Thanks for the links! I don't have time to go through them at the moment though.
It's almost certain that one of those 3.2 million incidents has our name on it.
In 2014, at a time when our son, who has high functional autism, was going down a mental rabbit hole about what foods he would eat. When the list got down to three foods, we told him that it could not go down any further, period.
So he asked for one of those foods for dinner, and we served it, and he decided that he didn't want it, that he would only eat one of the other two foods on his 'list'.
We refused to accommodate and reminded him that he wasn't allowed to go below three foods. That the food in front of him was on his list, and that he had specifically asked for it. So he would not be served anything different for dinner.
So he ate a little bit of it, and went to bed hungry and unhappy.
The next day at school, he told a teacher that we were starving him, that we were refusing to feed him.
This generated a mandatory CPS incident.
We received a call, and my wife went to the school and talked to someone and contextualized the situation.
The incident was subsequently closed without prejudice.
So, given that rather in-depth bit of "anecdata": of that 3.2 million, based on our direct experience with the reporting requirements schools have to follow, most of them are specious.
Of the ones that aren't, I suspect only a tiny fraction are in any way related to 'free range parenting'.
In short: I strongly suspect that the danger of inappropriate child services intervention associated with various 'free range parenting' activities is vanishingly small, even though it feels like a constant and potent danger.
PS: I'm 110% open and willing to answer any questions about anything mentioned here, including the autism, the 'food list', the seemingly strange behaviour, whatever. I feel that there are a lot of misconceptions surrounding the realities of parenting autistic children, and I am more than happy to help with that. Direct e-mail is fine too: diederich@gmail.com
It's almost certain that one of those 3.2 million incidents has our name on it.
In 2014, at a time when our son, who has high functional autism, was going down a mental rabbit hole about what foods he would eat. When the list got down to three foods, we told him that it could not go down any further, period.
So he asked for one of those foods for dinner, and we served it, and he decided that he didn't want it, that he would only eat one of the other two foods on his 'list'.
We refused to accommodate and reminded him that he wasn't allowed to go below three foods. That the food in front of him was on his list, and that he had specifically asked for it. So he would not be served anything different for dinner.
So he ate a little bit of it, and went to bed hungry and unhappy.
The next day at school, he told a teacher that we were starving him, that we were refusing to feed him.
This generated a mandatory CPS incident.
We received a call, and my wife went to the school and talked to someone and contextualized the situation.
The incident was subsequently closed without prejudice.
So, given that rather in-depth bit of "anecdata": of that 3.2 million, based on our direct experience with the reporting requirements schools have to follow, most of them are specious.
Of the ones that aren't, I suspect only a tiny fraction are in any way related to 'free range parenting'.
In short: I strongly suspect that the danger of inappropriate child services intervention associated with various 'free range parenting' activities is vanishingly small, even though it feels like a constant and potent danger.
PS: I'm 110% open and willing to answer any questions about anything mentioned here, including the autism, the 'food list', the seemingly strange behaviour, whatever. I feel that there are a lot of misconceptions surrounding the realities of parenting autistic children, and I am more than happy to help with that. Direct e-mail is fine too: diederich@gmail.com