Why is it 'premature' brain development? This seems to have picked a particular lens to interpret the results.
I grew up in a European country and moved to a developed western nation at age 10. The first few years of school were a really jarring experience because the kids in my class were infantile and mentally under-developed compared to where I came from. This was also reflected in a huge gap in curriculum, we were covering skills that were taught 2-3 years earlier where I came from. Parents in western nations infantalise their children and prevent them from developing autonomy/responsibility for far too long. It's even reflected in the law, 10 year old me was shocked to learn that it's illegal to leave children under 12 unattended at home.
A different interpretation of the same findings is 'lack of adversity causes delayed brain development'.
"If a person who has the lawful care or charge of a child under 12 years, leaves the child for an unreasonable time without making reasonable provision for the supervision and care of the child commits a misdemeanour.
A misdemeanour may net you a maximum 3 years imprisonment? That's harsh.
Of course, the salient part is …unreasonable time without making reasonable provision… Is there precedent on what "unreasonable time" might constitute? In general, of course, it depends entirely on the child and their mental and emotional maturity.
And there's the detail that of course any such punishment will make the problem infinitely worse. Why are laws always written from the point of view that the state is all-powerful, that it can and will solve whatever problem such a law creates ? It just won't. This sounds, on the surface like it will improve kids' lives, but it will make quite a few kids' lives a LOT worse once you take into account that there's nothing the the state can do here. It cannot replace parents it takes away (nor would kids accept those new parents).
(Before you say "but child services/adoption/foster care", read about how well kids are supervised there. Foster care is a LOT worse for kids than being ignored at home)
I’m a foster parent and I make it a point to be trauma informed and educated. How exactly is being in foster care worse than being subject to ongoing trauma by the bios?
It sounds like you’re making a generalization with this point and not being specific to leaving kids home at 12 and thus being removed from the home.
Scientific research consistently finds that kids are consistently a lot worse of in foster care, and a LOT worse of in institutions compared to at home.
EVEN when those kids get abused at home the results of foster care and youth services are negative for the children involved.
This is the largest study on the subject by far. And the results are very clear, very thorough and damning for the idea of foster care. It just does not work.
And, frankly, if you look at "attachment theory", the very basis of behavioral theory for children, and then take into account that most kids get placed into foster care again and again (average 4.7 times in 6 years of foster care) you certainly understand why foster care is worse than ongoing trauma by biological parents.
The ongoing trauma by biological parents is a fixed, constant factor that the kids adapt to. Foster parents only last for a year at a time. Being in foster care means having serious doubts that you're still going to the same house tomorrow, the same school. It means being told that both your natural parents, an institution, and foster parents reject you as a person, and this happens when you're like 12-14 year old. It means knowing that you (or your foster parents for that matter) have zero control and re-placement. It's even realistic that they'll be collected by the police TONIGHT and have to sleep in a jail cell, if people they don't know make this decision.
Under this stress, and that's stress that you as a foster parent cannot take away and have zero control over the continued trauma (so any promises you make are VERY dangerous: if they get taken away (60-80% of those kids), you are actually making a VERY bad trauma worse). Under such stress normal development is not possible.
Attachment theory is the basis of behavioral theory and it says 2 factors are more important than any other in child development:
1) constancy: same environment, same people, SAME RULES tomorrow
2) ability to affect their environment: they must systematically get more control over their environment. What they DO must influence their life.
You will immediately realize that the whole POINT of foster care and child services is to take away BOTH of these. The problem is that these factors matter MORE than whether the child is abused. They matter MORE than whether violence (real or psychological) is used against the child.
The goal is reunification until there can be no reunification. Everyone involved in the case is on board with that. We foster to bring families back together. And we've been successful at that.
> The ongoing trauma by biological parents is a fixed, constant factor that the kids adapt to.
No, it's not. It can and does escalate. A family's financial situation can get worse and thus more neglect. An abuser gets away with it long enough, they'll abuse more and worse.
> Foster parents only last for a year at a time. Being in foster care means having serious doubts that you're still going to the same house tomorrow, the same school.
A placement will not be disrupted unless there is an absolutely good reason (ie: the child needs a therapeutic foster placement.)
