UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

I have been reading a lot about this document from Home School Legal Defense lately, and what I have read has all been scary in that it would not only take away the rights of the parent, but also of the US to determine child safety laws. Those who are pushing it in the US say it would not jeopardize homeschooling, but it is happening right now in the UK. Anna has some posts about it already, so to avoid duplication, I will just put up links.

Warning from HSLDA
Who to contact
Is your congressman a sponsor?

I did try to call Ambassador Rice, and the phone is still off, so I went looking for the address of the UN building. Here is the address, and the letter I sent if you would like to copy it (obviously you might need to take out the foster parent part). I dated it July 4th and will wait to mail it then as I felt that the perfect day to send off my opinion on the idea of giving away American freedoms.

Ambassador Susan Rice
c/o United Nations
1775 K Street Suite 400
Washington, DC 20006

July 4, 2009

Dear Ms. Rice,

I am writing to you regarding my serious concerns over the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. As a foster parent, I certainly have a great deal of regard for the protection of children and their rights to safety and happiness. What I disagree with is the notion that our nation, pioneers in the advancement of child protection laws, educational standards, and equal opportunity, would need to take a step backward and join a convention that would not only supersede US law, but have absolutely no benefit to our society whatsoever. The Child Protection system in our country is not broken. What is broken is the ability of parents and teachers to keep kids safe because of those who already do whatever they wish with no regard for the rights and safety of others.

In the US, we see the ill effects of advancing the ‘rights’ of children who do not have the maturity to make such consequential decisions. Already we have schools full of children who cannot be controlled because they have learned that those is authority do not have the power to make them behave. The CRC gives a child the right to refuse to follow any rule or regulation that he may find ‘stifles’ his creativity. Were we to adopt the CRC, the stripping away of parents' rights to train their children would leave all of society very similar to that of many High Schools, where the few adults present are token caretakers and the children, not mature enough to be responsible and yet protected by their right to free expression, would be free to engage in whatever behaviors they desire. And who will take responsibility for the outcome? Surely not the parents, whose very rights to teach those children right and wrong have been relinquished to the UN!?!?

You have stated that the failure of the US to ratify this convention would be a disgrace. What would be a true disgrace is the handing away of US sovereignty to the UN for no purpose other than making nice. If you personally desire to be ruled by a patron, move to Europe and one of its many EU member states. Leave to the US, the birthplace of freedom and countless great reformers, the determination of what is best for the best. We fought for our independence….it is not yours to give away.

Lover of Freedom,

Amy *****

I also contacted my congressman and told him he needed to step up like many of the other Ohio congressmen already did and protect what is not broken. If you read the studies and statistics, the problem is not with parents stifling their kids' creativity. The problems are in homes where the parents are either absent or too permissive. Giving kids a bill of rights will only increase the problems tenfold!

The Staus of Blessed Motherhood

As any of you who have read here for long know, I have considered deleting the whole blog for some time. I believe the hour is late and there are grave issues to be watched closely. As a mother of young children, I don't have the time to devote to researching and reporting on these issues as they ought to be covered. I also feel the need to start pulling back and concealing as much as we can about our life.

I was also faced with a feeling of exposure when someone connected to my kids' past found my blog and was using the information found therein in a way that filled me with fear. It can be hard to remember that they are ours forever and legally adopted with no one who can lay any claim to them, but as someone who struggles with the everyday attachment issues, having anyone feel they still own any part of those kids shakes me harder than I care to admit.

The decision has been made, in conjunction with my husband, to leave the blog here, as we use cards for witnessing that bring people to this page and the gospel message. There are also many who ask questions about fostering/adopting that are easier answered once than repeatedly. We have deleted a great many posts in order to protect our kids and their schedules better. We also know that fostering and adopting kids is a calling, and regardless of the number of days left on this earth, there is a need for networking among those of similar convictions. As the world becomes more rebellious and decadent, our kids will be more drawn to the behaviors and people they were removed from.

I apologize for any broken links or missing explanations. Feel free to point them out and I will correct them as best as I can.

