I know about it from both sides.

First, CPS exists for a reason. I have family that used to run a group home for kids that were made wards of the state. The things that people will do to their own children is infuriating and heartbreaking. I have also been involved in an organization that deals with a lot of this stuff, for years, and have seen it, firsthand.

Child abuse also happens in UMC neighborhoods, but those folks are usually better at chasing away CPS cases, so you generally hear about them in less affluent areas, where the people don't have the means to fight (and also, the stress of living poor will often exacerbate child abuse/endangerment).

Second, CPS is notoriously "un-constitutional." Parents are guilty until proved innocent, and the caseworkers have great authority to be absolute tyrants. Anonymous tips from skeezballs, are given the weight of a policeman's sworn affidavit.

As a result, ratting out single moms to CPS is a favorite pastime of jerk ex-boyfriends. They make the poor girl (and, I guess, nowadays, boy)'s life a living hell, which they often can't bear, as they are already on the balls of their ass; not to mention tying up resources that could be better focused on real child abuse.

People can really suck.

*Upper Middle Class

...

Anonymous tips from skeezballs, are given the weight of a policeman's sworn affidavit...

This is one of those weird supposedly-balanced posts. The balance is, "on the one hand" CPS persecutes a lot of innocent people. "On the other hand", CPS fails to find determined and intelligent pedophiles working to evade it. You ever think that this isn't sane balance at all? Like maybe CPS is failing to find people doing calculated horrible things because it's approach is this abusive scattershot? Especially, any enforcement agency has a incentive laziness (heck everyone has one). If a worker can effortlessly produce cases against random schmucks, they have less incentive to work hard to find the people systematically evading them.

Hey, here's a suggestion:

Instead of sending out thinly-veiled insults, why not try just addressing the point you want to make (which is quite valid)? Wrapping it in ineffective ad hominem actually destroys it. I suspect that you may have some real experience, and could bring an important viewpoint to this thread.

As someone who has had close, intimate relationships with folks on both sides of this really heartbreaking and awful issue, I feel that I actually have the ability to see "both sides," so your insult looks a little flaccid, to me.

Bruce Schneier popularized the term "security theater." I would broaden that to "policing theater."

I've noticed that a lot of public protection agencies like to demonstrate to the normies that they're on the job by prosecuting the normies. After all, normies are much less likely to fight back than real pedophiles. And they still count as "enforcement actions."

There's no personal insult involved in my above. It's true I think the opinion of the above poster is both problematic and an approach that actually does real damage.

I mean, certainly "you ever think about that?" is a rhetorical turn of phrase but so is "I've seen both sides?" The discussion is informal here and emotional appeals happen on both sides. I don't really see the problem.

Edit: The problem with "balance both sides" is that it really is the position of one side. It's "sum of a (negative) utility function" outcome argument but generally put very emotionally. William Blackstone articulated the basic principle "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer" but today's justice asks instead "What is the cost of persecuting ten innocent persons if it allows one guilty person to be caught" and then tells you of the (indeed true) horrors some guilty person has done. And one can't argue "small chunk" with that kind of bullshit. One has to attack this very conceptual framework for what it is, a pernicious approach. I feel no reason to be nice about it. This is not ad hominem, I'm not arguing from someone's personal failing to a claim of their argument being wrong. But there's requirement to be "touchy feely" and talk how much I respect everyone. We're beyond that at HN I think.

That's a fascinating thing to say, when discussing being polite and empathetic.

I could tell you stories (again from personal relationships with the folks being persecuted, and from friends that are social workers that are the "persecutors"), that would bolster my statement (which, for some strange reason, you can't seem to accept as valid).

But I won't, because they are not my stories to tell.

It's entirely possible to see multiple sides of difficult issues. We may not have the answer, but we can recognize the validity of everyone's position. I've been doing that for decades. It's not a "superpower." We're all quite capable of it. It's just that we seem to live in a culture that demands we "choose a side."

I don't really care whether or not you believe me. I said my piece, and I'll leave it at that.

Have a great day.