> It means being told that both your natural parents, an institution, and foster parents reject you as a person, and this happens when you're like 12-14 year old.
Foster parents are loving people who are willing to take in children, love them as their own and return them to family when it's safe. They work with the bio parents as much as they can. There are phone calls, visits, etc. The children and their needs are placed first and they're treated with dignity and respect. Look into "normalcy" laws that were passed; they promote treating children normally, not like they're different because they're in the system.
> It means knowing that you (or your foster parents for that matter) have zero control and re-placement. It's even realistic that they'll be collected by the police TONIGHT and have to sleep in a jail cell, if people they don't know make this decision.
This is categorically false. Nobody is coming into my home to take these children without a dang good reason. A reason I would know about and have a say in prior. Period. That just doesn't happen.
> Under this stress, and that's stress that you as a foster parent cannot take away and have zero control over the continued trauma (so any promises you make are VERY dangerous: if they get taken away (60-80% of those kids), you are actually making a VERY bad trauma worse). Under such stress normal development is not possible.
We make sure children get therapy to help cope. We take continuing education classes to help US learn to help the children cope. We work with the therapists and often the parents to try and get the children to bond to us. Bonding is healing.
> 1) constancy: same environment, same people, SAME RULES tomorrow
Always. Children thrive on consistency. They need to have some control in their lives and that is provided by the foster parents. They have come out of a situation where they have no control and it is not consistent from day to day.
> 2) ability to affect their environment: they must systematically get more control over their environment. What they DO must influence their life.
See my reply to point 1.
> You will immediately realize that the whole POINT of foster care and child services is to take away BOTH of these.
Again, categorically false.
Until the day when we can provide services to all families in need before it becomes too unsafe for the children to live there, foster parents are a necessity. A lot is different now. Foster parents are required to take ongoing training to learn how to help children work through the trauma they've experienced. Foster parents are strongly encouraged to work with the bios both during the case and to be part of their support system AFTER the case. Laws have been passed to make sure children in care are allowed to be like normal children. You don't have to get your neighbor a background screen just to let your foster child have a sleepover with their children. Cases are not supposed to drag out. Most cases are supposed to end in permanency w/in a year. There are certain cases where it is mandatory that this happens.
Foster parents, case management, the judges, etc, all want to see children go home. Sometimes that isn't possible and it breaks everybody's heart. But the system you're describing doesn't exist. Not today.
Then where is the new study ? Fact of the matter is that foster care was horrible 170 years ago when it started, was terrifyingly bad between the 2 WW (should I link to pictures of kids getting locked in steel cages in foster care homes (even outside) or should we skip that part ? Many just died), it was bad after WW2, and it was very bad 10 years ago. And in the US it wasn't even the worst it could be. Google "aktion T4" and prepare to be horrified by the child services system. While the US was certainly better, it wasn't by much.
If you want to claim things have radically turned around you have a high mountain to climb. What has been changed in the system in the last 10 years that was not done for close to two centuries ? Because you're just making a claim of radically different results with zero data on what has changed, why it would matter, never mind an actual study on if it has actually changed.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that foster parents of the last 10 years ... are pretty much the same as foster parents of 20 years ago, so of course the study is valid.
> > Under this stress, and that's stress that you as a foster parent cannot take away and have zero control over the continued trauma (so any promises you make are VERY dangerous: if they get taken away (60-80% of those kids), you are actually making a VERY bad trauma worse). Under such stress normal development is not possible.
> We make sure children get therapy to help cope. We take continuing education classes to help US learn to help the children cope. We work with the therapists and often the parents to try and get the children to bond to us. Bonding is healing.
That was equally true 10 years ago. Didn't help back then, why would it help now ? Bonding is only healing if the bond doesn't get broken again, and even that's disregarding quite a large body of research claiming a "critical period" exists, which goes quite a bit further and states that children only really bond to parents the way most animals do. They claim a parental bond can only form in the first 6 weeks of life. After that, it just cannot happen because the hormones that make it happen just won't be there.
Also I have no trouble finding research that therapy is equally likely to make issues worse as it is to make it better (in fact this is why psychotherapy, ie. long talks with a psychiatrist under certain conditions, has pretty much been eliminated from psychological practice). Quite a few studies say entering kids in a sports program has better effects than therapy.
