Day old Dill

I forgot about this comment here from early 2008 about The Twisty Twirly Mother’s Act, until I was digging around this morning. 

Nancy Gray said this below in response to my opposition of legislative interventions into our families’ mental health:

So, what’s your point? The Bill was introduced on June 15, 2006 and hasn’t had any attention since then. The bill also doesn’t mandate anything…it merely offers.What worries you so much about educating mothers at birth concerning mental health? What frightens you about screenings being available for those who want them for their children, or for those where extreme mental illness is evident? Where are you threatened by help made available to those children who are suffering and not receiving care? I don’t understand your apparent fear of this bill, but it makes me wonder if your children might really need a voice for themselves someday. For your sake and theirs, I certainly hope that isn’t the case.

Nancy doesn’t understand my opposition and therefore it makes her wonder….After reading that again, it made me wonder how I kept my head enough to respond with some facts. At the time, I think I also felt it must be a drag always looking for trouble (abuse) in your neighbors and community. Maybe I felt that at the time, there was no need to add to the pain.

Kicking up to a little over a year later, the Mother’s Act has not died and has had plenty of attention. Chicagoan Bobby Rush added a name (and some emotion) to the package and it has passed the House of Representatives in DC. The affiliated Senate bill was introduced in January of this year and sits in the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

People like Nancy don’t want children or families to live a life of abuse or tragically lose their life.  I don’t either.  Melanie Blocker Stokes was being treated by physicians and she still tragically died.  It’s heartbreaking.

One abuse method that I’m aware of is drugging children for no good reason.  See Medicating Aliah in the Mother Jones magazine.  There’s so many more kids who’ve suffered the same.  Many families pull their children out of schools to homeschool because of some educators’ diagnoses to take a drug.  From USA Today in 2005

No wonder many parents respond to a teacher’s concerns with alarm or denial. "They shoot the messenger, blame the teacher, blame the school. They think there’s a conspiracy by the drug companies. They just don’t want to hear it," says Edward Hallowell, a Sudbury, Mass., psychiatrist who is co-author of two popular books on ADHD.

Of course, teachers aren’t always right. They know a lot about children but are not qualified diagnosticians. But they often are right. And experts say a teacher’s concern should always prompt action.

Parents are understandably concerned or alarmed if they know a teacher’s diagnosis is the first step to a potential problem.   The medication that is often the companion would cause a natural state of denial until many questions were answered. 

I just wrote my usual screed on a homeschool list about my observations and research of the pharmaceutical companies’ lobbying influence.  A comment about mental health screening in Texas being similiar to Stepford Wives spurred this post, so I’ll include an edited version below.  It includes another sad saga about all this governmental ‘help’:

The saddest and most sickening piece of this mental health screening/drugging game is that proponents push through universal teenscreen or pregnant/new mother mental health screening legislation saying it’s "for the kids" who can’t get help because they’re "poor" or "rural". "Poor" and "rural" seem to be synonymous to many of the city folks in our illogical society. Let alone using that to make mental health intervention necessary for all.

Too many of the kids and infants in ‘the system’ are drugged (or chemically restrained) with allergy medicine or anti-depressants to keep them out of it or sleeping. In Illinois, since the 2003 IL Childrens Mental Health Act passage, ALL children within the system (foster kids, those under Dept of Children and Family Services oversight) are screened for their ‘mental health’. They have no choice.

The IL mental health industry/lobbyists wrote the legislation to match the federal New Freedom Commission report so that the federal grants were available to them. It’s pervasive throughout the US.

The method for teens (TeenScreen) has been noted in the New Freedom Commission report and in Illlinois legislation.

The Edinburgh Scale seems to be the typical mental health screen for pregnant and new moms:

Nancy’s allegations about my family were not the first time that I’ve seen attempts to shut opponents down. What happens when a person using those tactics has the legal authority to intimidate,threaten and then follow up and interfere in your family with such subjective means? Personally, I like to brag about my children never being "school ready" (lining up and such).  "School readiness" is the focus of universal preschool and social/emotional learning standards.

In Illinois, there are many who don’t consider this a "home school" issue. Fortunately, there are many who get it, and know they’ll be coming after homeschoolers in some doctors’ offices during routine checkups if the trend continues. Again, bravo to the Texas homeschooling community in fighting this!

I screen my kids every day regarding their mental health. When you have characters like Dick Durbin and George W Bush agreeing on "mental health", parents should be paying close attention.