Is this a case of child neglect?

[classical_hero]

I have a 5 (soon to be 6) year old so yes.

I'm pretty good @ negotiating with her & she knows I respect her so she generally respects me. She often makes a play @ wiggling out of my arms & back into the pond or her friend's backyard, etc. (which means I have to physical carry her out, though she is usually laughing while I'm doing this, along with some amount of whining) but she doesn't usually have hysterical breakdowns which IMO is usually the sign of bad parenting (if it happens often & beyond a certain age).

A son is a far different prospect than having a daughter.

 

[peter grimes]

Umm, what??

 

[Lillefix]

Umm, what??

Didn't you know that ALL boys have ADHD and ALL girls are as docile as sloths. That's just the way it is...

 

[cybrxkhan]

Due to the way society works, even in more egalitarian ones, there will be expected gender roles, even if subtle ones. That said, though, it's not just male vs. female. There are plenty of things that would make not make raising any two kids the same: ethnicity/race, personality, socio-economic class, parents' personality, other family members' involvement, too many to list. Though I don't have children of my own, I know from growing up based on how my parents raised me and my brother that each kid presents a different and unique challenge.

 

[salty mud]

Everything you do involves a risk. There's a huge risk of drowning while bathing a child. Since there's a large risk, are you suggesting that we not bathe children until they know how to swim? But wait! How can we teach them to swim since there's a risk of drowning

There's quite a difference between bathing a child in shallow water with adult supervision than leaving them in a car completely unattended. Your comparison was silly.

 

[illram]

I dunno. I'll leave my toddler in the tub to run and get a towel in the next room, or I will let her walk from the 1 ft deep end of the pool to the 2 ft deep end while I am maybe 10-15 feet away. She could get in a situation in the 5 seconds it would take me to get to her in that time. I think leaving your kid in a car to run to the ATM 15 feet away or something is a similar calculus in our Parental reptile brain.

 

[peter grimes]

There's quite a difference between bathing a child in shallow water with adult supervision than leaving them in a car completely unattended. Your comparison was silly.

Yes, that's exactly my point. Leaving a child in a car seat in a locked car is *far* safer than bathing.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

 

[Farm Boy]

Drowning is fast. Drowning is quiet, nearly silent. It takes almost no water depth, and tubs are slippery. I gotta agree with Illram and Peter on bath time.

 

[peter grimes]

@FB - what's your opinion on running in to the bank ATM (assuming there's no drive-thru)? I'm curious, because I don't know if this is a city-car owner situation or if it's more universal. Basically I wind up parking illegally almost right in front of the bank - she's not in direct eye-view, but pretty close.

As a counter, I'd never run into a grocery store or something like that while leaving her in the car - that's a bridge too far.

I'm not looking for validation, I'm just curious what the limits are for different people in different situations. I realize that other parents may be quite uncomfortable with a situation that I'm OK with. And that's totally understandable. We all have different limits for different reasons.

 

[Narz]

The problem with "5 minutes is okay" in my mind is that you never know how long you're going to be.. Sometimes the lines are a long, sometimes the credit card machine is down and people have to pay with cash, and so on.

Well then you go back out & get your kid.

Maybe, maybe not, either way I don't think the mom should be allowed to use the "He didn't want to go!" argument. You're the parent, be in charge.

I agree.

A son is a far different prospect than having a daughter.

I'm sure I could carry a squirming 6-year old boy just as easily as a 6-year old girl.

 

[Formaldehyde]

I'm not sure how soon we'll let our daughter ride the subway alone, but 10 sounds fine.

I once met a woman in a bar in Forest Hills who had lived in Queens her entire life. She had never been to Manhattan because her mother told her the subway was far too dangerous.

I also met a lot of other city residents who had never been to Central Park for the same reason.

 

[Farm Boy]

@FB - what's your opinion on running in to the bank ATM (assuming there's no drive-thru)? I'm curious, because I don't know if this is a city-car owner situation or if it's more universal. Basically I wind up parking illegally almost right in front of the bank - she's not in direct eye-view, but pretty close.

As a counter, I'd never run into a grocery store or something like that while leaving her in the car - that's a bridge too far.

I'm not looking for validation, I'm just curious what the limits are for different people in different situations. I realize that other parents may be quite uncomfortable with a situation that I'm OK with. And that's totally understandable. We all have different limits for different reasons.

I'm twitchy when I break line of sight with the car and he's in it. Haven't done that for longer than a couple seconds at the gas station. Bear in mind though my car is manual everything. So when I have him in there while I'm ringing out the car is usually running and the driver's side door is unlocked. Which really isn't weird. I've gone months without locking up the house or the car in town. Now that I think about it, I've probably left town for hours a couple times without closing the front door so the screen would let air in, but that's something different.