Lastly, the only true questions, and what everything I have ever written here points to, is where are you headed? Can you truly close your eyes and pretend that what is going on around you is merely coincidence? The is ONE true and Holy G-d who has laid out the end from the beginning for any who are willing to listen. Do not kid yourself about your standing with Him. He is only merciful to those who have accepted his offer of atonement- the blood of the Lamb. Don't wait until it is too late to find out you are lost.

Shalom,

Amy- mother of many

Fireproof

We watched the new movie Fireproof last night, and it left me with a stomach ache that is still present this morning (even after Tums and water). I won’t give away the plot, but the gist is that when marriage gets hard, people find out what real love is- because it is not based on feelings. Real love is the choice to do what is best for someone regardless of whether they have earned it. It was a kick in the stomach to me for more reasons than the obvious.

Gary and I have had quite a rough patch lately. I will tell you that the stress of ironing out the details of the problem we’ve been working on for over a year are the precursor, but we also both know better than to use our spouse as a rug-beater. The movie was a reminder more than a shocking awakening when it comes to us, though, because we’ve discussed before that even when things get rough or we aren’t ‘feeling it’, we committed ourselves for life. What surprised me is how convicted I was by the movie over my attitude toward some of my children.

In watching the extras on the DVD, the director said a certain scene was the crux of the whole movie, because the main character (played by Kirk Cameron) realizes that the frustration he feels over his wife’s rejection is exactly the same way he has been relating to the L-rd. He cannot show her real love because he has not experienced it himself.

Ouch.

As much as I might argue in my head that our kids should feel gratitude toward all that we have sacrificed for them in order to fully accept and understand what the Father has done for them, the fact is that in my own mind, they don’t deserve such grace because they have not earned it. In light of what we saw last night, I am faced with one of two choices: either I haven’t experienced that unearned love myself and therefore don’t understand it, or I have and am being stingy in offering it to others. That is not a mirror I like looking in to.

I have let myself become a barren desert when it comes to one child in particular, and know fixing it will be excruciatingly painful. I have even thought to myself lately that I will not be in heaven because I cannot forgive her (Matthew 6:14-15) but have to honestly consider if being able to hold my grudge is worth the cost of my own forgiveness (and for so much more). Because I am so utterly addicted to the Father, there really isn't an option. I will not come before him like the man who was forgiven a large debt and yet refused to forgive another's debt.

More on the Nadya Suleman Story

The more I read, the angrier I get, and I have not been able to get ahold of Anne Curry to let her know how discriminatory I felt her interview was in comparison to the other families who have had multiples, so I'll just put it here and hope some of those people who can't seem to say anything nice will at the very least know that the whole world does NOT in fact agree with their tirades.

First, for clarity, I do not agree with many of the decisions Ms. Suleman made. I am completely against IVF, as I wrote before, because it gives the doctor too much god-power. He could be throwing those embryos in the trash while pretending to implant them in order to force you into more cycles and more money. He could sell some of your embryos to someone under the table. He could use his own sperm without your knowledge. And don't give me the 'doctors live by ethical guidelines' speech, because you're the very same people who are condemning a doctor for implanting this woman to begin with. I believe in the sanctity of marriage and the sanctity of family- that both should involve a man and a woman, committed for life. And yet I find myself defending this woman against the culture of which she is a product. The culture that said you can have whatever you want and you don't have to do it the way it has always been done.

So, say someone wants a big family. Life-long dream. No progress the traditional way (married and trying to conceive), so we move to the advances in science to see if they can provide a solution. We do W+X and get Y, which is a baby. Repeat 4 more times, and get Y (except once when it results in YY). So we have a precedent here of W+X equalling Y. Even the margin of error resulted in only YY. So for a sixth time we do W+X, and get YYYYYYYY. Even people who work in statistics and probability will tell you there was no way to know that was coming. We have created a way to fiddle with the human body in order to get what we couldn't before- surely you had to figure somewhere it was going to backfire. You can't even buying an appliance without a warning that if you use it in a manner other than what the manufacturer intended it for, he will not be liable for what happens to you.