My argument above is not some claim either that horrible things don't happen or that you don't have experience with these horrible things - or even that you don't have experience with CPS getting out of hand. So it's false imo to say that there is something I "can't seem to accept as valid" in itself.

Which is to say, you're being very respectable while flagrantly misstating my position. This is a bad kind of "meeting in the middle" view.

I'm talking systems. I think we should talk systems - millions of people and millions of children are affected. There isn't an experience you could personally offer that's going fundamental change our concept of what CPS has become as a system.

Edit: A big thing is that in many US social services, we have a giant machine which does horrible, horrible things but where each person who's a part of it can honestly say they're doing their best and can point to other horrible things that might happen if they stopped doing the problematic thing they do now. It's a "tensile structure" ... of evil. It can't be fixed by balancing, it maintains itself with arguments of apparent balance. Which is why I feel justified making a call to cut through the broad "balance" perspective.

> Which is to say, you're being very respectable while flagrantly misstating my position. This is a bad kind of "meeting in the middle" view.

This sort of thing happens two for a penny on hacker news lol, you get used to it. I see more coherent discussions that are less vicious on somethingawful these days

I fail to see how cases against random schmucks require significantly less effort than "real" cases. A case worker getting the tips doesn't know a priori whether the tip is credible and they still need to go out and take a look at the same things either way. If anything, an open-and-shut case where there are clear signs of abuse should be quicker than a wild goose chase. Sure there are some monsters out there that are really good at covering their tracks, and it would take a lot of effort in those cases to find the evidence of abuse, but how do you tell the difference between someone who is fantastic at covering their tracks and someone who never made tracks to begin with?

Social workers are not paid much, it takes substantial effort to become one, and the work is extremely emotionally taxing. If someone wanted an easy job, there are a lot of better options out there. While I'm sure there are some people who have lost faith in the system and are just working till retirement, the overwhelming majority legitimately want to help kids escape abuse. If it's the same amount of effort either way, why not go for the more fulfilling option?

The simple fact is that innocent people should not be treated like criminals, but abuse can and does happen anywhere. Either you dismiss more tips and make it easier for abusers to cover their tracks, or you follow up more bs tips which leads to more innocent people being harassed. At the end of the day there is always going to be somebody unhappy.

Most CPS workers have good intentions, and would be competent. Except that they have to take on way too many cases with limited resources.

Yes but ... this process creates a rottenness that can't be fixed by more money by itself. CPS' understaffing problem isn't a matter of there being a fixed load that not enough money is given to. It is a natural product of the ideology of "government inefficiency" that pervades legislatures. So an increase in funding would result in an increase in mandates which would still be satisfied by finding easy targets rather than appropriate targets.

The situation is pernicious and I don't really have a suggestion for improving things. I do know throw more money would make things even worse for the reasons above.

This is true for many groups, public and private, and across all sorts of problem domains. I see it frequently in teams chartered to build software.

You can always make the case “we can do more with more resources”. But I want to see that you can be effective with only modest resources first. I want to see that you can make a dent in the worst part of the problem with the resources you have.

Too many groups of all sorts start with limited resources and focus on edge cases that don’t really do much to solve the problem that they’re chartered to solve. Such cases often are easier to address, or the solution is more obvious, or whatever- as other posters have said, it’s basic laziness. Hence, in the case of CPS, harassing people for minor issues.

In commercial endeavors, it’s mainly just waste resources on projects that won’t really help anyone. In public endeavors, it’s much worse - it erodes trust in the system, and often victimizes people due to the power of the state.

Between four(!) and twenty eight(!!!) more times:

https://www.focusforhealth.org/sex-abuse-and-the-foster-care...

And when these sorts of things happen, it never fails, all the 'parental rights advocates' out there that were previously pushing to be more lenient with parents scatter. And the judge and CPS are left holding the bag. (Some of the 'parental rights advocates' even flip flop, and now call for heads to roll, because now all of a sudden they are child welfare advocates. :eye roll:)

So now the judge, the police and CPS have not only the political leaders and the general population asking uncomfortable questions, but CNN and Fox News trucks outside their homes asking questions as well. For the judge and the CPS workers, their careers are ruined not only locally, but nationally. There's no coming back from that.

