Proposal to cut down on abuse of aspie children

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I have a proposal. You know how you need a license to do practically anything: to drive a car, to own a pet, to get married, to operate anything heavier than a lawnmower. Well, why isn't there a license to have kids? Seriously, you've got people simply popping a bun in the oven, having a children with AS, and abusing them when they "misbehave".

My proposal works like this. Parents will be required to take a license exam; first, during the third trimester of pregrancy, then every four years until the child moves out of the house. The exam will work like a combination of a driver's license test and the SAT. Parents will be required to answer numerous questions on how to treat children. Questions will rotate periodically to avoid any possiblilty of cheating or outsmarting the system. If the parents pass the test, they will be considered licensed, and be allowed to have kids. If the parents fail the test, they will still be allowed to have kids. HOWEVER, they will be closely monitired by the DCFS. Children over the age of 8 will be given the phone number of DCFS, and instructed to call anytime they do not fell safe at home. Reports of abuse, no matter how small, will result in the permanent loss of custody. In order to regain the custody, the parents will be required to become licensed. If not, the children will be placed into foster care until the age of 18, unless the really wish to remain at home.

I think that's a wonderful proposal.

I agree with GH. Standardized tests like IQ and SAT can't even give an accurate representative of intelligence or ability to succeed in college.... so how could a test possibly be devised to measure people's parenting skill?

Besides, NT's lie, so there is no way to stop them from answering the way they think the state would want them to and then doing the opposite in practice.

I also agree with Ghosthunter. I will raise my daughter the way I damn well please and no state or government is going to license me to be a parent. We have a licensing system for parenting now and it's called CPS and although disfunctional, it's invasive enough, IMO.

Tallgirl.

I think that proposal sucks! Parents lie, the answers to the test would probably be available on the internet before the program was implemented, it would undermine a parent's right to raise their child the way they see fit, there's no way to manage a social services beaureaucracy on such a colossal scale as that, the hotline would be used for retaliation more than any legitimate problems, and you'd have social service ret*ds that don't have what it takes to compete for a better paying job in the private sector making arbitrary decisions about family's futures. Not to mention, what would you do with the kids whose parent's failed? Abort the babies for their parent's stupidity? Throw the kids in foster homes? A kid's home life may suck, but the parents would have to present an imminent danger to the kid 's life for a foster home to be a better environment. Therefore, I think that ignoring child abuse would be a lesser evil than implementing your idea.

From what former foster kids have told me, the state's system is abysmal and most children have a far better chance of being abused while in the system than with relatives. In many municipalities, foster kids are just numbers to be moved from place to place at their convenience and they never experience a sense of belonging or permanence. What's worse, a lot of these foster parents are in it purely for the financial incentive and don't care anything about the kids.

My friend's gone through it all, from having the refrigerator pad locked, being raped when she was six to having to take care of her incapacitated foster grandmother at ten all by herself. Where the heck was the social worker when she needed them? As for tests to determine whether a parent is fit, what criteria will the state have for passing? Will a mother who's into alternative child-rearing methods fail because her way doesn't match up with the answers?

Or worse, what about those who don't have the education to deciper the questions? They're at a disadvantage right from the start which brings me to the conclusion that any sort of testing could be biased toward middle class parents and leave those of lower socio-economic status most likely to lose their children.

And what if a kid, angry at being reasonably grounded or denied ice cream before dinner, phoned the number and reported abuse? Any report of abuse no matter how small would result in the child being taken away? Completely unreasonable!

Hi Aspie 1,

Have you considered that the staff of any children's welfare organisation/protective service are NT as well. The rules of such organisations are generally phrased to meet current NT views of families and children defined by modern humanist social theorists and the courts so that the first rule is that children belong with their natural families where they will be raised according to the "normal" [read NT] rules of child rearing. Having worked in the welfare system I have seen many children abused by the blind application of such precepts without any consideration of individual difference, especially developmental difference such as intellectual impairments or autism. Such systems are "mass" systems and are also incredibly legalistic, thus their views of unusual behaviour that might be presented by autistics in consequence of being in untenable situations will always tend to be in terms of criminal codes of justice.

Jim Crawford.