In my professional life, I work with special needs children. The group of kids I have are an amazing, mostly behaved, set of little people. I see their caring parents every day. It was a blessing that none of my children have any disabilities. These parents are champions in my book for enduring the challenges that come with raising a child who cannot talk, or walk, or has Downs Syndrome. As a parent I have certainly made my share of mistakes. These parents, I am sure are no different. It troubles me when one of these parents put their child in my care and feel they need to explain something that happened the night before. I look at their terrified faces because they are afraid that I will turn them in to Child Protective Services because their 3rd grader has a skinned knee.
This post was inspired by one such parent a couple of days ago. The child is in a wheelchair, has trouble speaking, and has a cognitive disability. He is a joy. This child seems to never have a bad day. When he arrives, he brightens the room. If I am doing something, he always says, “good job Marc.” His family is relatively poor. They have sacrificed to live in the affluent school district I work in. I see his loving mother and older brother every day. Life is hard for her, raising these two boys alone.
A couple of days ago this boy had gotten a haircut, as had his older brother. She, with almost tears in her eyes explained to me the story that went with the haircut. In the absence of the threat of CPS, this story would never have needed to be related to me. She explained that her disabled child always cries when he gets his hair cut. This time was no different. Her older son was next. As she took the clippers to her son without a disability he screamed in pain as she shaved his head. The clippers were dull. You could tell in her eyes that she felt horrible. She threw away the clippers and went to Walmart to buy what I am sure were the cheapest set of clippers they had to finish he son's hair. “I am sorry, I did not know,” she said to me. I replied, “why are you apologizing to me, seems like a pretty normal, if unfortunate day in the life of a parent.” She looked at me with hope and relayed that she just did not want her son mentioning it and having me or anyone else think she hurt him on purpose.
Did she overreact? No, I have listened to other employees complain about how this woman lives. During the winter, she sent him to school in a jacket that someone thought was not heavy enough. Another time they complained that it was too warm. Just before Christmas time someone complained that his shoes were too old and needed replaced. He got new ones for Christmas. These busy bodies occupy their time judging the decisions of all of my parents. Another child of mine has been visited multiple times by CPS because he has missed more than the allowed absences. He is a special needs kid, of course he is going to miss more often. The others roll their eyes and look at each other and say things like, “Mom must not have gotten up this morning.” Maybe she didn't and maybe she, another single mother, stayed out working late and her child and her needed some time together. On more times than I can count, I have heard CPS mentioned.
I have seen no abuse of these children. Sure, some of them struggle to pay bills and like my friend in the wheelchair, had to wait to get some new things because mom was keeping the lights on. These people, who live in a town with a median family income of over $100,000 a year, have no idea what it means to be poor. Yet, they pass judgement on a single mother with two kids, one of which is severely handicapped. They are itching to turn his mother in to CPS.
I could rattle off statistics to point to the abuses that are committed by the government in the name of “protecting kids.” Sometimes bad people do horrible things to children and I am well aware of that. This child is obviously not harmed. As I said before he is an amazing, happy child. His mother tells him she loves him every morning and in his spare time he tells us how great his mom and brother are.
This is where the abuses of government raise their ugly and cruel head. It is in the disruption of this families life at trivial nonsense. This woman had to fear me because I have the power to take her loving family away from her. CPS is a department run crazy. It storms into the lives of people and takes everyone prisoner. It might be said that somebody needs to help because of the rare occasion that a parent does something wrong. Ok, then when they disrupt a family their should be consequences for that employee.
In a voluntary community the market would tend to this. Private organizations could arise and be funded by a community to handle these situations. They could compete for the resources and would be held accountable to the people employing their services.
That solution does not work for the bullies in government. They believe that they own that child. They want to force their control into the heart of every family and teach every child who is boss. It is sick, twisted, and wrong. The truth is that even the parents do not own that child, he owns himself. He has all the same rights as every other free individual on this planet. Sure, a parent takes responsibility for helping their child grow into a good person but the child is still their own property.
As I have said in many other posts, my reason for fighting for liberty is in my compassion and love for this world. This is another example of how we as a society must take away the States power to destroy us. We must stand together and for our own freedom. It is time for the CPS to stop threatening good people at the order of individual, who just wants to control others and look down their noses at hard working families who just want to be left alone.
