Beware phone operators...They'll call the law on you.

Randy,

Just got a chance to read this. That is a tough situation to say the least. I think Falcons Talon said it best although there were some other good responses.

It looks like the worst part is over, but keep hanging in there. Also, don't let this incident change the way you raise your kids!

 

I think you should continue to raise your kid the same way you have. I'll tell you this, the way I was raised.... I was spanked a few times like many others and I'm glad I have when I was a young kid. This made me think of how I should be taught whats right and wrong. My sister has never been spanked whenever she gets in trouble so right now she is not the perfect daughter I would want to have when I grow up to have kids of my own.

But like you said.. its a last resort when you have to spank your child. The phone operator was just worried. She doesn't know what goes on under the roof.




-Tony

 

My 3 brothers and I used to get the hell beaten out of us...............Where in the hell was that operator then?
Now that I have children I understand where she was coming from.

 

Randy,

I understand why you can respond with anger about someone butting their nose in on you raising your child. I'm certain that you are a great father.

Yet I would hope that you could find appreciation for what the operator was doing. There is far too much child abuse, I'm certain most here would agree with that. In the past, and still, people would ignore the signs and many children have died.

You know that you are a good father and have nothing to fear. If 1000 good fathers have to respond to questions from child services to allow that operator to save one child's life, I'm all for it.

JMHO,
Greg

 

Except that considering how understaffed and underfunded many CPS departments are, it may well be that because CPS is busy investigating unfounded allegations they don't have time to properly investigate those situations that do need investigating and more children are placed at risk.

Besides, being innocent is not necessarily a defense in cases with CPS. We've seen cases where completely innocent parents were subjected to significant emotional and financial hardship because of unfounded allegations.

And in places like Arizona, CPS does not expunge records of investigations that were found to be unfounded. Though they are sealed to the public, they can be used against the person investigated in applications for foster care or teaching positions or if future allegations of child abuse or neglect are made. So, at least in some places, being innocent could still impact your ability to become a teacher or a foster parent.

Not to mention that when the grapevine gets going, there will be people who believe the investigation alone is evidence of guilt. There have been people who have lost their jobs, etc. when the fact that an investigation was being conducted became public even though no charges had been filed (and in many cases were never filed).

And finally, there is the fact that an investigation can cause its own psychological damage to a child depending on how the situation is handled.

 

Just to add to my previous post, I looked up some statistics for the state of Texas.

In Texas for the most recent reporting year, there were 172,718 investigations or assessments made by Texas CPS.

Of those, 39,925 were substantiated or indicated. Of those substantiated cases, 3,238 children were removed from the home.

82,228 of the cases (or, over 47% of the total cases investigated) were found to be unsubstantiated. In those cases, despite the allegations being unsubstantiated, 48 children were removed from the home. So even in the state of Texas, a report does not have to be substantiated to end up with a child being removed from the home.

It doesn't say why those children were removed from their homes even though the abuse/neglect allegations could not be substantiated.

 

I have to say, I disagree with virtually all the responses here. Yeah, she overreacted, but what if it HAD been a parent beating a kid? She may have saved a life by doing it. Personally, that's worth the risk of offending or annoying someone to me.

It's silly to say "well, it's probably not, so who cares" if she really believed she heard somebody beating their kids. So she was wrong, and maybe you'll get a call checking up on it. Better that than saying "don't want to risk offending a good parent, so I'll let a kid get beaten up" if that's what she thought might be happening.

 

Welcome to Texas Family Law.

 

Damn, too bad

I think it's fine to spank your children as a last resort, as in the situation you explained. I was spanked my whole childhood...can't even remember how many times, but each and every single time I knew what i did wrong, and I knew what the consequences would be if I did it again. Seriously, words just never got across to me when i was young, neither did grounding, SPANKING sends the message across without all the bullsh*t that society wants you to give your kids (all the mind crap). Spanking teaches consequences. Like really, if my parents said "that was bad son, go to your room"...i wouldn't give a f*ck. Oh no, I have to go to my room, the place I am 50% of the day anyways. Oh no, no TV, whooptydoo. Now if they say, "son, stop doing that, or you'll get a spanking (real consequences)" i would stop, because I learned from past experiences. As a parent you have to be consistant...that is the only way. If you spank only when you had a bad day at work or something...that is TOTAL F*CKING SH*T...but if you spank to teach your son/daughter, that is what's gotta happen IMHO.

As for the operator...raise your own f*cking children ya freak.

 

When I was young and my Dad spanked me, he would always tell me that it hurt him more than it hurt me. Afterwards, we would sit and talk about it and I never thought it was abuse. I think spankings can be justified (as a last resort) but its good to let your child know why you had to hurt them, etc. I think you did nothing wrong in this case. Honestly, I don't blame the phone operator because she could not know what was going on and if she overheard something like that and assumed it wasn't any of her business, there is a chance a kid could miss an opportunity to be saved from a potentially abusive situation. Obviously, this was not the case with you so I think you have nothing to worry about, other than having to justify your actions..

 

This is not a spanking -vs- no-spanking thread...yet anyway. Its whether the operator did wrong by threatening to report what sounded like child abuse.

Under what circumstances do you think potential child abuse should be reported?

mrpaige,
Lesser of 2 evils.
Fix the system, don't leave these children with no protection whatsoever.

