So you saw a mother give her five year old a real hammer to play with around the house, but decided not to call child protective services because you were getting paid? Cool…Cool. I only feel sorry for 2 people in this story, the 3 year old and the 5 year old.

As just a fun side note: the 5 year most likely doesn’t actually have ADHD, that’s a common diagnosis for children which should really fall under “shit for parents syndrome”. Not to say that ADHD isn’t real, but I would guess a vast majority of the time good parenting would replace any drugs the poor 5 year old is going to be stuck on for the rest of his life.

“crotch nuggets”, nice. gfy.

Wow Billy, you sure are impressive. Just one little story and you can diagnose a child!

TOTALLY, @Billy! ADHD and ADD are among the top overdiagnosed (and overmedicated) disorders along with PTSD and depression. They are all REAL diseases/disorders, and those who actually have them are lumped into those who don’t and often don’t get the help they need. Good parenting, healthy diet/lifestyle, and proper medical care really do go a long way. Instead, people medicate themselves and/or thier children into lethargy instead of actually dealing with the problem.
As you can guess, this is a sore spot for me. After firsthand experience and the experiences of those close to me, I tend to get on the soapbox.
Poor kids. Its sad when they don’t ever even get the chance to be normal and happy. They have crap parents who then wonder later why thier kid is so messed up.

@Polly – I know, right? Thanks for the compliment. Studies have shown that 20-25% of children diagnosed with ADHD were misdiagnosed simply because they were the youngest in their classes at school because of their underdeveloped (as compared to the older students) emotional and intellectual maturity. I would think a fair assumption is that another factor in maturity development is parenting, which I think speaks for itself in this story. BAM! Lawyered!

Regardless of whether the kid had ADHD or not, it seems mom didn’t care, and allowed him to be a major brat. Frankly getting fired from that job sounds like a blessing in disguise. It’s just kinda sad that those kids are going to grow up with no boundaries, and the real world is just going to punch them in the face when they realize mommy can’t protect them anymore.

I’m not sure child protective services could have done anything. I mean, how many parents let their kids do risky things? It’s not exactly rare. I bet a lot of kids growing up on farms, for example, get to play with all sorts of dangerous things from an early age. Not that this is right – it’s just the way it is. (My friend’s family had some land and horses and she was allowed to drive a pick-up truck around their property and she was only 12 years old.) No, I think CPS is probably swamped with cases of active abuse and egregious neglect…

Still, gotta feel for the person who had to endure this job. And all the people who will have to put up with those bratty kids for the rest of their lives…

I’m the nicest most practical mother you could ever meet and I think kids are great. Still, I think the phrase “crotch nuggets” is funny. Sure, it’s a bit “South Park,” but have you ever had to endure truly horrible, remorseless children before? Some people, whether grown up or not, are freakin’ sociopaths.

People need to run a background check on anyone before allowing them to watch their kids. That was completely irresponsible on her part. I wouldn’t worry about her accusations if she isn’t going to take the proper precautions.

I worked as a TSS for a brief period of time, and encountered a similar situation with one of my clients and his father. Parent’s that do not provide consequences, constantly yielding to their children’s demands, and are generally disinterested in their children’s undesirable behavior are extremely frustrating. I really feel for the OP, as this was a losing situation from the start. What I gleaned from the story is that the mother was basically in search of a babysitter that doubled as a mental health worker. On a related note: it sounds like the child could have possibly had ODD, not ADHD, which would benefit from counseling.

Billy, my friend is a social worker. Child Protection is actually a little more concerned with parents who disappear for days at a time, beat their kids, or do drugs in front of them than a mom who let her kid play with a hammer one time.

Yah, another person here who has a friend who is a social worker. She told me recently about a case where the parents had put cigarettes out on a baby’s legs.

If you are phoning CPS because she gave her kid a hammer to bash around, you are seriously in need of a reality check.

@winter and @ellere – Just because this wasn’t an extreme case of abuse or neglect, doesn’t mean that it should be ignored. If I come over to someone’s house and their 5 year old is chasing their 3 year old with a hammer, I promise I will call CPS every time. I didn’t say that the kids should be taken away, but starting to build the list of complaints is important if the bad parenting continues. I bet if the 6 months later the kid had killed his brother with the hammer you would be up in arms that the OP didn’t report the first incident to CPS.

HAHAHAHA! Call CPS because the kid had a hammer? You jest sir. Because the kids getting beaten and raped have to wait months to be checked up on, lets flood calls with things that are not abuse. Like a kid with a hammer. You don’t really want to know about CPS or what they deal with, or what actually counts as abuse. Spoiler alert, it’s not kids with hammers.

