Thinking about it, the story I told doesn't fit your purposes, because nothing is proven. I actually don't know that Natalia is not a victim of sexual abuse. I only know that whatever is true, the child protection officers involved are handling the case abysmally.
>>I was always aware that there are multiple layers of doubt involved; I did mention that I didn't know any of the people involved.
I also don't know the people involved. I have met some of them, and some I haven't even met. That adds another layer of doubts: Even the source of the story doesn't know much. From what I know, I wouldn't dare to make many conclusions. If there is anything I have learned, it is that a certain fog of doubt needs to be kept around all cases where child protection services are involved: They tend to be complex and double-sided.
>>OK Tove, why are they doing that? Why would they handle it the same abysmal way in the United States?
They don't handle it the same abysmal way even in Sweden. The family just had bad luck and happened to live where the social services are
crazy. They would have handled it better in the neighboring town. Or on a better day.
The worst thing is that the child protection office involved is certified according to a system called Signs of Safety. Every year the staff attends courses in how not to handle things this way. The book I gave away to the politician is a Signs of Safety-book that tells how cases exactly like this one should be handled (short version: make sure that accuser and accused never spend time together alone). The knowledge is there. It is just that when social workers are free to decide whatever they want, they are also free to make bad decisions.
It's always frustrating when people don't do their jobs, and I can appreciate the basic wisdom in separating accused from accuser in these situations. However, I really do think there's a larger issue that you're not seeing.
I think I'm seeing roughly what you are seeing on a psychological plan. I even know about exactly such a case: A man I'm acquainted with was accused of sexual abuse by his then teenaged daughter. Now he is an old man. The daughter is in her 40s and is so affected by borderline disorder that she can't lead an independent adult life.
So what you are writing about clearly exists. I just think the story I told contains too many question marks to be a useful example.
I would like to gently suggest that you may be focusing on aspects of the case that are not really central to what I'm trying to write about.
Let's leave aside the question of sexual abuse entirely. Maybe it happened, and maybe it didn't. I'm more interested in the other details.
According to the information we have:
* Beforehand, Natalia's mother felt pressured or bullied by her
* During the trial, Natalia did not merely recant, but changed her story multiple times, even accusing her mother of making her do it,
* Natalia belittled her mother's appearance after the fact, as her mother is trying to visit her.
This paints the picture of a girl who was mean to begin with. A normal girl would, after being removed from her home, try to cling to her mother. Even presuming that sexual abuse occurred, why is she persisting in treating her mother this way?
The very best we might say in Natalia's defense is that perhaps her *mother* was so truly awful that Natalia feels no affection towards her. Either way, somebody is very weird, the mother-child bond has been ruined, and Natalia is now looking at a long and dismal time in foster care.
> A man I'm acquainted with was accused of sexual abuse by his then teenaged daughter... The daughter is in her 40s and is so affected by borderline disorder that she can't lead an independent adult life.
Maybe you do understand this, but, I am not trying to say abuse --> disorder.
Borderline personality disorder is highly heritable, it correlates positively with psychopathy, with which it shares the same dishonest core. Maybe the father inflicted a disorder on his daughter; but maybe the same genes were simply shared. This woman in her 40's is now so affected by borderline disorder that she can't lead an independent adult life? OK, so someone has to care for her. Is it really working? And most critically:
What about the many more women in their 40's with not-quite-borderline-personality-disorder who sour their places of work, their churches, their family get-togethers, and their friendship groups with impulsivity and egocentric sensitivity? How do we, as a society, cope with the weight of their wickedness?
>>I would like to gently suggest that you may be focusing on aspects of the case that are not really central to what I'm trying to write about.
I would say the same! Otherwise someone could believe that I'm speculating about people I meet without any moderation. And I don't. But I also can't ban people from thinking what they think when they read what I write (and in addition to that, you also asked for permission to cite my story).
You are right that whatever the facts are, Natalia will never be the nicests kid in town. Which is an important thing to know about foster care: Many children end up there at least partially because of psychological peculiarities. Which makes the whole business all the more complicated.
That being said, it is not true that Natalia didn't miss her mother. It seems like she did. Initially she made attempts to be released from foster care, but to no avail. She has a too weak relationship to her mother, but she still had some kind of relationship. The social workers just did their best to make a weak relationship even weaker. Most of all for denying Natalia and her mother any opportunity to meet unsupervised. And they succeeded. In theory the social services are supposed to help people with their social relationships, but in practice they often like better to do the opposite.
