NOT A PARTNER Not a Partner not a part......

The Illinois Children's Mental Health Executive Summary is out as is the Plan submitted to the governor June 30th. Rather than repeat my mantra and quotes from their invasive recommendations and strategies, I will state that one of the most crucial issues is that I am NOT a partner (key or otherwise) to any governmental agencies or primary care providers or what have you. My husband and I are IN CHARGE of our children.

Isn't it ironic that folks who deal with our children in various modes often gripe and moan about how parents just don't cut it these days? That parents don't take charge or discipline their children?

Here's the scoop as far as I'm concerned. They've had that right taken away from them again and again. What is this insane world where children now have their parents and family as "key partners" with governmental agencies? For criminy sakes, let's think about this and see it for what it is!

Do I even want to be asked if my children will undertake a mental health screening? No. If I'm taking the kid in for a rash, then I don't want to be messed with for a mental health screening. Sheesh...As I write this, it is just so ludicrous and yet so reality based in Illinois.

If my children need a mental health screening, I will find the appropriate person to suit that bill and ask for help.

hmmm... No surprise as I look for literary help here (I can always use some of that) and God bless Home Education Magazine. I did a search on their site for "parental rights" and had 39 hits. Here's one sample voicing my angst very nicely

The rights and responsibilities of parents to raise their children need to be respected and protected so that families can continue their role as the foundation of our society. Respect and protection for parents' rights and responsibilities is not easy to secure, partly because it has to be balanced with the need to protect children from abuse and neglect. However, families are being undermined by recent attempts to protect children by increasing the power and authority of the state, particularly in the areas of education and social services. Increasingly parents feel the need to protect their parental rights and responsibilities.
It is tempting to think that parental rights and responsibilities could be simply and securely protected by laws and/or constitutional amendments. However, this will not work. First of all, parents' relationships with and responsibilities to their children are too fundamental, too broad, too basic to human existence to be effectively contained within a simple legal statement. But perhaps even more basic, there is no way to gain legal protection from the government without first surrendering basic liberties and rights to the government. Our parental rights and responsibilities will be far stronger and more secure if we work to maintain them in ways that are independent of the state rather than turning to the state to protect them.

Kasemans' wrote this regarding H. R. 1946, the "Parental Rights and Responsibilities Act of 1995 and concluded with

Parental rights cannot be protected by legislation. Attempts to do so can easily lead to increasing government intervention in family life and requirements that parents comply with government standards in education, health care, and other areas.

That was in '96. They had it right. This psychiatrist Chester Pierce, foretold the future plans in a sickening way
From The Underground History Of American Education

Along the way to this milestone, important way stations were reached beyond the scope of this book to list. The strand IÂ’ve shown is only one of many in the tapestry. The psychological goals of this project and the quality of mind in back of them are caught fairly in the keynote address to the 1973 Childhood International Education Seminar in Boulder, Colorado, delivered by Harvard psychiatrist Chester M. Pierce. This quote appears to have been edited out of printed transcripts of the talk, but was reported by newspapers in actual attendance:
"Every child in America entering school at the age of five is mentally ill because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, and toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It's up to you as teachers to make all these sick children well by creating the international child of the future."

I imagine statements like this were inconceivable and scandalous to most families then, but kids' allegiance to their parents is now a partnering with governmental agencies issue regarding their 'mental health'. Crazy!