Perri--I can understand that many of your standards of what is acceptable treatment and what is child neglect may have come from a third world country experience prior to your entering a Program.
I certainly didn't expect you to like what I had to say. I expected you to be pissed off and defensive and back in my face. You have that right, but I stand by what I said.
Child neglect and child abuse, under US law, is defined in relation to US community standards, not third world standards.
Additionally, our child welfare authorities make allowances for parents who are neglecting their children (by US standards) because they're poor or disabled and are doing the best they can---in which case the authorities try as best they can to hook the families up with social services to help them do better providing their child's needs UP TO US COMMUNITY STANDARDS.
They don't hold immigrant parents accountable as habitual child-neglecters just because they lived in third world countries where community standards were different and did the best they could for their kids with what they had.
US child welfare authorities take a *very* different view of parents who have the *means* and ability to provide their child with care up to US community standards and choose to withhold those basic needs (by our standards) as some form of discipline, or incentive, or punishment.
When parents do this, which is analagous to what the programs do, US child welfare authorities tell the parents to shape up, and if the parents won't, they remove the children. If child welfare decides the parents neglect is "wilful"--that is that they know they've been told not to but keep doing it anyway--they can and do go to court to completely terminate parental rights. Which legally means the kids aren't the parents' kids anymore and can be adopted, and that the parents have no more rights to visitation, or to try to someday get the kids back, or anything.
Most Americans, though we may bitch when child welfare people are slack or overzealous, *want* child welfare agencies to be there and *want* kids who are, for example, wilfully deprived of shoes by people who can clearly afford to provide them *removed* from that situation and never sent back.
If you disagree that strongly with the rules here, then you may want to emigrate to someplace that doesn't have our same child welfare laws.
But under our community standards, and the laws that we voters want in our communities, the things you're talking about are simply Not Acceptable.
Again, if individual parents did it, and still did it after social services had been provided to take care of any problems that stemmed from the parents being poor or disabled, those parents would lose their kids---likely permanently---and could reasonably expect to be criminally prosecuted and sent to jail.
In the real world, child welfare can't afford to prosecute every case of criminal child abuse and criminal child neglect, so they have to pick and choose the worst offenders to prosecute. Frequently, even if the parents' behavior is clearly legally criminal and they could clearly get a conviction, they just take the kids and do their damnedest to make sure the kids never go back.
The vast majority of Americans *agree* with child welfare taking the kids, and prosecuting, in those cases (that's why they call them community standards) and are just appalled that those same community standards are not being enforced on group facilities for teens.
When they find out.
I have talked to many people since I saw the shoes as a 3rd level "privilege" thing. I haven't found one single ordinary person, not involved in this whole debate, that thinks that's okay. I haven't found one single person that *doesn't* think that's grounds for child welfare taking the kids and criminally prosecuting the perpetrators for child neglect.
Same on the talking as a privilege thing. I'm not talking about saying anything you want to anyone you want. No good parent allows their child to rampantly verbally abuse other people, for example. I'm talking about simple social interaction outside of classroom or formal settings.
Same with the going to the bathroom privately thing, with the understandable exception of someone who needs to be on suicide watch.
I stand by my assertion that you will need parenting classes before you have kids in the US so you will know what community standards your neighbors and child welfare authorities expect you to follow, minimum, in caring for your child---including what bounds you may not legally breach in disciplining your child.
Maybe I'm wrong. It's been known to happen before.
All I can say is that it doesn't appear to be my isolated perception that you're coming across as not having a clue what US community standards of parenting really are.
I can see that perhaps your third world experience not preparing you for US community standards of childcare was simply not helped by being in a Program, and that some of that is the cause of your apparent cluelessness rather than brainwashing.
I know I'm not being gentle or tactful here, but this is a clue-bat situation because you're an adult woman who could, god forbid, end up in charge of a child without knowing local standards of right from wrong. As a mother---well, I know I'm reacting like a mother bear.
Whatever the source, I'm not going to let all this go by without standing up and saying that we don't want to let people treat kids like that here.
And the only "issue" I've got there is as a mom.
I've had people bitch about my parenting before. I guess everyone has had that. And it pissed me off. But when the rules said community standards were that you couldn't leave your kid home while you went around the corner to get a gallon of milk until your kid was 9 years old, I sucked it up and followed the rules. When community standards said I had to put my kid's med dosage in her hand when it was time for her to take it rather than putting a week's meds in one of those little day-by-day boxes from the pharmacy and getting her used to taking it on her own, I sucked it up and followed community standards.
It's not that I'm a hopeless slave to a "what will the neighbors think" mentality. It's that I'm not arrogant enough to believe I'm always right. If my friends and neighbors pretty much *all* believe that X is the minimum standard for how you treat a child, I'm going to err on the side of nurturing my child.
Anyway, all things considered, I stand by what I said.
It wasn't tactful, and I knew it wouldn't be, but I couldn't think of a tactful way that was also plain and clear---and I still can't.
So you don't have to agree with me, of course, but that's still what I think.
Julie/Timoclea
