Help. I don’t know what to think or what to do!

[anatess2]

11 hours ago, Vort said:

I have little sympathy for someone who would knowingly cause his child pain for no good reason. I'm not "Munchausen by proxy" apologist. But the guy apparently realized he was out of line and didn't want to continue. Do we really want to treat him like a baby rapist? Given the horrors that many parents visit on their children, this one seems to rank pretty low in comparison. I'm not sure it's in the child's or family's best interest for Dad to be kicked out of the house for such an act. Maybe it is, but maybe not. Certainly if he's causing actual physical injury to the child, that must be stopped.

I don't know. Believe it or not, I don't have much sympathy for a man who would pinch his own child just to get a rise out of the kid -- though my sympathy does increase when I think he's fighting a compulsion to act in that way. But today's society in the US and Canada has gone completely nuts, where a father's and husband's importance to his family is barely even paid lip service to, and does not seem to be an important consideration in court. I may be overreacting somewhat because I'm tired of the "kick him to the curb!" attitude displayed any time a father is something less than perfect. But to say a mother will lose custody of her baby because her husband pinched the baby and made it cry, and she didn't throw him out -- that's absurd, unless there's a lot more to the story.

When a woman does it, it's called post-partum depression and there wouldn't be too much of an outcry to get a lawyer to permanently remove a child from his mother.

Believe it or not, there is such a thing as new-baby depression for men too.  It's a mental imbalanced reaction to a perceived threat of losing intimacy/specialness/whatever-it-is from his wife.

When I had my first-born, I had the completely opposite reaction to the OP's husband... I had this mental imbalance that made me think my husband is going to kill my child.  So I tried to remove him from my house.  My OB helped me through that temporary stupidity.  I opted to go med-free instead of taking the PPD meds he prescribed.  Just being aware of the imbalance plus the support and saintly patience of my husband gave me the strength to overcome it.

I'm not saying this is what the OP has.  I'm saying it is a possibility.  I would advice to consult a mental health professional before a lawyer.  The mental health professional can tell you if you're going to need a lawyer.

Edited August 23, 2018 by anatess2

[JayKi]

7 hours ago, Vort said:

Stop judging me!

Get a life and/or grow up. You are loser who has nothing better to do than be mean to me. Now I judge you as sad lonely pitiful human with boring life.  

[Vort]

4 hours ago, JayKi said:

Get a life and/or grow up. You are loser who has nothing better to do than be mean to me. Now I judge you as sad lonely pitiful human with boring life.  

You are soooooo judgmental. Meanie. Remember, Weasel Stomping Day comes every year...

[Latter-Day Marriage]

1 hour ago, Vort said:

You are soooooo judgmental. Meanie. Remember, Weasel Stomping Day comes every year...

 

[Guest LiterateParakeet]

On 8/21/2018 at 2:31 PM, JayKi said:

You should no forgive him. Only a messed up person would harm child. 

JayKi, when I read this I thought you meant "Don't forgive him and stay with him...you need to protect your child."   Is that what you meant?  If so I agree with you.  Later, when the child is safe....then she can prayerfully consider forgiveness, but the first thing to do is ensure the safety of the child, right?

Here's a scripture I think is applicable to abuse cases....

D&C 98

43 And if he trespass against thee the third time, and repent not, thou shalt also forgive him.

44 But if he trespass against thee the fourth time thou shalt not forgive him, but shalt bring these testimonies before the Lord; and they shall not be blotted out until he repent and reward thee four-fold in all things wherewith he has trespassed against thee.

45 And if he do this, thou shalt forgive him with all thine heart; and if he do not this, I, the Lord, will avenge thee of thine enemy an hundred-fold;

46 And upon his children, and upon his children’s childrenof all them that hate me, unto the third and fourth generation.

 

Edited August 24, 2018 by LiterateParakeet

[anatess2]

15 hours ago, JayKi said:

Get a life and/or grow up. You are loser who has nothing better to do than be mean to me. Now I judge you as sad lonely pitiful human with boring life.  

Jayki, I know you don't speak Americanese so these are going over your head.. 

I hate to break up good trollish fun but Vort was pulling your leg.

