Amen. My experience (and I’m a working mother) as a cosleeping parent doesn’t resemble the scenario rachelellogram describes in the least. :dubious:
Apparently the court ruled on Nov. 30 that the kids are to be put in separate foster homes till the age of 18 and only have contact with their parents twice a year, which I find absolutely abominable. Maybe they are red-eyed demons, but as the child of Indian immigrant parents I recognize a lot of that list (no hitting, but my parents are screamers and have a very low tolerance for public unruliness) and I guess it’s just pushing my sympathy in one direction. For crying out loud-too few toys? My parents moved to Canada with $50-I could count on one hand how many toys I had growing up.
I say WTF?
I googled for the story and found a bunch of news reports on Youtube. It seems like the outrage in India is growing over this.
Honestly, some of the stuff that is being alleged as abuse is baffling me-like the child looks at surroundings when being hand fed and does not make eye contact with the mother. For real? Because that is every single Indian baby in my family.
And every Spanish baby or toddler in mine, whether fed by hand or spoon, plus a few kids of my acquaintance of other nationalities. “Here, honey, look at the little plane, BRR bRRRRR brrRRRrrrr…” Do those people think that trick, so popular that you can actually buy plane-shaped baby spoons, came up because babies find the view of their mother’s nose fascinating?
I agree. Indeed its so baffling that I feel pretty certain its not the full story. Googling, I still can’t find any mention of what the actual authorities claim was the reason for removing the children (presumably because child privacy laws keep them from talking to the press). All of the “not making eye-contact”, “sleeping in the same bed” stuff seems to be coming from the couple in question. The couple is unlikely to reveal that along with that stuff the State also alleged they regularly hit the kid with a bat, or whatever
The part that strikes me as strangest is that the court ordered the children to be placed in separate foster homes. Was that just some artifact of the foster care system, or did the court see some reason to keep them apart as well as away from their parents?
The video states the recent developments with the court. I am just baffled as to how they can separate the kids till they’re 18.
There are plenty of interviews with the parents where they restate the allegations made against them from the actual court case. The parents also allege in the interviews that what the mother’s reaction at the police station after the kids were taken is what was used to prove her lack of mental fitness. I can’t find any statements from the case worker’s POV.
I will say this-in the law school community in Illinois approximately 5 years ago there was a similar situation where a law student and her husband had their son taken away from them for close to a year after they took him to the ER and the attending physician absolutely insisted he was being abused.
Sorry, I still don’t understand what this article is saying. What does it mean to be fed ‘with hand’?
Sorry ran past the edit window:
I will say this-in the law school community in Illinois approximately 5 years ago there was a similar situation where a law student and her husband had their son taken away from them for close to a year after they took him to the ER and the attending physician absolutely insisted he was being abused. This is someone I know through other friends from her law school personally and none of us, literally none of us believe they were abusing that child-even her law school backed her up. The attending physician absolutely insisted they were beating and abusing the kid and absolutely refused to consider the evidence they presented showing that her traumatic forceps delivery had the ability to create the injuries she alleged had been caused by her and her husband. Basically one person made sure the case was dragged out and they went through an absolute nightmare getting him back.
It’s very hard to believe there isn’t more to this story. At the same time, if Norway’s child protective services agency is that overzealous it’s possible these people are being screwed.
Assuming what the agency said is 100% true, why not deport the babies and parents back to India? Why keep babies in separate foster care until they are 18?
Any dopers from Norway here?
I think you’re getting a tad hysterical over very little information, and 90% of what little information there is seems to be touted by the parents for their own case.
Not to say that it’s a very serious issue of course, but we just don’t know what the real story is here.
Hysterical? No.
But this seems to be an extreme case. I also note that there is not much info from the other side. That is why asked if there is any Norway dopers here, to get an unbiased view.
By hand. You know, like feeding your baby a banana, and you don’t cut up the banana and use a fork; you rip a piece of banana with your fingers and feed that piece to the baby.
