posted
You certainly need a lawyer now. The implied threat is enough of a problem to need the counsel.
My parents stuck to their guns and used all of the legal aid and knowledge they had, and they won. Weaker people would have given in. You aren't weak.
Posts: 684 | Registered: Jun 2002
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posted
This is all very surreal. Basically, all it takes for a law-abiding, loving parent to be in danger of losing their kids is one, hateful, vindicative report?
posted
Wow, I've been away from hatrack and missed this. I hope things can be easily resolved KQ. This just sounds really awful. At first I thought I'd misunderstood what CPS meant b/c I thought surely not *that*.
Posts: 872 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
Wow. All I can say to this is that I'm sorry you're going through it. What an awful situation!
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And to answer your initial, title-question: a crazy person, or a total asshole. Not trying to be flippant there.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
If something else happens, consider contacting the Home School Legal Defense Association. Their theology is out to lunch, but the legal service they provide for homeschoolers is extremely valuable. http://www.hslda.org/Default.asp?bhcp=1
posted
Just came aboard, sorry for the late intrusion.
KQ, as a psychologist, I can tell you it is tough to do the right thing with bipolars. They are always irritable and on the edge of anger, but they don't see it.
I would take his cell phone off my plan, if I were you, (if you haven't done it already) and I would explain first that because he is acting rudely and argumentatively, he cannot have a phone. If he complies with his meds, then you would consider it.
He will escalate and threaten, so that will tell you to call The Phone Company and cancel his number.
Always tell him at the end of a conversation that you love him and hope he will start treating his illness in a responsible way. "You have an illness and if you don't work to control it, you cannot be part of my life, even though I love you."
Posts: 121 | Registered: Jul 2006
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posted
The problem is that we will pay a hefty penalty for cancelling his contract early. We can't afford that.
Also, he does not have health insurance, does not have a psychiatrist (or psychologist), does not have a current prescription, and that "when you comply with your meds" sounds threatening to me, so I would not say it to him.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
BannaOJ, what theology is on the home schooling site that is out to lunch? I was just looking at it -- thanks for the link -- and I didn't see anything that seems unreasonable. I just read Michael Farris's statement of beliefs.
We home schooled one of our kids for a year and it was the best year he had in Elementary School. But it drove my wife crazy, she was afraid she was missing out on some important topic. I think it is a great way to educate kids. I wish ours had been.
posted
Hum. . . most places have public mental health facilities where one can get treatment & meds at little or no charge. The problem is if he doesn't comply with the meds, he will continue to act out.
Perhaps you could offer to go with him to the public mental health facilities in your area? LA is so full of crazies, it seems it would be easy to find some cheap or free mental health.
Well, I gotta get off line now. I will check back later. Good luck with a bad situation.
Posts: 121 | Registered: Jul 2006
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posted
I've seen the Robinson curriculum. I've seen a lot. I have no opinions yet about what I will use to teach my kids, except that it will involve a lot of kinetic involvement for my oldest, because she is a heavily kinetic learner.
The HSLDA is a little "out there theologically" to me, because they assume that all their members are a) Christian and b) homeschooling to keep their children from the evil world. I am Christian, but I am also Mormon, and don't think they are all that inclusive in their definition of "Christian." And my goal in homeschooling will be to provide my child with a better education than the local schools can provide and give her more individual attention and materials adapted to her needs (she has SPD, like me, so new experiences have to be introduced slowly and she sometimes needs a few minutes to isolate or self-soothe or other adaptations and understanding, she has an unusual learning style, and she is extremely bright), and also to provide her with opportunities to learn to interact happily and lovingly with those around her, which the local elementary school, to my mind, can't do effectively any more (they've had a ton of problems with bullying, weapons and drugs at school, beatings, etc.) It is NOT my goal in homeschooling to protect her from the outside world or the ideas of the world-- and I will teach my kids about evolution. So I don't know that their worldview exactly lines up with mine.
That said, they do provide excellent "insurance" against legal difficulty, which is why I will be a member, whatever I think about their views.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
I think you missed his point: LA being so full of crazies, there must be a legion of people ready to treat them.
Posts: 1753 | Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
I've been exposed to HSLDA since childhood, as I was homeschooled and have indirect personal contacts with the founders. I don' tknow if my mother was a charter member of HSLDA but pretty close.
Among other things many of their leadership are personally into "courtship" ideas which get pretty far out there at times.
I went to their site for the first time in a while and the rhetoric appears to be toned down since the last time I was there.
This is their statement.
" Is HSLDA a Christian organization?
Yes; however, HSLDA’s mission is to protect the freedom of all homeschoolers. Although our officers and directors are Christians, HSLDA membership is not limited to religiously based homeschoolers. We respect parents' rights to make the appropriate choices for the upbringing of their children. We have no agenda to make all public and home-based classrooms religious or conservative. Our primary objective is to preserve the fundamental right of parents to choose home education, free of over-zealous government officials and intrusive laws. We do put on a national conference annually and invite the board members of state organizations with whom we have worked for many years. Most, if not all, of those organizations have Christian leaders, but many serve all homeschoolers regardless of religious affiliation, as we do."