And who said the 5 year old was chasing the 3 year old with the hammer? Do you also report that the sweet homeless dog wandering the neighborhood is a savage animal chasing people because that sounds more dramatic?

There is nothing better than watching a little tyke play with Daddy’s tool box. And kids with power tools are just the cutest, especially when they try to run with a nail gun but then the cord runs out and they go SLAM onto the floor. They look so surprised and confused. I love it!!

@clevername: Well no, but I would probably report that there is a homeless dog wandering my neighborhood so that it could be checked out for rabies, brought into a shelter, hopefully given a home, etc.

There sure are a lot of people on this site that really have some kind of hatred for reporting crimes.
If CPS doesn’t investigate the situation because they deem it minor that’s their perogative, but at least there will be a record in the event that something more serious arises. I’m sorry that I don’t believe that a child needs to be getting raped by his father, defacated on by his mother, and left in a cage with no food for weeks on end before it’s time to call CPS. An adult handing a 5 year old a dangerous weapon and allowing him to play with it unsupervised is child endangerment, which is a serious crime that deserves to be reported.

Most of you commenting sound like the bratty 5 year old in the story.

Billy. It’s a hammer. Not a knife. It’s as dangerous as the kid picking up a rock.

You are living in one hell of a bubble if you think cigarettes in the leg is the most severe abuse my friend sees.

I AM a social worker, and I would have reported it. Not for the hammer, but for what appears to be pretty substantial neglect. Do I think this woman is on par with people who put out cigarettes on their kids’ legs? Absolutely not. Do I even think her kids need to be taken away? Probably not. But there are a lot of steps that can be taken before removal. At the very least, it gets a file started on this woman and puts her on notice that she’s a shitty parent.

Yes, this is not the most severe abuse or neglect CPS has ever seen, by any means. But it’s also not like they’re going to get this phone call and immediately abandon all the child rape cases to follow up on this – they’re fully capable of prioritizing on their own. If they DO do something – even just paying her a visit or a phone call – maybe it will jog her into, I don’t know, paying attention to her kids for five minutes, setting some limits, getting some actual help. It could potentially save these kids from a lifetime of misery – and save the world from having to deal with two more people who don’t know how to deal with the word “no.”

If they don’t – if they decide it’s not worth looking into – what have you lost? Five freaking minutes of your day. I’d rather do everything I could and have nothing come of it then just sit back and do nothing because “probably nothing will come of it anyway.” FFS.

@hellcat – …if I wasn’t already married…Thank you!

Hellcat, you are in no way a social worker if you think showing up and saying someone called would ever in a million years get this woman to magically change her ways. She’s just as likely to turn around and beat the crap out of them for shaming her. Something you would be aware if you were actually a social worker and not a liar on the internet.

@Ellere I have to take a stand for hellcat now. I don’t know her and where she works, but social workers work in manny different fields and child care is only one of them. I for instance have never worked with children. So I’d be careful bevore calling her a liar.

she sounds like your typical bored useless parent of today…they let their kids do everything they want and never say no. Any wonder the kids end up with no concentration span at age 5? Today’s parents are just totally useless.

@Ellere,
I’ve actually mentioned being a social worker before, in different threads. There was at least one earlier this year on MVWR about a girl with a hoarder roommate where I made reference to it in the comments. I suppose I could just be maintaining a long-term charade in an attempt to Always Be the Expert on the MVW sites, but that sounds like a pretty thankless goal.

Also, I never said “CPS should show up, tell her she’s a shitty parent, and then leave – and everything will be solved!” I said there are many steps before home removal, and some of those involve parenting training, family counseling, etc, which do have the *potential* to be helpful in cases like these. Please remember that the whole point of CPS intervention is to protect kids and help families, so they do have *some* expertise in the field of safely dealing with these situations.

Please remember, also, that I said “maybe” it would make a difference, but that I would rather make the effort with the hope that something happened than throw up my hands and give up without trying.

It sounds like you think that a “real” social worker would have just said “Better NOT report this potential case of child neglect, because probably nothing will happen anyway” and went on her merry way. I hope you realize that that makes no sense whatsoever, and is actually kind of the opposite of what social work is – regardless of whether you think I’m a “real” social worker or not.

You think handing a kid a hammer means CPS should get involved, in some way. There’s no way you deal with troubled kids if you think that merits any sort of intervention. Unless you are also the kind of person who yells at women when you see them using a bottle instead of breastfeeding.