 

[peter grimes]

I'm twitchy when I break line of sight with the car and he's in it. Haven't done that for longer than a couple seconds at the gas station. Bear in mind though my car is manual everything. So when I have him in there while I'm ringing out the car is usually running and the driver's side door is unlocked. Which really isn't weird. I've gone months without locking up the house or the car in town. Now that I think about it, I've probably left town for hours a couple times without closing the front door so the screen would let air in, but that's something different.

I commonly don't lock either the car or our apartment door. That's not just a rural sense of security, it also applies to sage cities like mine.

 

[cybrxkhan]

I'm sure I could carry a squirming 6-year old boy just as easily as a 6-year old girl.

Although my experience with kids is limited (mainly limited to my cousins), I figure if you can handle a little mischievous girl, you can handle a little mischievous boy.

Edit: actually from my experience the mischievous boy tends to be easier to deal with than a mischievous girl, as long as you're not on bad terms with the kid.

 

[Tee Kay]

Yes, that's exactly my point. Leaving a child in a car seat in a locked car is *far* safer than bathing.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

Not when it's 30C it's not.

It's not the case in the article, but still.

 

[Berzerker]

so is the logic here parents cant leave their kids alone for any amount of time?

jesus

 

[Farm Boy]

I commonly don't lock either the car or our apartment door. That's not just a rural sense of security, it also applies to sage cities like mine.

Didn't say it was! But it's two things for me. The car is actually running and unlocked and he's in it. I mean sure, I'll dodge to the cooler behind the counter to get a milk or something, but I probably wont go in back to pick out a bottle of wine. The bigger thing is I don't want some officious well intended d-bag to call the cops on me, which is far and away the mostly likely "bad" outcome. If somebody starts staring at my kid, trying to determine if they need to film him and have the state kidnap him, I want an immediate response along the lines of stranger danger. Because that is stranger danger. Done it twice already like I mentioned to Illram.

Not when it's 30C it's not.

It's not the case in the article, but still.

Yep, that's why I leave the car running. Granted, he wouldn't cook(or freeze) in 2 minutes, but I'd rather have him comfortable in his seat with his book and toy tractors, ya know?

 

[Kaitzilla]

Drowning is fast. Drowning is quiet, nearly silent. It takes almost no water depth, and tubs are slippery. I gotta agree with Illram and Peter on bath time.

When I was 6 I saved a 2 year old from drowning.

Was in one of those small pools with parent and the neighbor and I was the only one who noticed the tot fall off the floaty and silently slip into the water. (Seriously, no noise, no bubbles, straight to the bottom )

Went on myself to nearly drown 3 or 4 times growing up.
To this day I'm still rather frightened of water 4+ feet deep.

 

[Farm Boy]

When I was 6 I saved a 2 year old from drowning.

Was in one of those small pools with parent and the neighbor and I was the only one who noticed the tot fall off the floaty and silently slip into the water. (Seriously, no noise, no bubbles, straight to the bottom )

Went on myself to nearly drown 3 or 4 times growing up.
To this day I'm still rather frightened of water 4+ feet deep.

Ayup. Water is great, and I would consider it vital to teach people to swim, but people often have the wrong degree of complacency when it comes to water safety.

 

[NovaKart]

I saw this article just now on a similar topic about a woman with an autistic child. The article goes on a bit longer than what I posted. It really reminds me of how we need to be careful about judging people when we don't know their situation, like how their child might be autistic.

http://www.salon.com/2014/07/20/the_day_i_was_nearly_arrested_for_having_an_autistic_son/

When my son, who has autism, was 4, he had such a titanic tantrum on the street in Providence, Rhode Island, where we lived, that I couldn’t control him. He started screaming, running into the street, hitting and biting me — and himself — in a panicked frenzy, and all I could do was sit on the curb and try to keep him reasonably safe. His high-pitched shrieks soon attracted a crowd, people openly staring with disapproval and commenting about how I couldn’t control my own child.

No one spoke to me directly, save for an older man sitting on the terrace of a restaurant; he hollered to me that I needed to bring J over so he could spank him. A few people took their phones out (pre-smartphone era; this episode would otherwise have been immortalized on YouTube), and I thought, finally, someone wants to help. Maybe they’d call my spouse, who was at home a few blocks away, so he could give me a hand. I had broken glass in my knee and one of J’s tiny sandals had been dropkicked so far into the middle of the intersection that there was no way I could retrieve it myself and still hang on to him.

