Child removed from family because she was loved too much

WTSP Channel 10, Tampa ^ | 12-05-02 | WTSP

[Poohbah]

Is Poohbah advocating treating children like a house plant to be moved from house to house until they get just enough food and light to grow?

Not at all. However, if the mother isn't capable of functioning in society, and there is that much question about whether she ever will be able to (as you implied there was), then maybe the aunt and uncle should be pushing to terminate the mother's parental rights and adopt the child.

[Nuke'm Glowing]

At this time, they have only had the child for 11 months. No one would comment (from the state Gestapo) on the status of the mother because she's still rehabbing. I agree that they should push to adopt the child but because of the judge's idiotic ruling, I can forsee this child ending up making a future appearance on COPS as a problem rather than a loved child in a happy household.

[RGSpincich]

She was removed from her mother, placed in foster care and then placed with the aunt and uncle.

Normally there is a reunification order by the court to keep the family together. After a period of seperation and successful counseling for the parents the family is reunited and tries again. The kid goes into foster care or stays with relatives for awhile but the goal is to reunite the child with the parent(s). Evidently the child was rejecting her own mother in favor of these non-blood relatives.

Now where are all those who support parental rights. Oh yeah, they couldn't bitch about the government this time so now they're all for "second cousin and aunt and uncle rights". It is always the government's fault, don't you know.

[f.Christian]

Non blood relatives...aunt/uncle?

[Bob J]

On NOW at RadioFR!

Doug from Upland interviews JAYNA DAVIS discussing the OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING

Click HERE to listen LIVE while you FReep!

Click HERE to chat in the RadioFR chat room!

Miss a show?

Click HERE for RadioFR Archives!

[pttttt]

I have never understood this worship of biological parents.

The OJ Simpson problem. Also, it's not just biological parents. In many states it's any blood relative. Though here an aunt and uncle were involved as foster parents, and that apparently didn't count for much.

[Nuke'm Glowing]

I would only disagree with you on one point. I'm totally in favor of the parental rights, but the child is 2 years old. The mother is still in rehab. Until the mother cleans up, how can anyone justify moving this kid around like a dog from pound to pound???????

[RGSpincich]

Make that not directly related to the mother.

[another cricket]

This is absurd. There has to be a line drawn somewhere

You would think so wouldn't you? But there is an absolute worship of unfit parents. It isn't their fault you know. They have problems. They need parenting classes. We have to be more understanding and give them another chance and another and another and another and another and another until the child turns eighteen or dies whichever comes first.

I think you should have to screw up pretty badly to lose your child. I also think that once it is done it is done. None of this back and forth stuff. Children need a parent, preferably two, but at least one consistent stable adult to raise and love them.

Two years old and this little girl has just learned that to love someone is to lose them and every other bit of stability in her world. After this has happened a few times more what do you think that her chances of becoming an emotionally healthy adult are? And chances are it will happen again and again. Rehab has only a 10% success rate.

Depressed yet?

a.cricket

[Nuke'm Glowing]

More depressed that there are actually people who think the Florida DCF has a clue. They took this kid with less than 3 weeks before Christmas. I hope the judge and the socialist engineers incolved in this all have the crappiest holidays of their lives.

[MedicalMess]

Somebody should send Gomez the Gomer a bucket full of smallpox pus.

[goldstategop]

You can never be loved too much to the dismay of bureaucrats seeking to discredit the normal American family.

[GovernmentShrinker]

I think it's a separate issue. Knowing nothing about the mother's situation (and I won't even bother asking about the father), and giving the state authorities the benefit of the doubt as to the appropriateness of removing the child from the mother, the issue remains that the state seems to be asserting that when a child's parent properly loses custody of the child for an indeterminate length of time, the state is legally obligated to act in the interests of the guilty parent, and against the interests of the innocent child, by ensuring that the child doesn't form any strong bonds with any other adult. That's pretty warped.

[willyone]

I watched My Dog Skip the other night and got real sad remembering how things used to be. Why have we let this happen?

[willyone]

Not considering how screwed up some of the birth mothers are.

[willyone]

Not considering how screwed up some of the birth mothers are.

[RGSpincich]

Knowing nothing about the mother's situation (and I won't even bother asking about the father), and giving the state authorities the benefit of the doubt as to the appropriateness of removing the child from the mother, the issue remains that the state seems to be asserting that when a child's parent properly loses custody of the child for an indeterminate length of time, the state is legally obligated to act in the interests of the guilty parent, and against the interests of the innocent child, by ensuring that the child doesn't form any strong bonds with any other adult.

That's quite a sentence. My only question is, is it fair to allow the child to become emotionally dependent on a set of "parents" who will soon be gone? What's the better situation between that and placing her with a family that promotes and encourages her relationship with her mother? My take on this is that the "aunt and uncle" were not leaving any emotional space for the natural mom, even though there was a reunification order in effect. Perhaps it would be best just to terminate the mothers rights and find a loving home. Oops can't do that, this mom seems to be trying to be a better parent, unlike some others that come to mind.

[Roscoe]

Oh yeah, they couldn't bitch about the government this time so now they're all for "second cousin and aunt and uncle rights".

Too funny.

[Tuscaloosa Goldfinch]

Yep, it stinks, but it stinks in almost every state. It stinks here in Alabama. I know of good foster parents who were threatened with the "child abuse registry" if they fought the removal of their foster children for trying to enforce a little discipline (and no, I'm NOT talking about corporal punishment) after one of the children constantly lied. There are some good social workers within the system, but there are also many tin-horn dictators in the system who enjoy having that much power over people.

Most social workers have NO concept what happens to a child's heart when he/she is constantly moved from foster home to foster home and occasionally back "home" again. That's where many of those children who have no conscience come from. They have something called "attachment disorder." Attachment for these children has been interrupted so many times that they have given up, and have no concept of empathy for other people and have not developed a conscience. And the foster care bureaucracy is just a giant incubator for children like this.

Goldfinch, an adoptive mom.

[GovernmentShrinker]

Yeah, that was kind of a major run-on sentence, but you seem to have deciphered it okay anyway.

From what I've read of the research on early childhood and bonding, it is urgently important for infants and early toddlers to form a strong bond with ANY adult. Without that early bonding experience, a large percentage of children seem to sustain permanent and irreparable developmental damage that no amount of stable loving parenting in the future can fully correct. The children who have had the opportunity to form a normal bond, and then lose a parent (to death, prison, or whatever) experience some trauma for a while after the separation, but are able to recover and form normal bonds with a new parent or parents. There was a lot of publicity and research about this phenomenon during the first few years after the fall of the USSR and its satellite states, when many Westerners began adopting 1-2 year olds who'd been languishing in crowded, understaffed orphanages since shortly after birth.