# Nanny 911 5/9/05 23 special needs children?!? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 10, 2005, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nanny-911-5-9-05-23-special-needs-children/303228 "2005-05-10T16:12:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![wildirish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/919ad9/32.png) [@wildirish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wildirish)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2005, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nanny-911-5-9-05-23-special-needs-children/303228/21 "2005-05-11T15:47:20Z")
> [@rjung](#): > > I haven’t seen the episode in question, but I wonder why folks are questioning the motives of the parents instead of praising them for truly demonstrating what compassion and caring is really about. > > I could never take on a resonsibility like theirs, and I salute them for having the strength to do so. I wonder how many people here have ever had to deal with a special needs child? My wife has managed a daycare where special needs children are welcome and that is hard to find where we live. The type of people that work at places like this, and take care of special needs children and teens DON’T do it for the money, and they DON’T do it for any type of special praise. And if there are people in this world that will take in 23 specail needs children then i don’t think we should be degrading by comparing them to cats. They are human beings. And deserve to be treated like them by whom ever will do so. We should all be asking questions like: how can we help peple like this, and less of how can we try to discredit these people! Wildirish ---
**Author:** ![PeeQueue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8797f3/32.png) [@PeeQueue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PeeQueue)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2005, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nanny-911-5-9-05-23-special-needs-children/303228/22 "2005-05-11T16:31:50Z")
> [@](#): > > Look, I’m not saying that they’re necessarily bad. My issue was that the mother seemed a little off to me. Why would you take on all these special needs cases when your husband is also disabled? Yes, they have volunteers to help with the kids, but I’m willing to bet that they didn’t have them when they started adopting. In my opinion, there is no way that one woman can give each special needs child the attention he so desperately needs. She is not a superwomen, and even though she has a staff to help with the kids, THEY ARE NOT PARENTS. It appears to me that she’s got a martyr complex and/or a collecter personality. Something in that situation just isn’t right. Kudos to her for adopting all these kids, but why so many? More children=more sympathy from outside. I simply disagree. From what I have seen of the mother, she IS a superwoman. She learned to take care of her husband, and when she started adopting she figured she would adopt kids who no one else could take, because she had the special skills necessary to take them in. After she had a few, she realized she could take care of more without that much more effort due to her strict schedule and regimen. Every one of these kids is better off with her than where they were, regardless of how much quality time she can spend with them as individuals. Besides, who’s to say who is better adjusted - kids from small families with lots of personal attention from mother, or kids from large families with less? Your opinions regarding her “martyr complex”, “collector personality” “more children = more sympathy” are just that, opinions. I have seen no evidence to suggest any of these things. ---
**Author:** ![Alias](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a88e4f/32.png) [@Alias](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alias)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2005, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nanny-911-5-9-05-23-special-needs-children/303228/23 "2005-05-11T21:13:56Z")
> [@PeeQueue](#): > > I simply disagree. From what I have seen of the mother, she IS a superwoman. She learned to take care of her husband, and when she started adopting she figured she would adopt kids who no one else could take, because she had the special skills necessary to take them in. After she had a few, she realized she could take care of more without that much more effort due to her strict schedule and regimen. Every one of these kids is better off with her than where they were, regardless of how much quality time she can spend with them as individuals. Besides, who’s to say who is better adjusted - kids from small families with lots of personal attention from mother, or kids from large families with less? > > Your opinions regarding her “martyr complex”, “collector personality” “more children = more sympathy” are just that, opinions. I have seen no evidence to suggest any of these things. ``` You're right about the fact that my observations ARE opinions, and I truly hope they are incorrect opinions. I guess I have a lot of suspicion because my mother works full time as a psychiatric nurse, and I have worked in a psychiatric office. You see things in the psyche world that harden you, and make you less likely to see the good in things. I'm not totally backing down, but I want you to know that I'm not just a heartless person who automatically thinks the worst about a situation. The 23 special needs kids situation just set off some red flags because of some of the things I've seen and heard about in the psych world. In the book Sickened by Julie Gregory, she talks about Munchausen's By Proxy Syndrome, and how it isn't just limited to people making their children sick, or pretending their children are sick. Many MBP cases go unnoticed for years because these people take in numerous foster children, and specifically seek out kids with special needs. I'm not trying to crap on someone's good deeds, but the situation concerned me because of all the children being disabled in some way. It's just very similar to a few cases I've read about with MBP. ``` ---