What disturbs me most is that although we know that Natalia isn't nicest in town, we don't know how hopeless she is. A kid acting like that needs a psychological evaluation. If she was sexually abused, for psychological trauma, if she wasn't, for being bad at close relationships. As far as I know, she only met a psychologist in the beginning because she was so upset over being moved to foster care.
I'm a bit surprised at your interpretation of the story about Natalia and Kasia and Jimmy. I guess I have seen too much misery, because I didn't find Natalia's behavior outrageous. I mean, it wasn't GOOD, but still, such things happen. She was nine years old. Kids do stupid things. Some kids more than others. The real criminals are the social workers who denied Natalia a fair trial. Sentencing a child to grow up in foster care because she made up an elaborate lie on one occasion is just unfair.
My sense is that "dilligaf" and "no filter" have more a flavor of classic low-emotionality Dark Triad, although I haven't really encountered clear cases of either.
If Vulnerable Narcissists, borderlines, and other high-emotionality cases have tells, I would guess that they're more related to claims of emotional depth and special sensitivity.
Low emotionality, low honesty really genuinely doesn't care. High emotionality, low honesty definitely cares, it's just that everything still relates to the self.
the tells are flags not confirmations i guess (i've known a covert & a borderline to use these phrases early on in meeting new peeps, in order to create a bubble of warning attention, the same way wasps are clearly black & yellow stripes, but if you don't know it's a warning... they eat you.) Said in 'jest' of course. (edited: Oooh typo was 'ingest' a pun.)
those (honest) claims to depth and special personalities are usually not volunteered by vulnerable in first meeting peeps, or early on, as are the more aggressive-defensive dilligaffs etc, but are said later when trying to negotiate a free pass on something, and certainly not to those perceived as being dominated by them (tells in context)
Actually it turns out they ignored my request for TTS. Maybe my blog is too small still? My email is working now, and I made another request, but who knows what they'll say
Thinking about it, the story I told doesn't fit your purposes, because nothing is proven. I actually don't know that Natalia is not a victim of sexual abuse. I only know that whatever is true, the child protection officers involved are handling the case abysmally.
I was always aware that there are multiple layers of doubt involved; I did mention that I didn't know any of the people involved.
> whatever is true, the child protection officers involved are handling the case abysmally.
OK Tove, why are they doing that? Why would they handle it the same abysmal way in the United States?
>>I was always aware that there are multiple layers of doubt involved; I did mention that I didn't know any of the people involved.
I also don't know the people involved. I have met some of them, and some I haven't even met. That adds another layer of doubts: Even the source of the story doesn't know much. From what I know, I wouldn't dare to make many conclusions. If there is anything I have learned, it is that a certain fog of doubt needs to be kept around all cases where child protection services are involved: They tend to be complex and double-sided.
>>OK Tove, why are they doing that? Why would they handle it the same abysmal way in the United States?
They don't handle it the same abysmal way even in Sweden. The family just had bad luck and happened to live where the social services are
crazy. They would have handled it better in the neighboring town. Or on a better day.
The worst thing is that the child protection office involved is certified according to a system called Signs of Safety. Every year the staff attends courses in how not to handle things this way. The book I gave away to the politician is a Signs of Safety-book that tells how cases exactly like this one should be handled (short version: make sure that accuser and accused never spend time together alone). The knowledge is there. It is just that when social workers are free to decide whatever they want, they are also free to make bad decisions.
It's always frustrating when people don't do their jobs, and I can appreciate the basic wisdom in separating accused from accuser in these situations. However, I really do think there's a larger issue that you're not seeing.
I think I'm seeing roughly what you are seeing on a psychological plan. I even know about exactly such a case: A man I'm acquainted with was accused of sexual abuse by his then teenaged daughter. Now he is an old man. The daughter is in her 40s and is so affected by borderline disorder that she can't lead an independent adult life.
So what you are writing about clearly exists. I just think the story I told contains too many question marks to be a useful example.
I would like to gently suggest that you may be focusing on aspects of the case that are not really central to what I'm trying to write about.
Let's leave aside the question of sexual abuse entirely. Maybe it happened, and maybe it didn't. I'm more interested in the other details.
According to the information we have:
* Beforehand, Natalia's mother felt pressured or bullied by her
* During the trial, Natalia did not merely recant, but changed her story multiple times, even accusing her mother of making her do it,
* Natalia belittled her mother's appearance after the fact, as her mother is trying to visit her.
This paints the picture of a girl who was mean to begin with. A normal girl would, after being removed from her home, try to cling to her mother. Even presuming that sexual abuse occurred, why is she persisting in treating her mother this way?
The very best we might say in Natalia's defense is that perhaps her *mother* was so truly awful that Natalia feels no affection towards her. Either way, somebody is very weird, the mother-child bond has been ruined, and Natalia is now looking at a long and dismal time in foster care.
