Sparkling Adventures in Child Neglect: Vive La France

[happy atheist]

I've read posts here picking apart her every decision, and just blasting her for her failings.

That's almost the FJ mission statement. Even before Elijah was killed Lauren was a crap mother. She continues to be a crap mother.

I'm sorry you lost your child. I can't imagine how difficult that must be.

[SRC]

Has David ever said why he killed Elijah? I'm trying to understand the thought process, if that's even possible.

[BravaAmica]

Has David ever said why he killed Elijah? I'm trying to understand the thought process, if that's even possible.

If he has, it's not on her blog (anymore- Lauren does scrub her blog to keep current with her image du jour) and his lawyer wouldn't allow him to comment.

[chaotic life]

Actually, if you have bothered to read all of the Lauren threads, you would be well aware that the reason I snark on her is because I DO UNDERSTAND. And I damn well understand what it means to lose a child AND to hold living children through their grief.

Lauren's children ARE NOT ALLOWED TO GRIEVE. They are required to sparkle and to entertain her and to view their brother's death as NEUTRAL.

I have no sympathy for her struggle to grieve because she isn't grieving, she is numb and running as fast and as far as she can and dragging those children with her. She won't face her grief, and while no one can make her face it, she has NO RIGHT to push her own agenda on those children.

Grief is personal, but when you have living siblings, you are REQUIRED to continue to parent those children and to honor what THEY need for grief and recovery and not what YOU dictate they are allowed to have.

Go read back, both on these threads at on her own blog in her OWN words and tell me again that she's doing this well. Tell me again that two sessions with grief therapists is sufficient and being told that death is neutral and her declarations that HER CHILDREN WILL NOT HAVE THEIR LIVES ALTERED BY THE DEATH OF THEIR BROTHER THE WAY SHE HAS HEARD MOST SURVIVING SIBLINGS ARE IMPACTED is in any way, shape or form doing her best by those children.

I have eight living siblings. Not ONE of them as grieved the same way. And yes, most days, I swallow my grief because it's not safe and too overwhelming and as you are well aware after the first couple of weeks we aren't allowed to grieve in the eyes of the world. However, my children are working through their grief. Most of my children have been discharged from grief therapy NOT because they did two sessions and I ran away and dragged them with me, but because I have given each of them the opportunity for what THEY need. Two of my children will continue in therapy for the forseeable future. Their grief quickly overwhelms them if they stop going to therapy, even now.

Every bit of grace you extend to Lauren is something SHE has refused to give her own children. That is my problem with Lauren. She has denied those children their grief because she had decided that HER way is the only way to handle grief, and if you read her FB she is sanctimonious about her "handling" which is not handling but drowning in it.

I am going to continue to snark and to judge because she pisses me off that she puts her own pain and grief ahead of those four girls who have never been allowed to follow what they individually needed and have never had grief therapy except for two pitiful sessions while Social Services prevented her from running in the first month after Elijah's death because her way of running was deemed UNSAFE for those children.

[southerncharm]

Actually, if you have bothered to read all of the Lauren threads, you would be well aware that the reason I snark on her is because I DO UNDERSTAND. And I damn well understand what it means to lose a child AND to hold living children through their grief.

Lauren's children ARE NOT ALLOWED TO GRIEVE. They are required to sparkle and to entertain her and to view their brother's death as NEUTRAL.

I have no sympathy for her struggle to grieve because she isn't grieving, she is numb and running as fast and as far as she can and dragging those children with her. She won't face her grief, and while no one can make her face it, she has NO RIGHT to push her own agenda on those children.

Grief is personal, but when you have living siblings, you are REQUIRED to continue to parent those children and to honor what THEY need for grief and recovery and not what YOU dictate they are allowed to have.

Go read back, both on these threads at on her own blog in her OWN words and tell me again that she's doing this well. Tell me again that two sessions with grief therapists is sufficient and being told that death is neutral and her declarations that HER CHILDREN WILL NOT HAVE THEIR LIVES ALTERED BY THE DEATH OF THEIR BROTHER THE WAY SHE HAS HEARD MOST SURVIVING SIBLINGS ARE IMPACTED is in any way, shape or form doing her best by those children.

