Jon Clark seeks law to increase parental rights over adult children

[Alisamer]

8 hours ago, Marian the Librarian said:

Well put! I once read something to the effect that one's job as a parent is to guide your child(ren) out of your life, and into happy, successful lives of their own.

The control-freak parents we discuss here make me nuts. 

I agree, and what this guy is proposing seems like a terrible idea on a zillion levels.

These parents don't seem to want children, they want minions - possibly even slaves - people who jump when they speak and never deviate from what they're told, who they can show off to other like-minded people. A parent's job is to get their kid as close as possible to independent, functional adulthood. Some kids do better than others, some parents do better than others, but in general most people come out of childhood able to handle or at least learn the basics of life. I worry about the fundy kids we read about here - there's already the Duggarlings and Maxwell kidults either stuck close to home or at home, but all still under dad's thumb or tied to him financially.

I feel like my parents did a decent job, but I admit I sometimes get nervous when I have do do an adult thing for the first time, like book a flight, renew my passport, or make a hotel reservation, but so far so good. I did just google how to renew a prescription, though. I recently saw someone describe adulting as like a series of quests in a video game, and that was reassuring. Ask or search until you find out where you need to go to do the thing, then go there and ask the people you see there where to go do the thing, and eventually you'll get to the right person and place and get the thing done. But these kids aren't allowed video games, for the most part, so they won't relate even to that.

[AmazonGrace]

17 hours ago, Chocolatedefrauded said:

I feel like parents like these have never read a parenting book or learned stages of development. It has been said before but my God,  your children are individuals who deserve a chance to succeed and fail on their own. We all encounter success and failure throughout our lives. You have to teach them how to make good decisions (and practice on smaller things.) and teach them how to cope with failures.

you don't treat an 18 year old like an 8 year old and expect them to cope well. You're setting them up for failure! Kids have to go through the stages of learning to be independent.

 Protection like his ideas is crippling. What happens when the parents die or become ill? You have a 45 year old child who can't handle basic life decisions & opportunities. They are failing their children in a major way.

Who said parenting is the one job that when you succeed, you become obsolete?

I feel like this proposed law would be a tool for parents who already spent 18 years screwing their kids up, and now see that the results of their handiwork aren't good, to spend a few more years screwing their kids up some more.

[Mercer]

One thing I find interesting about this petition is that I see a lot about extended parental rights but very little about extended parental responsibilities.

If the parent is present they may choose to exercise "default guardianship."

If young people are supposedly in such need and danger that they should lose their autonomy, why do the parents get a choice about it? Why isn't it a requirement that they help, and a potential neglect charge if they don't? I mean, if the "need" is real and all...

Obviously I disagree with the whole thing anyway, but I'm just seeing a huge internal contraction in his own position.

Basically, parents have the right to step in if they are so inclined, but if they aren't, the adult who is allegedly so vulnerable is still entirely on their own. He is not proposing that the parents be required to provide any additional financial, medical, or legal assistance to the young adult - only that the parent be allowed to step in and control the situation. He is not proposing that the parent be required to be present if the child is in crisis - only that if they want to be, they get to override the child's autonomy. He is not proposing that the parents have any legal burden of responsibility for the young adult's conduct as they have for minors - the young adult still appears to be solely on the hook for any of their actions before the law, and the parent has no duty of restitution if they make poor choices.

That's why the who thing seems pretty cynical to me. I really want to be sympathetic to this guy because of what happened to his daughter, but the whole thing just seems so... calculated. If he really believed he was protecting young people, I would expect him to be more consistent about claiming that young adults need extra care from their parents, not just about advocating for parents to get to do what they want.

When it seems all about the rights of control for the parents and nothing about giving them any duties toward their young people beyond what they feel like doing, it's hard for me to believe his intentions are quite as pure as he claims.

[FundieFarmer]

So, FF family parenting methods compared to Clark family parenting methods: 

On 10/13/2016 at 4:50 PM, dianapavelovna said:

Clark refutes the idea that he and his wife were "uninvolved parents" by describing how his daughter wasn't allowed to take her phone upstairs to her bedroom, and he and his wife "check[ed]" it several times a week. I could take my phone upstairs but I had to turn over all my electronics for random inspections whenever asked. If I forgot to take my phone to school with me, that thing was fair game. 

