Posted on 02/12/2018 11:31:54 AM PST by nickcarraway
"The parents of special needs children are especially vulnerable to state intervention."
This mom's story in The Washington Post will kick anyone in the gut. Texas writer May Cobb was out for a day with her mom, her husband, and their autistic 5-year-old who, miraculously, was doing great. By great, Cobb explained, she meant he had not had a single meltdown during the hour they were at a park and on the boardwalk near Lady Bird Lake in Austin. He hadn't stripped off all his clothes, and he wasn't banging his head over and over again.
Sure, his hair was messy—his sensory issues render him distraught when he gets his hair brushed. And his pants were too short—but at least he'd actually chosen a pair to wear, rather than tearing them off. So all was as right as right can be when you have a kid with autism.
But then, as the family was heading to the car, a pair of cops approached Cobb:
"Can we talk to you a second," he asked, "about your son?"
My husband called out over his shoulder, "He's autistic," and kept walking my son to the car.
The officer's face burned with embarrassment. I assumed he was getting ready to inform me that rock-throwing wasn't allowed, but he said, "We got a call about your son. The people who called were worried that because of his hair, and because of his pants, that you weren't taking good care of him."
Because strangers care so much more about kids than their own parents do.
Now my faced burned with anger and my stomach was sick with shock.
"He's autistic," I told them, "and because of his severe sensory issues, we have difficulty brushing and cutting his hair."
Both officers nodded their heads in understanding.
"You're talking about my grandson," my mother hissed.
"Yes, there's clearly nothing going on here," the red-faced officer said.
"I'm so glad you were called to investigate this instead of more serious crimes," I said, tears threatening to strangle my voice.
"It's clearly just a case of bed-head," the same officer said by way of apology. "Sorry to have bothered you."
We bid them goodbye and joined my husband and son and walked back to our car.
They were worried you weren't taking good care of him.
This happened in November but Cobb just wrote about it last week because it has taken that long for her to process the event with a modicum of serenity.
As she ticks off all the other times her family probably looked strange to outsiders, she is grateful for the many people who did not call the cops. But the fact remains that "the police were called on us because my son was having a bad hair day. What does this say about our society?"
It says that we are increasingly convinced that it is up to every onlooker to assume abuse rather than to give parents the benefit of the doubt when anything, even a child's hair, seems amiss—that this is good citizenship.
This presumes that the authorities are going to make things better, and that an outsider can really tell what's going on.
"I have to praise the common sense of the police here," Diane Redleaf, a longtime family civil rights lawyer and director of the Redleaf Family Advocacy Institute at the National Center for Housing and Child Welfare, told me. "The family had the good fortune not to have child protective services called against them. Others have not been as lucky."
She recalled one case presented to the federal court: Dupuy v. McDonald, a class action challenge to policies that banished parents from their homes when they were victims of child abuse calls. In that case, Chicago high school science teacher James Redlin had been the target of an anonymous tip to state child protection authorities after a commuter thought he'd fondled his mildly autistic 6-year-old son on the subway.
Redlin explained that he'd been tickling his boy, as therapists had encouraged. Without verifying any of the context, authorities threatened to take his son into foster care unless Redlin's wife, who uses a wheelchair, provided 24-hour supervision of any contact between her husband and their son. The case dragged on all summer, with the authorities finally determining the charges to be "unfounded."
"The parents of special needs children are especially vulnerable to state intervention," said Redleaf. "And as for anonymous calls to the authorities, this practice needs to end. It is far too easy to disrupt or even destroy a family with one quick call from a cell phone."
My friend Linda Gasten, mom of a young man with autism, has this advice for onlookers: if you see kids "making unusual noises," consider that they may have a disability, and that it's likely the parents are doing the best they can. It's abundantly less likely that they are monstrous abusers who are taking their victims out for a day of fun, in public, at the park.
I don’t know why Bucks County, Pennsylvania, doesn’t consider this neglect. I think it is.
The good thing is if they are old style local police they will know if they get a call again they will remember their encounter with the family and respond accordingly.
We had a case here where a 10 year old (or thereabouts) boy rode his bike to the library less than half of a mile away. On the sidewalk. In daylight. Dressed for the weather. And still somebody called the cops. Because the boy rode his bike across a somewhat busy street to go to the park after he had been to the library. He crossed where he was supposed to. But by himself!!!!! To the park!!! Oh the horrors.
The mother sounds like a real witch. The grandmother, not much better. Sympathy for the father.
CPS, just another off-the-Constitution form of judicialism.
There’s divorce, immigration, CPS, securities, just to name a few - processes that essentially leave the Bill of Rights just fluttering in the breeze.
From the article:
It's abundantly less likely that they are monstrous abusers who are taking their victims out for a day of fun, in public, at the park.
As a parent of a couple of kids on the spectrum, I'm thankful that this has not happened to us. It could have, though.
So--since you know nothing about the subject of raising autistic kids, keep your ill-informed opinions to yourself.
Response: "Fine. I'll call CPS to look after the child while we wait at the station for your attorney to arrive."
You are familiar with the well known axiom, aren't you? "You may beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride".