I have eight living siblings. Not ONE of them as grieved the same way. And yes, most days, I swallow my grief because it's not safe and too overwhelming and as you are well aware after the first couple of weeks we aren't allowed to grieve in the eyes of the world. However, my children are working through their grief. Most of my children have been discharged from grief therapy NOT because they did two sessions and I ran away and dragged them with me, but because I have given each of them the opportunity for what THEY need. Two of my children will continue in therapy for the forseeable future. Their grief quickly overwhelms them if they stop going to therapy, even now.

Every bit of grace you extend to Lauren is something SHE has refused to give her own children. That is my problem with Lauren. She has denied those children their grief because she had decided that HER way is the only way to handle grief, and if you read her FB she is sanctimonious about her "handling" which is not handling but drowning in it.

I am going to continue to snark and to judge because she pisses me off that she puts her own pain and grief ahead of those four girls who have never been allowed to follow what they individually needed and have never had grief therapy except for two pitiful sessions while Social Services prevented her from running in the first month after Elijah's death because her way of running was deemed UNSAFE for those children.

I went to a therapist twice and never again, because I found the experience worthless.

You throw stones with one hand, while on the other hand you talk about how it's okay that you and your siblings have handled grief differently.

That's the thing, EVERYONE is different. I don't think Lauren is perfect. But I do not think that she is the villain you people paint her as.

So she's a hippy. So she has very casual ideas about some things.

My brother in law was raised on a communal farm in Tennessee. He remembers being somewhere around school age when his father figured out a system to pump water up from the creek to their house! Before that they didn't have running water.

But so what. He grew up happy and loved, and is now a pretty successful person, who has chosen a more "traditional" lifestyle for himself and my sister... although they are vegans... ick.

I still maintain that Lauren is a good mother. She is keeping her daughters the best she knows how. Maybe it's not perfect. But dont' all adults complain about their childhood to an extent? Don't all mothers make mistakes? Aren't we all just trying to do our best?

And she's not even close to being as bad as some of these parents who are raising their daughters to be virtual slaves to their husbands who will own them. In fact, in comparison to the other parents on this site I'd say that Lauren may be the best of the bunch.

[chaotic life]

Until the state stepped in and forced her to grift the van she travels in now, Lauren traveled in a stripped down truck. There were no seats for the girls. They were locked into the back compartment and played unsupervised for hours on end while she and David sat in the front. There were videos of this.

There are videos of the girls on the front of a forklift, playing with sharp saw blades what has to be at least a second story height from the ground.

There are videos of the girls in fire bathes, whereby a bathtub was suspended on the forklift over an open fire to heat the bath.

Lauren OWNS A HOME OUTRIGHT. She has renters in that home, but she still owns it. She left that home to travel and admitted outright that she lives on the government payments on her little FB ditty she just did.

She let her six-ish year old child get lost in the bush on Christmas Even with a young man she had known for exactly six hours and decided everything about it was fine and dandy.

She lost her toddler at Chinese New Year and decided that she should not panic but a just under two year old child should be permitted to explore under her own free will and would be mature enough to come back when she felt ready.

I did not say everyone MUST see a therapist. I said Lauren denies her children the opportunity to HAVE any grief. In fact, she will tell the world that the girls do not grief and have not grieved. She denies them grief AT ALL. She is permitted to grieve, but they are not. They don't not see a therapist because none of them needed it or wanted it. They don't see a therapist because it didn't fit into what LAUREN wanted. Their are told their brother's death is not a bad thing but a neutral event in their lives.

Lauren has in the past (though I'm quite sure it's scrubbed at this point because she constantly changes and edits the blog even the very old archives) talked about how often the girls have LICE because it's supposedly just too hard to eliminate them while traveling on the road.