They had passwords to all her accounts. CHECK. 

They would grab the phone out of her hands unexpectedly and put a GPS tracker on her car. She had to Facetime her parents when she was out to prove she was where she said she would be. They didn't do that necessarily, but if they asked for the phone, I had to hand it over. They also used an app to "ping" me whenever they wanted, and I had to "ping" back instantly. Even if I was driving.

She was grounded for having contact with people her parents "thought were trouble," and Clark himself "assertively demanded" face-to-face that they stay away from her. Oh, haha, not only would that happen for the smallest of things, but my parents would stand behind me as I had to tell my friends myself that my parents no longer approved of them and I couldn't hang out with them anymore. Fun, right? First time that happened I was 12. 

BUT WAIT! Clark himself told me everything I need to know (emphasis mine):

"Children of parents have no right to privacy." My parents told me that all the time and even enlisted the housekeeper to help them snoop.

Growing up, turning 18 and going to college looked like the sweetest relief to me. If my parents could have still held control, I don't know what I would've done.

Needless to say, while I do still love them and talk to them...they're not listed on any of my HIPAA forms and this whole extended guardianship nonsense would not have gone over well in my house.

[Childless]

Sorry, but meeting the age requirement for being a legal adult makes you a legal adult.  End of story.  Now, if this guy was stumping to get the age of majority raised, that would be understandable (many people feel 18 is to young for complete autonomy).  He's not though.  He's trying to get a law passed that allows parents to take control of their adult children regardless of age.  Sorry, I'm not buying it.  At some point, you have to let go and let them sink or swim on their own.  No one should have to live their life under the threat of losing their autonomy because mommy and daddy don't like the decisions they're making.

[Snarkle Motion]

1 hour ago, Childless said:

Sorry, but meeting the age requirement for being a legal adult makes you a legal adult.  End of story.  Now, if this guy was stumping to get the age of majority raised, that would be understandable (many people feel 18 is to young for complete autonomy).  He's not though.  He's trying to get a law passed that allows parents to take control of their adult children regardless of age.  Sorry, I'm not buying it.  At some point, you have to let go and let them sink or swim on their own.  No one should have to live their life under the threat of losing their autonomy because mommy and daddy don't like the decisions they're making.

Agreed. I know after the Virginia tech shooter there was some debate about how much info colleges could disclose to family of students with mental health problems. I can see wanting a law related to disclosure for college students but this feels completely different. 

I'd like to know if this was truly a situation of a "pimp" or whether this girl just ran away to live with her boyfriend. 

[Lurky]

1 minute ago, Snarkle Motion said:

I know after the Virginia tech shooter there was some debate about how much info colleges could disclose to family of students with mental health problems.

I'm confused by this - why would a college know about a student's mental health issues?  I mean, for sure, a student can choose to disclose to the college, but then we're back on the adult having the choice about who they choose to disclose what to.  

(Plus if a student knew that anything they told their tutor or college administration was going to be passed onto their parents, who they didn't want to know things, it's more likely students would stop disclosing at all)

Unless USA college medical services work differently to UK, where there are University Student Health Services, but they are under same rules as normal GP services in terms of who they can share what with?

[FundieWatcher]

Re: Virginia Tech shooter. I haven't heard anything about the disclosure debate. But I do know the University's mental health center was understaffed. *Some people have criticized the University's mental health center for not doing enough. In hindsight he needed much more  treatment. If his parents knew would that have changed things for the better or worse? 

I'm with you. I tend to believe doctors being allowed to disclose information to the family will cause people not to seek help.

Even if you did tell the parents, what are they going to do? My mom, who has good intentions, would probably try to talk me into seeing another doctor. Some doctor a friend of a friend used. For some reason my mother has always been pushy about her physician or dentist recommendations. While that is probably just her way of trying to contribute,  sometimes I just rather not hear it. But then what if you get a fundie parent? They either pull them out and put them into a non licensed program or have them use essential oils. Even if you have guardianship, you can't force someone to say all that is going through their mind. I don't know if I see the other side of the argument at all. Like someone else pointed out, most abuse comes from inside the family in the first place. 

