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Xtian mommy bloggers IRL- ugly story. (long essay)


longskirtlotsakids

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It's illegal to leave a six year old alone where I live. I'm sure this law varies from place to place, but here I think 9 is the age that you can leave a child in your home, and they have to be older (11?) before you can leave them with siblings under 9. I would not leave a six year old alone, simply because it is not an age where you can count on good judgement. I think you can convince a 9 year old to leave the matches alone, stay out of the bleach, don't play in the street, etc. They are better able to understand risk and are naturally more cautious. 6 year olds, in my opinion, are more prone to be guided by curiousity and the chance to do stuff you wouldn't normally allow them to do. Plus, you can explain to a 9 year old what to do if there is a fire and they will likely do it. A six year old might do it, or they might just panic and hide under the bed. The child in this situation is a good example. She was screaming hysterically in the living room of her apartment, when she didn't seem to be in any immmediate danger.

Illinois... its FOURTEEN. I shit you not. Before that age, they can be left alone for a "reasonable amount of time" which of course is soooo vague. Which really steams me off too because no, i would not leave a 6 year old for hours at a time, but I can't send a 10 year old to grab a gallon of milk from the teeny Mexican grocery store (they have the Mexican Cocacola... ZOMG BE STILL MY HEART) that I CAN SEE FROM MY FRONT DOOR (all suburban side streets too, no major roads to cross) ?!?!?!?!? - Ok i probably COULD but I could conceivably get into trouble with the law for it. :shock:

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Illinois... its FOURTEEN. I shit you not. Before that age, they can be left alone for a "reasonable amount of time" which of course is soooo vague. Which really steams me off too because no, i would not leave a 6 year old for hours at a time, but I can't send a 10 year old to grab a gallon of milk from the teeny Mexican grocery store (they have the Mexican Cocacola... ZOMG BE STILL MY HEART) that I CAN SEE FROM MY FRONT DOOR (all suburban side streets too, no major roads to cross) ?!?!?!?!? - Ok i probably COULD but I could conceivably get into trouble with the law for it. :shock:

Shit. I was babysitting for a couple of years already when I was 14! That's ridiculous.

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A friend of mine lost two young children to a house fire while she was out in the farm yard helping her husband. The children hid and became trapped in the house. I think that household dangers are far, far more common than children being abducted by straangers and parents really need to make sure that their kids really, truly are old enough to handle those kinds of emergencies before being left alone.

This is why I would never leave younger children home alone. I wouldn't be afraid of kidnappers or sex offenders but I'd be very concerned about emergencies that could arise. Back in the 80's there was a house fire caused by 2 siblings left home alone, I don't remember their ages but both were under 10 and one was a preschooler. They had been playing with matches. Like the kids mentioned above they hid in a closet, and died.

My granddaughter is 8 and no way would her parents leave her alone. I think when I was 8 I could have been left alone, and maybe even was but I was far more mature and had common sense.

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longskirtslotsofkids,

Thank you for comforting that little girl. I am appalled and it only clicked towards the end of your post that you were actually speaking about said blogger. I know many times when horrible situations happen, it can lead people to state, "see God doesn't exist". I disagree, but everyone has a right to their opinion. I will say this, I totally agree with you that good actions should be done ultimately because they are the right thing to do! They shouldn't occur (for adults at least) because we're trying to earn brownie points with the Almighty or because we want to be acknowledged for some community activist award. Sadly too many people do things for those (and other types of reasons) and not because it's the right thing.

Thank you again for helping that little girl. Hopefully CPS will monitor the situation and force that family to clean up their mess. This reminds me of an episode of Hoarders where two children lived with their parents in a filthy trashed filled home. Huge cockroaches were all over the place and trying to bite ~shudders at the thought~ while they slept. I don't know if in the blogger's case it's just laziness or also some type of mental illness, if not a combination of both. Here's the optimistic side of me coming out. Even though the blogger is grand standing publicly, I really really really hope that internally she realizes something is very wrong and seeks help, not only for her own good but also for her children.

longskirtslotsofkids, I truly admire you.

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I was a little confused about one thing, longskirtslotsakids...is this blogger whose child you comforted/rescued the SAME woman who said people should be able to sell their babies!? :shock:

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Bears also love poopy diapers.

I used to watch a family and the mom told me they had to stop putting their trash out until the morning of trash pick up because the bears would go through the trash and were taking out the diapers and dragging them behind some bushes. Ick.

And pugs do too. :puke-front:

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In my area, I am told that 10 is the age when a child can be left alone and 12 is the age when they can babysit. I don't know if this is law, or if it is merely the age at which social services will no longer raise an eyebrow. But it does not seem to apply to children walking to and from schools or school bus stops. I let my children (age 9 and 8) occasionally walk to or from school themselves. It is about a block away on a busy street with decent sidewalks and they walk with a large group of children who live in our apartment building. There is one intersection, but we have crossing guards before and after school. I do worry a bit but in my area children generally walk to and from school alone, and my worry is considered freakish and helicopter-y.