Well the other judges and CPS workers see what happens, and are that much less likely to give a single mother a break in the future for example. And it just iterates and escalates with each tortured, raped, or murdered (or all three) child.

[0] - https://www.invisiblechildren.org/2022/06/23/kamari-gholston...

This "learning" does not seem to me to be a sane evolution but rather a degeneration. A friend of mine describes how his father being a policeman let him see the worst in people. And there's a logical progression from seeing the worst to thinking the worst to not caring if you ruin someone's life through abusive prosecution. As I mentioned, catching a determined pedophile is hard but the "just put people in jail for nuisance and hope some of them are pedophiles" isn't protecting or helping anyone ... except an abusive and metastasized (in)justice system.

Off topic, but thanks for this idiom.

So she's grabbing other people's kids off the street? She sounds unhinged. I'd do everything I could to get a restraining order.

Given I am Canadian, here is our legal definition:

Kidnapping

279 (1) Every person commits an offence who kidnaps a person with intent

(a) to cause the person to be confined or imprisoned against the person’s will;

(b) to cause the person to be unlawfully sent or transported out of Canada against the person’s will; or

(c) to hold the person for ransom or to service against the person’s will.

You could argue the child did not want to be sent back home, but I think you would not be successful making this case in a court of law.

Escalating this by reporting her to the police will simply cause her to escalate back.

She reports you to CAS, you report her to the police. You now face a false police report charge, and if anything further happens you already have one strike against you as the police will document this interaction.

Clearly the child is in no danger, so what was the point of calling the police?

trust me, that's not a good feeling. especially if i am alone and i have to decide if i should wait to see if they come back or if i go search them.

if i think young kids are in a dangerous location, then i'd stay there and watch them, and call someone who can notify the parents. or i might tell the kids that it is dangerous here and tell them to go home. (if the kids say they are supposed to wait here, then that is what should happen). i would not just move them somewhere else, even to their home, unless explicitly asked to do so.

i would make an exception to this if i know the parents well, and i know the parents trust me to take care of their kids. but in that case i'd know how to reach the parents and let them know.

" All 50 states and the District of Columbia have some type of Good Samaritan law. The details of good Samaritan laws/acts vary by jurisdiction, including who is protected from liability and under what circumstances. "

I'm not advocating what what took place was correct but it is not "kidnapping" regardless of how you wish to twist things around.

I have three kids, so I am also a parent, does that change things? you mention you are a parent so it somehow contributes to the discussion?

you have now taken a story about an v "karen" walking a kid back home and painted it such that "Karern" has driven across the country and now you cant find the child.

i am aware of good samaritan laws. but protecting children from danger is one thing. removing them from a location where i expect them to be is quite another. there would have to be some obvious danger that wasn't there previously for that to be ok. (like a fire, or even just heavy rain and no nearby shelter)

i don't care what the legal term for this is. i care what effect the action has on the people involved. before you take children away from somewhere, think about that, and try to find a way to protect the children without moving them unless you can inform the parents or authorities.

We didn't have any trouble after that. But it was very very stressful.

If somebody reports child neglect, but doesn't report any indications that would invite a reasonable suspicion of child neglect, the government shouldn't be spending any more time on it than on all the other people who don't have any evidence of neglect. They're fearful of doing this, because if there turns out to be abuse or neglect and they got a call, they'll be lynched for it.

They should just triage with consistent rules that respect the individual freedom of parents and their children, accept that sometimes this will cause them to miss something, but not accept that they made a mistake as long as they have a record that they stuck to the rules. If the rules are not good enough, update the rules.

