On 2003-11-02 09:54:00, Anonymous wrote:
"Would that kind of fix have helped you, Ginger? Would it allay some of your concerns about government involvement"
Probably not. Here's the thing. I know now that I had people pulling for me, but they never spoke up.
If I'd known how my aunt felt about the whole thing, for example, I would certainly have dropped in on her instead of my sister when I was looking for a place to land. But nobody wants to draw the wrath of a fanatic so I just didn't know.
If there were such a law (and I think, in the case of a 16yo, that's pretty much standard policy for family courts. See Mitchell vs. Mitchell) they'd only work around them by presenting program parents as alternates and smearing the ones the kid wanted to live with.
Any language you can put into law can be interpreted in a number of ways. Take the Baker Act, for instance. Straight interpreted that to mean that they could carry out a 48 hr interrogation to get the kid to break down and sign themselves in while working their program friendly contacts in the juvenile justice, school and law enforcement to try and make a court order happen.
One of the times I split, though, someone suggested that I go to a halfway house and see if they could help me figure out what to do next. When I got there, they told me about the way
they interpret the Baker Act in Ohio. They interviewed me, asked me why I was a runnaway, gave me the riot act on house rules (No problem for me at all, just no violence, no drugs... behave like a civilized human) and told me I could stay for 48 hours, eat, shower, sleep and figure out what to do next before they would be required by law to report my presence there.
At the end of it, I decided (again!) to go see my sister, hoping she'd take my side this time if I told her how bad it was for me in Straight. (Doh!) But there was another option that some kids took who really had no decent choices. There was another halfway house on the other side of town. Every two days, they'd just pack their stuff and take up residence for another 48 hours at the other place.
I really don't think this problem is going to be solved by more laws. The
debate involved in pushing for the laws, though, might be extremely effective because it will bring factual testimony onto the public record and get people talking. That's what I think is going to turn this around.
I believe that human beings arrive on this Earth wanting to know absolutely everything, and the best thing we can do as parents is to get out of the way -- just be there to let them know what opportunities are there
-- Dorothy Werner, media liaison for the National Homeschool Association