 

Edited October 18, 2016 by FundieWatcher

[Snarkle Motion]

Re: Virginia Tech I think the issue was with teachers and residential staff seeing red flags but not having an appropriate mechanism to get him help. There was talk about allowing universities to reach out to parents if there are mental health concerns but I think this is a tricky situation.

[Mercer]

4 hours ago, Lurky said:

Unless USA college medical services work differently to UK, where there are University Student Health Services, but they are under same rules as normal GP services in terms of who they can share what with?

Assuming the school is using licensed mental health counselors, they would indeed be bound by the same confidentiality rules as any other therapist, meaning that they are not allowed to disclose what is told to them in a session unless the client is at risk of doing harm to themselves or someone else.

The problem is that once the therapist ascertains or suspects that the client is at risk of doing harm to themselves or another person, there are not always clear mechanisms for how to move forward with that information, nor is it always crystal clear whether something is serious enough to be reportable. (Say, for example, a client says in a session, "I'm so mad at my mom I could kill her!" Whether that is a figure of speech or a threat is very much a judgment call, and the therapist will not always be able to guess right.) It has become harder and harder to access inpatient services, and a therapist may be understandably hesitant to involve the legal system due to the risk of harm to the client.

I don't think that reporting on student mental health to the parent is the answer, for many reasons. It's just not always clear what the answer actually is, short of a complete rethinking of the mental health system that makes it easier for therapists to access higher levels of services on their client's behalf.

[Lurky]

2 hours ago, Mercer said:

The problem is that once the therapist ascertains or suspects that the client is at risk of doing harm to themselves or another person, there are not always clear mechanisms for how to move forward with that information, nor is it always crystal clear whether something is serious enough to be reportable. (Say, for example, a client says in a session, "I'm so mad at my mom I could kill her!" Whether that is a figure of speech or a threat is very much a judgment call, and the therapist will not always be able to guess right.) It has become harder and harder to access inpatient services, and a therapist may be understandably hesitant to involve the legal system due to the risk of harm to the client.

I don't think that reporting on student mental health to the parent is the answer, for many reasons. It's just not always clear what the answer actually is, short of a complete rethinking of the mental health system that makes it easier for therapists to access higher levels of services on their client's behalf.

To be honest, I feel like "we're not sure if we should report it to the authorities, so we'll tell the parents" would be a total cop-out in my mind, absolutely passing the buck. 

As you say upthread, there's no guarantee the parents would do anything about it - or as @FundieWatcher says, they might decide to treat with essential oils and prayer etc.   And then what happens if the young person does something violent?  Student mental health can shrug and say "not our responsibility".   

Either something is important enough to report to authorities, or it isn't, and a halfway house idea of "we'll tell their parents" is working on the assumption that everyone comes from a non-abusive, engaged, resource-full family - and in the USA, that is wealthy or has amazing insurance, which is pie in the sky.  

(If a GP practice or mental health service here didn't have protocols about what to do if they worry a client is a danger to themselves or others, I'd expect them to lose their practice.)

Edited October 18, 2016 by Lurky
tagging people properly

[Mercer]

1 hour ago, Lurky said:

To be honest, I feel like "we're not sure if we should report it to the authorities, so we'll tell the parents" would be a total cop-out in my mind, absolutely passing the buck. 

I agree with this 100%. Passing authority for adult mental health to the adult's parent is not a helpful solution and I don't support it in any way.

(If a GP practice or mental health service here didn't have protocols about what to do if they worry a client is a danger to themselves or others, I'd expect them to lose their practice.)

It's not that they don't have protocols, it's that because we don't have national healthcare in the United States, getting a client into a higher level of care requires multiple systems to click into place simultaneously, and that's not guaranteed to happen.

I'll give an example of this that I personally witnessed about a month ago. I have to be pretty vague about the details for the sake of confidentiality, but this was not a grey area situation at all, it was completely black and white.

A client with a history of violent episodes began making credible threats of suicide, general harm toward others, and specific homicidal threats toward myself and toward his mother who was not present. The police were called for an emergency involuntary transport to the hospital. They arrived promptly and transported the client safely in spite of the client becoming physically aggressive toward the officers.