Child protection agencies should do this regardless of the justice system's view of what has happened. Keep a fund for settlements, make guidelines good enough that you won't have to pay them out often, and immediately settle whenever something happens, without taking responsibility. It may not appeal to the sense of justice for an agency to pay when it's done nothing wrong, but child protection isn't a person, it's a function of government, and compensating people who have lost something important to them (like a child, sibling, or grandchild) is restorative.

edit: Blaming the busybody is similar to being content to punish SWATters. We need a system that can receive an anonymous report about an innocent person, and not show up and kill them. There will always be borderline attention-seekers and people who will call in false reports; we need a system that expects them. The system failure is the problem that we can improve on. The scapegoat is an excuse not to improve.

If there was an actual government function focused on child protection then every child would receive a bottle of multi-vitamins every month, a new helmet every year, sunscreen, a winter coat with mittens, scheduled and subsidized annual checkups with their pediatricians, etc.

In this case above CPS and police just checked up as they should on a any complaint and then were fine with OP, the system is working as expected (neighbor is still being a dick)

Yes it is annoying, but I rather live in a world where the police or CPS chase every frivolous compliant than them unable to do anything without a court order or not stopping abuse enough.

we don’t realize how many of our rights society grant to us and can take away easily . Raising a child is a one for that matter so is marriage, or even managing your own affairs (conservatorship), while we no longer just put people in mental institutions, government absolutely have the power to do so. Compromises of living in a civil society is to abide by rules even if it invades the privacy and rights of any one individual.

No, I wouldn't. This is not a good tradeoff. The world sucks and evil exists, but that doesn't give anyone the right to come between me and my children, no matter how much good they think they're doing on balance. This notion must be categorically rejected.

There is a middle ground between "unnecessarily destroying people's lives over frivolous complaints" and "not doing anything without a court order". The term "not stopping abuse enough" is too vague to speak to. There is no system where no family will be hurt unnecessarily, and no system where abuse is completely prevented. The goal is to minimize both.

This is a noble goal, but there's a very serious flaw in this logic. Money. Our government doesn't prioritize child services as much as the military and CPS works on less of a budget than you would think,so chasing down frivolous calls to action and malicious calls without repercussions and someone saying, "They weren't parenting the way I thought they should be parenting" (like letting a 7 year old walk alone in a safe neighborhood - which is fine). These take away much needed resources from very real abuse cases and placement services and treatment services for children who need them. CPS workers are often over worked and under paid, as is.

This is what everybody always says. There's a serious problem with that however. Unfortunately CPS makes the situation of children worse, when they interfere, rather than better.

Everybody is always in favour of detecting abuse (never mind that there isn't any reliable method to do that, and most kids get placed effectively randomly, according to research). But when it comes to footing the bill of decently caring for the children ... nothing of that favour seems to be left. CPS is terrible for kids, and of course this raises the question: are they better than abuse at home? Or ... worse?

https://sci-hub.se/10.1257/aer.97.5.1583

Or, more dramatic:

https://www.kansascity.com/news/special-reports/article23820...

The biggest investigation ever into CPS had to come to the conclusion: a kid is better off abused at home than helped by CPS, even in the "average" case of actual serious physical abuse. Worse: most placements are effectively random, depending more on the CPS investigator than on the kid or their circumstances, so most kids in CPS haven't actually been abused. There's all sorts of extra investigations equally bad, for example one concluding that the violence in the life of a child increases when CPS intervenes to protect a child, rather than decreasing.

And that's ignoring the many CPS scandals where CPS employees get caught abusing kids themselves, even renting out children for sex, using them as drugrunners, ...

> Depends, if a person is really abusing a child which unfortunately happens more frequently than we all want to believe, then you would rather have the government intervene without complicated red-tape as soon as possible.

NO, I would not want the government to be enabled to do this. I would want the government to provide options for those children to escape such an environment IF AND ONLY IF they have the "durable" agreement of the child (meaning if the child wants to go back, they can immediately do so).

Basically you are saying that it is not possible for government to be competent no matter what we do, so we are better of without it interfering in our lives ?

That's a good thing. It does not mean CPS ceases to be, just that the (many) really bad parts will get into serious trouble. That will be a very good thing.

I want the power of government to FORCE themselves into 99% of the life of a child to cease. If that doesn't improve the lot of the child (the outcome), it's an abuse of power. I do not even imply it's their intention to abuse power (although clearly that exists), it just needs to stop.