And now, she has a traveling companion that she deliberately conceals from the world because that's not authentic to her persona right now. That is the main issue most people have with her in general, she heavily edits her persona to fit whatever she wants to be TODAY and it's constantly changed. Everytime she changes who she wants to be, she goes back and alters the blog to reflect as if she was always that person. Today, she wants to be someone who knew her marriage always had issues. Yet, David did the bulk of the parenting before he killed Elijah. Lauren suffered from crippling depression which both she and David admitted kept her hidden in bed for weeks and weeks while David was left to do all of the care and parenting. She once got so depressed she left her entire family except Elijah, leaving only a cryptic message with Aisha that she was leaving so that David could seek righteousness. She then altered and edited it later that she did not abandon them but went to buy a new car because their New Zealand truck broke down. Too bad David recorded that hot mess for her.

She was a mess long before Elijah died, and she's a worse mess now that he's gone. She is NOT a good mother simply doing the best she can. She's a good editor who alters anything she detects her naysayers find wrong to continually make the blog look better and herself with it, all while lecturing the world on how authentic SHE is and if we would all be as authentic as she, we would all be better than we are now.

[chaotic life]

Oh yes, her latest great parenting was to put the burden on children all eight years old or younger on whether they would "allow" her to travel to Holland and Iceland alone and leave them without her. Then, rather than leave them with people who have known them their entire lives and are safe and familiar, she left them with someone she had only met this summer who had a meltdown and left those girls with yet someone ELSE while she was on the other side of the world for over two weeks. To secure someone to watch those girls, she advertised for strangers online, stating that the girls were self sufficient and merely needed an adult to be "present." The oldest child is EIGHT but they were totally self sufficient, which says a LOT about how good her parent truly is. She has family willing to support her, so tell me why a GOOD mother leaves her children for over two weeks to travel halfway around the world with adult "friends" while leaving her children with someone they have known mere months whose only experience parenting is one very self absorbed son and her own self absorbed universe instead of those family members who by Lauren's OWN admission those girls LIKE being around? And why place the burden of whether she traveled on the shoulders of those young girls? That's just manipulation. So no, I do NOT see her as better than these other fundies. She has NO concept of keeping her children safe and never has.

[chaotic life]

And for the record, because it does bug me, I did not say that I and my siblings handle grief differently. I said I and my children, the siblings who have survived the death of MY SON, handle grief differently. Because, that's my non-negotiable point. I don't get the right to NOT function when these Children require it of me. Plain and simple. The living, breathing children must be tended to and must be allowed to grieve in whatever manner each of them individually requires so that THEY can survive.

My grief will carry with me for the rest of my life. My son died in my arms 16 months ago, and I'm not likely to forget that. However, I am determined that my children will not wind up in a therapists office older, afraid to examine their grief because their mother was too broken and too weak to let them be whatever they needed to be as they were growing and integrating this loss into their lives. I do not force one way to grieve upon my children, nor do I deny any of them what they need to grief. I provide them with the safety and the functioning parent to support them so that they CAN grief.

Please, tell me how Lauren is doing that for her girls? When Elijah's death is only allowed to be neutral, when they are not allowed to be sad, when Lauren will talk about what hurts HER but angrily declare her children will NOT be permanently altered by losing a sibling (as if that is even possible) please then tell me how Lauren is helping those children with THEIR grief? Because they lost their father and their brother that day and were left with a parent who by her own admission didn't function most of the time previously, and all they've been allowed to do since the state finally approved her van is to run non-stop so she can try to outrun HER grief but without any acknowledgement of what they think, feel, or might possibly want in the situation.

[already hungover]

You throw stones with one hand, while on the other hand you talk about how it's okay that you and your siblings have handled grief differently.

That's the thing, EVERYONE is different. I don't think Lauren is perfect. But I do not think that she is the villain you people paint her as.

So she's a hippy. So she has very casual ideas about some things.

Yes, it's true that people handle grief and loss differently. However, an important caveat: Lauren doesn't acknowledge that everyone is different. Her surviving children are expected to treat their brother's murder at the hands of their father as a "neutral" (Lauren's own word) thing, instead of grieving in their own way. It may be true that this is the best way for Lauren herself to handle her loss, but it's absolutely unfair to expect her children to do the same. They're people too, and each of them had her own relationship with Elijah and should be allowed to grieve as she sees fit.

