Our Gym Called Cps On Us. Good Times.

[toyotafan]

Just a rant, I'm going to use my Google talk to text function, I'm ranting so I'm not really going to go back and correct if there any weird words (edit: lots of wrong words so I am editing...)

So a couple of weeks ago my kid had a meltdown, this is my youngest kid, because he did something wrong and his punishment was to go sit in his room.

After he got back to his room he proceeded to empty every drawer on his wall toy stacker, which is one of these IKEA wall units. It's like 7 feet tall and there are 15 different ways to configure the bins as they slide in and out.

So he goes back and starts pulling everything off the wall throwing it in the middle of is room cuz he didn't want to sit in time out in this room.

So I go back to see what's going on and there's a mountain of stuff that he's stumbling over, and he probably twisted his ankle in his room.

That is he twisted his own ankle in the pile of stuff that's all over the floor, and this is a lot of stuff. Took a while to clean up.

So a day later he mentioned his foot hurting a little bit, well he did the day before but I thought it was better and we took him to swim lessons.

At Lifetime Fitness in Mansfield Texas.

Needless to say we thought it was fine, and he was fine, but he told his instructor a little fantasy tale that I broke his foot that I'm mean that I yell at him (untrue, true and super-true statements, especially after he destroyed his room) ... and he also said that we did not take him to the doctor to get the broken foot fixed.

So that was on a Thursday, Monday morning at 8 a.m. I hear this bam bam bam bam bam on my front door and if they didn't go away.

So I get up go take a look and there's a woman there and I open the door and like "hello" and I hear those words that are still active in my mind "hello I'm so-and-so with child protective services we got it report of abuse that we need to investigate."

So I step outside close the door behind me she's demanding to see the kids, she's demanding to come inside saying things like "I really need to get inside", "I have to see inside your house I have to talk to your kids."

And I'm like "oh no you don't let's talk first to see what the accusation is" excetera excetera ... "I happen to know that we have something called a Bill of Rights in the Constitution, and I know there's a fourth amendment against unreasonable search and seizure and 5th Amendment which means I don't have to talk to you I have the right to not say anything and not to incriminate myself. And by the way you're not talking to my kids without me present and my attorney."

So it took about a half hour or so to figure out what was going on and finally I realized CPS has an old phone number which we haven't even used in 5 or 6 years ... Also, you have all of the names of my kids that somebody gave you and it's in reference to it somebody's foot being hurt ... so I have to conclude that was at the swim lessons and instead of talking to us about it which anybody normally would do hey did your kid break his foot or, even stopping the lesson because they think a kid has a broken foot, now they just called CPS after the fact and gave me a massive amount of headache had to go to the doctor and dropped $230 on an exam even though we just been there the week prior and the attorney fees for if I have to do anything else talk to anyone else are going to start Manning up $200 an hour.

I get the fact that there are crazy sick and sadistic people out there who will hurt children, those are probably extremely rare cases but they're pretty horrible when they happen. How about looking at our file and seen we've been members there for seven years we've taken our kids there for seven years in the child care, swim lessons, rock climbing, racquetball, xcetera.

We take care of our kids their health, dental, they're well fed, have excellent Medical...

How about talking to us in just a simple conversation instead of just running off a call and CPS cause a massive headache and my wife felt like she was going to break down and start crying when she heard.

That's it, I'm pulling into Lifetime Fitness right now to talk to the general manager and cancel my membership and get money back for the swim lessons which we're never going to send our kids to again. Just a nightmare people have some common sense!

Update. Lifetime fitness HQ called me. They have a corporate policy to report to cps every time they are told by a child that they were abused, even if the child clearly is fine.

Just beware. We're joining the Y.

 

[tibadoe]

Sorry to hear about all that. I agree that it would have been better to talk with "you the parents" first before calling CPS.

 

[toyotafan]

So he was running around, and in a swim lesson, when he had a "broken foot" ... So why did they continue on with the lesson? I should call cps I the instructor for failing to stop the lesson.

 

[toyotafan]

So he was running around, and in a swim lesson, when he had a "broken foot" ... So why did they continue on with the lesson? I should call cps I the instructor for failing to stop the lesson.

I'm actually trying to figure out who gave him the lesson so I can report them. I'm really ticked.

 

[tbplus10]

As you already found out the Mansfield Y has a great swim program, half the cost and their job is to teach kids to swim, not extend mommie and daddies fitness center membership at x amount of $$ per month.
My granddaughter is a proud alumni of Mansfield Y swim program circa 2014.
The world we live in, struggling through, is full of those that have nothing better to do than stir drama, they thrive on it, every issue is a chance to become a social media star. We can't look at a situation, assess it properly, and say yep kid hurt himself being a kid and is looking for some sympathy, doesn't happen. Kids that need protection are ignored for fear of upsetting and back g the parents and Kids that dont need protection can be brought forward because we more than likely have nothing to worry about a parent as docile as a sheep.
Good luck with this Steve.

