Blame Government ? and lawmakers for our kids?

[addictsmom]

Lori, I agree 1000%. I can go on and on for days too about stories of what I did for Tish. She never called the cops on me and I think that is only because she was always in some kind of trouble and figured the cops would of arrested her in the end. That did happen one time when she called them for something else. She winded up going to jail instead of the other person.

I also screwed Tisha's window shut, I grounded her from make up, blow dryer, even hair spray when she was younger. She could care less. When she was skipping school in the 10th grade, I took her car away and told her she would have to walk to school from now on. You guessed it, she did not go to school at all and informed me that she would not ever walk to school so until I gave her car back, she would not go. I started taking her every day, dropping her off at the front door, was there in the afternoon when she walked back out those doors. After doing this for 5 weeks, I found out that she was walking straight out the back door in the morning and walking back in as the bell rang and back out into my car. Nothing worked with her. I went through hell and back to get her commited to a pshych ward when she was 19 as she was a danger to herself. She had overdosed twice already where she had to be resucitated. After 4 hours, they released her and informed me that she was of age and if she wanted to kill herself, she had the right to do that. I cannot say that I blame the government for her problems, but I can tell you that when she turned 18, all my options of help were out the window. I could not carry her on my insurance anymore as she was not in college. Without insurance, you cannot get any quality rehab. Damn, you cant get any rehab at all. And the SAFP program that she just went to for a year is NOT rehab. It is a mental torture program liken to a Nazi concentration camp that has made her more angry than ever. I dont know if she would have been better off in a regular prison or not...... I just dont know anymore about much of anything.

Diane

[Cactus]

Lori,
I am sorry this has happened to you. Your story breaks my heart in so many ways. The pain and anger you experience is completely justified. Our system is broken in many areas, and only now do we see it’s many flaws. Real-life tragedies such as your own can and does put the fear of God in our lives. Life is so damn fragile!!! Hard enough to maintain a healthy family these days w/out the outside interference of government, which of course has grown larger over the years.
When my first was born, the child had created a habit of crying at night. She would demand to be fed by crying and yelling in the wee hours of the night and early morning. Bottle-feeding seemed to work after a while, but only for a short time. The crying began to get worse again and it also became noticed by the next door neighbor. My wife and I (at the time) went to the doctor and had the child examined only to find out that there was nothing physically wrong with her. Understand that there were many times right after handing the bottle to our child, and after me or my wife left the room to go back to bed, the crying would once again resume. Seems we would always return to find the bottle on the floor beside the crib. Assuming that the bottle was dropped accidentally, we would pick it up and return it to her. This would go on constantly until one night I hung back to see why the bottle would fall and why she would cry so quickly afterward. That’s when I caught her throwing the bottle to the floor, crying and throwing a tantrum again. She wanted attention! We went back to the doctor again told him what I saw and he suggested to us that instead of getting up every time the child cried for the bottle, to ignore the tantrums. He told us that eventually the child would find that her own tantrums wouldn’t work to get our atention anymore and start sleeping through the night.
So that night we did as the doctor suggested. For several nights we looked in on her without her seeing us. The crying continued for several days until it began to quiet down a little more each night, but by that point it was a little too late. Our next-door neighbor had heard the crying too and decided to call D.C.Y.S. (Dept. of Child and Youth Services). They came to our house along with the police, oh ya…let the fun begin!
I don’t know to this day what the HELL that neighbor was thinking, but she obviously passed those thoughts of hers on to the child protection agency and to the police. My wife and I were (not charged) suspected and pracitally accused of child neglect! They took our child away from us to perform a physical exam at the hospital, and after the initial visit to our home, made us drive to the agency’s office for further questioning. After hours of more questioning (we told them about our doctors advice), paper-work we were forced to fill out and the exam of our child, they allowed us to pick up our child and bring her home. We were required to take parenting classes, told we should never hit our child (she was only 8 months old for God sakes!) and had to endure their required un-announced-visits. I suspect that many of those workers were NOT parents themselves. Look that was in 1979, and they didn’t leave us alone for the next two years.
If they hadn’t bothered us in the first place, the crying would have ceased and we would have had a pretty normal life. But honest to God, the ones running that horror show really didn’t know what F*** they were doing to us. They gave us advice that we didn’t need or want at the time (advice we never used), cost the State (tax-payers money) in man hours, treated us w/suspect and disrespect, and continued to taunt and humiliate us with attitudes of threats for months. We endured rumors and catty looks from our good ole neighbors and was even dropped in on late one night.
So that was thirty years ago in ‘79’ and it seems nothing has changed even now (in fact it’s worse).
Lori, my thoughts and prayers r with you and your family.
Cac~