No, I think that the possibility of neglect merits at least *calling* CPS, and letting them make the call as to whether or not to get involved. In my first comment, I specifically said “not for the hammer, but for what appears to be pretty substantial neglect.” Please actually read my posts before jumping down my throat.

What the OP describes sounds like emotional neglect (again, *not* the hammer specifically, but everything else). It might not be, and even if it is, CPS might not be able to do anything about it. In fact, they probably won’t. But what does it hurt to call?

Author of the post here. Thought I’d clear up a few things…

Yep, the hammer thing really freaked me out. I had just taken the hammer away from the 5 year old when the mom came in. Because he was whining, I clarified the situation for her, saying that I’d taken the hammer away because I didn’t know where he’d found it and I didn’t think it was safe. Mom said he could play with it, gave the hammer back to him, then left the room. Soon afterward he went outside to play with the hammer by himself – also because the mom said he could. (She said it was “good for him.”) He proceeded to hammer the hell out of the lawn for a while. I watched him through the window, wincing.

Mom canned me a couple of days after that, and I wonder if someone DID get hurt with the hammer and she felt too embarrassed to deal with the I-told-you-so element of seeing me again. (Not that I would say “I told you so” but if someone got hurt, she’d be faced with the fact that I was right and she was wrong.)

I felt like I was between a rock and hard place in this job. The mom did most of the child-rearing and those kids were her life. She was constantly around, buying them things and taking them places, so I wouldn’t say she neglected them. She was just the typical permissive-indulgent parent who wants to be loved so much that she would set no healthy limits for her kids. Because of this, the kids had no empathy for other people – and no genuine appreciation for anyone. I was spoken to in cruel ways by two of the kids and if Mom heard she might mumble something about how it wasn’t nice, but that was about it. I never once saw her use a stern tone or give a time out to any of the kids. Once one of the kids jumped from a ledge onto the sofa. She said nothing about it and continued talking to him as if it didn’t happen.

She said she wanted me to apply the Superanny rules in taking care of the kids. The rules had been given to her by her son’s therapist and were prominently posted in the kitchen. But no one in the home used those rules except for me – and ultimately, I was fired for it.

My prediction is many years of trouble involving the kids’ behavior – calls to come up to the school, etc. And she may never accept that she’s a big part of the problem.

The kid playing with a hammer while stupid is not CPS-worthy. It’s not dangerous to him to have a hammer. It’s not sharp or poisonous.

When I took over as the nanny for the children I’ve been caring for for the last year I inherited a pair of the most demonically nasty kids I’d ever dealt with. It’s taken me 10 months of breaking habits put in place by weak nannies who let them walk all over them, struggling with parents countermanding my rules, and being the most intolerant nazi of a nanny EVER to make these kids into children I’m willing to take into public.

I can’t stand the thought of their parents going ‘oh, the kids are unhappy with being told they’re not allowed to eat candy all day/pee on the floor/scream/hit … we need a different nanny.’ Honestly, if the mother was the full time caretaker of these kids they’d be uncontrollable.

@Adalyn

Have you ever SEEN a hammer? One end blunt, the other end pretty damn sharp and vaguely hooked? Heard of cases where people have had their heads bashed in with hammers, or been stabbed with the back end? Yes, hammers are definitely sharp and dangerous for a young child to have.

Perhaps you were thinking of a ‘rubber mallet’, which while still potentially dangerous, is at least less so.

@Adalyn – Oddly enough guns aren’t “sharp” or “poisonous” either, maybe you need new conditions for what kids shouldn’t be playing with?

This whole thread feels like arguing against “birthers”. No matter how ridiculous it seems, they just keep on going. How a 30 second phone call to CPS could possibly make things any worse still baffles me.

How is a hammer more dangerous then a freaking ROCK???? Kids are always hurting each other by throwing rocks, would you call CPS if you saw a kid with one?

Billy – Did you just say a hammer should be treated like a gun? Seriously?

It’s not about making it worse, it’s about people with such distorted views of what constitutes abuse that would warrant having a third party step in.

OP, thanks for clearing it up.

@Ellere – yes, rocks are dangerous also, but usually kids pick them up off the ground outside – you know, away from their parents. You’re saying if a woman gave her 5 year old a big, sharp rock and said “Here, go outside and play with this,” you wouldn’t think that was a little off?

um, whoever is saying that hammer is not dangerous, please do me a favor. Go, open your tool box, take out the hammer and drop it on your foot. Trust your own guts/opinions and do this. Let’s talk once you have done that, alright?
Re: Calling CPS, No comments.