And lastly psychological safety research says that often safety cannot be restored once it's really broken. As in cannot ever be restored, not even in 30 years (e.g. placed children who have to stay in institutions, or women who get raped often still complain of "angst" disorders 20-30 years later). Being taken away and forced to live somewhere else breaks safety. There is no therapy that fixes it. There is nothing that fixes it.
And this makes sense doesn't it ? When push comes to shove we as individuals aren't safe in society. There is a lot of actors, from criminals to accidents to government employees/..., that could hurt any one of us quite a bit with zero recourse. Just watch the news. That is fine, because we don't believe that to be the case. But children who get placed, or victims of crime, well, they've been demonstrated that they aren't safe. No amount of therapy is going to fix that because their assessment of the situation is entirely accurate: they aren't safe. Victims of crime do not magically receive safety from further crimes, no matter how serious those previous crimes were. It's almost ridiculous to state it, but of course no amount of rapes protects a victim from getting raped again. Children who get placed get placed on average 4.7 times in 6 years. If they think they're unsafe from getting "placed" (ripped from their environment, suddenly and violently), that is entirely correct reasoning. They aren't safe. Fixing it with therapy is not possible because it's the ones who believe they're safe who are wrong.
You can see things happen, but you can't "unsee" them.
> > 1) constancy: same environment, same people, SAME RULES tomorrow
> Always. Children thrive on consistency. They need to have some control in their lives and that is provided by the foster parents. They have come out of a situation where they have no control and it is not consistent from day to day.
Most parents of placed children have never abused their children. I find it hard to believe you don't know this, but okay. The biggest reasons for placement are divorce, "autism" (meaning difficult children), and poverty (often combined with drug problems or criminal histories/records). Those together account for >90% of placements, and none involve abuse of the children on the part of the parents, none involve "no control". If you say that these aren't good situations, I'll agree with you, but it doesn't justify doing a placement. In fact the biggest constant factor in these situations is the parents, THAT is the main thing limiting damage, which foster care then takes away.
> > 2) ability to affect their environment: they must systematically get more control over their environment. What they DO must influence their life.
> See my reply to point 1.
Actually in the case of divorce children not only have the ability to help, they often succeed (again, I can link studies if you want) in keeping the parents sometimes together, mostly on speaking terms until they move out. If that's not control of the situation, I wonder what exactly you would call control of the situation. And frankly, if you think about it from an evolutionary psychology standpoint, you could make a very good case that this is in fact the normal situation, the very reason couples exist (meaning men and women form bonds in order to have children, if not on an individual purposeful level, then certainly as a species, so even in very good marital relationships the kids are a big stabilizing factor).
Same with autism and poverty. In both cases there are very obvious actions the children can take that will increase their control (with autism: mask the symptoms, with poverty, well we've all had a coffee in the Bronx, no ?). Are either of those coping strategies ideal situations for children ? Of course not. Both, however, are better than foster care ("your parents don't care anymore" or "your parents are not allowed to care anymore by the state")
> You will immediately realize that the whole POINT of foster care and child services is to take away BOTH of these.
(meaning consistency in not having their environment and parents changed, and taking away control because other people decide everything for them, mostly out of necessity because of the frequent environment changes)
I stand by this point.
> Foster parents, case management, the judges, etc, all want to see children go home. Sometimes that isn't possible and it breaks everybody's heart. But the system you're describing doesn't exist. Not today.
A lot of studies (that, granted, come from many different international settings, but also from the US) claim that this is not true. The biggest factor that keeps coming up is that all those people want maximal physical "safety", absolutely minimizing risk, for the children (but really for themselves), ignoring the psychological damage done to them. The purpose, first and foremost is to avoid mistakes where children for example get sexually exploited or die as an eventual result of a decision not to place them, and the police catches the perpetrators and it gets smeared out in the press. One number I've found, which clearly shows the problem, is that ~400 children get placed to avoid the situation that 1 might get beaten (not killed, beaten, potentially just once). So for instance, children will get placed if there is a sole mother that has to leave young kids alone to have job. The eldest kid will do that and take care of it, and do it well. I'm not 30 years old and I know I've had to do this for my parents 20 years ago when it wasn't a problem. Now if you get caught repeatedly it may result in placement.