What if, according to your idea of everyone being different, one of Lauren's children DOESN'T feel that Elijah's death was "neutral"?

[lipstickgoalie]

I went to a therapist twice and never again, because I found the experience worthless.

You throw stones with one hand, while on the other hand you talk about how it's okay that you and your siblings have handled grief differently.

That's the thing, EVERYONE is different. I don't think Lauren is perfect. But I do not think that she is the villain you people paint her as.

So she's a hippy. So she has very casual ideas about some things.

My brother in law was raised on a communal farm in Tennessee. He remembers being somewhere around school age when his father figured out a system to pump water up from the creek to their house! Before that they didn't have running water.

But so what. He grew up happy and loved, and is now a pretty successful person, who has chosen a more "traditional" lifestyle for himself and my sister... although they are vegans... ick.

I still maintain that Lauren is a good mother. She is keeping her daughters the best she knows how. Maybe it's not perfect. But dont' all adults complain about their childhood to an extent? Don't all mothers make mistakes? Aren't we all just trying to do our best?

And she's not even close to being as bad as some of these parents who are raising their daughters to be virtual slaves to their husbands who will own them. In fact, in comparison to the other parents on this site I'd say that Lauren may be the best of the bunch.

I don't understand how you could read the blog and come away with the impression that Sparkles is a is an even half way competent parent, much less a good one. Those kids have no education. NONE. They are in no way learning skills to prepare them for adulthood.

She isn't a hippy, she is an extremist. She did it with Christianity, she is doing it with this sparkly bullshit. She can't be moderate about anything. Does every parent make mistakes? Yes, but Lauren is making piles of them all in the name of her own ego.

She is a shitty parent. Epically shitty.

[already hungover]

And she's not even close to being as bad as some of these parents who are raising their daughters to be virtual slaves to their husbands who will own them. In fact, in comparison to the other parents on this site I'd say that Lauren may be the best of the bunch.

Further, Lauren is ABSOLUTELY setting up her girls to cling to the first person who acts like he/she cares. It's awful to set up a child, particularly a young girl, to yearn to feel taken care of so badly that she'll totally ignore her instincts, and that's exactly what Lauren is doing to her daughters.

[Full enough quiver]

I am an extremely easygoing parent. The only rule in my house is that we treat each other respectfully. My kids wear whatever they want, eat whatever they want, go to bed whenever they want. None of us wear shoes unless required to do so in public, or for safety reasons. I dont restrict "screen time". I unschooled every subject but math. My kids have driven atvs since age 6 (with a helmet) I actually think it would be pretty cool to travel the country like Lauren does. My easygoingness ends when it comes to personal safety, and education. Letting them get lost in the bush with a strange man? Leaving them with virtual strangers for two weeks? Letting them climb up on the roof, or ride an atv without a helmet? Seriously stupid. I was very relaxed about what they learned when as far as school, but I made sure they learned to read and write well, and kept up with their peers in math. My stepdaughter goes to public high school, and is in all ap classes, and is on the honor roll, and the younger one has never gotten less than 100% on her standardized testing, so clearly I'm doing something right. Can Lauren's girls read? Can they do math? Could they pass a standardized test for their age level? I don't know, but I'm guessing not. So, I don't snark on her for being a hippie, or for being a laid back parent, traveling, or letting the girls go barefoot. However, the lack of concern for basic safety, and the educational neglect boggles my mind.

[Arete]

Further, Lauren is ABSOLUTELY setting up her girls to cling to the first person who acts like he/she cares. It's awful to set up a child, particularly a young girl, to yearn to feel taken care of so badly that she'll totally ignore her instincts, and that's exactly what Lauren is doing to her daughters.