[meg'smom]

You know the more i think about this the more angry i get. Let's take Porsche for example.... this is a child that was thrown into the foster system and then forgotten about. when she turned 18 she was put out on the streets with no where to go which is when i took her in. The state closes their cases at age 18. Now here is a young girl who has been shuffled from home to home and then left pretty abandoned and then ends up in prison and has a child which is taken from her as well...... shall we even think about the anger that is building inside of her? The system creates more vicitms.
My heart hurts for the ones who are not yet incarcerated..... while it may be to late for my two girls there are some that are still being ignored and will end up right where mine are if something doesnt change.
I am beyond frustrated with the system and I am appalled at how many people are in the situation as I am!!!! For a long time i thought i was the only one dealing with the screwed up system and rules but after coming here i see that this is a HUGE probelm in this country.

Addictsmom..... I am not blaming the government for Megan's issues I am angry at the government and the system for taking away my ability to discipline and since they took that they refused to help when i screamed for it. Megan is responsible for her drug probelm and for her actions however if I would have been able to nitervene with something other than lecturing her and been able to discipline in a manner that meant something to her maybe she would listened to more of what i said and not be where she is. Maybe not... I dont know but i do know that as long as parents are restricted in thier ability to discipline thier children and are afraid of going to jail for being a parent the prison population is going to continue to rise.

[addictsmom]

Lori, honny I never meant to imply that you blamed the government for Megan's issues. Please forgive me if you thought that. Hell, they are to blame. I know that. All I was saying is that I never had to deal with the issues you did such as the police being called and all that crap so I cannot say the so called "govt" had much of an impact on me disciplining. But I can definatly tell that you did. You were crying out for help then and no one listened. Unfortunatly, I did not cry out until she was over 18 and then sure enough no one listened. And you are right, the govt plays a role in more than just discipline. They take prayer away, they take responsibility of the child away too. How many men and boys do we have locked up just because some 15/16 girl said someone did something to them out of anger? The child is always believed it seems. Yes, I know, 99% of young children molestations are true, I am not saying that. I am talking about girls that just out and out lie. I was taken to court when Tisha was skipping school all the time like I was not doing everything within my power to get her there. If your child is under 17, parents can be jailed, sued, condemned, all the above, if their child does something wrong. No one looks at the parents and says "What can we do to help you" all they want to do is point fingers and tell us how much we failed at this and that. I love you Lori, please know i did not mean to offend...

Diane

[meg'smom]

Addictsmom..... no no I am not offended at all. I did not take it like that. I am sorry too if i confused you......LOL it is all good! I knew what you meant no worries!!!!!!

[shash06]

I think "they" are trying to make boys into girls. What i mean is this generation do not have straight guide lines on what it is to be men. There fathers and grandfathers cant teach them because now it is inappropriate for boys to act like boys did in the past generations. Also with this gender equality girls are trying to be boys. So this is another little change in society that has added to the confusion of our younger generation. I beleive both genders are equal but we are different and we should embrass those differences instead of making our children feel ashamed of the difference. Also nobody can get aggression out properly or fairly. Our prime minister in Aust. has the made the papers for being a rude bully at an air hostess recently and his excuse is he is only human. However if my sons had of done this they would be facing more charges they cant use being human as a defence. So also the mixed messages that are sent. It is also the do as i say not as i do mixed messages. I wish the law makers could spend a day in our shoes and yet they say the know the "real" people - they are so out of touch

[shash06]

My own stories that come to mind are
a) i had a house full of undesireables and rang the police to remove them but because my then 14 yr old invited them the police could not do anything
b) faced aggression from one child so badly rang the police but they only advised me to leave the house they could do nothig
c) i knew a 14yr old girl who was just living with a group of teenagers her parents were seperated and they lived over 100km away and didnt even know where she was. The girl had to face court i told her that DOCS would probably remove her from where she was living and we had good chat and she felt hopeful that her life was about to change for the better. I went with her to court - she got up in front of the judge, the duty solicitor, the police prosecutor and DOCS and said she was 14 staying with friends she had no job no money no family support. The judge gave her a 6mth good behaviour with no conditions and he and all the authorities let her walk out.