Does that apply to children who aren’t babies as well (e.g., post-toddler up through grude’s “8 - 10”)? I would imagine such children would be old and sturdy enough to get out of the way and/or wake their parents off of them.
Norwegian doper here. No, it’s not illegal to feed children by hand in Norway, to the best of my knowledge. I have no idea what is really going on in this particular case. The child protection services aren’t talking, because they are indeed legally mandated not to, the parents’ story seems completely outrageous, but who knows if it’s more to it, and the main Norwegian media, as far I can tell from a quick search, aren’t really picking up on this at all, for whatever reason.
However, it does seem that the child protection services in Stavanger, the town where this is happening, have a knack for creating minor international incidents. A similar, but even more bizarre, situation went down a few years ago, and has been under investigation and hitting the newspapers just recently. The gist of that story (which I’ll tell because it’s weird), as far as I can make out from the papers, goes something like this:
In 2002, two Turkish boys (brothers) are removed from their parents who are staying in Norway, and placed in foster care, similar to the Indian kids. The parents later return to Turkey. Then, in 2006, the boys, now aged 9 and 10, go to visit Turkey on holiday. The parents take the opportunity to kidnap them back (apparently by grabbing them on the street in a dramatic incident). Turkish courts rule that the situation is a clusterfuck, and until further notice, the boys are to stay in Turkey under the care of the Turkish child protection services, and not under any circumstances leave the country. The Norwegian foster parents, however, are not deterred by this: They kidnap the kids back again, and smuggle them back to Norway.
This, as it happens, was totally illegal: The boys had dual Turkish and Norwegian citizenship, and Turkish courts had ruled that they were to stay in Turkey. The Stavanger child protection services were apparently involved in planning and executing this bizarre heist, including paying 500,000 Norwegian kroner (about 85,000 dollars) to people involved. For what it’s worth, the Norwegian foreign ministry were, reportedly, not pleased. The foster parents have been convicted* in absentia *in a Turkish court and sentenced to a month in jail.
Oh, but now it gets really strange: The biological parents had all the while been arguing that the foster parents were poorly suited for the task: Among other things, they were unemployed and living in the house of the foster father’s parents. Then, right after the kidnapping debacle, the foster father is convicted of sexual misconduct against a twelve year old girl and possession of child pornography (yes, I know: :eek:), and goes to jail for two months. I 2007, the boys are removed from the foster home.
Great stuff. I can’t for the life of me find anything about this in English, but here, here and here are some Norwegian language news articles to start you off, if you happen to have a babel fish in your aquarium.
A word on co-sleeping:
“Studies suggesting that co-sleeping is dangerous have been criticized for their poor methodologies. If parents follow certain safety guidelines, co-sleeping is a safe and beneficial environment for both infant and parent. Parents should not co-sleep with their infants if they smoke, drink or take drugs (even prescription medications that may cause drowsiness); become overly fatigued; or have a waterbed, very soft mattress or a lot of fluffy bedding.”
From here. If parents don’t drink, smoke, and follow basic sleep hygiene around co-sleeping (child in between mother and bedrail until past infancy, no deep mattress toppers, etc) it shouldn’t be more dangerous than a crib, and cultures that regularly practice co-sleeping (many East Asian countries, for example) have lower incidences of SIDs on record. Studies that have shown co-sleeping to be problematic haven’t focused on co-sleeping parents who follow safety guidelines. More pros and cons here.
My husband and I manage to have sex five times a week on our huge couch and the fuzzy blanket we bought especially for that purpose, while our 3.5 yr old sleeps upstairs in our family bed. So much as a flash of the sex blanket gets his motor started. It used to be stockings and suspenders, now it’s a faux fur throw. We have more sex now than we did before we were parents.
Wonder what Norway would think of baby-led weaning?
We had a case in the UK of overzealous child protection officials who seized children and accused the paretns with abuse, and were absolutely convinced of their righteousness.
Turned out a be a crock of shit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Ronaldsay_child_abuse_scandal
its not just a UK issue either,
Some of the investigations themselves amounted to sexual abuse.
:eek::eek::(