Autism is real. "Spectrum" can be lack of discipline.
LOL
Thanks, Missy. ;)
“Certainly, if you see something that doesn’t look right and by that, I mean someone dressed in a heavy winter coat on a hot, sunny day and not a child with messy hair.”
I have seen that sort of thing in many a movie with no explanation. One that comes to mind is a chick flick called Phenomenon that I went to see to please my dear wife. I asked her why John Travolta was sitting in the front room of a house with a field of mature corn clearly visible through a SCREEN door, the main door standing open but Travolta was wearing a heavy leather jacket. I see such things all the time and it is one reason I never go to a movie theater any longer.
My neurotypical child also knows how to put on a big show. Same deal with us, of my two youngest, one has special needs and the other doesn’t. Yesterday in the grocery store I woulda let you buy them both for $3. (And they were in good moods... just wild and playful)
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Lefty loons just can’t mind their own business!
All leftists are born brownshirt fascists!
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The human body adjusts to constant low temperatures but when the mercury bobs up and down it can be hard to deal with. Right now we are having a spell of much WARMER than normal weather which is giving me a fit because we have had many weeks of much colder than normal weather here. Seventy degrees now makes me feel as if I am suffocating with the high humidity we are having. Tomorrow’s high is supposed to be 55 which should feel great but then the next day is supposed to be like early summer.
I said the standard for investigation is lower than the standard for determination ... I didn’t say there is NO standard, or virtually no standard, as is the case in the examples you cited.
Hence my gripe here is not with the police, but with the onlookers who I think should stop acting like the whole world is a NYC subway where you can’t talk to or even make eye contact with the people around you.
Absent any actions that would cause a reasonable person to fear retaliation, they should have first approached the family and said - pardon me, I’m concerned about your child, is everything ok? - then, after that, if they still had concerns (which they likely would not, in this case), they could have made a more informed decision about calling the police.
My daughter had seizures when she was 10. The first anti-seizure medication she was on gave her rages and made her very sensitive to lots of things. At the time, she had very long hair, and it was near impossible to brush it. She looked wild for about two months. Plus the rages really made her seem wild.
She finally let me take her to the hairdresser and get a cute short hair cut.
She changed meds, and I don’t know if the haircut was before or after the med change.
What’s funny is to this day, she keeps her hair short. At least, she recognizes it and takes herself to the hairdresser.
Funny to think back on those days because she is so sweet and kind now.
Not just kids with autism. Mine has a brain injury, but looks normal. There are also less programs for kids like her. She didn’t qualify for some programs for autistic kids that I think she would have benefitted from. Mainly social skills programs.
The only thing I really wish I would have done when the kids were younger is getting the neurotypical kids into therapy.
As adults, my two “normal” kids have some issues that I think were from our crazy home. Lots of anxiety issues. Lots of self-worth issues. I’m not sure what we could have done to help them, but I think something happened to them.
Once, my non-verbal, autistic 8-year-old daughter was in the back seat of my SUV, with my wife seated in front, waiting for me to come back from the deli. She (my daughter) became impatient and started hitting the side of the car, including the sheet plastic taped over the opening behind her to cover a recently broken window that had not yet been repaired.
It’s at night, and some guy sees my daughter, starts asking questions, and my wife is of course afraid to open the door or even try to talk to him, so she just calls me to hurry back and tells me what’s happening ... so then he starts trying to peel off the plastic (not easy to do as it’s taped on both sides, exterior and interior) so he could get a better look through that opening to check on my daughter.
So just like you said from the article - what’s the more reasonable explanation - which is exactly what I said when I returned, saw him, and said WTF are you doing?
He disagreed, saying he had to check just to be sure ... so I told him ... suppose you’re parked at a rest stop and you hear a couple having sex in the car next to you ... now the more reasonable explanation is that they are treating this rest stop like a lover’s lane, right ... but according to you, you have to check just to be sure, so you’ll be the guy that opens the door to look in and asks the woman - excuse me, miss, I just want to make sure that this is consensual and that you’re not being raped. And if you’re lucky, like you are today, the other guy will be one who can control his temper in the face of such lunacy, and you won’t wind up in the hospital.
That left him speechless, so he walked away, and a couple that was with him apologized on his behalf, and said, not surprisingly, that he’d had a little too much to drink that night.
I also keep my daughter’s hair shorter ... bangs in front and then just chop off the back as soon as it becomes too long to easily untangle.
Great to hear your daughter is calm now ... I’m looking forward to the day we can achieve that without the meds (prozac and risperadone for anxiety and clonidine for insomnia).
Thank God for the meds, as before that she really did look like she was abused from her constant self injurious behavior (self hitting/kicking/biting and head banging) - not too mention the times we got injured trying to stop her from hurting herself (I’ve learned, the hard way, to hold her at an angle to avoid having the back of her head take out one of my teeth when she thrusts it back forcefully ... she’s quite strong)!
Naturally, the meds just greatly diminish the frequency and intensity of such tantrums, not eliminate them entirely ... but they’ve basically made the difference between me keeping my sanity or losing it!
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