Her girls, who are ages 3-10, are foraging for their food, because their mother cannot be assed to plan daily meals for them to sit down to. This is supposed to build up independence for the girls. They get to decide at that age whether or not they are vegans even though Lauren makes no efforts to ensure the specific nutrition they would not be getting from animal sources is coming from somewhere. They were left alone over 2 weeks with a resentful adult they barely knew to be "present" while she went on a European fuckfest. They are not being educated, she is throwing up a bullshit smokescreen about "unschooling". She isn't unschooling, she is doing NO schooling. She takes them on a field trip through prisons with no thought of any anxiety they have over their father being in prison for murdering their baby brother. The are dirty. They are barefoot in dangerous situations. One of them has been documented eating sand, which probably indicates a nutritional deficiency. The girls don't have kept hair but she keeps up maintenance on her dreds no matter where she is traveling.

Spare us the idea of Lauren as martyr mother of the year. She is a unfit mother, a selfish grafter, and the best thing she could do is leave those girls so they could be placed in a stable, loving home with real meals, real love, real education, and people who would protect them.

[Annasopinion]

I think this entire thread has disintegrated into bashing anything and everything this woman does. I've read posts here picking apart her every decision, and just blasting her for her failings.

It's sad.

Are her decisions good or bad? Is she the perfect mother? I don't know.

But what I do know is what it is like to survive the death of a child. And I don't think it's appropriate to throw stones at someone who is trying their best just to get through every day whole.

My daughter died 7 years ago, and I look back on some of the things I did back then, and don't recognize myself. I don't remember this, but I apparently laughed at a joke less than an hour after she died. I can only imagine I was in shock. And I'm glad I wasn't surrounded by people who would judge me. People who would roll their eyes, and "what a terrible person... her daughter isn't even cold."

Let me tell you, the loss of a child is startling, it is jarring. This woman woke up one day and had a whole family. The next day she was identifying her dead baby and watching her husband arrested for the crime.

I think she's done a pretty well job of keeping her daughters happy and whole. Has she been perfect? No. But I read her blog and see a woman who is trying every day to come to grips with what she has to work with.

She lets her kids play. I played when I was little. There were hours where my parents didn't even know where I was! When I was four we lived on a golf course. My grandfather told me that there were alligators in the ponds in an attempt to keep me off the course! I stayed out of the water hazards, but was famous for playing in the sand traps when I wasn't supposed to! I wasn't neglected. I was allowed to play.

I don't know what it would take for some of you to have a more sympathetic ear, but many of you need to explore the concept of empathy. Just try reading her blog for a week, and look for positive things. Just give it a try. It may just change your mind about Sparkling Adventures.

And yes... I know she took a holiday without her kids. So what. Plenty of people go on vacation without their children.

And yes... I know you suspect that she's getting benefits. So what. She's not breaking Australia's budget with her very frugal lifestyle.

And yes... I know that some people give her money and other donations. So what. People give money to other people and organizations all the time. I know people who donate to the Susan G Komen Breast Cancer Foundation... and think that's stupid that they're just donating for the president of that organization's million dollar salary. But so what? It's their money to give.

I don't understand why you are posting this on free jinger? You can feel how you like about lauren, so can we. You don't own and Lauren doesn't own any monopoly on what it is like to be devastated by the death of a child. I have a lot of opinions concerning Lauren but you'll notice that I've never commented on her blog - because I can't see that it would help her in any way and my mostly sincere concerns would fall on deaf ears. Lauren isn't just some alternative mumma living out her life - she's a mentally ill woman in possession of four young lives. Now, obviously that's, my opinion. I don't really care if anyone agrees with me or not, but I am interested in other peoples impressions of Lauren which is why I am here, on free jinger.

"Empathy" does not equal giving someone cart blanche to drag their children through their own mental illness in order to justify some bullshit wacky philosophy of authentic living which put them and their children in the line of damage and loss to begin with! Elijah's death was not some random tragedy it was a culmination of fucked up unbalanced thinking between two mentally damaged adults which reached its culmination in the most horrible, final way.

I think she's done a pretty shitty job of giving her daughter's space to grieve, giving them stability and giving them room to express the reality of their new 'family'. They are being dragged through a 'memory book' of denial.

Yes, this is just my opinion, which is all a comment on free jinger can be, which brings me back to my original question - what are YOU doing here criticizing US?