Furthermore despite these "safety" decisions the amount of children found abused by the police keeps going up. So if the purpose of child placement is to make those go down, they're placing the wrong children and generally not making good decisions.
Plus this paper by itself makes the point that this claim of yours is false. Read the paper, for one thing, it matters a LOT which case manager decides on the child. This has nothing to do with the child, with the situation the child is in, whether the child gets abused, ... And clearly, what happens in practice is not in the interest of the vast majority of the children getting placed, so that's not it either (unless you want to claim they just don't know that, and they're placing kids not knowing what they're doing)
> Then where is the new study ? Fact of the matter is that foster care was horrible 170 years ago when it started, was terrifyingly bad between the 2 WW (should I link to pictures of kids getting locked in steel cages in foster care homes (even outside) or should we skip that part ? Many just died), it was bad after WW2, and it was very bad 10 years ago. And in the US it wasn't even the worst it could be. Google "aktion T4" and prepare to be horrified by the child services system. While the US was certainly better, it wasn't by much.
You.. you realize you're still conversing with an actual foster parent, right?
Foster kids don't get locked in cages. We have people in our homes checking on the kids at least once per week. They get seen outside of our home without us around several more times per week. These kids are in constant contact with people in the system, therapists, their bios, etc. If we were harming them, people would know.
> If you want to claim things have radically turned around you have a high mountain to climb. What has been changed in the system in the last 10 years that was not done for close to two centuries ? Because you're just making a claim of radically different results with zero data on what has changed, why it would matter, never mind an actual study on if it has actually changed.
>I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that foster parents of the last 10 years ... are pretty much the same as foster parents of 20 years ago, so of course the study is valid.
At the VERY least you need to look into the "normalcy" laws. After that, go ahead and look into the changes in training necessary to become a foster parent.
> Bonding is only healing if the bond doesn't get broken again,...
We form and break bonds as humans, ALL THE TIME. Being able to form and break bonds is a necessary and healthy part of life. If a child can't form a bond they will have more issues develop as they mature.
> Most parents of placed children have never abused their children. I find it hard to believe you don't know this, but okay.
The Number One Reason is Neglect. The top five reasons in no order are abuse, neglect, parental drug use, parental incarceration, loss of parents. And they're only placed in foster care if a family or non family care giver cannot be found first.
> The biggest reasons for placement are divorce, "autism" (meaning difficult children), and poverty (often combined with drug problems or criminal histories/records). Those together account for >90% of placements, and none involve abuse of the children on the part of the parents, none involve "no control". If you say that these aren't good situations, I'll agree with you, but it doesn't justify doing a placement. In fact the biggest constant factor in these situations is the parents, THAT is the main thing limiting damage, which foster care then takes away.
Where are you getting this?
> Furthermore despite these "safety" decisions the amount of children found abused by the police keeps going up. So if the purpose of child placement is to make those go down, they're placing the wrong children and generally not making good decisions.
How is child placement supposed to make child abuse go down? Child placement exists because there are parents who are not currently able to make safe choices for their children. Child placement is not meant as some deterrent. The legal system is supposed to be the deterrent in this situation.
> One number I've found, which clearly shows the problem, is that ~400 children get placed to avoid the situation that 1 might get beaten (not killed, beaten, potentially just once).
Children shouldn't get beaten. Ever.
> So for instance, children will get placed if there is a sole mother that has to leave young kids alone to have job. The eldest kid will do that and take care of it, and do it well. I'm not 30 years old and I know I've had to do this for my parents 20 years ago when it wasn't a problem. Now if you get caught repeatedly it may result in placement.
Depends on the age of the child(ren). This is where a support network would come in to play. Before the children are removed, the investigators will do their best to help the parent find and build a support network so that the child(ren) can have a safe place to stay while the parent works.
Not locked in cages ? What do you suppose happens to these kids if they were to, say, go back to their biological parents. Just walk out. And before you say "no bars, no locks", it is actually the case that large pieces of the justice system has no bars either.
Something is a cage if you can't leave. If violence will be used to return you to that place, that takes the place of locks. Those kids are very much locked up.