So this is a world wide problem as I am in Australia.

[Travsmon]

You guys rule!!!!! I totally agree with everything said. My husband is a high school teacher and has been for over 20 years and he's had the worse year of his career. The kids have absolutly no respect for anything, beginning with themselves. He says he has noticed a steady decline in there grades directly resulting from them knowing he can't do or say anything (for fear of losing his job), their parents can't do or say anything because the kid with turn them into CPS. My beautiful 6 year old grandson has been taught from kindergarden, "if anyone puts a hand on him, he can report it to the teacher".. Our children and grandchild's future is bleak, because govenment has slowly but surely taken over our responsibility as parents. I'm truly afraid of there future. My husband has been teaching long enough to see that this mess started when the current parent were children and has gotten progressively worse every single year. Oh Yeah, one more though "Prison is big money here in California". The State get something like $16,000 (up front) for each year someone is sentenced. Then they only do half time and with no rehad to speak of the system knows the likleyhood of them returning is like 80%, so it's a vicious circle. Thanks for letting me vent.... lol

[UserNamesRCrazy]

I think that once the government stepped in and took away the right to discipline children, our children got more power, and I recall my son threatening to call CPS on me because I wouldn't let him go out at 11 o'clock one night. He proceeded to slash his bed, a recliner and shot his bb gun inside our home!! I called the police and asked to have him removed from my home, they told me to paddle his ass, but that was illegal I stated, they came and took him to a local home for troubled kids. It wasn't our first run in, and wasn't our last. I begged for help for my son since he was young only to get shot down by his Father, and told by our local government that it was a phase and he'd grow out of it.

My son didn't grow out of it, he is a drug addict, he is violent, he says the most inappropriate things - threats to harm others which are now considered terrorist threats and felony's. He's in prison for making "terroist threats" ... actually, no, he's in prison because he's a drug addict who has never been arrested for drug sales therefore was not eligible for a diversion program ... he couldn't pass a UA if his life depended on it, so for probation violations, he's doing four years, is eligible for half time ... but who knows.

The whole CPS thing is out of control. CPS should be involved for neglected children, those who are tossed around from sitter to sitter, home to home, moved eleven times in two or three years ... unstable homes. A spanking never killed anyone, a beating has, and there i a difference.

So, yes, I agree that our prisons are overflowing with young adults who were given control over their parents and in my sons case, he is a victim of our local governments "blinders' to the drug problem here.

Sorry for the typos ... I just don't care today.

Originally Posted by awesumdove

Hi everyone - I visited my daughter this past Thursday, and one of the topics that came up was ~ you know Mom, "the government, lawmakers, and the states are somewhat to blame for so many kids being in prison ~

And her reasoning (and I have to somewhat agree) was that many years ago, probably dating as far back as the 80's, was the issue of discipline in that it was taken away from us as parents, caregivers, and teachers because of abuse and/or some parents could not control themselves or didn't know when to stop???

You can no longer discipline your kids with a little switching on the back of the legs, etc., because someone, your neighbor, friend, ex-husband or someone that has a grudge against you or whoever could call "Child Protective Services" and lodge a complaint that you were abusing your child.

If a child is having a temper tantrum in a mall or store (anywhere), you dare not discipline them on the spot or talk badly to them for fear that someone will/may call the police and you could be arrested.

And then, children started controlling their parents by threatening to call Child Protective Services themselves about being abused when there was none.

And now you cannot say the Lords Prayer or any prayers in schools or public meetings etc., or be able to show any kind of religious preference anywhere. In some cases, the pledge is not even allowed because of small fragmented groups and their rights. Well, my friends, what about our rights?

What is this world coming to? And then they want to imprison anyone for the slightest violation with unfair or inappropriate sentences; and still yet they complain about overcrowding and costs, as well.

I was just wondering how everyone feels about discipline, and what do you do? if your child/young adult is out of line, or out of control? Your honest opinion and thoughts please.

PS: The more I come to this site the angrier I get seeing the inappropriate and unjust sentences for the same crime. There has to be something we, as a group, can do about this. Parents need to be able to disipline... I don't mean to offend anyone, but I see so much sorrow here, and had to voice my distaste for our government and lawmakers.

[Jan7El]

I have grandkids now. The oldest, 5 yrs old, hates the timeout chair. I think he would rather be spanked because it is quicker. I don't have a problem with people spanking their kids, as long as it is not out of control.