> A man I'm acquainted with was accused of sexual abuse by his then teenaged daughter... The daughter is in her 40s and is so affected by borderline disorder that she can't lead an independent adult life.
Maybe you do understand this, but, I am not trying to say abuse --> disorder.
Borderline personality disorder is highly heritable, it correlates positively with psychopathy, with which it shares the same dishonest core. Maybe the father inflicted a disorder on his daughter; but maybe the same genes were simply shared. This woman in her 40's is now so affected by borderline disorder that she can't lead an independent adult life? OK, so someone has to care for her. Is it really working? And most critically:
What about the many more women in their 40's with not-quite-borderline-personality-disorder who sour their places of work, their churches, their family get-togethers, and their friendship groups with impulsivity and egocentric sensitivity? How do we, as a society, cope with the weight of their wickedness?
Sorry for dividing my reply into two, but Substack's technology for comments is not great at the moment - things disappear.
>>Maybe you do understand this, but, I am not trying to say abuse --> disorder.
Of course not, I'm just pointing out that I don't deny the possibility.
The borderline daughter lives in some kind of institution, as far as I have understood.
>>I would like to gently suggest that you may be focusing on aspects of the case that are not really central to what I'm trying to write about.
I would say the same! Otherwise someone could believe that I'm speculating about people I meet without any moderation. And I don't. But I also can't ban people from thinking what they think when they read what I write (and in addition to that, you also asked for permission to cite my story).
You are right that whatever the facts are, Natalia will never be the nicests kid in town. Which is an important thing to know about foster care: Many children end up there at least partially because of psychological peculiarities. Which makes the whole business all the more complicated.
That being said, it is not true that Natalia didn't miss her mother. It seems like she did. Initially she made attempts to be released from foster care, but to no avail. She has a too weak relationship to her mother, but she still had some kind of relationship. The social workers just did their best to make a weak relationship even weaker. Most of all for denying Natalia and her mother any opportunity to meet unsupervised. And they succeeded. In theory the social services are supposed to help people with their social relationships, but in practice they often like better to do the opposite.
What disturbs me most is that although we know that Natalia isn't nicest in town, we don't know how hopeless she is. A kid acting like that needs a psychological evaluation. If she was sexually abused, for psychological trauma, if she wasn't, for being bad at close relationships. As far as I know, she only met a psychologist in the beginning because she was so upset over being moved to foster care.
I'm a bit surprised at your interpretation of the story about Natalia and Kasia and Jimmy. I guess I have seen too much misery, because I didn't find Natalia's behavior outrageous. I mean, it wasn't GOOD, but still, such things happen. She was nine years old. Kids do stupid things. Some kids more than others. The real criminals are the social workers who denied Natalia a fair trial. Sentencing a child to grow up in foster care because she made up an elaborate lie on one occasion is just unfair.
> Sentencing a child to grow up in foster care because she made up an elaborate lie on one occasion is just unfair.
I do agree with you about this. Assuming that the story I have is true, I would vastly prefer a different outcome for Natalia and her family.
The other tells said proudly in confidence, besides "sometimes you gotta be a…" are "dilligaff" and "no filter".
I've seen children of narcissista, as survivors, can often go overly dramatic, never sure if it borderline...
My sense is that "dilligaf" and "no filter" have more a flavor of classic low-emotionality Dark Triad, although I haven't really encountered clear cases of either.
If Vulnerable Narcissists, borderlines, and other high-emotionality cases have tells, I would guess that they're more related to claims of emotional depth and special sensitivity.
Low emotionality, low honesty really genuinely doesn't care. High emotionality, low honesty definitely cares, it's just that everything still relates to the self.
nice fit there,
the tells are flags not confirmations i guess (i've known a covert & a borderline to use these phrases early on in meeting new peeps, in order to create a bubble of warning attention, the same way wasps are clearly black & yellow stripes, but if you don't know it's a warning... they eat you.) Said in 'jest' of course. (edited: Oooh typo was 'ingest' a pun.)
those (honest) claims to depth and special personalities are usually not volunteered by vulnerable in first meeting peeps, or early on, as are the more aggressive-defensive dilligaffs etc, but are said later when trying to negotiate a free pass on something, and certainly not to those perceived as being dominated by them (tells in context)
context changes with fashions and sitcom-ery
Bro you’re the only one without TTS. Fuckin RIP 🪦
Actually it turns out they ignored my request for TTS. Maybe my blog is too small still? My email is working now, and I made another request, but who knows what they'll say
Sorry - my email is dead, and they can't reach me to turn it on