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Comment by wincy | Hacker News Reader

We live in an upper middle class neighborhood and the only people who drive through are other people who live here. Our daughter is seven now but we’ve let her go to her friends house of her own volition since she was five.

This wasn’t a problem until a woman with several foster children (I know this because she told me? I assume she was trying to virtue signal to me what a great person she was) moved into our neighborhood.

One day she came to our house with our daughter in tow, telling us “it isn’t safe” and other nonsense. Most of the people on the blocks are parents and we have each other’s numbers! The next time our daughter was out, then came home, a short time later we got a knock on the door by a police officer. He was friendly and asked to see our daughter to make sure she was okay, but said he’d gotten a call and he had to report it to CPS. So the man from CPS came and inspected our house to make sure we weren’t abusing our child.

Luckily nothing came from it but it was really annoying and I really hate that neighbor now. We bought our daughter an Apple Watch so she can call us and we can GPS track her so she’s not “being neglected”.

It’s frustrating because I lived in a much less safe neighborhood than we do now and was allowed to range much further when I was her age. It just takes one busybody to ruin your life, though.

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Folks that live in UMC* neighborhoods seldom see much of the "dark side" of CPS.

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

This is absolutely true. In the US there are so many situations that have gone south, that CPS and the courts have an almost learned reflex to never give breaks. These cases could be physical child abuse, or sex abuse, and could even go all the way up to death. As a kind of 'prototypical' example of what I'm talking about, Google Kamari Gholston [0].

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...

CPS and the courts have an almost learned reflex to never give breaks...

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.

Exactly. Call it "policing theater." Demonstrate that you're doing your job, by doing it a lot.

I know about it from both sides.

...

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.

> I know about it from both sides. ... 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.

Instead of sending out thinly-veiled insults

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.

> 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.

This is an extremely good way to put this, and it's nice to see it stated outright here. Thank you!

> 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 don't think this was a thinly veiled insult either. It was what we call "robust debate."

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."

Absolutely, they would rather accumulate the easy stats than handle hard cases.

CPS is failing because it’s severely understaffed and underfunded. It’s hard to find dedicated abusers or even just neglectful parents when you have thousands of cases, few social workers, and computer systems from the 1980s. It also allows apathetic and downright sadistic people to keep their jobs, because you don’t have the resources for proper oversight or the competitive job offers to replace them anyways.

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

CPS is failing because it’s severely understaffed and underfunded.

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.

No matter how noble the cause, the last thing I want to do is to provide more resources to ineffective, often abusive agencies. Reform first; show you can be effective without being abusive, and then we can talk about resources.

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.

Understaffed and underfunded? Just because they’re ineffective doesn’t mean they lack for resources.

> 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.

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.

> already on the balls of their ass

Off topic, but thanks for this idiom.

"flat on their ass" is one I have heard for this as well.

Child abuse also happens in foster care homes, in fact the chances of that are a lot higher than in the normal population.

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

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

> One day she came to our house with our daughter in tow

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.

Sounds like kidnapping to me (I am not a lawyer).

If you do that, that will turn one CPS report against you into 5. And if it leads to fights with that neighbour, worse ...

I grew up with CPS being reported against my family on multiple occasions. At one point we had 7 CPS reports against us. At the end, CPS sent two people -- one being a supervisor to make sure nothing was missed -- and two sherrifs with a wagon to take away the kids if anything untoward was found. The supervisor determined nothing was wrong and that the CPS reports were malicious and put a note on our file and address stating that further reports need to go that specific supervisor.

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

If she has boundary issues, she may not stop until she suffers from a firm response. It may also be why she has the strange hobby of approaching and interrogating someone else's children (she may feel 'safer' with them since a polite kid rarely sent her to mind own business).

Can you elaborate how you feel returning a kid to their own home is "kidnapping"?

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

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?

as a parent if i expect my kids to be in a certain location, and say i planned to pick them up from that location, someone removing them from that location has effectively kidnapped them, because when i get there, and the kids are gone, then i can't find them.

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.

Are you aware that almost every country has some sort of "good Samaritan" which would offer protection in this situation.

" 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 live in a country where child abductions do happen. they are rare, so that doesn't turn me into a helicopter parent that wouldn't let their kids out of their sight, although may other parents here do just that, but if they are not where i expect them to be, then i'll silently panic.

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.

Yeah, I think a restraining order is a reasonable course of action. The 'strange neighbor' does not seem to have the best intentions and she could have easily spoken to the parent without involving the child.

That is infuriating. What right does the government have to come and inspect your house and invade your privacy over your child walking around outside?!? In her own neighborhood? Surely despite everyone’s political leanings we can all agree that this is an egregious abuse of power.

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.

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.

> 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.

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).

This is an opinion that’s risky to have because at a superficial level it’s not oriented enough around “save the children”. But there’s some good evidence for it. There’s some great analysis in “The Future of Capitalism” by Paul Collier if anyone is interested in a deeper look

Wow, this is terrible. Obviously we need increased CPS funding to resolve this :^)

Solution to bad government is not less government. If the CPS is terrible we should figure out how to fix it not throw in the towel.

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 ?

Why does everybody always that that offering children the choice of CPS or not is effectively "throwing in the towel"? Yes, CPS will have to offer something meaningful (ie. a reasonable path to a decent future) to children, or not have any children.

