One thing I’m not fond of is this sudden trend of threatening to or actually speed dialing CPS over the little infractions parents sometimes make.
You want to know what a truly bad parent is? He or she is the one whose children have speech delays because their ears were clogged with wax for YEARS. He or she is the one whose children sat in urine and feces filled diapers because the stay-at-home parent was lazy and the working one thought it wasn’t their job. He or she is the one whose house was condemmed because of the pure filth inside of it.
THAT is a bad parent. The parent who occasionally takes their kid to a fast food restaurant (guilty), sometimes lets them watch TV (guilty) and maybe, just maybe offers up a TV dinner for a meal every now and again (also guilty), on the other hand, is most certainly not.
To me, there is a VERY definitive line between being a parent that makes choices that don’t meet your standards, and being a bad parent — one whose actions put their child in emotional and/or physical danger and/or cause physical injury or trauma.
(This rant brought to you by someone Dan told me about. In this guy’s case, CPS not only did the right thing, but they should have done it a lot sooner!)
The part about the speech delay due to a wax build-up… is that true???
My Brothers little guy is just over three and I think has a speech dealy. He does not have the average vocabulary of a three year old, you have to really concentrate to understand the words that he DOES know. Whenever someone brings it up with my Brother, he freaks out and says his Son is fine. We’re not saying the kid is stupid, we’re saying that there is something obviously wrong! He was supposed to see a Speech Therpaist, but him and his Wife decided that their son didn’t need it!!! (which pissed us all off, but there’s no reasoning with my Brother).
Is it possible it could be all becuase of something like wax in ears????
.-= Theresa´s last blog ..discovering why our house smells like cat pee… =-.
Yeah there has been cases of the same thing in england where kids have cotton buds or just wax build ups for years and require hearing aids but then suddenly the problem comes to light.
.-= Maz´s last blog ..Where did the time go? =-.
My nephew needed gromets in his ears when he was three. He had difficultly hearing but it wasn’t deafness. once the gromets where in place he was fine. He had speech delays, you could understand a word or two but that was it. My sister and her DH were bashing their heads against a wall to get the health ‘professionals’ to take them seriously.He is now 13 ,never shuts up and has just started college
.-= Tehya´s last blog ..Sell out to the man =-.
I agree completely. Some things are different styles and choices in parenting but most definitely NOT abusive.
.-= Amanda´s last blog ..Pregnancy is =-.
People are extremely quick to judge other’s parenting and I always wondered why. Indulging in a little fast food, or television isn’t going to hurt a kid at all, as the saying goes, everything in moderation. Sadly, it’s often these things that are made to be a big deal while the bigger picture of REAL child abuse goes unnoticed.
.-= Carli´s last blog ..My body is not a beanbag =-.
Eww that whole ear wax thing just made my skin crawl and reminded me what foster kids come from. Thanks for that Jenn, I needed it. All too often CPS does nothing.
We actually just threatened to call CPS on my step mom and her niece because she lets my step mom babysit the 2 year old. The 2 year old is severely overweight for her age in my opinion. She’s not healthy, she’s being fed junk food constantly. My step mom is blitzed out of her mind and not able to take care of herself very well. She takes prescription drugs that are pretty strong and add on top of that any illegal substance you can get your hands on. To make matters worse she does it in front of the kids, hence why my child is no longer around them.
The niece’s reaction? I worked for CPS taking applications for food stamps and I know I’ll get away with it. I have to ask myself is this because too many people make false claims and bogus claims that aren’t really about neglect so CPS has no time to really investigate the actual problems? I think that has a lot to do with it!
That’s why CPS is actually there – for cases like that. Sometimes I feel that in cases like that where there is so much neglect there is nobody around to see how neglected the child actually is to be able to get them help. It’s a real shame.
.-= Caity´s last blog ..Baylee is here and a concert tonight! =-.
Calling an overburdened system to report kids eating fast food and watching tv should be illegal.
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