They openly support their "Patrick Henry College" with HSLDA finances (also on the Q and A page) and if I were a non-Christian homeschooler I'd have more problems giving them my membership fees as a result.
Posts: 11265 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
You're right, they have toned it down in the past couple of years since I've been to their site.
Being Christian has never been a requirement to join but I do remember them being a bit more, um, pro-fundamentalist in their wording.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
BO, ok, I see what you are saying. I wouldn't quite fit with them either.
PC: "Crazies" is a technical term we use to describe people who are kind of crazy. <GRIN, WINK> Thanks to JH who caught the meaning.
Finally, KQ: I Yahooed Los Angeles public mental health. Here is the link http://dmh.lacounty.gov/
Here is the contact info: For free, confidential mental health information, referrals to service providers, and crisis counseling at any day or time, call our 24/7 ACCESS CENTER at 1-800-854-7771.
They are supposed to offer mental health treatment at low or no cost to severely and persistently mentally ill people, and your brother qualifies, since he has a major mental illness and has no health insurance. How good are they? Probably better than nothing. They do know how to treat BPD, since they see so much of it.
Good luck. YOu need it, given the difficulty of treating BPD.
Posts: 121 | Registered: Jul 2006
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posted
Interestingly my brothers, who although adult remain much more plugged into fundamentalist Christian homeschooling community in CA than I am and they say that the younger generations of homeschoolers are just plain "messed up" both academically and socially.
I'm no longer a practicing Christian, and those that go into it for the "Godly education" reasons may be surprised by the actual numbers of homeschooled kids out there who aren't any longer practicing Christians, however I don't expect to find those actual statistics anywhere on the HSLDA site, as compiling the numbers would be difficult.
Among the 20 or so kids who were the nucleus of the first homeschooling families in Ventura County, I'm pretty certain that only roughly 50% are actually Christians today. (I have knowledge of many of those kids lifestyles that their parents have little clue about.)
As far as socialization for well-adjusted homeschooled kids in society goes, I'd actually say most of them are contributing members of society. However their (and my) parents bent over backwards to give a wide spectrum of social experiences that current homeschoolers don't seem to emphasize, either socially or academically.
One of my brothers is expecting a child, and I'm thinking they will probably homeschool it. It will be interesting to see their impressions on other homeschooling families in this generation compared to our generation.
posted
Yeah, but if he doesn't seek help they can't help him.
I am familiar with the public health resources-- which, when it comes to mental health, are crappy-- but I also know that it's up to him to seek treatment.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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quote: However their (and my) parents bent over backwards to give a wide spectrum of social experiences that current homeschoolers don't seem to emphasize, either socially or academically.
I think it depends on the area and the sub-group of homeschoolers. I know that both the part of Dallas where I used to live when I first considered homeschooling and the current area I'm in (a rather wealthy part of L.A., for the most part, despite the specific problems with our neighborhood) have excellent homeschool networks, "umbrella schools", and a wide range of other opportunities for socialization/association. The local group here has weekly "field days" in the park; the group in the area I used to live in had a baseball team that went to nationals. So it probably largely depends on the community, and the individual parents/kids involved.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
I hear you. I definitely think that a homeschool group with a healthy salting of ex-hippie sorts seems to help. But there also appears to be a significant segment of highly over protected homeschooled youngsters in SoCal also, that are incapable of rendering decisions without their parents present. That subset is one of the largest reasons my mother got out of the homeschooling consulting business.
She was a die-hard homeschooling advocate for many years. And she still is as far as civil liberties go. But what these parents were doing to their kids both academically and socially appears to have gotten up her craw. In some ways these types are singlehandly reversing much of the progress that her generation of homeschooling parents made.
posted
I have met a lot of those, too. I agree with you, there are some people who just should not homeschool if they really want what's best for their kids-- or at least, shouldn't do it the way they're currently doing it.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
If your brother is true to form, this kind of thing will happen from time to time. There seems to be a "period" or length of time BPD cycles, and it varies from person to person. Some can be faily stable but every three months, the wheels just come off (ok, more technical talk) and things go to hell in the handbasket.
I say that by way of innoculating you. He may try something like that again the next time he gets crossways with the rest of the family.
BannaOj, I do know one person whose "home schooling' was just keeping the kids around the house so she wouldn't be alone. They were years behind academically. The ex-husband got custody of the kids based on their increasingly greater gaps of basic skills and knowledge. Maybe the pioneers were creating the kids who go to Harvard and Stanford because they are so advanced and then the real pathological parents jumped on the bandwagon. But KQ seems like a sharp tool and should be able to do a great job as a home school mom. I have read a lot of her posts in other topics. And her network will make a huge difference.
