances.

temporallobe 4y ago

The insidious aspect of doing something like this is that there’s no way of knowing who made the report, and there seems to be no repercussion for making frivolous or false claims, otherwise you could retaliate against them in the same way.

ranger_danger 4y ago
>otherwise but having no consequences means they CAN retaliate the same way
- temporallobe 4y ago
  Right, but whom would you make the report about? All of the parents on the opposing team?

eweise 4y ago

Not as bad as your story, but my wife drove to our local community center parking lot, with our infant in the back. She got out of the car and started talking to a friend about 20 feet from the car (windows down, not hot). Another woman called the police complaining that the kid was in the car unattended. They came and threatened to get CPS involved. In the end nothing happened, but it was scary how the situation escalated so quickly.

LenoreSkenazy 4y ago
I am so sorry that this happened. People love to feel like THEY care more about your own kid than you do. And the problem is: with cell phones it is almost effortless to get the authorities involved. LS (I wrote Free-Range Kids and run the nonprofit Let Grow)
- eweise 4y ago
  Thanks. I haven't read your book but glad you bring awareness to this issue. We never put limits on how far our kids could roam. The farthest they would pedal, was the mall about four miles away. Only thing I ever feared were cars so most of our instruction was around being safe around traffic.

Octokiddie 4y ago

This sounds like the parental version of swatting someone. Hideous.

aidenn0 4y ago
Happens enough that CPS basically ignores reports from ex-boyfriends/ex-girlfriends around here.

devwastaken 4y ago

Don't talk to state workers. Same as don't talk to the police. Anything you say cannot be used to help you in court, it is heresay. It can only be used against you. The interviews are to determine if the DA has enough evidence to prosecute you and if human services meets the vague requirements to steal your kids.

LenoreSkenazy 4y ago

Hi. I'm Lenore Skenazy. I wrote that article and run Let Grow, a nonprofit promoting childhood independence, which grew out of the Free-Range Kids movement. (I wrote Free-Range Kids.) At Let Grow we are working to change state neglect laws so they clarify that neglect is ONLY when you put your kid in serious, obvious and likely danger -- not ANY TIME you take your eyes off them, or anytime someone doesn't like your parenting style. Four states have passed these "Reasonable Childhood Independence" laws and five states are considering them this year. Find out more (and, if you'd like, help out) at LetGrow.org . Click on "Advocacy."

mcv 4y ago

What's bizarre to me is how common both these sort of stories are, but also stories of American parents beating their kids as if that's a normal thing. Where are these child protection services in cases of actual child abuse?