> We have people in our homes checking on the kids at least once per week. They get seen outside of our home without us around several more times per week. These kids are in constant contact with people in the system, therapists, their bios, etc. If we were harming them, people would know.
If you were PHYSICALLY harming them, yes. Psychologically you must realize that those people, for those kids, are a threat. Each of those individuals is a risk for them to get placed away from you, again. If they see something (even misinterpret something, totally out of context), they will get ripped out again. My point is this is the exact opposite of safety, this is far worse than daily beatings. In other words, those people are there to protect family judges and child care investigators from getting accused of causing abuse, they aren't there for the safety of the child at all.
Reminds me of the scene in "instant family" in the hospital where the child sees the foster parents trying to tell the truth about the nail accident. IMMEDIATELY the child panics, tears in her eyes, and refuses, with an initial angry fit and shouting to her foster parents (whom she really does not want to lose) to let the child care worker talk to anyone but her. Why do you suppose she has this reaction ? Do you not see the treat ? Do you think it would have been the first time that sudden re-placement for a dumb reason without asking her happened to her ?
And let me assure you, compared to what you sometimes read in child protection papers, this was a very mild reaction by that child. Very often a child will respond to such an event by running away. I hope you can understand where such a reaction comes from.
And let me ask you. If you had zero control over your own life, but had 10 people regularly have a conference and if at that conference decisions are made, they are implemented with brutal violence on you. Would you consider this a way to avoid harm to you ?
No. You wouldn't. Such a situation would inflict harm. You would never feel safe. You would never feel in control. Which is of course exactly my point.
Which is why you are harming those kids. And I get it, you can't fix it. You can't stop it. That unfortunately doesn't change the fact that you are harming them. But as I'm sure you've heard often in foster care: the world just isn't fair.
> We form and break bonds as humans, ALL THE TIME. Being able to form and break bonds is a necessary and healthy part of life. If a child can't form a bond they will have more issues develop as they mature.
First, we're talking about parental bonds. Those are definitely not formed all the time, outside of birth. Do you form bonds on which you will be totally reliant for 20 years "all the time" ? I sure as hell don't. Nobody does, not even kids.
> How is child placement supposed to make child abuse go down? Child placement exists because there are parents who are not currently able to make safe choices for their children. Child placement is not meant as some deterrent. The legal system is supposed to be the deterrent in this situation.
The idea is that children who are abused get placed, stopping the abuse. This is not happening, which brings the whole point of placement in question.
> Children shouldn't get beaten. Ever.
No, you should NOT HARM CHILDREN. And when you don't have a choice, you should pick the one with MINIMAL harm for the children. This does NOT mean you should protect children from everything, that itself is child abuse.
Aside from the fact that the vast majority of cases there was no beating of the children by the parents, so this just doesn't apply. Does it apply to your foster kids ? But even where it does: the damage done by placement is far greater than the damage a parent does by beating child. That's the point I'm making here.
Furthermore, children will explore boundaries. That means they will push you until you react with violence (e.g. ideally a slap). If you let them push and push and push, you and the child will lose control and it will lead to disaster, because their behavior will intensify and intensify without bound. So I do hope you make this very important exception to the simplistic "no beating children, ever" statement.
Simplistic catch-all answers just lead to disaster in kids, just like everywhere else.
> ... the investigators will do their best to help the parent find and build a support network so that the child(ren) can have a safe place to stay while the parent works.
I have calculated how much time an investigator can spend on a child before a decision to placement is made by taking their working hours (optimistically, without lunch or bathroom breaks), divided by caseload. I came to 23 minutes per month. That includes the court case (there is no investigator in the actual court case by the way, just a short report by the investigator is read). Explain to me how these people do what you say they're doing ? How do they even drive to the house of these children (of course, plenty of stories online with claims investigators never saw the child before placement, and nobody in court, save the parents, saw the children before the case, so there's that). Can you explain how they even check anything in those 23 minutes ? Because what you're saying sounds very, very hard to believe.
So allow me to say: no, they don't. Investigators just don't do this. They may send childcare workers that do this (and as said, judging by stories online, they often don't), but they are most certainly not doing this themselves.
> They would be returned to their legal guardian, foster parent or otherwise. How does this not apply to any child?