So I must say I see your position as something you often see when it's about CPS: that they are about guaranteeing jobs/organisations' existence for existing employees/organisations (and subcontractors and ...), and absolutely not about children. That it's about guaranteeing punishment for "bad parenting", whether that means vaccinating children or NOT vaccinating children. About destroying lives of undesirable groups. The large majority of people working in CPS have zero interest in caring for children. That's fundamentally what needs to change: CPS needs to fundamentally be about caring for children.

Not about fixing society. Not about punishing whatever some people consider bad. Not about forcing people to live a certain way by means of threats and punishments.

How frequently does it happen?

As you point out, you take people who just cant help but "virtue signal" and combine this with an anonymous reporting system and now that system is being abused.

The other day I took my dog for a walk and a young girl (around 5) approached me to ask if she could pat him. I had a short conversation with the girl, told her to make sure she is careful with the roads (we met at an intersection) and asked if her parents know where she is. She told me she has a walky-talky and her mom is aware.

I did not see a need to do anything further, the young girl knew her way home, she was like 5-6 houses away in a safe and quiet area.

But some "stranger danger" nut jobs feel they have a duty to protect YOUR kids from their imagined danger?

My dog is rather large and a rehome with some bad behaviour attributes so at times i need to be firm with him to encourage him to change.

I certainly dont "beat" him as that accomplishes nothing, but he is "yelled at" and made to sit down and not allowed to continue walking until he calms down.

someone reported me to animal control, who then came to my house. They were not able to tell me who called, when, what took place, etc.

How do yo defend your actions when you are not allowed to know what the actions were?

Flip side, if my large dog bit one of the off-leash dogs in the area the owners would then be reporting me for this?

Cant discipline the dog for being bad around other dogs, cant let the dog be aggressive to other dogs?

These reporting systems are rapidly becoming "weaponized".

I don't know how we arrived at kids walking around in their own neighborhoods is neglect but life sure is poorer for it.

We also have run ins with CPS more often than normal because we have a disabled child. We were reported to CPS because our daughter has issues with holding her breath (her brain stem isn’t quite right, she essentially has a condition where if she gets upset she forgets to breathe and has to be “rebooted” by giving her breaths) the EMTs came into the house and found her crib with poop in it when they took her to the hospital.

The thing is, when she holds her breath she proceeds to have a massive bowel movement that no diaper can contain. Hence the poop in the crib. The crazy thing is that to “protect” her, the state withdrew her nursing care (as they were being investigated by CPS), and forced the burden of taking care of her fully onto me and my wife.

This was during the crazy nursing shortage in 2021 so of course our nurses found better jobs that pay far better Which I’m glad for them, but it left us in a tight spot. We’re lucky enough that we make enough money that my wife can stay at home but this would have been absolutely ruinous for other families. The nursing shortage is so bad that the state had enacted a program where my wife gets paid to be her caregiver (which is funny, being your child’s employee, her name is on the checks).

It’s all very frustrating and makes us cautious with what we say to doctors and other mandatory reporters, even if we think we’re being good parents. One time I gave my daughter a sip of Mountain Dew and mentioned it to the doctor and now it’s in the “permanent record” that I give her Mountain Dew.

It's horrible, but it's too large of a risk to do anything else, regardless of how actually pleasant and healthy your families environment may be. Assume that every fact you give any of them about your children will be misunderstood, interpreted as uncharitably as possible, taken out of context, permanently recorded, and distributed to hostile strangers to judge.

I don’t think anybody here has commented that the fact this woman fosters is actually directly connected to the fact that she reported you.

It’s indicative of how broken the whole system is that the training to be a foster parent declares things like letting a 7-yo walk alone to be unsafe.

Note that these are some of the same social workers that could be checking up on you when CPS is called. Thus, it is only a happy accident that there weren’t charges filed against you.

I used to think living in 100% indian community is a bit weird; after all america is about diversity, learning and understanding other cultures. But now i see the light and recommend this lifestyle for anyone with kids.

https://www.texasalmanac.com/articles/the-asian-indian-in-te...