Then I keep reading comments about how a single, unemployed mother should never have that many kids- one is enough. Whoa! (so much for a woman's right to control reproduction, BTW!) If the problem is that she can't possibly care for all those children and give them what they 'need' (read: everything advertised on TV)because she is not working, then why subject even one child to a life of doing without? Feminism's jagged pill is that you have the right to demand whatever the world says is normal, but anything beyond that and you're on your own. If it is an ethical dilemma, what impact does the number of kids have? She would be just as 'unfit' to one child as to 14, no? So you're willing to pay taxes to support a woman with one kid, but that's the cut-off? You people are deranged.

On to the financial arguments. Ms. Suleman is currently living off of student loans. I'm still waiting for the point here. You mean that is different than the thousands of couples who take out loans to pay for IVF, or for overseas adoptions in countries who have made babies a commodity? That's different than someone who has a life long dream of living in a prestigious house getting a loan to pay for it? We are currently bailing out those people and their pie-in-the-sky mortgages, but the only person we can blame for such a 'scheme' is the lady who's dream was kids instead of a house? This is America- when we can't afford what we want, we charge it. We get what we want now and agree to pay for it later. And while we're talking about the financial aspect, isn't investing in kids a better risk than commodities? Kids appreciate. They will grow in value as they become old enough to work. Houses and cars depreciate. At least her investment makes logical sense! And she is using those loans to get the degree that the world has said she cannot succeed without.

Well, her house is too small. Does anybody remember the house the septuplets went home to? Or better yet, the homes our great-grandmothers not only raised large families in, but gave birth to those families in? If someone had 12 kids in an 800 square foot cabin today, they'd be taken away! Jimminy Cricket, we're sure lucky our government finally went against its own constitution to determine for us what is best, because we sure don't know ourselves. Of course, there would have been nowhere to put the kids taken into custody 200 years ago, because all the neighbors lived the same way. No wonder they were so miserably unhappy and our nation suffered a lack of inventors and heroes.

And finally, our country has 'progressed' to a point that people can condemn one another without ever meeting. Countless quacks psychologists have been paid to consult media moguls on the mental health of Ms. Suleman. Without any kind of clinical sessions or testing, they have given diagnoses ranging from an unhealthy preoccupation, to schizophrenia, all based on an hour long, edited interview with a journalist who focused on her own presuppositions to determine the questions. An interview with a woman who had just been through the most exhausting and terrifying experience of her life, both emotionally and physically. Bringing the argument full-circle to the first argument I made, in America, sanity is now subjective. G-d preserve us.

In Defense of Large Families; Revisited

I find myself amazed at the timing of my previous posts to what has become nothing short of a media circus over Nadya Suleman, the mother of the set of octuplets born in January. I feel we as believers need to be standing up for this mother of many, and finding ways to offer assistance in any way we can. Some of the reasons why are similar to the post I wrote previously when so many were in an uproar over the Duggars having #17 (yeah, that long ago). There is quite a lot of talk going on about how the doctor should not have 'let her' get pregnant again when she had six children at home. If we begin using a limiting rule for some families, it won't be long before we are right behind China is controlling people's reproduction. But there are also some specific things I think we need to consider in this situation.

First, we need to be thankful that Ms. Suleman was willing to carry her babies, even at the risk of her own life, instead of employing selective reduction. When Jamie Lyn Spears announced her pregnancy, many mommy blogers wrote in her defense because she did not decide to end what most saw as an inconvenience rather than a human life. The same argument applies here. Both women were in less than ideal situations, and thought they made choices we don't agree with, the fact that they did not abort demands our thankfulness.

Secondly, there is something of a double standard when it comes to accepting multiples in America. The McCaughey septuplets were heralded as miracles, and their parents were not publicly attacked for not choosing to reduce. The Gosselin sextuplets were heralded as miracles, and their parents were not publicly attacked for not choosing to reduce. I have seen interviews with both of those families where they were asked if their choice to use fertility treatments was maybe irresponsible because of the risk of so many babies, and both families gave an unequivocal no, because the odds were so, so slim that it was never a consideration. The chances are higher for a woman pregnant with one baby to have complications than for a woman to end up carrying six, seven, or eight viable embryos. It's like saying people are irresponsible for going outside when there is a 1 in 1,000,000,000,000 chance they will be hit by a meteor.

