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What she tweeted was what she was feeling at that time. She was at wits end and with no support of any kind she wrote what she was thinking and feeling—-not what she was doing. If one cares about these things, and is truly concerned about a child? You do not condemn the mother who tweets she needs help. Instead you reach out and try to help however you can.

No one is being fooled. Just because someone is distraught and stressed, overburdened with the demands of single parenthood, without the village, without the help they were promised when told by family they should keep their child, doesn’t make them a bad parent. It doesn’t mean their child should be ripped out of their bed short of midnight and kept from a loving parent. Many of us have wished we had not given birth, aborted, given up our children for adoption, many of us have met that wall of desperation where we feel we are not good enough for our children and want someone, anyone to come help us, take them away. Then we get past it and we move on, we get better. We focus on other goals to solve our problems. Like road schooling.

There is injustice here.

North Carolina has a lot of programs already in place to support mothers like Ani but it rarely applies them to situations involving the poor. North Carolina is actually well known for removing children from poverty stricken, minority homes for reasons less than ones given to Ani for the removal of her son.

Please believe that CPS removes children for far less than what was reported about Ani. Unconventional parenting, homeschooling? According to the HSDLA are causes for removal every single day in the US. A child in Albany, NY was just returned (finally) due simply because the parents chose to homeschool, paperwork was misfiled by the state so the child was taken out of the home.

It happens. All the time. The government is not always right, it is actually often wrong. It abuses power. We all know this. There are better ways to help children like Nick and their mothers like Ani. The disproportionate number of Black and other children of color in foster care says quite a lot about who the government deems to be suitable parents and who it doesn’t. Being unconventional, Black and a single woman? Can and will take your children away.

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At 11:39 pm on May 28th six police officers and two social workers kicked my front door in and dragged my screaming & crying child from his bed. I was handcuffed, dragged to a police car and my left wrist was fractured. I spent the next three hours in jail and my son (who is on the autism spectrum) was whisked off to emergency foster care.

Let’s don’t get this story twisted around.

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Most people want to be great parents, great peers, just like most teachers want to be great teachers, but then the oppressive or exploitative natures of others, business and the state get in the way more than they help.

When I wrote my book Rebel Moms which features over 50 rad moms sharing it all to help others rock motherhood, some shared the same fear that CPS or busy bodies would cause disruption in their lives or that of their children due to un-schooling, veganism,being heavily tattooed, being poor, being sexy, being Buddhist, being awesome, and well we see their fear was valid. I just hope Ani knows we’ve got her back!

Davina Rhine aka Rebel Mom

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I can assure you, if you think unschooling kids don’t learn how to read, then you are definitely misinformed. My girls are leaps and bounds ahead of their traditionally schooled counterparts. My 18 year old chose to attend college for her senior year of high school, is extremely active in the community and is a national poetry competitor. My son moved 3000 miles away on his own at 20 to pursue his interests in music.

The only difference between homeschooling & unschooling is that we allow the girls’ interests to steer their education. We help them learn about the things they’re curious about…when they’re curious about them…because that’s when the best learning takes place. Instead of being taught what a curriculum schedule things they should know from a single textbook, they learn by living, exploring, trying, reading, researching (with our help), observing and doing.

Traditional systems keeps kids from the world and tell them the have to “get prepared” first. But they don’t. The only preparation the schools do is to stifle their natural curiosity, cause them to question the validity of their own interests and make them dependent on an authority figure to make even the smallest decision.

Granted, there are some “radical unschoolers” out there who take the concept of child-directed learning too far in my opinion. While allowing a child to direct the grocery shopping or their own hygiene, manners and bedtimes is potentially great learning experiences, it’s probably a better idea for an 8 or 9 year old than a 2 or 3 year old. I think it’s best to first allow them to developed some concept of why we do these things the way we do them and *then* give them some ownership allowing them to experiment with what works for them.

We don’t know the details about this poor woman’s story. It would seem that the charges were completely unfounded and vindictive since the child was returned to her custody after the investigation. The fact is the child should never have been removed from the home…especially not in such a traumatic way.

The scariest thing is that CPS was able to take this woman’s child away from her based soley on the fact that someone didn’t “like” her parenting style. Yes, CPS has a tough job sorting out the vindictive claims from the real ones. But there has to be a better system.

What’s next? Will CPS take children from women who choose not to breastfeed? Or from families who buy too many sodas in a month? What about situations where for generations the kids have help out on family farms? Oh, wait…the gov’t is already trying to put a stop to that. You see? The gov’t has interfered WAY too much in our parenting choices.

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