Re: California Parent Loses Custody of her Son, May Also Lose Her Job
I think it was Zigtozag that brought up the dating issue ... but, I do agree. :)
- Carl
Re: California Parent Loses Custody of her Son, May Also Lose Her Job
In this forum I am simply looking for ideas on how to resolve this as a legal matter at this time. The court certainly has no time nor does it look at all the other issues. It acts as if it could care less about the behavior of my boyfriend (of 3 years) or what happened to my car. Yet don't get me started. There are many many issues that come into play. RE my boyfriend, yes of course he can be a jerk at times. I do however see a disparity in single dads who date drama queens who aside from acting like jerks themselves, drain the man of his finances which should be going to the support and rearing of his child, which can border onto neglect. What about girlfriends who encourage and/or demand that the divorced dad they date NOT pay child support. Such people should be held in contempt as accessories to delinquent child support, yet men and such cohorts rarely if ever face any legal consequences of what I consider child neglect.
I do have 2 seat belt tickets on record due to my son not wearing his seat belt or removing it as mentioned heretofore. In one traffic stop, the chp actually peered into the back of the car and wagged his finger at my then 7 year old, issuing a stern warning to listen to his mom and keep his seat belt on, it's the law. It apparently went in one ear and out the other. It is also on record that my son was kicked out of his after school program for not listening to the coordinator. Two different teachers at two different schools rang my cell phone during the day while at work countless times asking me to come and get my son. One teacher, a veteran of 35 years put my son in a chair outside her room and stated to me, "I've never seen a student like this before in all my years of teaching, I can't do this, send your son to an SDC (special ed day class)."
I've been a good parent. As a single mom who has received 0 child support over the years, I have used all my personal savings for expensive tutoring programs, after school sports, baseball, basketball, swimming, karate. Have sent my son on trips w/family all over the U.S. and took him to Brazil with his martial arts team. He is in perfect health and top of his class in reading.
I certainly never intended to scratch my son's wrist or hurt him in any way, if I would have intended to hurt my child I certainly would have never given him a couple of open handed wacks in public. I wasn't even aware of the scratch until the onlooker who called the police noticed it. Again I calmly left the scene of someone livid over thinking I wrecked their brand new car and didn't tell them about it, calmly asked then pleaded w/my son to get in the car and let's go. The next thing is he didn't have his seat belt on. So what if I would have let the seat belt thing go and an accident would have taken place and he would have been badly hurt? I was driving already upset and he had his seat belt off. God works in strange ways. Who knows what could have happened down the road, especially during a CA summer full of tourists and the huge crowd who just moved to the state two weeks ago all driving BAD. What's done is done. All I can say is maybe it was all for the best. I believe so many of us need parenting classes for so many reasons. (e.g. parents of obese children are also guilty on some level of child neglect). I will say I do in fact believe CPS is arbitrary and actually flippant at times and badly needs reform. I refer to the book called Out of Control which documents its countless transgressions. I am thinking of the teacher in Phoenix who was so preoccupied w/buying donuts and the first day of school she left her young toddler in the car for over 6 hours, and basically baked her daughter to death. She is still teaching and faced not even neglect charges. "Good job CPS." But back to me who tried to get my kid away from a bad situation and also make sure he had his seat belt on. I will likely need to go back to college and get trained for a new career. Perhaps the new career will pay better. Lots of stuff out there does in fact pay better than teaching.
Re: California Parent Loses Custody of her Son, May Also Lose Her Job
If you're going to expose your child to a psychopathic boyfriend, commit substantiated acts of child abuse, and refuse to take any responsibility for your actions (let alone attribute any responsibility to the psychopath), then I have to agree with your ultimate conclusion - you do not have the judgment I would expect from a teacher and should consider a different career.
Re: California Parent Loses Custody of her Son, May Also Lose Her Job
JUDGEMENTAL:
Did I say my boyfriend is not to blame? Of course he started the whole thing by worrying about a brand new truck and thinking I scraped into another vehicle when parking it and didn't say anything to anyone. He had no right to think that, much less accuse me of something that makes no sense at all. I am not with him at this time and he has had to deal with some severe financial consequences is all I can say.
Further, I have stated several times the scratches on the arm, just as when I've left scratches on the arms or received them playing volleyball, were unintentional. As according an l.a. district attorney, an open handed whack on the thigh is not against the law, nor is it child abuse. The nuns in my religious school are guilty of much harsher corporal punishment as they regularly whacked us across the hands with a ruler for forgetting our homework. And that was considered a good education mind you.
I guess all of my parenting over the years and total and 100 percent lack of child support, which the same lame county of Los Angeles does absolutely NOTHING about, draining every dime I have in the bank to be a good baseball mom, basketball mom, martial arts mom, swim team mom, sending a 7 year old on trips as far as south America and always being there for him at every school event including each and every special ed meeting and/or school incident even if it meant taking time off from work means nothing to people like you and the myopic CPS people who make no attempt to sit down and speak with me and get to know me, my son and the situation in its entirety.
I guess the arbitrary and inconsistent view of CPS can take one "weak," (in the words of my children's court attorney) borderline case and invalidate all of the love and parenting I have given my son over the years. And they can also go on to cheat the young adults in the state of California of their teacher in a program for those who have failed to pass the California exit exam due to the mediocrity of so many of my colleagues, and the system itself.
This is the the same CPS who does absolutely nothing about a mom in phoenix who was too preoccupied w/her job and krispy kream donuts to notice she was krisping her 2 year old baby to death in the back of her car. This is the same cps who recently left a 7 year old child victim of sexual assault on video tape in the hands of her negligent parents. Because such a horrible incident took place while this young child was in the custody of her parents she should have immediately been put into a detention hearing and made a temporary ward of the state until the family was thoroughly investigated. Do yourself a favor and read the book Out of Control if you do in fact seek to be informed about the incompetence of CPS, a state agency your tax dollars pay for. It needs careful review and reform.
If we want to protect children we must come up with carefully structured and evenly distributed codes and statutes that would truly protect children. Apply the law properly. Don't apply it randomly to otherwise good people who had a borderline situation on a bad day.
Yes I may get out of teaching and go back to doing what I did before I taught. I was a bilingual news reporter for various news agencies in several countries. Maybe this time my pet project will be an expose of CPS, what it does and does not offer families and what is needed to have a more effective agency that works for children and parents.
