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.
You should probably stop that.
Five years from now, you’ll be shocked to find out you were engaging in “inappropriate conduct”. (:
It’s fun to, when a liberal woman gets that “in your face, holier than thou” attitude and you look her square in the face, with a grin and a twinkle in your eye, and say, “You’re just so cute when you’re mad.”
What follows is actually a lot of fun.
Proper response:
“I do not want to be engaged”
“I do not answer questions from law enforcement or agents of the state without the presence of my attorney”
Messy hair and family interactions that doesn’t suit a busybody is reason to call the authorities? Give me a break.
I’ve seen several cases where I thought the child was abusing the parent.
Yup. Lots of them on youtube.
That should be on pay per view.
Just the few times I’ve come across seriously autistic children, I’ve realized this has nothing to do with a spoiled kid. If people can’t see that, they are seriously stupid!
First my point was that the call was probably triggered by more than just messy hair and ill fitting clothes. That the person who called may very well have mistaken behavior typical to Autism for signs that the child could be suffering for neglect or abuse. I would rather have someone err on the side of caution. Especially when there have been recent cases in the news where somebody should have taken the time to call.
Some have written the person who called should have talked to the parents. But approaching a stranger to ask rather personal questions about the condition of their child can be at the best awkward and at worst dangerous.
The cops did not go in making accusations against the parents. They told them the situation and observed that everything was fine. It is better they were called then CPS. Since CPS sometimes as an attitude of all abuse all the time.
sorry Kozak but you're wrong, DEAD WRONG......
So sorry that you just don't get it..........
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.
More likely wearing a burka or a fake boob belt while slashing throats. Here in NYC, homeless people wear all the clothes they own so not to get robbed by other homeless. Calling a cop over a coat is nutty.
My step kids don’t bathe when they’re at their mother’s home. They’ll go for a full week without bathing. When they come to my house they stink and their hair is greasy. They stink up the house. The 11 year old boy is allowed to wear filthy pajamas and smelly slippers in public. He had lice. CPS says that’s not neglect and there’s nothing they can do about it. We make them bathe which makes them so angry they go to their mother’s house and report us for sexual abuse. So far we’ve been reported eight times, each time unfounded.
Why isn’t it neglect?
The cops did a good job, that I will agree.
I play senior softball with a guy who has an autistic son whose age is approx. 46 years old but looks like he's in his early 20's. Once in a while he brings him out to the park and while it's impossible to communicate with him he acts like a 14 year old and is excited about everything.......
When it come to hygiene there’s a term used by CPS workers called “marginal care”, under which things like messy hair, too-short pants, or even, perhaps, not bathing for a week, would fall.
So as long as it’s deemed to be “marginal care”, then it’s not neglect, which makes sense.
As for the not bathing, that might also depend on whether or not they were periodically sponging off or not, as at some point if you’re not cleaning certain areas, then indeed no bathing at all is neglect.
But the family in this article got reported for messy hair and too short pants.
That report was by an onlooker, not a CPS agent, and did not constitute any determination of neglect. My post was specifically in response to a question about why not bathing for a week is not deemed to be neglect, and the standards CPS workers use to make that *determination*.
Naturally, the standards for starting an *investigation*, either by CPS or by the police, are lower.
I am 66 years old and have never called the cops on anyone.
I love freedom.
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p.s. Your “about” page is a hot mess.
Remember the case not long ago about the family in California with the 13 kids?
The one daughter finally escaped and called the police on a cell phone she’d taken from the house before crawling through a window? The kids were all dirty and near starvation. For years some people had noticed things that looked strange, including the kids sometimes eating out of trash cans and only being allowed to play in the yard at night and often wearing dirty clothes and seemingly terrified to talk to anyone. And the house they left in Texas was a mess and with human feces on the walls and a couple dead animals in the trash according to the woman who purchased it in a foreclosure sale.
Yet no one, even the extended family who had not been allowed to see or talk to the children for several years, ever reported it to the authorities.
Not saying that whoever called the cops on this family wasn’t overreacting or being a busy body but we don’t know what trigged it aside from the messy hair and short pants. At least the cops showed common sense and all ended well, so I sort of fail to see the parents’ outrage.
I understand that. If someone called the police and said they spotted a child wearing corduroys or with a chocolate milk mustache, would the police be obliged to investigate?
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