Reply #20: thanks! too

[iverglas]

One question, to ask your perspective on.

Even if all of the resources that you refer to are made available, there is still a necessarily rather heavy onus on parents to make use of them, and to cooperate and assist in efforts to assist the child.

From the very little information available about the case the thread relates to, it seems that the parent might not be meeting that responsibility. In any event, there are surely other parents who don't.

I'd agree that charging a parent for failing to administer somewhat controversial medication to a child seems rather draconian -- but I'd think it might just be the only means available to "the system" to try to get the parent to recognize his/her responsibilities and take the situation seriously, and assume his/her share of the burden of meeting the child's needs.

It's possible that this school was trying to help this child and was being thwarted by the parent's non-cooperation, and needed something to hit her over the head with to get her attention (oops) and get her to direct her mind to the seriousness of the problem and her own contribution to it, by threatening her with some (even if not necessarily appropriate) consequence for failing to do that.

Just a baseless hypothesis -- it may indeed be more likely that the mother was in some way unable, rather than unwilling, to do her part -- but meant to point out that sometimes parents actually are the bad guys.