The point is who they get returned to, of course, and how they see those people. Children outside of foster care get returned to the situation they know. Inside youth services or foster care, not so much.
Also you and I both know that if they run away re-placement into an institution will not be far behind. So even though you say it's the same, it's not. It's just not. And yeah I get that part of the reason is that a child that runs away from their biological parents simply doesn't realize institutions exist. They actually believe the lies, that the police will fix things.
> Again, you're talking to an actual foster parent. Our children have a healthy relationship with their case managers, GALs, therapists, teachers, etc.
Yes, and if you were ever a foster kid you would know that you have to make DAMN sure they believe so. And that it's never actually the case.
As a kid in youth services you have 2 choices, you will eventually realize. All these people MUST think you're just about fine (but that they're still able to "help"), or they must be scared of you. Anything else leads to "help", which is a disaster, or to "treatment", catastrophe. Yes this sentence contains a hint as to why I might have negative feelings about these people.
Sorry to pop your bubble, but these kids are lying, scheming, faking and cheating you. And neither you or I will blame them for that (you are going to get mad when you realize though. It'll pass, but the damage will be done). Though kids in youth services in my experience have a bit of a "brutal honesty habit", so maybe you should ask. But be careful: like safety can't be restored, you also cannot "unhear" the sentence "I'm doing this to prevent worse", and you may realize that the clock is ticking, that they have taught themselves not to care about you and lie about it, that they have gotten plenty of practice at this and are far better at it than you are at identifying it and that thought, too, cannot be "unthought of".
Do you realize the violence your will kids face if you or their therapist or their teacher were to even just doubt that they're fine ? Do you think someone can develop normally knowing this ? Don't you think that, perhaps, there's something you're missing ? That this absurd situation you think you see in your kids is perhaps simply not real ?
They are faking it and in reality their "safe" environment is causing extreme stress because they cannot ever let their guard down. The only minimal remainder of control they have is utterly and critically dependent on everyone believing everything is fine. They cannot ever be honest to almost anyone. I mean I hope it's not like this in your case of course, but ...
> This is a movie. It is "based on" a real story, but look up what "based on" really means. Not much.
Yes, the psychological reactions of these kids have been pared down to a completely unrealistically peaceful level. Nobody in such a situation reacts as controlled as the kids in this movie do. Also they have systematically avoided showing the even worse sides of youth services, such as the initial taking away of the kids, the institutions, the complete and total idiots that are the employees, supervisors and therapists, the ruins with barbed wire they house the kids in, the fact that your "hyperkinetism" treatment is never going to fix your teacher (meaning the problem youth care solves is NEVER the kid, but ALWAYS the kid is the one punished/treated/locked up/... It never works because you cannot fix a leaky car tire no matter what you do with the bike in the trunk), the constant replacement/changes (you NEVER have the same consultant twice. Just doesn't happen. They quit before they'd see you twice), the "time out" prisons, they show the many court cases only by showing a bag of bears instead of the constant crying and the beatings and fights by the police officers in the waiting rooms, the group of terrified children collapsing quietly in their chairs or looking for a fight, the moment a child realizes that the therapists outright only care about you while they're being paid for it, or the ones where it's not even for their pay but who do it to psychologically insulate themselves ... Reality is far worse on all fronts.
Have you ever seen a 5 year old in an institution in this situation: it's one of their first days, they've just calmed down a bit. They actually connect to one of those group supervisors. And they do what kids do, in such a difficult situation: they start following them around. The kid thinks this supervisor cares. Now you're about to say: she does. SHE probably thinks she does (like you do). But she doesn't: that's not allowed. So at 6pm, at the door to the group, this 5 year old learns: the supervisor doesn't care. She (it's usually a she) is not allowed to care. The kid is violently torn away from this supervisor it was trying to attach itself to, and the child realizes how it's going to be from now on: EVERYBODY rejects you. Whether they want to or not. It's just a matter of time. The realization dawns. It becomes very suddenly very clear why every kid is just lying around in the sofa, avoiding every contact they can avoid, avoiding to be confronted AGAIN with the forced or real rejections.
Then they're in their room for days, crying. They stop eating for a day or two. They realize what a horrific mistake they've made by not preventing themselves from ending up here, that it's never going end, ever. That the other kids were telling the truth and not at all trying to be mean.