I was about to ask a bystander to retrieve it, when I noticed that one of the ladies who had her phone out, someone who’d made disparaging comments about my parenting a few seconds earlier, was giving me a very disapproving look and stood poised, with the flip-phone to her ear, her finger at the ready at the keypad.

And I realized: Oh, boy, she’s about to call the cops. Instead of me being a sweaty mess of a mother trying to calm my autistic child, now I’m an abuser/kidnapper/potential felon/who knows what.

In retrospect, however, one of truly taxing days of my life had actually been stopped from being much, much worse when my friend suddenly spotted me in the middle of the mob and ran to my aid. My friend is white and clearly looks like a professional, non-felon, etc., and the crowd mutteringly dispersed.

Fast-forward some years; our son is now 11. At the checkout of the Whole Foods, something sets him off and without warning, he screams and sinks his teeth into my hand, biting so hard the joint in my thumb swells to the size of a plum. He starts kicking and screaming; my husband and I carefully escort him out of the crowded store and to our car. He runs the last 10 feet, jumps in the back and slams the door. He has his own jump seat in the back of our station wagon, an enclosed space where he feels safe. We open the windows on a gorgeous 70-ish day and let him finish his tantrum in peace. The tantrum sputters out quickly, and we open the hatch to put our groceries in. I turn back to my cart and see a cop walking toward us, while an entire line of bystanders — Whole Foods employees and shoppers — stare at us from the entrance.

“This lady called us,” he says, gesturing to a middle-aged white woman standing a few yards back.

“I wouldn’t treat a dog the way you treat your child!” she screeches at us, her voice dripping with condensed hate and disdain.

My husband and I look at each other. Was she talking to us? What did we do?

Then I remembered her. She was eating a sandwich, sitting in a junky van as we passed by, my husband and I, one hand on each of our son’s arms so he wouldn’t scratch himself or us. I remember giving her an apologetic look – Sorry to disturb your lunch – as we guided our screaming son back to the car. I didn’t realize that, in her eyes, she saw us abusing our son. Or kidnapping him? I still don’t know what she saw.

“Like a dog,” I heard her snarl to the person next to her, an employee in a Whole Foods apron, who nodded, absently. “Worse than a dog.”

J was perfectly calm, sitting in his seat. He might have even said hi to the cop. He likes saying hi to people; he likes policemen and firemen and garbagemen. The cop does not look overly perturbed. My husband and I are middle-aged; he’s white, I’m Asian. We are both college professors and probably look it. How much more stereotypical can we be with our recycled shopping bags and older-model Volvo station wagon? These things shouldn’t matter, but I think they do. The cop tuned out the screeching lady and calmly listened to us.

“We weren’t abusing him,” I said. “He has autism and was having a tantrum and being inside the car makes him feel safe. And we were standing here with him the whole time. It’s 70 degrees, and the window is open.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said. The cop said his nephew was autistic. “My nephew does stuff like that all the time.” He wished us well and walked away, not even bothering to ask our names.

*

I walked at a brisk clip toward the woman, our accuser. She, along with the crowd, had stood there observing the cop calmly walking back to his squad car. I wanted to know what she thought she saw. I wanted to know why she didn’t merely talk to us. Before I could get close enough to hail her, she jumped back in her van, refused to make eye contact, and peeled out. The employees faded back into the store. I summoned the store manager.

Yes, he’d seen us here with J numerous times. So had the employees. This wasn’t the first time he’d had a tantrum in the store. My husband and I would not have done a single thing differently, even if we had a whole department of cops and social workers staring at us. But it made me wonder: Sometime, when we are away from home and people who know us, or the cop doesn’t have an autistic nephew, are we going to get arrested? What would happen to J?

*

A recent spate of arrests of mothers has me thinking about this now more than ever. At what point did parenting go from a communal activity to an actionable crime? A mother in her 40s, Debra Harrell, is currently in jail for letting her 9-year-old daughter play in well-populated park while Ms. Harrell was at work. Tanya McDowell, a homeless single mother, was charged with felonious larceny when she hoped for a better education for her son, using her babysitter’s address instead of her last known permanent address in a worse neighborhood, to enroll her son in kindergarten. (i.e., “stealing” a free public education). Shanesha Taylor, another single homeless mother, had no one to watch her two small children, so she left them in the car during a job interview. She got the job — and then returned to find the cops waiting for her. (The district attorney in Scottsdale, Arizona, has now agreed to dismiss the charges, as long as Taylor completes parenting courses, and establishes education and child-care trust funds for her kids.) In all three cases mothers were separated from their children for the act of mothering.