Movie: Mean Girls. The two home school stereotypes she refers to at the beginning. One is a national spelling bee finalist, and the other are shirtless kids in overalls saying, "An, on the sixth day, God created the Remington Bolt Action Rifle, so Man could kill the dinosaurs." <southern accent>
Posts: 121 | Registered: Jul 2006
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posted
Lynn, I know kq has been on other homeschooling threads where I've participated. I am in no way questioning her ability in particular to homeschool her children.
I haven't seen Mean Girls, but there's a South Park Episode with homeschoolers in it that absolutely cracked me up.
I have zero desire for children of my own at this point in time, however if I did have children, I would not rule out homeschooling as an option. I think the most important thing homeschooling gave me, was Time to random interesting things I wanted to, and my mother encouraged this. I would characterize much of my childhood before adolescence as idyllic, although it was far from perfect.
There were many good things about being homeschooled. The drawbacks began as I got older. I'd had this wonderful preparation for Living Real Life and as a result was ready for it at a much younger age than traditional. They couldn't let me go and grow on my own when I really needed to because so much of their own self worth was tied up in me.
I haven't turned out poorly IMO although they consider their parenting a failure because I haven't toed the religious line.
posted
(I didn't think my ability to homeschool was being called into question, for what it's worth. You offered some helpful advice and then went on to mention that you see homeschool education deteriorating among the particular group you have the most interaction with, while I do not see that as much in the particular groups I have interacted with. )
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
BannanaOj: What SP episode, btw? I've watched almost all the episodes (except for the really offensive ones) and can't recall homeschoolers.
Posts: 3060 | Registered: Nov 2003
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posted
My kids are 1 and 3-- 14 and 38 months, to be exact.
The three-year-old is currently in a Montessori preschool (in a home near us) two days a week, for whatever period of time she wants to go. Next year I will probably be teaching her to read if she hasn't picked it up on her own already, she's been begging me to for a while but I decided she needs to learn to use the potty first!
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
We have a friend who homeschools some of her children and is a teacher for CAVA ( http://www.caliva.org/ ). I don't know what areas of CA this covers.
Posts: 399 | Registered: Sep 2002
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posted
I know lots of people who love programs like that. Personally I'm not a fan of them, for my family's needs at least, but to each her own. Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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Annoying dude called again, asking me to give them copies of my kids' vaccination records. I told him to get a subpoena or a court order or whatever if he wanted them.
He also didn't seem to know what Healthy Families or a Public Health Clinic were. What a dufus.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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quote:Originally posted by lynn johnson: LA is so full of crazies, it seems it would be easy to find some cheap or free mental health.
Yes, nothing says "reputable psychologist" like calling a group of people "crazies."
I was thinking the same thing myself.
Me three.
I also object to the gross generalization. (If one excludes Hollywood) I doubt L.A. has a higher concentration of "crazies" that most other urban areas. And if I recall the statistics correctly, lower than in Dr. Johnson's neck of the woods.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
AJ, at a 4-H meeting once a parent who often made jokes with me was getting annoyed with some younger kids parents and asked for my email address. The next day she emailed me the clip of South Park with the home schooled kids. Very funny, also not sure what episode it was.
Posts: 5362 | Registered: Apr 2004
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quote:Good luck. YOu need it, given the difficulty of treating BPD.
Where I worked, BPD stood for borderline personality disorder, not bipolar disorder (BD). And those are two quite different illnesses. They aren't even on the same axis.
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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quote:Good luck. YOu need it, given the difficulty of treating BPD.
Where I worked, BPD stood for borderline personality disorder, not bipolar disorder (BD). And those are two quite different illnesses. They aren't even on the same axis.
Yeah, I found myself scrolling up to see where someone might have mentioned borderline personality disorder.
Having said that, just this week, my daughter's very competent and smart therapist asked what Em's secondary diagnosis was, mangling the pronunciation, asking for details about what the symptoms were. So it is possible that professionals can mix up the names or acronyms and still be, well, professionals...
But the "crazies" comment did kind of throw me for a sec. I'm sure professionals might say stuff like that "in the locker room", so to speak, but I would be surprised to hear it in laypeople's presence.
I'm making no real point, as usual. Posts: 628 | Registered: Nov 1999
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quote:Originally posted by BannaOj: However their (and my) parents bent over backwards to give a wide spectrum of social experiences that current homeschoolers don't seem to emphasize, either socially or academically.
AJ
I think I need to send you a copy of my calander! Posts: 2711 | Registered: Mar 2004
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Printer-friendly view of this topic
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At first I thought I'd misunderstood what CPS meant b/c I thought surely not *that*.
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I told him to get a subpoena or a court order or whatever if he wanted them. ![[ROFL]](graemlins/rofl.gif)
