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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

> Then he lost five pounds. He still felt better than he ever had and neither of us were concerned. His medical team implied I was in danger of being reported to children's services as an abusive mother.

But wasn't that valid cause for concern, especially for someone who should be a growing boy? If being underweight was a serious medical concern for him, losing 5 pounds seems like a big flashing red warning that something could be going wrong.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your story, but from what you've written, it sounds to me like their intervention successfully ensured he was eating enough when he wasn't before?

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The problem is that the phrase "a valid concern" would lead me to think "something doctors and parents should consult on (also with the child themself!) and determine if there is cause for alarm, and if so decide collaboratively what the proper course of action is." Sure! Of course! That's what you do with valid health concerns, right?

What it actually means is "something for which social workers will decide whether to take your child away from you for". That's a pretty big escalation from a "valid concern", but one that happens if "the system" decides you are a target. "A valid concern" is in that case a code word for "credible presumptive evidence of child abuse". A child being underweight is a valid thing to be concerned about, it is not on it's own credible presumptive evidence of abusive parenting, no.

Abusers sometimes take their victims elsewhere - new doc, new town, new state - when people start getting suspicious. The victim may also be retaliated against; accused of trying to get help. There’s a risk to consulting someone you suspect might be the perpetrator.

I doubt the proper answer to this risk is to assume abuse. I don’t mean to say the answer is easy but the described behavior towards this person for how they try to help their child is sickening.

Any approach here will have bad results on a population-level; there's no perfect answer. I'm very glad I'm not personally responsible for decisions that could destroy families or doom kids to torture if the wrong judgement call is made.

If the parent is abusive, trying to get their cooperation in fixing the problem may be an effective means to out them.

They had absolutely no reason to believe I was abusing him. Most likely, they were just trying to cover their own butts and err in that direction rather than in the direction of "what's best for this child?"

That's without getting into larger concerns of "What on earth is wrong with the world that a junk food diet is the medically recommended diet for a serious medical condition?"

I’m not questioning anything about your story. I’m just curious: what types of “junk food” were they recommending?

They routinely recommend pro inflammatory foods like peanut butter. It's an inflammatory condition.

They recommend sugary foods. It's a condition that puts one at high risk of diabetes.

They recommend ice cream as a high fat, high calorie food. It's a condition that predisposes people to having trouble tolerating milk and milk products, especially from cows.

Thank you for the additional details.

Is this condition so rare that naming it will doxx your child? If not why not name it so others can add it to their mental toolbox in case it affects them or those they love?

Sounds like Nephropathic Cystinosis, but honestly provided info isn’t enough to diagnose in its own.

I’m speaking more generally than your specific case.

I know. I'm trying to engage you in good faith.

I was molested as a child. I know a fair amount about abuse.

There isn't always a clear bright line between ignorance and abuse. Assuming the worst can make the problem worse.

People tend to not be paragons of virtue who have all the answers for everything they run into. Some people can be helped to become better parents.

I thought long and hard about that while sending care packages to a couple of welfare moms. Declaring them unfit moms and having their kids taken and placed in foster care wasn't some magic solution that guaranteed a fabulous outcome, so I chose to try to help them succeed to whatever degree I could, on a limited budget and from a distance.

There's also a pretty big risk to assuming abuse when it isn't present, removing a child from their parents is an action causing great trauma to the child. Even just putting the family through an adversarial process where removal is threatened can be very traumatic to all involved. If there is a challenging health issue going on too, adding all that on top is actually adding barriers to addressing the challenging health issue, and is harmful.

The solution to reducing risk and harm is not to always err on the side of assuming abuse and making families prove otherwise.

There's no perfect answer; there will always be judgement calls that turn out to be wrong, even when made in good faith. You're correct that false accusations of abuse can be devastating to families; missing real abuse is similiarly devastating.

As I've said elsewhere in this thread, I'm glad I don't have to make these calls.

You are missing the part where I harmed his health to comply with their expectations. He was fine and does better on a high quality diet than on a junk food diet.

Weight isn't the only metric that matters.

What do you consider a high quality diet? What would meals for a day look like to you?

If you haven’t already: find the accusation in your comment.

It’s a very simple question - one that my kid’s pediatrician asks during almost every visit. Weird that you take it as an accusation.

What's weird is that you apparently don't understand the difference between being asked that question by your child's pediatrician vs a random stranger on the internet.

The question is not weird in the context of telling the story on a messageboard.

If we were applying the default "random stranger" rules, the story never would have been shared in the first place.

The answer can make the story wildly different.

I think there is a class of internet bully that clusters around stories like this, not unlike the "think of the children crowd" mentioned in the article.

Harmed his health by what metric?

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