December 10, 2004

• The Department of Social Services will probably waste little time before removing these kids from the parents' home.
• Their 17-year-old son, Ben, has not been handling the family's celebrity status well and had a "meltdown" Wednesday after school, she said. Little fucker will probably take a lawyer's bid to represent him in a lawsuit against them for emotional anguish, neglect and public defamation. Re: CPS...I think parents ought to have more power to refer their kids to Boot Camps and CHiNS (Children in Need of Supervision). (thus spake the social worker)
• The Department of Social Services will probably waste little time before removing these kids from the parents' home. How far does this go? If I say that my kid gets no supper until he takes out the trash, and he doesn't take out the trash, can social services take him away from me?
• My dad used to go on strike with me. Except that it involved actual striking. Usually with a strap.
• It depends where you live. In North Carolina, DSS jumps all over any complaint. You are in major Shitsville if DSS is investigating you, regardless of the facts. To answer smallish bear's question, it goes pretty damn far, at least around here.
• Social services (at least in Ontario) don't have any jurisdiction over children over 16. Only one of their kids would even be eligible. But I seriously doubt they would even be interested for a 12 year old unless there was actual abuse, or she was getting into serious trouble for lack of supervision. My mother did this several times when I was that age, though in a less dramatic fashion: once she covered the entire TV with an opaque bag for two weeks, then we had to earn hours of tv viewing (in 15 minute intervals) by doing chores. Or rather, I earned by doing chores, and my older brother was just a leech off my time. I have personal experience with a relative being taken into foster care by the Children's Aid Society from non-abusive but negligent parents. I know we feel like they are arbitrary when it happens to people we love, but they really aren't.
• OK so withholding TV, ok. Withholding dinner, not ok. Withholding dessert is probably ok. Making chicken and spinach casserole on pizza night, ok.
• Doubt that they'd get taken away at that age--after all, parents are on property, food's in house, they're in safe position. And they're well old enough to be in the house alone, and do their damn chores!
• I wonder if this family is going to have some serious long-term issues after all this publicity.
• Hmm. My wife and I were talking about this. These parents are insane. Why are they moving out of their own house? Put the kids in the tent. Or, on a more serious note, in a nice, no-bullshit boarding school.
• I thought the same thing, rodgerd (however, DSS/CPS could get a call on that one for the 12 y.o.). As for the boarding schools, too much $$ -- most folks just can't afford them. And with Boot Camps, the kids have to be court-ordered, which means they have to be nasty little incorrigble felons. One social work job I've never had (nor will I ever take) is the DSS/CPS one. These folks get all the bad press and often literally hold these kids lives in the balance. I think I would end up in jail for murdering some of the sick f***s that treat them so badly. Trust me, snatching kids is the last thing DSS wants to have to do (for an essay-full of reasons), but when you don't and should have, I can't imagine living with that.
• Wasn't this the subject of one of those awful Lifetime movies? I could swear this has been done to death.
• You move into the the tent so that the hand-wringing reactionaries can't say that the kids are in jeopardy. This rocks, but you really have to wonder about the parent's negotiation skills if it came to this. Also, 12 and 17 seems a little late to start.
• Yeah, a boarding school is great. When my Dad sent me to a "semi-military" one for senior year in high school as a punishment I met a bunch of bored rich kids who had easy access to drugs. Hello tobacco, hello marijuana, hello acid, hello cocaine. I learned how to march while hallucinating on LSD! And it was pretty fun for the following decade or so until I realized that I wasn't genetically predisposed to addiction and didn't really want to follow my friends to smack grad school and a subsequent career as a junky. So, not having spoken to my Dad in years, I quit all drugs cold turkey.Then I started my life over. And it only cost him about 10K. Thanks Dad! Maybe parents should try taking care of their children instead of sending them off to live with strangers.
• but you really have to wonder about the parent's negotiation skills if it came to this. Also, 12 and 17 seems a little late to start. PareidoliaticBoy: Negotiation skills, nay, any verbal/reasoning skills, have nothing to do with this. These people may well be hostage negotiators at work and still be in this situation. Look at the ages, man. Look at the AGES! You can reason better with a two year old than you can with ages 12-19! Whilst raising the 4 little BlueHorse spawn, from the ages of 1-11 I thought I was doing a fair job. The first two had their ups and downs, but I still had hair when they left home. They'd graduated, were not on drugs, or in jail, nobody pregnant. It remained to be seen whether or not they'd be Productive Members of Society. But by the time the two youngest hit age 13, I was sure I'd FUBARed completely on those two. Now the youngest is 25, and they are all PM of S. If I get a camper for retirement, I'm keeping the tent to pass on when the grandkids reach puberty. If I may paraphrase Mark Twain: At the age of 11 you put the kid in a barrel. At twelve you hammer on the lid and feed the kid thru the bunghole. Maybe let them out at 20. Or not.
• Hmmm ... I have no shortage of ideas on how to make your kids pay without drawing the attention of DSS. Then again . . . For starters, I would pretend to be my child and contact the DSS with a fake complaint. That would discredit the child nicely, especially after I cried wolf a few times. "Mad dad beat me so bad yesterday I have a huge bruise on my back." Oh really? Let's see . . .
• One of my sisters, going through her rebellious phase, ran away from home a couple of times, and on one occasion called Social Welfare (now known by the silly acronym of CYPFs) and said my parents had abused her. They, quite rightly, told her to get her silly arse back home. Which she did, ashamed.
• But Cat Barnard told correspondent Strassman the walkout may be starting to work: "Benjamin, when he came home from school the other day, rather than leaving the garbage cans out for three or four days, he grabbed them and bolted for the house like a rocket. And Kit actually, after showing her how to wash her clothes at least 12 times, has finally realized that she can wash clothes." CBS
• Good God, these kids have no bloody idea just how hard life will get for them. If they can't do a few chores, their in for a hell of a time.