Please give her my best.

Meanwhile, the tone of some of the comments  on your blog are rather disturbing. are 

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She’s getting better though and should be fine tomorrow.

The children we have adopted all come from pretty depraved situations where the needs of request/response were not me consistently for so long, they have to be taught, even at older ages the concept of cause/effect. Most corrective parenting theories have as a base assumption that all children at a given age understand action/consequence. I think this is what makes these children so difficult to parent/teach and, hence, the reason for the high disruption rate once placed.

I was dealing with a “situation” this morning with one of our kids that most parents with only biological children would probably not understand. We were discussing a certain school issue that had come to our attention about our 11 year old, and the “fix” for him was so easy but it required him to do the most elementary form of problem solving. He is a smart child with a mid/high IQ and has been home from the orphanage for over 7 years now. He can solve an entire 3X3 Rubiks cube in less than 50 seconds (regardless of condition) just to give an example.

He has been doing very well over the past 6 months in behavior so this “problem” at school surprised us and we sat to talk to him about it. He went into “toddler mode”, refused to talk or think through the situation.

Anyway after two/three hour conversation we had to baby step him into the process of problem solving while understanding and taking into consideration to his own weaknesses (in this case was simply writing down homework to overcome perpetual forgetfulness).

While we were doing it I was thinking about the women you have written about. Some of the dynamics of the conversation reminded me of the thought process or actions (on a different level of course) of many of the women. It is not about being child like in it, but more like “impaired” about basic elements of problem solving, decision making, action/consequence, and accountability (and in some cases the framework of conscience).

I guess I say all this to ask if you agreed with this, and secondly if there is any kind of training available in problem solving, decision making, and the like to assist with some foundation of this in women that may have had, such as our children, a very difficult childhood.

It seems to me that a “living skills” class should not only include how to go grocery shopping or keep an apartment, basic literacy as so many do but also the components of making a conscience decision with understanding of all variables in a given situation.

If there are many typos and grammatical errors,….I typically write anything here whilst being interrupted 10 times…

It’s a “catch-22″ conundrum. Clearly, one’s sterling behavior may not be enough to avoid contact with our legal system. You may find yourself falsely accused . . . Almost any US lawyer will tell you we have a legal system, not a justice system.

Of course. This trend is big business for law firms as well . . . of course, some legal beagles do what they can to support reform and fight this, but others clearly prosper and take advantage of it . . . it’s an ugly business, as is that fundamentalist idea, as @Aussie says, that a person accused is a SINNER. There is also a trend for anything and everything to be criminalized today – many situations that were once handled as misdemeanors or even simply negotiated in conciliation situations are now Class 6 felonies in many states, and defendants are quickly plea bargained into submission because defendants who go to trial risk having additional charges added if juries find them guilty (and of course, if you’re innocent, or there are circumstances in which a defendant feels that a better outcome might be obtained, there’s the natural impetus to seek a jury of peers to review the case – but it’s dangerous!! Prosecutors now have more power in the courtroom than judges, whose hands are tied and cannot intervene with overcharging and unfair sentencing rules . . . Crazy, crazy stuff.

The HATE there .you could cut it with a knife. How can people so full of hate manage to feel superiror enough to feel that hate is justified? Can’t they see how evil it makes them?

Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I will check out your blog on this topic.

“For me, I write.”

I wish more people would write! We’ve gotten away from writing as a society.

My relatives that were able to free themselves took a chance at learning and understanding the law or putting forth a fairness argument on their own behalf when the lawyers treated them as a “sale”. I see them as good people that got caught up in or fell victim to the “money system”, but they had enough belief in their own goodness and were determined that they will defeat any and all forms of enslavement when they’d done nothing wrong.

The one that is addicted is still addicted and mostly the family chose to self-preserve and cut off communications. We were a crutch to her. She went through every “program” there was that was available. For a while, she got her life together and then reverted to her old ways. Her children, however, are determined to NOT suffer her doom — even as they make similar mistakes.

The heinous act one is dead. He did both drugs and alcohol. But that wasn’t what ate him out from the inside.

@2 sides -

“My slammer experience was a few nights in the county jig, enough to make me never, ever ever want to get near any sort of lock-up again.”

That’s exactly why I asked. People don’t want to be locked up, so the natural thought for me is how to help them avoid it and if their already in that predicament, how to help them get out of that pickle. At one time, the U.S. favored rehabilitation — even went as far as educating criminals and providing trades. Now, for some reason, the U.S. favors punishment. Is it to support the privatized prison system and the businesses that support privatized prisons?

They must be beholden to the people/social group/party etc that funded their campaigns, and they must “uphold the law” to meet the prejudices of those people.

These positions should be appointed, on merit, and police should not be stationed in the small towns they grew up in. State-wide forces would also be vastly better trained, and small “local” corruption could not be swept under the rug.

Then it would also help, even with elected officials, if the “underclass” was not prevented from voting, either by making it impossible to register or outright refusing them the vote (eg as Florida does for anyone who’s been in prison – disenfranchised for life).

It would also help to get rid of the deeply fundamentalist idea that a person just accused of a crime if a SINNER and therefore deserves to be cast out, marked for life and treated as not quite human. What happened to all that being settled on Judgement Day?