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[...] Play time is in short supply for children these days and the lifelong consequences for developing children can be more serious than many people realize.
An article in the most recent issue of the American Journal of Play details not only how much children's play time has declined, but how this lack of play affects emotional development, leading to the rise of anxiety, depression, and problems of attention and self control.
[...] Gray describes this kind of unstructured, freely-chosen play as a testing ground for life. It provides critical life experiences without which young children cannot develop into confident and competent adults. Gray's article is meant to serve as a wake-up call regarding the effects of lost play, and he believes that lack of childhood free play time is a huge loss that must be addressed for the sake of our children and society.
Parents who hover over and intrude on their children's play are a big part of the problem, according to Gray. "It is hard to find groups of children outdoors at all, and, if you do find them, they are likely to be wearing uniforms and following the directions of coaches while their parents dutifully watch and cheer." He cites a study which assessed the way 6- to 8-year-olds spent their time in 1981 and again in 1997.
(Score: 3, Disagree) by Thexalon on Saturday May 12 2018, @06:33PM (7 children)
Just curious: Why don't you want to let social services walk into your home and open the fridge?
I've hung out with social workers. They usually don't want to take somebody's kid away, in no small part because that's a lot of really unpleasant work they'd have to do. They do want to make damn sure that kids aren't being neglected or abused. By repeatedly fighting them and making it impossible for them to check on your place, you're raising their suspicions that you're doing something you shouldn't be doing. The first report could easily be dismissed as "nutty friend of a neighbor". The second, third, and fourth reports now make things look like your household has something to hide.
Alternately, you have people in town who have it out for you for reasons unrelated to your treatment of children. You might want to look into why you might have that kind of reputation.
I know what over-zealous social workers look like, too: A couple of my friends is trying to get regular playtime with their grandchildren, and their (deceased) daughter's ex has hired a Christian-warrior lawyer to make all sorts of false allegations about them because they aren't Christian (e.g. Satanic panic kinds of claims). The solution has been to cooperate completely with the investigations: Each time, the investigators come back saying my friends are great and the Christian-warrior lawyer is full of it. Now that lawyer is facing sanctions for repeatedly suborning perjury.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 12 2018, @07:14PM (3 children)
On some previous occasions I was less stubborn. The privacy invasion is tiring. They have no right to it. You are making the "nothing to hide" argument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument [wikipedia.org]
During one visit they spotted thick exposed wires in my home, sticking out of the wall. They didn't ask about the wires, but they wrote it down. Later, I'm getting accused of an electrical hazard. They were disconnected speaker wires, high up by the ceiling. They were out of reach. Even if still operational, which was not the case, they would be low voltage. I still got more trouble from it.
So it is a fishing expedition. I don't wish to worry about what some barely-educated dummy might misinterpret in my nerdy home.
The neighbor's friend does have an obsession with me. She knows that I have 11 thin children, so in her demented mind she presumes I can't feed them. I have reason to believe she has called the cops many more times, but they ignore her when she doesn't have any evidence beyond "lots of thin children". FYI, they are fed, to the tune of roughly $50,000 per year. Both parents were very skinny as children, so that is in the DNA. The kids are active and are not fed junk food.
I didn't even mention all the reports. There were a few more. One was my wife clueless enough to call 911 when a kid was in the yard unbeknownst to her and a neighbor suggested an abduction. I could forgetting one or two. If you look at the per-child rate, it's like a typical family getting just 1 report. I do have 5 times as many kids as normal. I'm still pissed; not one of these should have resulted in people trying to enter my home. Not once did any allegation relate to the interior of my home. I feel like I'm living in East Germany or North Korea with all these inspections of my private home.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 13 2018, @12:31AM (1 child)
Makes me wonder what the other half of the story is to reports of white idiots calling the cops on black people for no reason at all.
With police violence, we see that while black people are disproportionately victimized, by headcount, more white people are victimized. The common thread is that they're working class, not to mention Hispanic immigrants.