I look at the issue as "Is my child mature enough to handle what might happen when they are in the situation?" If a stranger approached the group of children, my kids know to run away screaming and it is a very busy street so it would not go unnoticed. They would not walk into the road or cross the street without a crossing guard. However, the things that happen in a home are much more diverse and require more common sense to deal with. Fires, break-ins, etc. My children would be very likely to make the wrong decision in these cases, so it makes sense that they cannot be left alone.

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The hoarding scales are different from different sources. The OCD foundation has a really good illustrated one - a level 4 hoarder from another source would be a 7 on theirs.

To really oversimplify, if items cannot be used as intended (can't sleep in beds, keep clothes in dressers, dishes in kitchen cupboards, drive car ) due to clutter or squalor- there's usually a problem. There are also separate categories for animal and human waste. I know a lot more about this subject than I really should, due to hoarding mother.

There is a Yahoo group that I belong to - Children of Hoarders - that is an awesome resource for anyone who was forced to grow up that way. Interestingly, my interest in fundies has stemmed partially from that. There is a lot of weird religion going on with a lot of hoarding folks.

Thank you so much for posting this. I really really needed to see this right now. I am dealing with my mother and her hoarding issues and things have sort of come to a head in the last month or so.

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Thank you so much for posting this. I really really needed to see this right now. I am dealing with my mother and her hoarding issues and things have sort of come to a head in the last month or so.

Also, if you watch Hoarders, Matt Paxton (one of the extreme cleaning specialists) has a book called The Secret Lives of Hoarders about the causes of hoarding. He also has a podcast called 5 Decisions Away and on it they discuss many things about life in addition to hoarding and its causes. They do curse a lot on it though, so just be aware of that.

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Also, if you watch Hoarders, Matt Paxton (one of the extreme cleaning specialists) has a book called The Secret Lives of Hoarders about the causes of hoarding. He also has a podcast called 5 Decisions Away and on it they discuss many things about life in addition to hoarding and its causes. They do curse a lot on it though, so just be aware of that.

I do watch, or at least I catch t hem on netflix instant, and I adore Matt Paxton. I did not realize he had published a book, but I have read a bit by him on the TLC boards. I did not know that about the podcast either, I will look that up.

Honestly, that show was how I learned there is a name for this. I used to joke that the women on mom's side all had the collector gene.

I spent a long time last night reading through the Children of Hoarders blog, and various other bloggers who wrote about being affected by hoarder. I have been in denial about all this, especially since she wasn't as bad as she is now when I was growing up, but the more I read and learn, the clearer it becomes to me. I have spent a great deal of my adult life wondering why I am not smart enough to be organized for any length of time, why I can't seem to get it together and put things in places where they go, instead of sitting out so I can see them, that way I know where they are. I have felt so stupid and lazy and just worthless in this area, and the more I read, the more I understand one of the biggest reasons I have trouble with this is because I was just never really taught how, and I learned by the example I lived with. I don't want to perpetuate this cycle with my own kids. I have a lot to talk to my therapist about this week, obviously.

Reading stories of children who are tasked with cleaning out their parents houses after they die, I am getting a glimpse of what will be in my future if my mom keeps going the way she is. She has made it clear she doesn't think she has a problem, and that my interference was unwanted. I can't help her, and I can't make her help herself. This is fucking hard.

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No, this is not the baby seller fundy. I just brought her up because it was weird to have two head-explody fundy-based incidents within two days of each other.

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Thank you so much for posting this. I really really needed to see this right now. I am dealing with my mother and her hoarding issues and things have sort of come to a head in the last month or so.

You're very welcome! We're more common than you think. Mention FJ or something when you post there so I'll know to say hello. Be forewarned, though - many of us are very angry there -- it's really our only safe place to vent - so there is less sympathy for the hoarding parent and loads of coping skills for the child that was damaged by it. Looking forward to seeing you there!

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Also, if you watch Hoarders, Matt Paxton (one of the extreme cleaning specialists) has a book called The Secret Lives of Hoarders about the causes of hoarding. He also has a podcast called 5 Decisions Away and on it they discuss many things about life in addition to hoarding and its causes. They do curse a lot on it though, so just be aware of that.

Matt Paxtons podcast FINALLY opened my husbands eyes that our respective parents both have problems. (his folks are worse than mine, but still). He still won't watch the TV show with me but he now understands why i flip the hell out when his mother tries to push giving me garbage from garage sales and he is much stronger with saying "no" to them now when they're offering something we do not need or want in our house.

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OMG I can't believe she is bitching about you posting about that. SINCE SHE HAS A BLOG ABOUT HER PRIVATE LIFE.

If she had a blog about, I dunno, housepainting and her own house was peeling and falling apart, that would be worth sharing. If she had a post about stock investing and didn't share that she lost a ton of money on bad mutual funds, that would be worth sharing for her. Since she blogs about being a housewife and mother, posting about her awful parenting is totally fair.

The only thing I can think of in her defense is that despite her aggressive try at monetizing her blog, probably nobody reads it, which makes it a little bit like picking on the underdog. But then she went and made her few readers aware of your post here anyway.

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