[Annasopinion]

Her girls, who are ages 3-10, are foraging for their food, because their mother cannot be assed to plan daily meals for them to sit down to. This is supposed to build up independence for the girls. They get to decide at that age whether or not they are vegans even though Lauren makes no efforts to ensure the specific nutrition they would not be getting from animal sources is coming from somewhere. They were left alone over 2 weeks with a resentful adult they barely knew to be "present" while she went on a European fuckfest. They are not being educated, she is throwing up a bullshit smokescreen about "unschooling". She isn't unschooling, she is doing NO schooling. She takes them on a field trip through prisons with no thought of any anxiety they have over their father being in prison for murdering their baby brother. The are dirty. They are barefoot in dangerous situations. One of them has been documented eating sand, which probably indicates a nutritional deficiency. The girls don't have kept hair but she keeps up maintenance on her dreds no matter where she is traveling.

Spare us the idea of Lauren as martyr mother of the year. She is a unfit mother, a selfish grafter, and the best thing she could do is leave those girls so they could be placed in a stable, loving home with real meals, real love, real education, and people who would protect them.

YAH! She gets the crown for Martyr of the Year!

[memell]

Do you know she scrubs her blog ...a lot of what went on before has been altered or changed to reflect well on her ..those videos of Davids ..........The one "Lauren's gone" still disturbs me

.

I dont care about the hippy dippy ways but I can't move past the children not being allowed to grieve and pictured in water water water ,I'm over Lauren preaching ..and yes that is what it is .................how she more authentic than those of us who work and PAY HER centrelink payments .I unschool my children by giving them lots of experiences ....and they go to school .......not ipad all day.

Also David was the more plugged in parent.............she has had to learn how to interact with the children.

I see Lauren as a women perpetually stuck in immaturity .wishy washy and bendy. If the new partner decides to to change /live else where she will follow no questions asked.......I see it in other fundamentalist believers that lack of a sense of self and assumption that everyone must be like them...

I do wonder if she is one of those women who cannot let her daughters shine ...shes made up ,wearing cute skirts and looking lovely ...her daughters are not dirty scruffy and miserable

At least Alice went dark ......she might just be more authentic........crazy .Lauren keeps putting it out there because she enjoys the attention.

If you haven't already found it ...look up Death camp kids .......????the future

[chaotic life]

Incidentally, since the blog is scrubbed on a regular basis, perhaps you are unaware that May 2012, Lauren ABANDONED her four daughters and ran away from life. She felt guilty and reframed it and came back, but she left them. She took off early one morning without a word to anyone except her young child and disappeared.

What is also scrubbed from the blog is WHY she ran away. David claimed she was frigid and thus wanted to practice polyamory. She would rather abandon her vulnerable daughters in the middle of no where in a broken down truck than face the marital issues that his request brought up. But she SURE wasn't going to consider polyamory because that went against who she was.

Except today she is nearly giggling calling herself polyamorous while recounting what SHE believes polyamory to be and declaring that if we would all just open ourselves up to love we would all embrace polyamory. Eighteen months ago, she abandoned her children because her husband suggested this idea to her. Today, it's the only way enlightened people live their lives.

There were drugs in David's system when he killed Elijah. If you think there aren't drugs in Lauren's system on a regular basis, then you are fooling yourself. That's part and parcel to the "hippy" life she has embraced since Delaney was born and since Lauren does nothing halfway, I'm positive she's well versed in the drug culture now as well.

[August]

It's not the hippy shit we object to. It's the unsupervised swimming, playing with circular saw blades on top of a moving forklift,being barefoot on a farm and around a fire, being left unsupervised with a horse at the age of three, climbing ladders to the roof alone, napping whie her two year old plays nextto a river, putting the older three in the back of a truck without seats and driving around. They have this bus because CPS would not allow her to continue to drive without seats for everyone. She sucks, and while her mothering is horrible, it's not going to kill or injure one of them the way her supervisory "skills" are.

[August]

Has David ever said why he killed Elijah? I'm trying to understand the thought process, if that's even possible.

