[sleepy]

I have been through the court system with my X over discipline of my son. Child services is a funny thing. They think mothers can do no wrong and fathers are monsters. A counselor told me once that my son felt he was not in control of his life...DUH.. he's 14 he's not in control of his life the parents are! They said if he doesn't do what you tell him to CALL the cops. Every time the government gets involved with ANYTHING they go compleatly over the edge. If you ever had to deal with child services you would know that THEY ARE INSAINE. My lawyer found the law that said you can hit your kids as long as you don't leave brueses broken bones or draw blood. child services said they didn't care about that law they should be able to take him away from me anyway. Thankfully I got a judge that has teenagers. But it still cost me $6.000 in leagle fees.

[Rusty]

Sleepy,

I feel for you there. The child protection system is certainly not perfect, and I would tend to agree that the criminal justice system overall is somewhat slanted against males. With that in mind however, that is also part of my point with the lawsuit issue. I don't see a need to get lawyers and everyone and their brother in on it. Getting a harassment/restraining order does not require the family to hire a lawyer. It also MIGHT NOT be warranted/or granted in this case. However, if an order were granted and the harassment continued, then the neighbor could be charged with a violation, thus moving him into the juvenile detention system where he would have to answer to someone, whether its a judge, parole officer or someone else.

All of that might also be avoided by not giving the kid the attention he's looking for in the first place. Odds are if his behavior is ignored (as hard as it is), he'll move on and find something else. I'm also not saying it's a cure for the kids stupidity, but odds are time will heal that. I would guess based on my experience that a good majority of people reading this, might have done some stupid and inconsiderate things as a juvenile. I would also say that most of us also look back on things we did and shake our heads and hope that our kids don't follow in our foot steps.

Anyway, good luck and I hope the issue at hand gets resolved.

[Jim Scites]

Originally Posted by sleepy

I have been through the court system with my X over discipline of my son. Child services is a funny thing. They think mothers can do no wrong and fathers are monsters. A counselor told me once that my son felt he was not in control of his life...DUH.. he's 14 he's not in control of his life the parents are! They said if he doesn't do what you tell him to CALL the cops. Every time the government gets involved with ANYTHING they go compleatly over the edge. If you ever had to deal with child services you would know that THEY ARE INSAINE. My lawyer found the law that said you can hit your kids as long as you don't leave brueses broken bones or draw blood. child services said they didn't care about that law they should be able to take him away from me anyway. Thankfully I got a judge that has teenagers. But it still cost me $6.000 in leagle fees.

I have a cousin who works for the welfare department in a small town in West Va. She came to me bragging one day saying that she looked out her office window and saw a mother smack her child across his mouth. She called downstairs and had the child taken away from the mother and put into custody. Sometimes an open handed smack in the mouth is what a child needs. Yuo just can't ever hit a child because you are mad. The only time my children ever got spanked is if they deserved to be spanked, and they defied me when I told them to stop. Not because they made me mad.
Back to this kid: In the neighborhood that I grew up in there was a group that was about 5 years younger than me. They were mostly into drugs. They used to hang out late into the night under a street lamp up the street from my parent's house. The neighbor across the street started calling the police and harassing the kids. He would stand out and have shouting matched with them and threaten them. Well he went on vacation for a week one time and when he got home his house was destroyed. They broke into it and graffiti'd and tore up everything inside the house. He could never prove it was them that did it and he eventually had to move since the kids wouldn't let up on him. Be very careful how you handle this. You aren't always home and he can do a lot of stuff while you're away. I have no idea how to tell you to handle this situation. Since it's your daughter that's getting the harassment something has to be done. Good luck.