Now I wonder how many white people get cops called on them for no reason. Same story as police violence? Proportionately victimizing more blacks and Hispanic immigrants but by headcount more white with the common thread of being in the working class.
Otoh, if you're feeding 11 children, you're probably not working class, unless you're doing so with my tax dollars, which is fine. Perhaps we'll find that proxy harassment by CPS is what the remaining middle class faces.
It's a generation of soy boys and incels, and for whatever reason the D team, after spending so many resources on shaping that generation into failures, is now determined to completely alienate them from ever supporting the D team again. Polls show that incels and soy boys are overwhelmingly R team. Ridicule the alt-right all you want. The more you ridicule it, the stronger it will get....
N.B. I don't want the alt-right. I'm just making an observation. What "alt-right" means has changed a lot since Moldbug. It's increasingly including more and more people who are livid with the status quo and frankly just flat out tired of this shit.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 13 2018, @02:11AM
Finances for a large family are weird. You can feel sort of well-off and poor at the same time. On a per-person basis, I sometimes qualify for government assistance, though I don't want any government workers in my life so that is a "NO" from me. I get all my taxes refunded, and usually a bit more. I guess that makes me poor? On the other hand, I'm earning about 5x the median income and I'm above the 90th percentile. My wife is obviously staying at home. I can afford things that are per-family, but not things that are per-person.
Proxy harassment by CPS is frightfully common. I resist dishing it out, even to people I hate, but I can see the temptation. It's easy, normally anonymous, and effective. I only know about the neighbor's friend because she bragged to somebody and that made it back to me.
I can give you the other side of my experience calling cops on black people. I saw them after dark, entering a home that had been foreclosed upon and was then bank-owned. They also seemed to be taking pictures of my kids, which was creepy. My continued observation (after the cops were already called) makes me think they were probably a family business contracted by the bank to neaten things up, and that the flashes of light from cell phones were just to see better in the dark. The cops sent them away, but without arrest, so I guess the black people had a half-good excuse as far as the cops were concerned.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Sunday May 13 2018, @03:44PM
The difference here between "I'm investigating random citizens" and what you're experiencing is that in these cases the authorities have cause to believe you are committing a crime. A stupid reason, namely reports from stupid people, but a reason nonetheless.
Think about the flip side here: CPS receives 6 reports about a household, but didn't investigate any of them and/or is stonewalled by the parents, and it turns out that these kids are abused, hungry, and getting shocked regularly with loose electrical wiring. That's a problem too. And the key point is that CPS has no idea which of those two situations (an unjustly accused set of parents, or a serious problem) they're looking at until they investigate.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 13 2018, @12:58AM
Because it's none of their business and they should frankly have much less power than they do. Supposedly saving children is not an excuse to ignore due process or the notion of innocent unless proven guilty. But it seems that, when it comes to children, people shut their brains off (if they have brains to begin with, and I'm frankly not sure that authoritarians do) and will allow any atrocity to take place in the name of protecting them.
Nothing to hide, nothing to fear. That doesn't work as an argument for mass surveillance, and it doesn't work here, either.
If people can use CPS that way, then maybe CPS has too much power to begin with. It is unjust to use such methods to destroy someone's life, even if their reputation is bad.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by crafoo on Sunday May 13 2018, @05:24AM
Why don't we just stand aside and let the government goons inspect our homes over completely ridiculous non-issues? Are you serious? Fuck that. Show real evidence of wrong-doing or criminal behaviour or GTFO.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 13 2018, @04:02PM
Well, we can start with the Fourth Amendment and go from there. Agents of the government are not bringing Publisher's Clearinghouse checks when they come knocking on your door.
Nothing can be gained by letting these people into your home, especially if they believe letting children play in the yard is worthy of a home inspection.
I'm sure the social workers you know are fine people and mean no harm. But the same cannot be said for all social workers. Some see themselves as police without badges and guns, and believe their right to dictate how you raise your children is sovereign.