None of the adults understand. Well that's not true, they do. But their job depends on them not understanding: either they refuse to understand that this is what happens to all the kids, or they're not there anymore tomorrow (it's sometimes about the money if they're freelancers, but more often it's just a filter).
You don't realize that for your kids you're like this supervisor, at 16h, before they go home at 18h. You are going to reject your kids. That's a certainty. The kids realize this, but know that pointing this out to you will lead to disaster, a further bout of sudden violence against them, completely uncertainty about what comes next. What's next in that case could literally be a jail cell.
And to youth services you're nothing but a bed: one more kid they can "save". Disgusting assholes.
> Not locked in cages ? What do you suppose happens to these kids if they were to, say, go back to their biological parents. Just walk out. And before you say "no bars, no locks", it is actually the case that large pieces of the justice system has no bars either.
>Something is a cage if you can't leave. If violence will be used to return you to that place, that takes the place of locks. Those kids are very much locked up.
They would be returned to their legal guardian, foster parent or otherwise. How does this not apply to any child?
> If you were PHYSICALLY harming them, yes. Psychologically you must realize that those people, for those kids, are a threat. Each of those individuals is a risk for them to get placed away from you, again. If they see something (even misinterpret something, totally out of context), they will get ripped out again. My point is this is the exact opposite of safety, this is far worse than daily beatings. In other words, those people are there to protect family judges and child care investigators from getting accused of causing abuse, they aren't there for the safety of the child at all.
Again, you're talking to an actual foster parent. Our children have a healthy relationship with their case managers, GALs, therapists, teachers, etc. We, the foster parents, work with all of them to make sure this is so, but honestly it happens organically. Our current children absolutely love their case manager. They enjoy the time they spend with him.
> Reminds me of the scene in "instant family" in the hospital where the child sees the foster parents trying to tell the truth about the nail accident. IMMEDIATELY the child panics, tears in her eyes, and refuses, with an initial angry fit and shouting to her foster parents (whom she really does not want to lose) to let the child care worker talk to anyone but her. Why do you suppose she has this reaction ? Do you not see the treat ? Do you think it would have been the first time that sudden re-placement for a dumb reason without asking her happened to her ?
This is a movie. It is "based on" a real story, but look up what "based on" really means. Not much.
However, first, I've not said placements do not disrupt. They do. It is strongly discouraged.
Obviously, this child would rather stay with her new foster parents than her last. You can clearly see she's forming a healthy bond with the new foster parents and is willing to "protect" them in order to stay. This isn't as bad as you're making it out to be. In fact, this is good that she's formed a bond with her foster parents. In fact, it is good that she trusts the case worker enough to go and talk to her about this incident.
>And let me assure you, compared to what you sometimes read in child protection papers, this was a very mild reaction by that child. Very often a child will respond to such an event by running away. I hope you can understand where such a reaction comes from.
Children in care have been traumatized most of not all their lives. They have over developed amygdala. They are in constant fight, flight or flee anyway, so I have no doubt that a few would run away.
>And let me ask you. If you had zero control over your own life...
Let me ask you. What child has complete control over their life?
>.., but had 10 people regularly have a conference and if at that conference decisions are made, they are implemented with brutal violence on you. Would you consider this a way to avoid harm to you ?
Nobody brutally harms foster children. This is patently false.
>Which is why you are harming those kids. And I get it, you can't fix it. You can't stop it. That unfortunately doesn't change the fact that you are harming them. But as I'm sure you've heard often in foster care: the world just isn't fair.
I am not harming them. It is traumatic to be removed from family. On that we can agree. However, children can and do form healthy loving bonds with their foster parents. It is absolutely possible for kids to love bio parents and foster parents simultaneously. That loving bond helps to heal them and the thrive and flourish while in care.
Ideally, no punishment would ever need to be laid upon anyone because they would all obey the law after weighing the effects of the punishment against what they would gain from breaking the law.
This makes sense on the surface, but when the choice is "risk getting caught" vs "put food on my table for this week by working and leaving my kid at home", it's a lot muddier.
Parents who treat their children as if they are fragile (for example, by keeping them away from dirt and potential allergens, such as peanuts) are depriving their children’s immature immune systems of the learning experiences those systems need to develop their maximum protective capacity.