**Author:** ![Zulema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/db5fbb/32.png) [@Zulema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zulema)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2005, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nanny-911-5-9-05-23-special-needs-children/303228/24 "2005-05-13T13:00:21Z")
> [@wildirish](#): > > I wonder how many people here have ever had to deal with a special needs child? My wife has managed a daycare where special needs children are welcome and that is hard to find where we live. The type of people that work at places like this, and take care of special needs children and teens DON’T do it for the money, and they DON’T do it for any type of special praise. And if there are people in this world that will take in 23 specail needs children then i don’t think we should be degrading by comparing them to cats. They are human beings. And deserve to be treated like them by whom ever will do so. We should all be asking questions like: how can we help peple like this, and less of how can we try to discredit these people! > > Wildirish Both sides of the argument are generalizations. Not all people who take in many special needs children are doing it for the money or the attention from society and not all of them are doing it just because it’s a good thing to do and they have a caring nature. I was closely involved with a family that took in special needs foster children. If they decided to adopt the children they actually received more money than if they just were foster parents. The payments stopped when the children turned 18 or graduated high school. You wouldn’t believe how fast those kids were kicked out of the house once the payments stopped. There was no love or good attention in that home. The kids were paychecks that did chores and that’s about it. These were mostly emotionally and mentally disabled people, not physically disabled. ---
**Author:** ![Fionn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Fionn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fionn)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2005, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nanny-911-5-9-05-23-special-needs-children/303228/25 "2005-05-13T15:50:04Z")
The show made a lot more sense after learning about the staff. When the dad mentioned that it took seven vans to get the entire family to the same place, I wondered how they would manage to get five or six spare drivers. I’m trying to avoid pathologizing compassion, but I was a bit concerned by the mom’s attitude that she could never go away, even for a weekend, because the boys had been abandoned by their families. Lady, secure attachments are all about being able to stand separations because you trust that the person will come back. Give them a chance to miss you once in a while. ---
**Author:** ![Tastes\_of\_Chocolate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tastes_of_chocolate/32/3232_2.png) [@Tastes\_of\_Chocolate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tastes_of_Chocolate)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2005, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nanny-911-5-9-05-23-special-needs-children/303228/26 "2005-05-13T21:59:51Z")
I don’t know enough to make any kind of value judgements here, so I won’t. I am surprised that it’s legal to adopt that many children into one household. I guess I have always assumed that a judge someplace would say that this was to many. Are there any restrictions on the numbers of children that can be adopted by one couple? ---
**Author:** ![Rilchiam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/2bfe46/32.png) [@Rilchiam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rilchiam)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2005, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nanny-911-5-9-05-23-special-needs-children/303228/27 "2005-05-15T00:43:43Z")
> [@PeeQueue](#): > > And questioning why there are no girls?? You’ve got to be kidding me. You have 23 troubled and otherwise special needs boys living together and you want to throw in the added complication of girls into the mix? **StarvingbutStrong** already acknowledged that it wouldn’t be a good idea to start adding girls when the number of boys had reached 15 or so. The question was, how did it **get** to that point, that they **never** adopted girls, even early on? ---
**Author:** ![look\_ninjas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b2d939/32.png) [@look\_ninjas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/look_ninjas)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2005, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nanny-911-5-9-05-23-special-needs-children/303228/28 "2005-05-15T01:02:26Z")
Note that **Alias** has not accused the woman in question of anything so far. She’s said that the situation seemed a bit weird, and was reminiscent of animal hoarders and cases of Munchausen’s by Proxy, which it is. As to why someone would second-guess the motives of a woman who would open her heart and home to 23 disabled children… Unfortunately, we do it because we need to. We can’t assume that everyone who adopts disabled children is a saint. There are people who adopt special-needs children only to ignore and neglect them, and we need to keep our eyes open for that. And one of the warning signs is, in fact, the adoption of several special-needs children. I don’t know this woman. I haven’t observed her with her children. She might very well be a perfectly capable caregiver to those children. But if we react to any sort of suspicion towards her motives with horror and shock just because adopting disabled children makes her some sort of Christ-like figure, then we might very well react the same way to a situation where the caregiver really is incompetent or outright abusive. It’s important not to make those kinds of assumptions. ---
**Author:** ![Fionn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Fionn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fionn)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2005, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nanny-911-5-9-05-23-special-needs-children/303228/29 "2005-05-15T14:25:57Z")
I’d wondered how she could possibly provide emotional support to 23 boys, since she was shown comforting the angry boy amidst all the cooking and washing and scrambling. That she has a staff makes it more understandable. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Fight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/90ced4/32.png) [@Cat\_Fight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Fight)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2005, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nanny-911-5-9-05-23-special-needs-children/303228/30 "2005-05-17T00:21:11Z")
> [@look!ninjas](#): > > As to why someone would second-guess the motives of a woman who would open her heart and home to 23 disabled children… Unfortunately, we do it because we need to. Thank you for being a voice of reason here. It’s all well and good to praise the woman and her husband- and they do seem to deserve praise, in heaps- but let’s try to apply ethics of responsibility here instead of automatically equating charity with good intentions, or good intentions with positive results. That kind of (non)thinking can lead to situations like [this](http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/stories/20040213_childabuse_collingswood_report.html). Add me to the group of people who’d like to know if there is a limit to the number of children a family can adopt. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nanny-911-5-9-05-23-special-needs-children/303228.md?page=1)