"The Dallas-Fort Worth area is home to one of the oldest Indian American communities in Texas."

How many other residents in the US can live in a 100% indian community. Is that one still 100%, the family is indian?

the key takeaway being that it avoids this snitching system?

Indian Americans are no means more forward thinking than other communities, they just have different things they would be nosy about, for example many parents would disapprove of American boyfriends and even some Indian ones from different caste or communities.

I cannot speak of (or for) the indo-american community though, given that most of my life experiences have been in large cities, but amongst fairly diverse strata of society.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-political-s...

2. If the woman contacts your child again, file for restraining order. Tell your neighbors to do the same.

People have rights, better stand up for them or they'll get trampled by blue policies like CPS, which have a long history of abuse and lack of care.

Big adopters are also generally abusive parents. Sounds to me the woman is projecting.

Were you legally obligated to let him into your house?

Technically it was anonymous, so I’m not sure how I’d even make a complaint. We did call an attorney and strangely he just said “cooperate fully with CPS it’ll be fine”. Which I mean, it was in the end.

I'm the white parent of a black son we adopted at birth. We live in a white middle class neighborhood but one neighbor doesn't like having a black kid living there. They've called CPS multiple times. It's always nerve racking because you don't know what can happen even if though the claims are bogus. They come to the door assuming you are guilty.

See, the problem could have been avoided by calling police right there and reporting a kidnapping.

If I was in charge, I would set the residential speed limits to 20mph and have the Police enforce those speed limits 24/7.

Kids learn from failure. It’s letting them fail and learn that grows strong adults.

Some risks can be mitigated. Learning to tumble and take a fall, for example, mitigates risks of falling well into the elderly years.

And as for 5 or 7 year old, yes. Or flip to the other side— traditional society, including indigenous societies, start training their toddlers on chores. Toddlers already want to help, and these are often behaviors they are already doing, like pulling clothes from laundry baskets.

Five year old and seven year olds are capable. In Japan, two year olds are sent on errands.

And, I have heard at least one story of an American family where the mother had her 7 and 8 year old kid take over meal planning and prep for dinner, and paying the bills. (She didn’t just throw them into the deep end either).

If you put your child in a bubble you not only stunt their development you also rob them of so much joy.

What if I get HIV from a needle at a park bench? Do I need to inspect every park bench I sit on with UV light at night and leather gloves to be sure?

Where do you draw your line. Clearly your lines are different than others.

You should consider that their lines are based on rational investigation of the risk. Is yours?

https://letgrow.org/crime-statistics/

The tl;dr is that helicopter parenting is relatively new — only something that's come into play in the last few decades — and in all the time before that kids had far more freedom to roam compared to today. Even factoring in an uptick in the murder rate in the last couple years that came about during Covid policy, it's still half of what is was in the early 90s or prior to that.

It seems like the world is more dangerous now because of the outsized attention crime gets in media, but objectively speaking, it's not.

And keeping kids at home on their screens is having definite negative consequences on their maturation and later ability to succeed in the world. Here's a good article on the subject:

https://reason.com/2017/10/26/the-fragile-generation/

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_world_syndrome

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eMZp8KsZ5k

Is Japan safer than the US on average? Yes. Is the US so unsafe that sending a 7-year old to the neighbouring kids' homes should be frown upon?

Ideas this author generated include — sending an older child along; secretly following to observe without intervening on anything less than catastrophic risks; sending the kid to neighbors to borrow a cup of sugar (and acquaint them to the neighborhood), and so forth.

Life is risky. Our job as parents are not to keep a child from any and all risk, but to curate environments where risks are not catastrophic. It’s this ability to freely explore that a child would exercise initiative and independent thinking.

It is this ability that allows a generation to know what they can do for leading society when you and I and every preceding generation are gone, and they have their own kids to raise.

I would argue that previous generations had such issues as well but they just didn't get talked about as much. It would help explain some of the damn the long term all that matters is the next year / six months type of thinking.