Children’s social and emotional abilities are as antifragile as their immune systems. If we overprotect kids and keep them “safe” from unpleasant social situations and negative emotions, we deprive them of the challenges and opportunities for skill-building they need to grow strong.
Why is it 'premature' brain development? This seems
to have picked a particular lens to interpret the results.
From TFA:
The researchers found specific associations of SES and
TSE with psychiatric symptoms, cognitive performance,
and several brain structure abnormalities.
We know that these brains are developing prematurely rather than differently because they are flat-out worse. Adversity is not the same as meaning or experience. I'm sure that lack of meaning causes problems, and we do need to provide opportunity for growth, but that's not what the article is talking about. Lack of trauma or chronic stress permits the brain to develop the way it evolved to, and brains that develop the way they evolved to are more performant, more stable, and inclined toward more effective habits and behaviors.
Kids growing up in poverty just have to grow up faster and those outcomes are a strain on their mental health. Consider they are born with a mission to “save the whole family” early on without the tools to do it. That is much more pressure than just going to school every day if they are even privileged enough to go to school. That may sound shocking but with technology (online correspondence classes) and looser “home schooling” laws you now have a generation of kids which just didn’t receive education at all. Schools are more strict towards social behavior and I have met more young people that tell me they were expelled from school at the age of 13 than ever before. So, how do you “save the family” now? I truly wish these kids got the second chances I received growing up to redeem themselves but they don’t. The resulting survival mechanisms they are forced into really blur the lines of wrong and right. It’s really more than I can sum up in a single comment but something is going to need to be done here in the US about this.
> A different interpretation of the same findings is 'lack of adversity causes delayed brain development'.
Because in most species, reproducing takes a lot of effort so organisms don't get ready to reproduce until the last possible moment. E.g. fungi don't produce mushrooms the first couple years they're in a new pile of woodchips even though there is more than enough mycelium already, it's not until there are only a couple more years of woodchips left that they will produce mushrooms.
OP could also have meant he went from a private Russian funded private school for elites to a school for disadvantaged children (such as children with poor parents or recently immigrated) in a ghetto like neighborhood.
It'd still be another single data point though.
Edit: just another variation of "children these days" and "when I was young we used to go to school on foot and swim through the river"
The poster quite possibly was using the cold war definition of "west" (which is likely way more relevant to the comparison they are making), not the antiquity one.
The OP obviously means 'Western Europe' but the way he wrote it, in the context of international readers, doesn't make sense, because it reads as 'Western Nation' (i.e. Europe, N. America, Australia, NZ) In his local context, 'The West' could very well more likely mean W. Europe, no doubt - I'm sure it's crystal clear to him/her. But this is a North American board, with an international readership.
If you say "Developed Western Nation" in this context, for example, in the press, or even on the BBC it means the 'classical west', not 'E/W Europe'.
Australia is located in Asia Pacific, and the US is in North America but they are 'Western Nations' by virtue of their cultural history.
So, growing up in Europe could mean that you grew up in the Balkan countries during one of the wars in the 90's. Also, even if you think that map is wrong, countries in the Balkans are certainly not a part of "developed western nation".
For those who are having difficulty with the concept, have a look at Wikipedia entry [1]
'The West' is referenced from basically central Asia, a term devised before the 'discovery' of the New World. The term generally includes 'new world' countries that are founded by 'old world' Western countries.
This is an old term, but it's used ubiquitously today, this is not a contentious subject.
I have been thinking abou this for a long time. Thanks for putting it out there. It seemed that int the domestic crop of people, the US lags behind some/most places in the maturity department.
I grew up in a European country and moved to a developed western nation at age 10. The first few years of school were a really jarring experience because the kids in my class were infantile and mentally under-developed compared to where I came from. This was also reflected in a huge gap in curriculum, we were covering skills that were taught 2-3 years earlier where I came from. Parents in western nations infantalise their children and prevent them from developing autonomy/responsibility for far too long. It's even reflected in the law, 10 year old me was shocked to learn that it's illegal to leave children under 12 unattended at home.
A different interpretation of the same findings is 'lack of adversity causes delayed brain development'.