Third, Ms. Suleman did not do anything sneaky or untruthful. The doctor did the procedure. And while many are upset that using 6 embryos was unethical, it would seem this was the same plan they had used for the previous pregnancies. None of those pregnancies produced more than twins, and that only happened once. Even with the chance there that all 6 might develop, no one could forsee two of them splitting into twins. How can we criticize someone for something even the medical community did not see coming? One doctor interviewed for his 'professional criticism' said he never implants more than three embryos, but if you use the same standard he is using to condemn this woman, he is just as irresponsible, because those three could divide into six, which is exactly how many were implanted into Ms. Suleman. Double standard.

Finally, the money for the IVF cycles was earned through working, where Ms. Suleman undoubtedly paid taxes. Why is it so crazy then that she be getting back some of that tax money in the form of support for her children who have special needs? People are willing to pay taxes to create 'special' schools to ship the 'special' kids to, but not to help support the home they live in? I totally don't understand that reasoning. Social Security may not be something we agree with or like, but the fact is that we are paying into it, and so long as it exists, we have a right to use it when we need to.

What it boils down to is this mother is being unfairly attacked because she wants children instead of a lifestyle, she sees many children as a blessing and not a burden, and she is not wealthy. But compare those criteria to the two previous families mentioned with multiples, and they are the same. What gives?

She is single.



And in what has to be the biggest hypocrisy in the news today, the country that told women they did not need men to raise a family has turned on a woman who decided to live just that. "Well, she shouldn't be getting donations because she chose to have the kids". As did the Gosselins and the McCaugheys. Even the media is biased- the same Anne Curry who grilled Ms. Suleman does cheerful yearly updates on the McCaugheys. In reality, the best sponsors for this woman would be the National Partnership for Women and Families, the ACLU, or the National Organization for Women- the very organizations who demanded her right to have children without a partner. But we all know how fickle they are, both demanding protection for that right to chose to be a single mother, and simultaneously expecting every responsible woman to have an abortion in a case such as this. You have to fit into the mold they created.

No, the support should fall to the church as a collective to take in this woman who so valued life as to preserve it at all cost. Churches should be finding a suitable house for this large family and offering not only to be round-the-clock feeding helpers, but also protectors, acting as a shield between the violent world and this young family. No one had a problem doing it for the other miracle babies.

***Just a note, I love both the Gosselins and the McCaugheys and in no way wish to criticize them or the support they were given. I merely think it ought to be just as liberally applied when the circumstances aren't what people want them to be.

Homemade Lysol

With this being the time of year for sickies, I've been re-examining the stuff I use. Hand sanitizer and antiviral spray are great for times when you cannot easily get to a sink and soap (like at the fair or the zoo) or after using a public restroom (those things are SO not clean). But using them frequently can cause a host of problems, including hampering the ability to fight germs if the alcohol kills the good bacteria in the stomach and mouth. So while I'm not throwing away the sanitizer and I still carry a can of Lysol in the car, I wanted to find something that would work without so many side-effects. I was researching homemade hair treatments- of all things- and came across this tidbit of info about vinegar and peroxide:

Vinegar mixed with hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is used in the livestock industry to kill bacteria and viruses before refrigerated storage. A chemical mixture of peracetic acid is formed when acetic acid is mixed with hydrogen peroxide. Vinegar is being used in some Asian countries in an aerosol spray to control pneumonia. A mixture of five-percent acetic acid and three-percent hydrogen peroxide is commonly used.

A few years ago we had a group of missionaries come and stay with us, and they brought the rotovirus. I had never experienced it before (or since, hallelujah) and found myself spraying the crib mattresses and the bathtub several times a day with either Lysol or bleach water. Both were offensive to the nostrils (because no matter what kind of fragrance they try to add, that stuff still stinks) and I'm sure a menace to the septic tank and the material being sprayed. Peroxide can discolor some materials, so be cautious, but generally when we're talking about sickie germs, it's the bathroom where they congregate most.

