[MeekOneGOP]

[Door Slams}
Husband: Honey, I'm home!
Wife: Did you remember to get the balls and chains??
Husband: Dang! I knew I forgot something!
Wife: It's ok, we still have this old surveillance camera to watch the kids while we're out!

[stuartcr]

My father used to make me mow the lawn in Florida in August, is that the same?

[Khepera]

Man why didn't we think of this?

[nothingnew]

their four young children to dig ditches in subfreezing weather

My wife says this sounds like a typical day where she grew up on a South Dakota ranch...except there were 10 children, and they are all honest and hard working adults now...oh well...

FMCDH!

[Melinator]

It sounds to me that the key question here is what do they mean by "malnourished". Sending a child to bed without supper, giving them chores to do and even spanking them are common sense and wholly acceptable disciplinary practises in my view. Starving them is not.

However, it is not unusual for a children's service agency to throw in "malnourished" as an allegation against parents when they are not really sure if they have "enough" to justify repossessing the Government's children and future slaves. I was a skinny kid, and I was expected to work my butt off in sub-zero temperatures (tending farm animals in an unheated barn), but I sure as heck was never "malnourished" - I just had a very high fitness and metabolism level.

[isthisnickcool]

I remember when I was a kid and we were visiting my uncle Bobby. Some man had become angry with his two children and had kicked them out of the car and was making them run in the ditch next to the car. One a very busy highway. He would drive ahead of them as they ran screaming trying to catch up. They were maybe 6 or 7 years old.

Uncle Bobby's house was right next to the road and he saw all of this. He walked out and told the kids to follow him. The man pulled over and started to cuss uncle Bobby out. Uncle Bobby told my dad to hang on to the kids. Bobby stepped into the house and seemed to instantly return with a Winchester rifle. Which he promptly stuck it in the man's gut and said he better pray because he had just a couple of seconds to live. After a couple of moments and after the man peed all over himself uncle Bobby said "now you know scared those kids are. If you ever do something like that again I'll find you and kill you".

Uncle Bobby was on a Underwater Demolitions team during WWII, a pipe fitter in the Middle East (he told me that the Arabs were crazy 20 years ago)and the kind of man that would stick his hand in a bucket of blue crabs and clean them while talking to you. Never looking in the bucket, or at the crabs. A man's man.

Uncle Bobby has been dead for many years. But I wish he would have been around to see what happened with these kids and maybe scare the pee out of the parents. By the way, the Winshester was not loaded, today it hangs on my study wall.

[ravingnutter]

I used to punish my daughter by making her move rocks to help clear off our property. We also dug ditches together, although that was not for punishment, but in an emergency situation to divert water away from the house during a flood. She actually had fun doing that, we ended up in a mud fight, I was cleaning mud out of my ears for a week, LOL!

[ikanakattara]

This business about "sitting on the floor at points around the room" sounds a lot like "mat training," which I read about years ago in ultra-pietistic homeschooling magazines. I think homeschooling writer Mary Pride mentions it in one of her books, too. Basically, you put the mat down on the floor, put the kid on it, and spank or switch him if he gets up or gets off of it. It was supposed to be some kind of homeschooling "mother's helper" - how to keep younger kids still "during home church" or when mother was trying to teach older kids.

[AppyPappy]

There is a cult that teaches to withhold food as punishment.

[Lizavetta]

Come on, come on....where's the part about them being homeschooled?

That seems to be the only type of child abuse cases that get coverage these days.

[blackbag]

Social Services said
the digging was cruel and unusual.

[MistrX]

My parents forced me to shovel snow during bitterly cold Michigan winters before I could go sledding. Does this mean I was abused as a child?

[Renatus]

My dad made me dig ditches because he wanted to teach us how to work. He also made us hoe the garden when it was 100 degrees outside. We did it in the full sun! He never let us sit on our @sses. We all had to work. I love him to this day and he has been dead for many years. He was a great dad and mom stood behind him too. I dug those ditches from the time I was 8 years old. Also had to milk cows when it was 10 degrees below zero. Didn't hurt me any. This government control is grotesque.

[rockfish59]

they'll never get rich, by digging a ditch!
but they will get callouses!

[Darksheare]

My brother and I dug huge pits in the back yard when we were kids... does that count? Many times the poachers that jacked deer in our back yard fell into them....

[antaresequity]

LOL...when I first went to work for my evil Stepfathers construction company (age 12, summer vacation), I kicked butt. I would scramble around cleaning the sites and digging ditches...I loved it...I got paid $1.00 per hour...

All of the guys on the site told me I should get at least $2.00 per hour...So I got up the nerve and went into the office one afternoon and asked for my first raise ever..." I want $2.00 per hour!" I squeeled.

My stepfather reached out with his steel like hands and grabbed my limp little wrists and pulled my arms towards him. He forced my palms skyward and they were blistered, scratched and scabbed...As he looked through his bi-foculs over his red cragy nose...he examined them. Without moving his head, he raised his focus over the frames of his glasses, and with a piercing gaze... " I will give you $1.25"...

As I walked out of the office I felt great...I felt like I was growing up. I was the talk of the site the next day. My mother caught wind of this incident and the next check I received had the $2.00 per hour rate...

[MissAmericanPie]

Sanchez? Any relation to the Sanchez that is going to be the next Texas governor?