At that point, though, things started to break down. The client was left sitting in the hospital emergency room for 18 hours before he was seen by a hospital psychologist. By that point the client had calmed. He denied that he had said those things (the fact it had been witnessed by two counselors and a registered nurse was not taken as relevant) and denied that he had suicidal or homicidal intent, so he was discharged. He was back at the group home with 45 minutes.

We filed a complaint against the hospital, they responded with a counter-complaint against us, and the issue is currently tied up in arbitration. I'm confident that the arbitration will go in our favor, but retroactive validation won't help the client who did not receive care.

In the meantime, the client has been denied admission to a secure residential treatment facility because he was deemed too dangerous for that level of care. He was denied admission to the hospital for an inpatient med adjustment because according to the psychiatrist (and to be fair, he is almost certainly correct about this) the issue cannot be solved with medication. Various other avenues and appeals are being investigated, but currently the client has not received any additional help.

So... all this to say, we had protocols, they were followed, and nothing changed. And this was a very clear situation of a person with a documented violent history explicitly threatening harm. If the situation is at all grey or fuzzy, it gets exponentially even harder.

Hopefully that clarifies my point a little better.

[imokit]

@Lurky Even in the UK we have huge issues.  People who should probably be admitted to psychiatric hospitals are managed at home by people going in regularly due to lack of beds.  I know of a patient who was kept in a side room on a medical ward for a week while awaiting a psychiatric bed.  She'd ended up in the emergency room (I don't know how), there were no psych bed and psych wanted her admitted, so she went to a medical ward and they sent doctors to manage her there.

We have systems to escalate and admit, and we're better at enforcing treatment on patients who don't want treatment but are a danger to themselves or others, but we're not perfect.

[Coconut Flan]

And yet my stepdad ended up on the psych ward twice on suicide watch even though he was dying of cancer and was in a wheelchair.  The first time they didn't want to release him because he was "confused."  I asked them if they planned to keep him until he died since he had vascular dementia and would never be not confused again.  They finally returned him to the nursing home. 

[Snarkle Motion]

I think the problem is when behavior is not severe enough for a psychiatric hold but still concerning for the campus. I think the cops were actually called on the Virginia tech shooter a couple times but they didn't feel he was enough of a danger?

When a student writes an essay about killing himself or hurting others. That's something that is clearly concerning but who does a teacher go to? They don't know if this person is seeking mental health treatment, they might call the cops but there is not necessarily enough to warrant holding a person based on "fiction" even if it's highly disturbing. 

I know the university I worked at had a system run through the dean of students so that anyone on campus (teachers, resident councelsors, peers) could report concerns for possible follow-up. The idea being that a student with a couple warning signs is more likely to have some sort of intervention to connect them to resources.

I think Ive heard the argument that if parents were paying for college they had a right to know certain information related to grades, disciplinary action, and general well-being. This information may not rise to "health" information but I believe grades are protected under FERPA as well as other school information. Do parents have a right to know if their adult child has been attending class if the parents are paying for it? Can parents ask campus counsellors if their child has been leaving his room at all? This is where it starts to get blurry. It's not an easy issue but seems somewhat related to what Jon Clark was arguing.

[Mercer]

At least back when I was in college, parents only received notification of the student's grades if the student proactively signed a paper allowing grades to be released to them. (Who was paying the tuition was not a factor; it was the same for all students.) If the student didn't sign the paper, the parents couldn't get that information. If the paper had been signed, the grades were mailed to the parents three months after they were issued - the delay was the give the student time to clear any incompletes or to appeal any incorrect grades. Not sure if that was just my school or if that was more widespread. 

I always thought that was a pretty fair compromise, but some parents were absolutely incensed that they couldn't get the grades immediately and with or without permission, even though their students were legal adults.

[Coconut Flan]

As a parent there is an easy solution to that problem.  You don't pay for the next semester until the student shows you or emails the just completed semester grades.  I'm all for my 18 to 21 year olds working on being fully functional adults, but I'm also not going to pay for failure or goofing off.  If you want mama to support you, there may be a couple of strings with the money.  But that's between the parent and the student and doesn't involve the school.

[Mercer]

8 minutes ago, Coconut Flan said:

As a parent there is an easy solution to that problem.  You don't pay for the next semester until the student shows you or emails the just completed semester grades.  I'm all for my 18 to 21 year olds working on being fully functional adults, but I'm also not going to pay for failure or goofing off.  If you want mama to support you, there may be a couple of strings with the money.  But that's between the parent and the student and doesn't involve the school.