MacLuhan of the “the medium is the message” watched with concern an entire generation of electrification and broadcast radio and TV. He watched as people become passive consumers of content, content which shaped and homoginized culture.

Another example is there if you read the history and the fictional literature of the Gilded Age (around 1890s). Automation of household tasks combined with a shift to industrial jobs outside of home lead to the rise of the movement for the right for women to vote … and also, the discontent and malaise from no longer being able to contribute meaningfully for the household outside of raising of children. That went on well in the 50s.

The ability for someone to be able to meaningfully contribute unique to them to something greater than themselves is a key to well-being for both the person and the community they belong to. The erosion of that ability has been going on for multiple generations.

When kids today are restricted from being able to meaningfully contribute (because it is not risk-free), they turn to other places. Social media are that place, but the social media companies are out to make a profit, not to enable meaningful engagement. Internet use is largely uncurated by parents. So we end up with a society where we have this veneer of keeping kids “safe” by keeping them off the streets, but letting them run wild on the internet. (Example: Roblox)

Being overprotective means your kids don't develop a spirit of adventure and self-reliance. Is there a risk of their coming to harm? The statistics say chances are lower than ever. Violent crime peaked in 1991 and has trended downward (+/-) ever since (this site is run by the FBI):

https://crime-data-explorer.app.cloud.gov/pages/explorer/cri...

I'd also go camping, alone or with friends, in the middle of nowhere, with my parents only knowing very roughly where I was (e.g. "we're camping on such-and-such estate, near the area with the wild boars" :)

Now, as a parent, I keep catching myself being a helicopter parent, and hate myself for it! Nothing catastrophic happened to me or my siblings, or anyone else I knew of. So I don't even know why I act this way now.

The hell it isn’t! Kids learn a ton by being on their own, and not relying on a grownup 100% of the time.

This thread is making me realize how variable different locales are on this.

You got a source for that?

Edit: Wew this thread went from bizarre to disturbing in record time. No parting rage-quit response for me? I feel left out...

Edit: parent's dead reply is an incredibly clear illustration of how such an isolated, unenriched childhood can impact social development. My kid's out playing in our neighborhood, thanks.

They went completely off the rails. Strange, it didn't look quite like the average cheap troll account either.

But I don't think the behavior should be taken as "an incredibly clear illustration" of anything. Just like their initial claim, it is an unverified anecdote at best, not data.

But the outburst might have been childhood trauma causing a bad reaction to the topic and discussion. I hope they're okay...

Somebody who flees a conversation imploring everybody to "kill yourself" after mild disagreement has all the appearance of a grievously immature person, raised on gamer culture, lashing out in greatly disproportionate response to a narcissistic injury. The person I've got sympathy for in this situation is the poster's "loving wife." I was once married to a narcissist, too.

It just wasn't the "incredibly clear illustration" that you claimed. We know almost nothing about the person, and narcissism and probably other kinds of behavioral issues they may have displayed are probably not caused by playing video games or having an isolated, unenriched childhood.

Neither story means anything in the general case.

And frankly, the 7yr old has more to fear at school with 'assault drills' and the mass shootings of some foreig.... 'mentally instable white guy'.

This is an extreme exaggeration of the threat of mass shootings at public schools. Children have far more to fear at home or on the street than at school, which is the safest place they'll be all day.

> "What if governments learned from the MKUltra experiments in the 50's that trauma allows you to control people, so they purposely orchestrate disastrous events to keep their citizens afraid + dependent on them, and that's one of the reasons that mental illness has been rising? lol"

https://twitter.com/itrevormoore/status/1400158963748917249

If something bad happens to your kid while they walk down the road alone, what will the cops and CPS do to you then?

It's funny how having a 7yr old in a small group wandering around together is some horrible thing (as you point out to mostly mythical violence), but sending kid to public school where bullying is routine and other terrible things are never considered child abuse.

If I sent my child to a building for 40h a week, and they suffered 8h abuse across the week, they'd be taken from me. But since it's called "School" it's acceptable.