 

The more I think about it, the more I wonder why would this operator call CPS? If anybody has had to call CPS, they would know that you must be prepared to wait on the line for easily over 20 minutes before getting to speak with someone. Then, by the time a case worker is assigned and sent out to a house, it is well over a 4-6 hours later. The more I think about it, the more I feel that the operator was threatening you to intimidate you. If an operator encounters this situation as its happening, wouldn't a more appropriate course of action be to call the police and stop the alleged "beating" as soon as possible? Once the police get to the "emergency", the family can be moved to a safe location, or the abuser can be removed, and the police can instigate a CPS investigation. I call bullshiznit on the operator.

 

I don't know. I don't think traumatizing otherwise fine children, causing financial and emotional harm to innocent families and wasting limited time and resources so that legitimate cases do not get the attention they need is necessarily the lesser of two evils.

Considering that the VAST majority of reports to CPS are unsubstantiated (since roughly half are rooted out and dropped before an investigation and 47% of those investigated are unsubstantiated), it seems that the reporting system itself is the problem, i.e. too many people are reporting non-existent instances of child abuse or neglect. Fixing the system would not seem to include widening the number of investigations or widening the number of people making unsubstantied reports.

People making unsubstantiated claims based on the flimsiest of evidence are likely not helping, especially since a call like this would likely not even make it into the investigation stage even if it were a legitimate claim since the only evidence is the operator's guess of what is really happening in a place she cannot see. All this operator would be doing is burdening the system. And I say that even if we were looking at it from the operator's perspective rather than ROXRAN's

 

One time I told my Dad I was going to tell the police it was child abuse (for a spanking). He said ok, I'll drive you there. We got in the car and drove to the police station. I chickened out and then we drove back home. I'll never forget it.

 

My mom once told my brother that if he's going to report her, that she would give him something to report!!!

 

Man, like someone else posted, whenever I got spanked, I knew what I was getting spanked for and the worst part was having to give my Mom, my own belt or get a branch from the tree...

I certainly don't have any ill feelings towards my Mom for what she did, I know I deserved it and life goes on.

 

It is interesting how different kids can be, though. I don't spank my kids, not because I made any philosophical decision to not do that, but because it was never necessary to do so. I remember when they were younger threatening to spank them a couple of times, but I never did it. Most of the time, though, all I had to do was lean over and quietly yet forcefully say in their ear that they needed to stop whatever it was they were doing that was wrong. That almost always worked. And if that didn't, making them go to bed did the trick.

I have known kids, though, where such discipline wouldn't work and nothing but a spanking really changed the behavior in many cases.

I don't know why my kids have been so well-behaved. I was certainly not that well-behaved, and my kids' mother was, I'm told, not all that well behaved growing up, either. I think my former wife has done an excellent job raising them (and I've done the best I've could, too), but I know even sometimes great parents don't have the same ease we've had.

Now my kids have gotten to the ages that discussing things with them actually tends to work. There are the occassional groundings administered, of course, but there hasn't been that much need to do that (I realize, of course, that my older son is just now entering the prime misbehavior years. He turns 14 in February. So we'll see what modifications, if any, have to be made in the system of discipline over the next few years).

 

I think 1 prevented case of true child abuse (obviously not the case discussed) is worth 50 moderately irritated parents. Unfortunately I am not aware of a reliable and valid frivolous meter. I would be interested in a social worker or therapist of abused children take on this as they more see the other side. Whether more parents unduly get their kids taken away than parents who get away with real child abuse is a question I have no idea of the answer too. Just as with all issues in the criminal justice system invariably there will be errors on both sides, you can only shift where they are more likely to occur.

 

Okay. So where is your line drawn?

Is 1 prevented case of child abuse worth 50 fathers losing their jobs over false claims?

Is it worth 50 children being traumatized by a frivilous investigation?

Is it worth 50 abused children not receiving proper investigation because CPS was busy investigating unsubstantiated claims?

Is it worth 50 parents not being able to become teachers or foster parents because they were falsely accused?

Is it worth 50 non-abused kids being taken from their families despite the abuse claims being unsubstantiated and placed in foster care to save one kids who is being abused? (Aside from the 48 kids taken in Texas, there are many states who remove kids from homes in situations their own departments found to be unsubstantiated. In a state like Pennsylvania, they took more NON-abused kids - 5,311 - out of their homes than they did abused kids - 3,269. In the 18 states who reported the number of kids they removed after their investigations showed the allegations to be unsubstantiated, there were 14,416 children removed from their homes. The term unsubstantiated roughly means that the allegations of abuse failed to meet even the tiniest standards of probable cause. A police officer could not search your vehicle with the same level of proof gathered by CPS in these instances where they still removed these thousands of children from their homes).

How much can be heaped on innocent people to prevent one case of child abuse? Where is the line drawn?

I know we'd all like there to be no child abuse at all, but we're often not talking about cases of mild irritation of 50 familes for every one child saved. Heck, if we look at those statistics from 18 states of children being removed despite there being no evidence of any abuse, you're already looking at 20% of the children removed from their homes not having been abused.

And, of course, we can't forget that children in foster care have a greater chance of being abused while in foster care than their counterparts in the general population. There are cases where children weren't being abused in their homes were removed only to be abused while in the custody of the state.

 

Well...where is your line drawn? How will you protect those children who would otherwise be abused or killed?

I don't know about the quality of the reference below, but according to it, about 1 in 3 reports were substantiated, and only 1/2 of the actual abuse cases are reported to CPS. More than 3 children die every day from abuse or neglect.

http://www.vix.com/men/abuse/studies/child-ma.html