CPS Threatens Dad: Let Your Kids Play Outside and We'll Take Them Away

Reason.com ^ | December 23, 2014 | Lenore Skenazy

[Altariel]

I received an update from the Maryland mom of two who was contacted by Montgomery Country Child Welfare Service in November after she let her kids, ages 6 and 10, play at the park two blocks from home by themselves. She was cited for allowing a child under age 8 "to be locked or confined in a dwelling, building, enclosure, or motor vehicle while the person charged is absent."

The CPS worker decided "confined in a dwelling" was the same thing as "outside in a park."

The higher ups at child services agreed that this was insane, and the case was closed—until this week. As the mom wrote in an email to me:

It seemed that we had called their bluff and they were going to leave us alone. Not for long. This past Saturday, while I was out of town, my husband dropped my kids off at a park about 1 mile from our house and said they could walk home together. They got 1/2 way when someone called the police.

"Shots Will Be Fired"

The kids were picked up in a patrol car and brought home. The policewoman asked to see my husband's ID. When he refused, she said she was going to call for back-up. He said he would get his ID and went to go upstairs. She said - in front of the kids - that if he came down with anything else, "shots would be fired."

At this point 10 yr old. called me crying, saying that the police were there and that Daddy was going to be arrested. My husband stepped outside to continue the conversation away from the kids. When he disagreed with one of the officers about the dangers that walking alone posed to the kids, she actually asked him: "Don't you watch TV?" (The answer was no). They took notes and left.

"Sign This or We Take Your Kids"

Two hours later someone from Child Welfare showed up with a temporary plan, which they wanted my husband to sign, stating that he would not leave the children unsupervised until Monday when someone from their office could contact him.

He refused.

She called the police, saying that if he didn't sign they would take the kids away right then.

He signed.

This is outrageous. We refuse to deprive our children of critical opportunities to develop responsibility and independence, and have no intention of fundamentally changing our parenting to accommodate this kind of paranoia and bullying, but it's not going to be easy. We are now waiting for the call from Child Welfare and looking for someone who can give us legal advice on these issues in Maryland.

I have to admit when I read stories on your site and elsewhere about CPS threatening to take kids away, I never thought it could happen to us. I'll keep you posted.

Best, Danielle Meitiv

I'll keep you posted, too, readers. Since when are children not supposed to play outside on their own? And what gives the state the right to take them from their parents when they do?

[VerySadAmerican]

Yet I’ve known of instances where CPS recommended the “family is better off together” when the father was molesting the children.

Most of these CPS “agents” have liberal arts degrees and couldn’t work the third shift at a convenience store.

[Star Traveler]

People are out there to kidnap your kids, these days, no matter where you move to in this country.

[Fast Moving Angel]

Free range kid — never heard that term before, but it sure applied to me. If my mom knew half the places I went on my bike during the day (summer vacation), she would have had six kinds of hissy fits. :-)

[Rusty0604]

My first question was where do they live? But I guess they can’t make rules for some neighborhoods and not others. Of course, the pansies will enforce their rules in good neighborhoods and on good parents because it is easier and more politically correct.

Better to let parents use their own sense of safety for their kids.

[matt04]

Add to that the whole “shots will be fired” comment before and you have a good case in my mind.

[mistfree]

“They got 1/2 way when someone called the police.”

Here’s the problem; Some busybody called the police! If everyone who called the police had to be identified and if any charges were brought the busybody would have to bring the charges. That would stop all the nonsense and only serious stuff would be reported. Every story I read starts with somebody called the police.....

[Pollster1]

The answer in Maryland is:

1. Get a lawyer if you are going to stay in the area. CPS is shockingly terrible at their job - they do not have the resources to follow transient parents who abuse their children, but they are like bulldogs going after stable parents who make different parenting choices from the Nanny State advocates.

2. Once CPS is on your case, you have to do what they say until a lawyer gets a court order permitting you to parent your own children, or your kids will be in immediate danger from CPS “solutions” to the problems they imagine exist. Some foster families are good, but the demand exceeds the supply of good foster homes, and the children they take from good parents are uncomfortably likely to end up in a terrible place.

[Jonty30]

Yes it is. Get them to get a warrant.

[EEGator]

[Sherman Logan]

I have never seen any actual evidence that children are at greater risk from predators than in the past. Predators have always existed, but we have an unspoken and unexamined assumption in our society that children are at greater risk than in the past.

I’ve been trying to find such evidence for about 10 years without success.

[GeronL]

Pure tyranny

[Secret Agent Man]

they don’t want people to be comfortable outside their cells.

[offwhite]

"And what gives the state the right to take them from their parents when they do?"

Because parents today don't take personal responsibility for their children. If something happened, the parents would probably sue the park district, the police, CPS and the city for not protecting their children.

The MSM would jump on the story, the Internet would be a-Twitter, and civil-suit lawyers would arrive in buses. The parents would be the heroes -- so brave and so strong in the face of an incompetent and inept bureaucracy that would allow such things to happen to children. Our future!

They'd probably clear a cool $10 million in an out-of-court settlement.

That's why.

[bicyclerepair]

Ditto exactly.

[3catsanadog]

Yeah, what’s with all these moms waiting with their kids at the bus stop?

[wbill]

... because of the extreme danger to kids in the day we live in. There are way too many out there now just looking to grab kids at the first chance they have

I had this very conversation with my Dad the other day.

His theory is that there aren't any more perverts than there were back in the "good old days". He thinks that they've been emboldened by talking to others like themselves (for instance, on the internet) AND further emboldened by the fact that repercussions are currently limited.

He said that if a person got caught diddling with kids back when he was a child, that person more likely than not would be "taken care of" (his words, not mine) and the local cops would take a pretty laissez faire attitude towards it.

Sez me, that makes sense. If a person knew that they were going to get offed, instead of patted on the head and told that they were the real victim by a sympathetic headshrinker .... Behavior would be modified, rapidly.

Makes as much sense as anything. Truly we are in a Brave New World.

[MeganC]

I grew up being terrorized by CPS and would never, ever allow them on our property. Never.

[Lazamataz]

America is a prison.

Inmates may not walk around without guard supervision.

[Lazamataz]

Yeah, what’s with all these moms waiting with their kids at the bus stop?

Extremely prevalent in the latino community, too.

[steve86]

The great majority of the time this kind of absurd nanny stat-ism occurs in the northeast (of which I am including non-merry-land).