Thursday, August 10, 2006

Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

If you think the forces of evil aren't subtly trying to snatch your children, think again. This should make your skin crawl and cause you to ask yourself "Do I know who has access and influence over my children today?"

From HSLDA's website:
Children in Utah public schools face yet another danger: suicide screening. TeenScreen, a national organization whose goal includes having mental check-ups for all of the nation’s youth, has been using public schools as an avenue for finding youth to screen under their Mental Health Screening program.

This screening is given to children as young as 9 years old and raises questions such as: Have you thought seriously about trying to kill yourself? Do you think often of killing yourself? Have you tried to kill yourself? These children agree to the screen for rewards of gift certificates for movies, food, parties, or clothing. Often parents are not asked or even told if their child is screened.


But wait, it gets worse.

Wake up, parents. Pay attention to where your children are, and who they are with. By that, I mean the adults in their lives. Peer pressure is nothing compared to influences like this.

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:29 PM

    This was amazing.... I sent it to my friend, who is a social worker, working with kids in this age group and it was interesting to see her response:

    wow that is unbelievable that they are doing this somewhere in a school system. I know that in Washington we can maintain confidentiality with children 13 or older, which means we cannot give any info to parents unless the kid signs a consent or are a danger to self or others. Basically a kid can tell us about drugs, criminal activity such as shoplifting etc, and we have to keep their confidence unless we can determine that what they are doing is imminantly dangerous to their life. In some states, such as Hawaii, parents have full rights until age 18. I have never heard of the survey and worry that there is a degree of danger just in bringing it up. I think if a teacher notices a kid seems very depressed and talking to the parents doesn't help they could do a CPS report which might encourage the parents to take the kid to a counselor. I believe only professionally trained folks should do suicide assessments. I know that when a kid in a school suicides we worry about copy cats and I wonder if some kids that may have never considered such a thing may start to think about it after this survey. Again if someone notices a change in mood, behavior, etc it is responsible to refer to professionals but parents need to be informed as well. I hope this gives you my opinion.

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  2. That is an interesting response in that there is 'policy' somewhere in Washington that allows 13 year old children to have confidences with adults other than their parents. I realize there are extreme cases where parents are uninvolved in their children's lives, but the idea that it is assumed that parents would not repsond appropriately to their children after age 13 is treading on dangerous ground. I maintain that there is simply no right of the state to interefere in a law abiding family. Period. Does the "danger to themselves or others" include abortion? I'll bet not.

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