LOL @ oi.

Yeah…I understood the original point regarding CPS was to call CPS because they may wish to open a file on this family, or, CPS may already have opened a file.

Of course no one is going to take your kids away for playing with a hammer, but maybe they already have a dossier on this family that is three inches thick with a kid already dead from an “undetermined accident entailing a blunt object to the head.”

Do I think that is the case? No, not really, but I’m from Canada. Stuff like that doesn’t happen here so who knows.

@Ellere – Nope, I didn’t say that at all. No where, at all, in my entire message, did I compare a hammer to a gun. But I’ll break down the play by play on what happened for you.

1. Adalyn said “It’s not dangerous to him to have a hammer. It’s not sharp or poisonous.”

2. I was making a point that something doesn’t have to be “sharp” or “poisonous” to be dangerous in the hands of a child, such as a gun.

Also, yes, I would think it would be really bizarre if I saw a 5 year old running around with a rock in his/her hands unsupervised. However, there is a big difference between a kid picking up a rock, and handing a kid a hammer to play with. One would hope that the parent would tell their child to put down the rock once they notice it.

And finally to conclude: You see a mother hand a 5 year old a hammer, and tell him to go play with it. What HARM results from calling CPS to let them know about the situation?

I swear, you know what’s as bad as over-permissive/indulgent parents? Nosy people who call CPS on their neighbors over every little possible thing.

I grew up on a 20 acre ranch, relatively poor and me, my brother and my sister had to make due with what we could find around the property to keep us entertained. This meant that we’d go swimming or fishing together in the irrigations ditch, often times unsupervised; we’d ride around like little daredevils on our three wheeler; we’d even play with random tools such as hammers…GASP!! Both our parents worked full time but we had our Grandpa that lived with us. He was always around but neither him nor our parents watched us 24/7…why? Because parents don’t need to be attached to their children at the hip nor micromanage their every move just to keep them safe and happy. A little autonomy goes a LONG way in growing up. You know what the worst injury was that I had growing up? A broken arm from falling off the monkey bars in the back yard, while my mother was sitting there watching me play.

My siblings and I all grew up to be healthy, happy adults and my brother now has his own two year old. When I was home helping my Mom put up her Christmas decorations this last year, my niece was with us and I gave her a hammer because she wanted to help us. She was holding it and went to run after my Mom and she tripped and smashed her finger a little. Ya know what we did? Cleaned her hand, kissed her booboo, cuddled her a little, and then went back to work…she even wanted to grab the hammer and keep helping us. The problem with what the OP was talking about wasn’t that the kid was given a hammer to play with, it was that the parent wasn’t aware of what little demon crotch-spawn she had and so what he did with that hammer would be questionable because of how SHE raised them. You can give 10 different kids hammers and they’ll use them 10 different ways based on what they’ve learned is acceptable behavior from their parent’s/primary caregivers.

Also, to add to my original comment about nosy-ass people calling CPS on others…

I had a teacher in highschool (very small school, so everyone knew everyone and your teachers lived down the road from you) whose wife was killed in a very serious car accident and he was left with 3 young children, one of whom was special needs. One of his sons didn’t understand what was going on and wanted to know where his Mom was and started acting out in school…pulling his pants down in class, yelling at the teacher, fighting with other kids. My teacher was doing the best he could but it was very hard on him. One day he had to leave class to go over to the Elementary school because his son had, again, been asked to leave school because he’d pulled his pants down in class. His Dad was taking him to the car, almost in tears, trying to explain to his son that he couldn’t keep doing this…his son started acting up again and my teacher told him No! And smacked him on the butt a few times. Some nosy a$$ parent saw this and called CPS on my teacher.

Ya know what happened? CPS came, took the kids away and put them in their Grandparent’s care and started an investigation on my teacher. He wasn’t allowed to teach during the investigation either. The concluded that there was no merit to the original complaint but look what happened? An already greiving man and his children who are already going through hell, get all this extra crap lumped on them because of one nosy ass person who saw something they didn’t comprehend called CPS.

I totally advocate keeping your eyes and ears open but I think you should KNOW what you’re talking about before making a call like that. There could be very serious consequences for people who didn’t even do anything wrong because you called over something that you didn’t totally understand.

OP here.

I think Call 911 has got it right. All kids are different. There are kids who, with supervision, could handle a hammer. This wasn’t one of those kids. (I still think the mother is partly in denial about her son’s behavior. When I told her some of the awful things he said and did, she just laughed. She honestly didn’t seem concerned by any it. If someone told me my kid behaved like that, I would be completely mortified – as would most responsible parents in that situation.)