A Jayki Lesson on idiomatic expressions:
Pulling your leg - To tease or joke with someone, often by trying to convince him or her of something untrue.

 

[jerome1232]

Great, now I'll have weasel stomping day playing in my head all day.

Thanks Vort. Thanks. 😑

[Guest MormonGator]

21 minutes ago, jerome1232 said:

Great, now I'll have weasel stomping day playing in my head all day
.

Better than @pams new favorite song. 

 

[askandanswer]

@JustAGuy I'm curious. When a court is trying to decide whether or not to allow a parent to stay in the same home as a baby they have been hitting or pinching, what are the arguements in favour of keeping the parent in the home that might carry some weight with the Court, and how does the Court go about deciding how much weight to give each arguement for and against? And how much does the gender of the accused change the weighting?

[zil]

9 minutes ago, askandanswer said:

@JustAGuy I'm curious. When a court is trying to decide whether or not to allow a parent to stay in the same home as a baby they have been hitting or pinching, what are the arguements in favour of keeping the parent in the home that might carry some weight with the Court, and how does the Court go about deciding how much weight to give each arguement for and against? And how much does the gender of the accused change the weighting?

I can't begin to answer this question, but I see a pattern in the question which matches the pattern I came to understand when I was in Moscow, Russia.  Specifically:

1) In Russia, the thinking (generally accepted by the population - or at least those I interacted with) is that you aren't allowed to do something unless the law said you were allowed to do it.

2) In the US, however, the default assumption is that you can do anything you want unless a law explicitly forbids it.  (Unfortunately, far too many people who think the Russian way are coming into power here and trying to establish laws that follow that pattern.)

Your question is correctly phrased for Russia - you need justification to allow the parent to stay in the home.  But it's backward for the US.  In the US, you need to prove that he should not be allowed to stay in the home.  This may seem like semantics to some, but it's a crucial difference.

(NOTE: Given the parenthetical comment in #2, it's entirely possible that in this kind of scenario, US laws are like #1, I wouldn't know - that's one of the reasons I can't begin to answer the question.)

[Just_A_Guy]

27 minutes ago, askandanswer said:

@JustAGuy I'm curious. When a court is trying to decide whether or not to allow a parent to stay in the same home as a baby they have been hitting or pinching, what are the arguements in favour of keeping the parent in the home that might carry some weight with the Court, and how does the Court go about deciding how much weight to give each arguement for and against? And how much does the gender of the accused change the weighting?

It’s a pretty subjective, case-specific analysis; and this is one field of the law where two judges can look at the same case and give wildly different results based on the judges’ own background and values and perceptions and opinions.  

If I were still a parental defender, some arguments I might try to run that I would expect the court to take semi-seriously would be:  

—The nature of the bond between the child and the offending parent, the fact that the bond isn’t (usually) *all* bad, and the trauma of disrupting even the good parts of that bond (which even very young children have been clinically shown to experience).

—The nonoffending parent’s recognition of the threat posed by the offending parent and their will and ability to control that threat

—The offending parent’s recognition of the problem and willingness to be subject to protective measures (never being alone with kid, etc)

—The presence/availability of other supports and monitors in the home

—whether the abuse was a calculated, premeditated act; versus simply a case of a frazzled parent losing their cool

—The famly’s practical ability to maintain separate households (not a *major* factor, but it does come up)

Gender *per se* shouldn’t make a huge difference.  But indirectly it still can insofar that certain questions can’t help but have gender-specific answers (is the baby nursing?  Who has been the primary caretaker?  Who has been the primary breadwinner?  Can the 5’2” 98-pound-parent physically restrain the 6’5” 250-pound parent, if needed?).

The other aspect, which I suggested earlier upthread, is that depending on the jurisdiction the sorts of conduct described in the OP—while undeniably crappy parenting—may not be “abuse” as a matter of law; especially if they don’t leave physical marks/bruises/lacerations.  At least in my jurisdiction, (with some technical exceptions that don’t matter in this discussion) court jurisdiction doesn’t attach at all if the court can’t find that “abuse” or “neglect” actually occurred.

Edited August 24, 2018 by Just_A_Guy

[askandanswer]

Thank you JAG, that's interesting.