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.

> 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.

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.

>>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.<<

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.

Unfortunately there isn't a way to know ahead of time which complaints are frivolous and which aren't. They don't know whether the person who is calling in a complaint is a busybody worked up over nothing or if it's a jealous ex who wants a leg up in a custody hearing or if it's someone has misinterpreted what they've seen or if it's someone who has just witnessed the tip of an abusive iceberg. A quick visit by a trained professional is not particularly expensive and is much more effective means of data collection than a slow trickle of information from poorly informed and possibly malicious random people. Considering that this case worker is probably not getting pulled off a "real" abuse case to do this visit but is instead going when they have an opening in their schedule and would otherwise be idle, the claim it is drawing away much needed resources is questionable.

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.

I agree with you, but almost everyone else disagrees with us.

Benjamin Franklin said, paraphrasing William Blackstone, that “it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer.” I feel like society chucks that principal out of the window as soon as children are involved.

Sounds great, until the opposition is handed the keys to that sprawling legal and administrative apparatus.

> Depends, if a person is really abusing a child which unfortunately happens more frequently than we all want to believe

How frequently does it happen?

About 1 in 7 children have experienced abuse or neglect in the past year.

Does the definition of 'neglect' include letting your child out into the neighborhood alone?

I recommend checking for yourself

If the government steps in and tries to help kids grow up to be modern citizens (read: pious, hard-working, conservative), then I don't see a problem with inspecting houses.

We always love to blame the busybody snitch for this, and we somehow let the government off the hook, or even paint it as a victim.

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.

I've always considered child protection to be the parents' responsibility and not a function of government.

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.

This shows that it's not really about actually "thinking about the children", otherwise they'd be actually thinking about the children long term and not just using them to gain political platitudes.

Most child abuse is happening inside families. The whole thing of child protection is to protect kids against parents/caregivers who either neglect them or abuse them.

This is actually a fairly large problem these days.

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".

This is a real shame, it's bad for your daughter and life in general. I have three kids and as much as I'd love to let them roam a bit like my wife and I did as kids, stories like yours scare the hell out of me.

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

Now that she’s seven and has the watch everything seems fine. She goes further than ever and we haven’t gotten complaints. Maybe the lady gave up or decided my daughter’s magically old enough now.

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.

That is one lesson I've learned. Keep your mouth shut around doctors, counselors, therapists, teachers, and daycare workers. Treat them politely, professionally, and keep them at a distance and never give them details about your family. Gently coach your children to do the same, but not explicitly.

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.

> This wasn’t a problem until a woman with several foster children (I know this because she told me? I assume she was trying to virtue signal to me what a great person she was) moved into our neighborhood. One day she came to our house with our daughter in tow, telling us “it isn’t safe” and other nonsense.

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 have family that choose to live in 100% Indian community in dallas for this exact reason. Kids can go in and out of the house at will. They walk around outside and find other kids to play and hangout. No playdates, no schedules, no dropoffs.

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.

> But now i see the light and recommend this lifestyle for anyone with kids.

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?

I don’t know if I would recommend it necessarily and saying this is an Indian living in America.

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.

While i agree in part with your generalization about Indian parents, issues of caste have come down a lot over the past 75 odd years...

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.

yes homogeneity brings higher levels of trust. people just talk to each other, going to law enforcement isn't the first instict.

A tight community breeds abuse coverups when people in power abuse the weak (children), because the weak have nowhere to go for help.

Depending on your ingroup, espousing this opinion can ruin your life and career in the US. It is true regardless, as measured by numerous and repeated studies.

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

Are you sure about the area? Texas does have a few recognized tribes, but they are nowhere near Dallas.

Probably referring to Indian as in India, not Native American (but I'm not sure)

> they are nowhere near Dallas

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."

Ask your family why they only feel comfortable doing this in a 100% Indian community.

The best part of growing up in an urban area is there was always neighborhood kids to play with. Just walk outside and see who else is out.

1. 4th amendment, never let police in your home voluntarily.

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.

> So the man from CPS came and inspected our house to make sure we weren’t abusing our child.

Were you legally obligated to let him into your house?

Typically the first visit is a request to be voluntarily let in. If denied they will return with a police officer and a warrant to enter, and will be more likely to try to hurt your family rather than do a cursory walkthrough. It’s a bit of game theory but it’s best to let them in the first time.

As the story demonstrates, there could be extra-legal consequences whether one allows them in or not. For average people without very deep pockets, it's damned if you do, damned if you don't.

I denied the police officer entry. He made me produce my child (to show she was there and safe) but that was it. A CPS representative came a few days later and we were advised by a lawyer to let him in and take a look. He made some minor suggestions about cleaning up around our younger daughter’s high chair (she’d thrown some food around her chair) but nothing came of it.

Have you considered legal avenues to stop her from harassing your family?

It seems to have stopped. I’m not sure if they moved or she just gave up or what. This was two years ago and we were cautious about sending her to friends houses but she’s largely autonomous again. I think having a cell phone watch helps immensely (she can say “call mom” and “call dad” to Siri).

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.

This is common these days. People use CPS to try to bully people.

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.

>One day she came to our house with our daughter in tow

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

Let me get this straight. You let 3 state agents trick you into strapping a government tracking device to your child?

It would be a shame if someone called the health department after seeing a rat in your neighbor's yard.

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