Reply to Police came saying they have a CPS report on me

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Reply to "Police came saying they have a CPS report on me"

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[quote=Anonymous]OP, a few thoughts.

First, the only one you have to blame is yourself.  You need to stop trying to find fault with what others have done.  You cannot change others, but you can change yourself.

The issue of why police came instead of CPS may be that the counselor, who is a mandatory reporter, may have reported to the police instead of to CPS.  You don't know or control what process is in place for mandatory reporters and she may have been following her instructions.  If you want to follow-up on appropriate or inappropriate procedure for mandatory reporters, you can ask for a meeting with the principal to ask whether proper procedures were followed and why police were summoned instead of CPS, but that's separate from everything else.  While it may have been an invasion of your privacy, the fact that the police contacted the wrong individual regarding your issue, is not an actionable offense.  You have no recourse.  You can lodge a complaint about the police error, but otherwise, there is nothing you can do about that, and there is no one that is going to give you any redress for that human error.  It's unfortunate that it caused you embarrassment, but that was caused by your poor judgement in escalating your anger to a physical outburst.  Last, why any visit was necessary?  When a mandatory reporter reports an incident, they often determine the severity of the offense (in this case low severity) and the history.  Is this the first time that you've had a physical incident with your child since he started seeing this counselor?  If it was not, then it may be that the history of incidents was sufficient for the counselor or police to determine that a visit was called for.  A series of small incidents are often considered sufficient for a home visit.  Additionally, your child's own response to being hurt, a physical outburst of throwing his backpack is a red flag.  Physical outbursts are often learned behaviors.  Children learn how to deal with their anger by watching the key adults in their lives, most especially their parents.  Do any adult figures in your son's life routinely express your anger physically (throwing things, hitting things or people, other physical expressions)?  If so, your son's anger expression may be an echo of that.  The counselor may have put several things together such as your son's physical outbursts along with your physical outburst and determined that your son was learning from potentially abusive actions on the part of parental figures and reported that.

So, moving forward, you need to address your own personal issues.  You acknowledge that you need different techniques for dealing with your anger.  That's a good start.  Self-awareness is the first step in rectifying a problem.  However, as mentioned, the issue is further how you express your anger.  Your son may be learning physical outbursts are a way of expressing his anger.  If that's the case, then you need to curb more than just your reactions to him.  If you get angry and throw things or hit objects, that also needs to be curbed or it will continue to echo into your son.  That may be what the counselor is responding to, your son's violent behavior and the possibility that it is learned behavior from observing his parental figures.

You should not be changing counselors unless it is specifically in the best interests of your child.  While you want to switch because of the impact on you, you are correct that it suggests that there is a problem that you are trying to cover up if you do this precipitously.  Unless you've flagged the issues with the current counselor, it will suggest very strongly that this incident was the impetus for the change and that will look bad in the future if there are additional issues with the new counselor.  If the current counseling is not working, then you need to set up a meeting with the counselor to discuss the issues.  You can request that any management figures (perhaps the principal) attend if you are trying to work with them to make adjustments to the help that he is getting.  But you need to document that there is an issue with the current counseling and make attempts to correct issues before you make a change of counselors if you want to avoid any suggestion that you are changing counselors to cover your own tracks.  Then if you've made attempts to identify and correct problems with the current counseling, and you are still having problems or issues or even lack of progress, then you can change practices.
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