Buy an empty spray bottle and label it so that it does not get used for anything else. Then mix

1 part 5% white vinegar
1 part 3% peroxide
if you want, a few drops of fragrance

Turn the nozzle until it is the finest mist you can get. Spray on surface and allow to sit for 5 minutes. Wipe off if desired (like the toilet seat, not only because no one wants a wet tuchus, but also so you don't get it on clothes and discolor them).

Stupid Books

I feel like a real heel writing this after Jeannie's supportive comment, but I have promised her to always be truthful about all of it so that she doesn't not go into it blinded like we did. Sometimes I really wish I could turn back time and change the decisions I have made in my life. Most notably (and guilt-causing) is the adoption of the four oldest kids. Nice people don't think that way- or at least they never admit it. What kind of a monster could regret taking on children who so desperately needed them? A monster who is completely wrung out and not even half way done.

When we realized in December that we were at the end of our rope with some of the kids and decided, against everything we believe in, to put them in school, we had a decision to make. Either we warn the teachers what is coming and by default give the kids the sympathy that allows them to get away with everything (as happened every time before) or we say nothing and allow the teachers to think we are just the worst parents possible. We decided on the latter, though we understood there came with it the risk that the teacher would be so concerned as to contact Child Services and there is always that nagging fear that they will remove all the kids while they sort it out. But we knew the other way had reaped only trouble, as the teachers would turn psychiatrist/social worker and try to force on us their opinion of how to parent these kids.

Always the victim, Nellie faked unintelligence on the placement exams, which landed her right back in third grade. I thought finally she was seeing the consequence for her actions, since she was bored already the first week. But she quickly found a way to make it work for her- continue playing dumb and you get special attention from the reading specialist, the math specialist, and the room mother/volunteer. And I know it is pride that made my first concern in all this that the teacher was secretly cursing both of us and homeschooling in general for creating such a dim-witted child. So with that bee in my bonnet, everything that has come up since has perturbed me to an all new level.

There are some Christian marriage guides that I own and have given to others as wedding gifts. I don't agree with everything in all of them, but find enough good to make them worth reading. I never agreed that it was necessary for a marriage to have 'weekend honeymoons' as often as possible. After all, no where in the Bible is there an example of parents leaving their kids with someone else while they took a romantic trip. Thousands of marriages survived without vacations. But when I read it this time, I was livid. Well, isn't that requiring a lot of people who have no one who can and or will care for their children? After all, I sent my boys to my brother's' house for one night last week and have had nothing but problems since. What if you don't have the money to go somewhere? Is your marriage doomed? This idea started to make me so mad I was ready to go toe-to-toe with the author. Or at the very least burn his book.

Then came the whole years-long discussion about moving. We've talked about how it might benefit the kids, but decided it wasn't going to benefit them enough to make it a priority in the decision. Our kids are likely going to turn out the same whether we give them a 'fresh start' or not. Then last night on a show I have started watching, the family announced they were moving and the reason was it was best for the kids. So I'm a selfish hypocrite, am I? Is what's best for the kids really the most important factor in determining the resat of your life? (all rhetorical- this family doesn't even know we exist) One of the hazards of this job is thinking the whole world is out to judge me.

And perhaps I should stop reading altogether, because I found myself weeping over Little House on the Prairie. I allow myself the luxury of reading these books in the winter, when the outside work is limited and there are many dark hours of the day. The way those girls not only respected but obeyed their parents made me jealous and angry at the same time. Why can't kids be like that anymore? Especially when they were rescued out of such evil circumstances? It it simply what Paul prophesied, that kids would be less and less obedient as time drew to a close? Is it all the pressure of society with the 'takes a village' crap and kids knowing the world will intervene on their behalf??? I don't know, but I can never see Nellie acting like Laura Ingalls and it ticks me off. There's a character in the later Little House books, Ida, who is adopted and is so thankful to have a family, she never asks for anything and is always cheerful. Instead, I have the true character we named her after- Nellie.

Down with books and happy endings! Seriously.

PS- at the risk of your own life, do not send me comments about how kids never really behaved that well. I have studied history enough to know what I'm talking about.