The allegations against L.B., made by an anonymous caller at 4:45 a.m. that day, were false. These included that she was a stripper (she worked at a home for people with disabilities); that she used drugs (none were found, and a drug test was negative for all substances); and that an abusive man lived with her and that she owned “machine guns” (after an exhaustive search and interrogation, both claims were deemed baseless).
In fact, L.B. has never been found to have committed any type of child maltreatment, ACS and court records show.
Yet the anonymous caller, whom L.B. believes to be a former acquaintance with a grudge, has continued to dial in to New York’s state child welfare hotline. Each time, this person or possibly people make outlandish, often already-disproven claims about her, seeming to know that doing so will automatically trigger a government intrusion into her domestic life.
And ACS obliges: Over the past three years, the agency either has inspected her home or examined and questioned her son at school more than two dozen times. Caseworkers have sought a warrant for only three of these searches, most recently in August. All of those requests have been rejected by judges, according to court records.
Man, I’ve literally done that.
Christmas parties at my grandparents house usually meant spending the entire day in the basement because there were too many people. For me It’s usually not a number of people thing, but how many people are in a room relative to its size.
I do want to give you some good news though. Despite my persistent anxiety, I have recently discovered that it has made me incredibly resilient to sudden stressors I wasn’t anxious of prior. I would not be surprised if your daughter builds the same resilience either. It won’t be easy, nor intentional, but it is a small gift from it.
You never know what strengths you will gain from childhood adversity and I hope she gains some through the hardships she’s experienced. And I think it is the same with her, it’s more about how many people are in a room relative to its size, which is a big problem with my wife’s family gatherings because she has a huge family, but she also has a lot of trouble with noise levels and with unfamiliar people, so she has a lot of issues when it comes to social anxiety.