We think it was some sort of psychotic break. He was mentally unstable for years beforehand, and was using drugs.

[freejugar]

What drugs were in David's system?

[anjulibai]

You know, my cousin is pretty hippy in her ways and parenting. Breastfed her two girls until they were 3. Into all sorts of natural remedies, organic foods, New Age type beliefs, etc.

But her girls are very well taken care of. They are fed well, dressed appropriately, clean, go to school, vaccinated, see a traditional doctor regularly and are taught basic manners.

Being a hippy doesn't make you a bad parent - being neglectful does.

[Arete]

Oh, I agree. And Lauren is no more a hippy than I am. "Hippy" is just a role she is playing for her audience.

[Terrie]

As others have said, Laura is guilty of abandonment and neglect. While there's no right way to grieve, I feel comfortable saying there are wrongs ways, and she's doing it wrong, because she's causing life-long harm to her kids. Trauma and neglect cause physical changes to the brain, and the younger a person, the bigger and further reaching the changes.

[Annasopinion]

Do you know she scrubs her blog ...a lot of what went on before has been altered or changed to reflect well on her ..those videos of Davids ..........The one "Lauren's gone" still disturbs me

.

I dont care about the hippy dippy ways but I can't move past the children not being allowed to grieve and pictured in water water water ,I'm over Lauren preaching ..and yes that is what it is .................how she more authentic than those of us who work and PAY HER centrelink payments .I unschool my children by giving them lots of experiences ....and they go to school .......not ipad all day.

Also David was the more plugged in parent.............she has had to learn how to interact with the children.

I see Lauren as a women perpetually stuck in immaturity .wishy washy and bendy. If the new partner decides to to change /live else where she will follow no questions asked.......I see it in other fundamentalist believers that lack of a sense of self and assumption that everyone must be like them...

I do wonder if she is one of those women who cannot let her daughters shine ...shes made up ,wearing cute skirts and looking lovely ...her daughters are not dirty scruffy and miserable

At least Alice went dark ......she might just be more authentic........crazy .Lauren keeps putting it out there because she enjoys the attention.

If you haven't already found it ...look up Death camp kids .......????the future

Hasn't anyone else thought how fucking weird it was that in response to Lauren walking off on him and the girls, David chose to post a response on YOUTUBE?! I think general readers of her blog aren't aware that she was in a relationship of two equally mentally ill adults. Before Elijah died I often thought they were trying to escape themselves - except there's no road long enough to accomplish that. She abandoned her family, told Aicha that David had to find 'righteousness' and HITCHHIKED with Elijah strapped to her bosom. Then she bought a van...and pretended this had been the whole reason for her little stomp off. This was all in response to the fact that david wanted to have sexx with other women because lauren wouldnt have sex with him.

Authentic? hardly. She's just as crazy as can be.

[Annasopinion]

You know, my cousin is pretty hippy in her ways and parenting. Breastfed her two girls until they were 3. Into all sorts of natural remedies, organic foods, New Age type beliefs, etc.

But her girls are very well taken care of. They are fed well, dressed appropriately, clean, go to school, vaccinated, see a traditional doctor regularly and are taught basic manners.

Being a hippy doesn't make you a bad parent - being neglectful does.

Yes and if anyone doesn't agree with her, its because they're not enlightened enough and shes generous enough to tolerate them in their unevolved ways :cray-cray: PUHLEASE! No one is irritated by lauren because she's a hippy ( i dont even think she is a hippy, i just think she's full of shit). I've got plenty of beliefs and practices that aren't accepted/acknowledged by what lauren calls the old economy or mainstream society - and guess what? I still think she's a manipulative, manic, psycho bitch who couldn't look after a goldfish and shouldn't be trusted to either. I don't so much care that her kids are dirty and look like they smell, but i am bothered by the whole no education IS education. No. It. Isnt.

I've been bending spoons (mostly unintentionally) since i was a child and have learnt a lot about vibrational force and controlling energy which is about as hippy as you can get. but guess what? I went to uni, got a job, bought a house, shit in a toilet and wash my hands afterwards. It aint that hard lauren, try it sometime.