it's 'national autism week'...

Antagonism from schools toward parents has been on the rise for years and neurodivergent kids are often the flashpoint.

 

And there's the mindset that worries me, BYH ... "mind your own business."

I'm sure there have been thousands of instances in which a child was harmed because people "minded their own business."

Is it degrading for the parents? Yes. I'm still hard-pressed to put that above the alternative.

 

Penn State.

 

Penn State brings me back to people having a really bad idea of how to protect kids. I’m hopeful that between that and Nassar, people are starting to understand what a predator looks like.

They aren’t pulling up in vans, grabbing random kids they’ve never met. They aren’t combing through strangers’ social media looking for personal information on kids they don’t know. Stranger attacks on children are rarer than lightning strikes. Predators generally prefer to position themselves into situations where they have access to children they know well, with authority over them. But many parents will spend all their energy worried about strangers swooping in but never teach their kids age-appropriate ways of understanding that there are lines no adult is allowed to cross and how to react if one does.

If people had a better grasp of what abuse and neglect looked like, we could encourage people to call if they’re concerned without having to worry about frivolous reports.

 

We're not really preaching hyper-cautiousness with a messy-haired kid b/c Joe Paterno gladly let a pedophile work as his assistant coach for decades, are we?

 

I thought that was just shottie putting the ball on a tee and QYFY whacking it.

 

Shit. You're probably right.

 

That's usually the case. Things would have gone a lot more smoothly around here if you had realized that years ago.

 

The child welfare state systems in America are overloaded. Seams, coming apart.

 

I’m sure @CD Boogie has some interesting thoughts about this.

 

Nothing harder than parenting. Hope everyone here has a wonderful day.

 

Yeah, that's the association I made there.

Grow up.