[quote=“PrestonSturges, post:53, topic:50037”]
How many social workers failed to see right through Jerry Sandusky?
Probably about the same number of cops, psychologists, school administrators, colleagues, fellow students parents, and concerned citizens. Why is it that the social workers are the ones who are totally responsible, do the others get a free ride. Obviously social workers have done a great harm to you or someone you’re close to. Still that doesn’t tar the collection of people who are social workers. I once heard a social worker did something helpful someplace…accident per chance but still. Kind of the category of not 100% of cops being assholes I should think.
No truth to that whatsoever, I just read the papers. Jeeze, if you automatically lapse into patronizing passive aggressive “social worker” mode that easily, it makes me wonder how well you really would be able to handle dealing with normal people.
Ah, “appeal to authority” because only a social worker can pronounce other people free from stain?
I do know that people raised by alcoholics who have not spent considerable time and energy on their own recovery have no idea of what a “normal” person or family is, and so they regard people from nonalcoholic families with extreme suspicion to the point of becoming like Inspector Javert. That’s extremely common among children of alcoholics, even those that aren’t drawn to positions of petty authority. And in fact those types of jobs are vary attractive to them, despite their horrendous handicap in understanding human psychology. And that’s why there’s Al-Anon etc.
That’s a perfectly valid point, but the gist of this story is “selection bias” towards the local authorities acting acting badly. Without bias there is no story, otherwise we’d be getting our news from random screen caps of Google Street View…Could we say the flipside of “bias” is “No true Scotsman.”
Or to put it another way “Social worker stays within comfort zone of helping troubled people, and because nobody rejects them, they avoid flipping out.”
This story would have been more like “Social worker flips out because normal family rejects them.” Yikes, read that few times and ponder it. Who would flip out under those circumstances? A borderline personality disorder, or anyone with borderline traits who finds themselves in a power struggle and has petty authority. And that would describe a codependent social worker - an emotional powder keg with a severely uneducated understanding of psychology, at least as it pertains to relatively normal people.
And what does someone like that do? They follow people around looking for “proof” that other people have problems, not them, often for years. They gather rumors and use confirmation bias when they talk to teachers and neigbhbors And what does a mentally disturbed person do? Accuse, accuse, accuse. What’s a drunk or addict do? Accuse, accuse, accuse. This is why people from alcoholic families show be rigorously screened out from jobs like social work.
Who, me? I’m not following anybody around gathering evidence. I’m not trying to get anyone in trouble. I’m not spreading rumors. I’m not accusing anyone of anything. I’m just trying to figure out how to get through life without enough alcoholic traits to fit in.
It was something that was sprung on our parents, when we brought other feral little monsters home with us that we’d happened upon in our travels …
I can recall being kicked out of the house aged 10 - 11 and told to get on my bike and not come back 'til supper time, with anything within a 5km radius being fair game for exploration. And that radius held a small town; woodland; several less than adequately capped pit heads; slag heaps; abandoned industrial buildings; lots of bad tempered old people and a known kiddy fiddler (but reputedly he couldn’t keep up with a kid on a bike) within it. Although, being nerdy, I frequently ended up in the public library instead …
We were shooting at pigeons with wristrockets under railroad overpass, poking around abandoned industrial sites, swimming in the quarry, walking miles down the railroad tracks, bringing home snakes, exploring storm drains, making match head pipe bombs, shooting bee-bee guns etc. Give us a gallon of gasoline and box of kitchen matches, and we were happy for the afternoon.
Our neighborhood was pretty unique because it also had a grid of alleys, mostly running north/south but some also ran east/west, dividing some block into quarters. Some of them still are paved with bricks. This was like an alternate street system used entirely by kids. Most of the houses were built 1890 to 1920 and all of them had the coal cellars with the cast iron hatch where the coal truck would have pulled up and dumped a load of coal into the basement (often a shallow paved space under the front porch.) The alleys allowed the larger houses (up on the hill) to have access to carriage houses with servants quarters over the garage. This was also common lower down the hill, but tradesmen would built a rental unit over their garage or even what we would call a “tiny house” rental property facing the alley. Some of those were inhabited by elderly pensioners. All in all, the alley environment and mixture of social classes was an example of what the New Urbanism is trying to recreate. it was very kid friendly.
No, see, that’s my point. It’s cases like this that literally make me follow my kids around and let the neighbors know not to call the cops on my kids who are going to the playground a block away.
Here are my options as a parent these days:
1 - Follow my kids and be a helicopter parent.
2 - Have the police get calls about them and be told I have to prove I’m their dad when they walk home.
The third option has been disappearing rapidly, you know, the one where the kids play outside and come home when they’re done? People have called the police on children playing in their yard. What the hell is any rational parent supposed to do but follow them around and take away their independence to prevent 5-0 from rolling up on them and drawing down?
That’s a very real worry, that the cops may simply blow your kid away for, you know, acting like a kid. Thank god no cops came up on me when I was 8 years old with a replica PPSH submachine gun and a (very nice) plastic Lugar.
I imagine it depends greatly on multiple factors. Where you live, what the neighbors are like, what your kids look like, what the perceived crime rate has been, the relative intelligence vs hair-triggeriness of your local cops, the actual risk of your kids falling prey to muggers, molesters, abductors, serial killers, clowns in the storm drains, etc.
And I think it helps a lot if you know your neighbors, and they know you and your kids. That’s the hard part for me; I’m pretty shy in person, and it might come off as standoffish, so I haven’t made any real effort to really get to know my neighbors. But my kids are outside playing with the next-door-neighbor boys nearly every day (they all range from five to almost eight years of age). When they’re outside, we don’t always directly supervise them, so they’re limited to our yard, the neighbor’s place, and the sidewalk out front of both houses, but as they get older, they’ll be allowed to range farther. Ours isn’t a dangerous neighborhood, in my opinion.