And as far as the rest…..Well, I have this little thing called “decency.” My decency prevents me from making someone else’s life harder without a very good reason for it. Getting this mother in trouble didn’t seem like the best course of action. Sure, she’s not a nice person – she’s a rude and clueless person. But the world is full of people like that. And this mother’s got three kids to raise – and mostly by herself, from what I could see. And she clearly loves her kids even though she doesn’t make the best child care decisions for them.

I thought about calling CPS. I thought about anonymously signing her up for “Supernanny” or sending her a book about the dangers of permissive-indulgent parenting. I even thought about sending her the link for this website. But I’m too decent for any of that. And it’s not up to me to change her. (Just like it wasn’t up to me to change any of the other crappy bosses I’ve had.)

Some people are just awful. And you can hope karma somehow pays them back for what they’ve done and they somehow see the light, but ultimately you have to just let it go…..You learn your lesson and move on……..

“But I’m too decent for any of that.” – It disgusts me that you think you are too decent to help someone.

@Call911 – A teacher spanked someone else’s child? They deserved to have an investigation done. If a teacher ever touched my child in that way, CPS would be the least of their problems. I also don’t buy the argument of “my parents/guardians were neglectful and I turned out just fine, so this kid will be fine too!”

I have to admit actually, reading all these comments is pretty depressing. I just hope that you guys represent the minority of our society, and that the majority would not stand by watching child neglect with a smile on their face.

The problem is, Billy, that CPS can make a small mess into a bigger mess…it just isn’t all that simple. Despite my earlier comment, in reality I wouldn’t have called CPS on the mother. She’s a crappy mother, no doubt, but do you have any idea what CPS can do to a family? It puts the family at the mercy of a bureaucracy. Bureaucracies put their policies over insight, instinct or common sense. Is that a chance you’d be willing to take?

To possibly save a child’s life? Yes

Billy – You weren’t there and you don’t know. You’re flying off the handle all based on a few words on a screen. Pointing the finger at this hapless babysitter in the story is ridiculous.
What’s needed here is a rational decision, not some alarmist action. I find reading YOUR comments depressing. It sounds like you have some issues you really need to confront.

Billy, reading comprehension skills, the teacher was the father.

And how many kids are killed every year because they were playing with a hammer? Oh, zero? Wow. Better put CPS into my speed dial!

@ Billy the teacher didn’t spank someone else’s child, that would be absolutly unaceptable. He was a widower who had recently lost his wife and had to care for his own children. One of them developed severe problems over the loss of his mother, the father’s nerves snapped and he slaped the child. then CPS was called and so the children didn’t only lose their mother, but they lost their father too.

The kid might have given himself a nasty bruise, but the possibility of him doing serious damage was very minimal. That would be why I qualified with “while stupid.” I would never give a little kid a hammer to play with but I don’t think it’s worthy of calling CPS.

A 6 year old is not exactly going to beat himself to death with a hammer and with the additional information that he was outside, alone, I’m pretty confident he wasn’t about to hurt the other kid either.

I find people with the most to say about parenting have the least experience with kids.

Seriously Sally, you need to get out of my head today. Cause everything you’ve said today have been my exact thoughts. It’s getting spooky.

“One of them developed severe problems over the loss of his mother, the father’s nerves snapped and he slaped the child” – Oh, I’m sorry…it was the father who was beating the crap out of his own child in public, that makes it entirely acceptable because he lost his wife….my bad, for some weird reason I totally forgot that loophole that says it’s ok to abuse children as long as they are your own and your spouse had recently died. Thanks for setting me straight on that one.

Well, Billy, Ruby and I respectfully disagree with you.

Billy, my parents spanked me and while I don’t agree with spanking and wouldn’t do it, I can say that having CPS take me away while investigating my parents for it would have been infinitely more damaging.

MMmmmm, spanking…. You know if gives them a hardon to whack their kids on the ass. I get a hardon when I get whacked in the ass. Especially with a hammer. Shit, that fuckin shit ain’t dangerous. Only if you don’t want the most erotic ass smacking ever.

All of this arguing kinda reminds me of people who don’t call the cops when they hear domestic abuse, unless its ‘serious enough’. If you see someone getting slapped, call the cops, maybe it’ll stop the broken bones a few years down the road. If you see a kid running around with a industrial hammer as a toy, maybe stopping the snowball before it starts rolling would be a good.