 

[toyotafan]

As you already found out the Mansfield Y has a great swim program, half the cost and their job is to teach kids to swim, not extend mommie and daddies fitness center membership at x amount of $$ per month.
My granddaughter is a proud alumni of Mansfield Y swim program circa 2014.
The world we live in, struggling through, is full of those that have nothing better to do than stir drama, they thrive on it, every issue is a chance to become a social media star. We can't look at a situation, assess it properly, and say yep kid hurt himself being a kid and is looking for some sympathy, doesn't happen. Kids that need protection are ignored for fear of upsetting and back g the parents and Kids that dont need protection can be brought forward because we more than likely have nothing to worry about a parent as docile as a sheep.
Good luck with this Steve.

That point is dead on. My wife's cousin is a Dallas county CPS case worker and she said they hate these trivial cases. They're getting to the point where they don't want to talk to teachers, day care workers, etc.

She said she got so bogged down in frivolous cases that she actually had a case she needed to follow up on where the child died before she could get back to check on it because her day was spent chasing leads of a child with one weird bruise or a teacher's observation that a child is now more withdrawn than before.

 

[tibadoe]

I was thinking about this last night - just don't understand why they didn't talk with you first. Just a little common sense on their part could have saved a lot of wasted time down the road.

 

[toyotafan]

When I talked with their corporate, they told me that they don't discuss any type of issue like this, but they have a corporate policy that they contact CPS every single time they get a report of abuse. The problem I have is, who's definition of abuse are you using? Where do you draw the line?

Some of what CPS now considers to be potential signs of abuse include Physical Abuse, Sexual Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Labor Trafficking or Sex Trafficking (isn't that already covered in sexual abuse?).

Going deeper, CPS has such a wide range of indicators for Physical Abuse ... anything that can cause "substantial harm to the child" ... broken bones down to bruises. Well, that's wide latitude.

Put together is a weird patchwork quilt comprised of the most horrible acts of parents against their own children, compared to a child who got swatted a little bit too hard (think of Adrian Peterson who was trying to discipline his son and got suspended by the NFL) for misbehaving.

So the same people who investigate a 5-year old boy who said that his dad was mean are also investigating child traffickers. See how anyone could get burnt out of this position? Trying to police the entire society.

I've heard that CPS now up in the liberal northeastern states is now blocking children from being placed in foster care (and they will block adoptions) if that household teaches something similar to transnational gender roles or anything against homosexuality having a biological source.

 

[tbplus10]

The issue of not discussing with parents has been around a long time though.
In 1988 My then 4yr old daughter fell off her bike and bruised her butt/lower back, the daycare she was in reported us for abuse even after my daughter told them what happened. CPS talked to us then warned the daycare they should use more discretion when filing reports.
I was so pissed about the situation that for 2 days I stood in the parking lot of the daycare handing out a flyer explaining the situation, I was active military at the time and it was also brought to my command causing me issues at work until settled. Unfortunately for the daycare owner many other people bringing there kids were active duty too. Needless to say they lost so much business the doors closed a month later.

 

[toyotafan]

The issue of not discussing with parents has been around a long time though.
In 1988 My then 4yr old daughter fell off her bike and bruised her butt/lower back, the daycare she was in reported us for abuse even after my daughter told them what happened. CPS talked to us then warned the daycare they should use more discretion when filing reports.
I was so pissed about the situation that for 2 days I stood in the parking lot of the daycare handing out a flyer explaining the situation, I was active military at the time and it was also brought to my command causing me issues at work until settled. Unfortunately for the daycare owner many other people bringing there kids were active duty too. Needless to say they lost so much business the doors closed a month later.

Haha, that's what we all did back in the day before social media. I knew of a guy in town in Mill Creek, Washington who had a mid-80's Ford Bronco, in each of the back quarter-panel windows were hand-written signs in Sharpie (with good penmanship too) that read something like "I AM NOT SATISFIED WITH MY $90 WHEEL ALIGNMENT I GOT FROM LES SCHWAB TIRES!!"

Now of course when we've been done like this we just take to social media. Some of what I think the over-use of social media lately is that for so long we've just been held captive to not have a voice when we got bad service, bad products, etc. Now, that we've been unchained, we get to have our voices heard ... but so does the cry-baby who's unhappy that he only got 99 Jelly Beans in his 100-count snack pack.

Hopefully the pendulum will swing the other way. I've cooled off enough to know that I have better things to do with my time (although in spirit, I was right there with you Tim on the going to the parking lot and passing out fliers ... or getting onto every single Lifetime Fitness facebook page and venting) ... than to do something like launch an entire website like www.LifetimeCallsCPS.com ... ;-)