Yeah, that is a much better solution - parents and their young adult children communicating, not parents trying to use legislation or authorities to force their children to comply with them.

[Lurky]

@imokit Yeah, I absolutely know we're not perfect (esp after my partner was working for a mental health service, with a different shocking story every week) - BUT when it goes wrong, there are clear protocols to hold people accountable to (even if they aren't)

@Snarkle Motion So, for people who are saying "if parents were paying for college they had a right to know certain information related to grades, disciplinary action, and general well-being", does this only count for parents?  If the grandparents are paying, should they get the information?  If a family trust, the executors?  If a student loan company, or a scholarship is basically paying, should they?  I'm getting ridiculous, but if the parents are paying 50% and the grand parents paying 50%, should they each get 50% of the information?    And if it's "parents only", why?

(I was getting ridiculous on purpose, but the bottom line is that students who want their parents to know about their grades will tell them - and in terms of attendance, part of going to university is to learn to take responsibility, and face one's own consequences.  Having a student's attend classes only because they know that if they don't, their parents will be told, and will threaten to stop paying just infantilises them, and doesn't help them mature.)

[Snarkle Motion]

@Lurky I'm not saying I agree with them, I don't. It doesn't matter who's paying for tuition. I'm just saying I've heard this argument made before many times and I can understand where some parents are coming from. its usually from a good place but I agree it's for them to work out with their adult child and that the protections are in place to protect the adult child.

Like what would stop any random person from calling up and asking about a students grades pretending to be the parent? It's no one else's business. However what about the residential counselor asked by a concerned parent to check in on their kid who they haven't heard from for several days? This is where I start to see the line get fuzzy. 

[Lurky]

@Snarkle Motion Sorry I wasn't clearer - I didn't think you held those views, I was riffing off of you saying other people held them.

Re the parents and the counsellor - of course they can ask, but that doesn't mean that even if it's carried out, they should get a reply about it.  And again, how do you prove it's the parents?  Maybe I'm a stalker and I call up pretending to be my victim's mother?  Or even in more benign circumstances, a helicopter parent is worried because their kid hasn't answered a text, so gets a welfare check on their ass, when their kid is just trying to cut the apron strings.

I mean, bottom line - if some one is really worried about a student's mental or physical health, they should be asking the police to do a welfare check, because again, asking a school counsellor to get in touch is passing the buck too, as the counsellor has absolutely no power to get the student treatment if they don't want it.

BUT, part of having a child grow up is dealing with the fact that yeah, parents might not hear from that kid for several days, or even weeks, because now they're a grown up, and they can choose what level of contact they want. 

Maybe a kid is out of touch because they're ill, but maybe they're pissed off with being expected to be in contact every few days, or once a week, or they're partying hard, or in the labs working their socks off, or just not thinking about their parents because they're wrapped up in their own lives.  I get that that could feel hurtful to parents who aren't ready to be empty nesters - BUT as people said upthread, the whole purpose of parenting should be to produce independent adults capable of making their own choices and mistakes. 

[Sicily]

On 10/14/2016 at 7:12 AM, Hane said:

This guy is obvs a douche, but something tangentially related that happened in my family:

When my middle sister was about 25, single, and living at home (some 30 years ago), she was suffering from bulimia and anorexia so badly her potassium level fell to near-lethal levels and she was hospitalized to normalize them. She was having hallucinations and was barely coherent much of the time. Still, her doctors didn't want to share info about her condition or care with my mother, with whom she lived and who would be caring for her once she was released from the hospital. 

This was a fairly short-term illness back in the '80s, and I'm wondering whether such matters are handled differently now.

 

 

I guess depends on the laws in your jurisdiction. My aged father was hospitalised with mental illness and the hospital has kept me (as next of kin) informed of all developments.

[zee_four]

I bet they'd love to apply this to adult women seeking birth control and or abortions.

 

This "white slavery" panic was what prompted the FBI to be formed. The scare was almost completely sensationalized and all about women leaving home and being involved with men. 

 

1901 is calling it wants its misogyny back.