Dealing with critics

The parking lot freak has taken umbrage at being told that living in a parking lot for a month is not amazing for a 5-year-old child. What is really hilarious is that he is defending himself from being accused of child abuse with the favorite line of all child abusers:

“This is my life and my child and we will parent her as we see fit.”

Sir, nobody here cares about your life. You can do whatever you want with your life. All we are discussing here is the life of a different person. A person who is not you and has a life of her own. She is not your property and not your body part. You can delete posts all you want (which is a total waste of time because everything can get screen-saved), but the CPS will be taking an interest and the child will be protected from your careless and unhinged behavior. The best thing you can do is place the child in a normal living situation ASAP. And then try to seek help for your very obvious psychological issues.

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39 responses to “Dealing with critics”

Pen

May 3, 2015

I like how in the comments, they’re all like “Clarissa doesn’t know anything about us, like about our daughter’s eye surgery.” The eye surgery doesn’t have anything to do with whatever you’re doing now. Your girlfriend’s fight with cancer doesn’t have anything to do with whatever you’re doing now with your daughter. Nothing has anything whatsoever with your current actions except your current actions. Never mind that commenting on a public blog is not and has never been “prying” into someone’s private life.

It’s very much like what people do in response to other sorts of crime, believe it or not. “X has been dealing with abuse since childhood,” or “Y never had any friends,” or “Z dealt with this illness and organized awareness groups for this illness.” Believe it or not, the personal history of the people involved, while it could provide a social psychological reasoning for their actions, is not relevant to criticisms on the actions themselves. It’s very much a situation where one can feasibly say, “I understand why you did this. That doesn’t make it okay.” Understanding does not equal excusing.

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Clarissa

May 3, 2015
“Nothing has anything whatsoever with your current actions except your current actions.”
- Exactly.
  “Never mind that commenting on a public blog is not and has never been “prying” into someone’s private life.”
- Seeing children as part of their private life – instead of as separate human beings with private lives of their own – is the first symptom of all abusive parents.
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1. Jones
  
  May 3, 2015
  
  It’s really nothing you’ve done.
  
  They just don’t like sunlight, that’s all …
  
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Shakti

May 3, 2015

She isn’t being held captive in a van while her parents pretend to be poor people.
The very fact that the parents aren’t actually poor but “pretending” and white is what keeps CPS from checking in on them. Roma, for example, are persecuted for the exact same thing.
The month in the van in the Walmart parking lot sounds a lot like homelessness from the blogger’s own descriptions. It sounds claustrophobic if the blogger woke up in the middle of the night to freak out.

I’m sure many people do just fine with an RV lifestyle but this person doesn’t seem like they’d handle it well.

Some quotes:

I worked at a car dealership as a customer relations guy for a few years, back when I wasn’t completely socially inept. Something happened between the late 90’s and now that soured me on social interaction and I’m still recovering.

Houseless is a better word than homeless I think. My home is my van, but I don’t have a house. I like it. I think what worries me most is that I know how mentally unstable I am, and I know I’ve found myself in awkward places full of anger and despair, feeling hopeless, and crazy. Those are the times where I found trouble, even if I wasn’t looking for it.

The cashier who checked Maizy out told her that he thought it was dangerous to sleep at a truck stop.

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Clarissa

May 3, 2015
“The very fact that the parents aren’t actually poor but “pretending” and white is what keeps CPS from checking in on them.”
- I agree. They are relying on a double standard to keep doing this to the kid.
“I’m sure many people do just fine with an RV lifestyle but this person doesn’t seem like they’d handle it well.”
- It sounds like much worse than an RV. The van they use doesn’t have a toilet.
“I think what worries me most is that I know how mentally unstable I am, and I know I’ve found myself in awkward places full of anger and despair, feeling hopeless, and crazy.”
- Lucky kid, what’s with being part of this “angry, unstable, crazy and hopeless” guy’s personal life.
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Evelina Anville

May 3, 2015

Well if he took the post down, you clearly hit a nerve. He must know there is something problematic about this “lifestyle choice.” I agree that the whole thing is troubling. As you know, I am very very critical of “homeschooling” and think it’s an inherently abusive practice. That being said, I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing to take a young child out of school temporarily (and the key word is temporarily here) if the family is going to be doing some extensive travelling. I can see it being quite a lovely/educational thing for a child to travel to significant historical/natural sites throughout the country. But it would take a certain amount of money and planning: a nice motor home, staying at lovely campsites near something special (i.e. the Grand Canyon), making sure the camp grounds have special activities for children, cooking outdoors over open fires. etc. etc.

However, that’s most definitively NOT what this family is doing. They are sleeping in a cramped van in Walmart parking lots, eating canned food, and furtively scurrying to showers. The parents seems to be experiencing some type of collective antisocial nervous break down and are cloaking their erratic behavior as “educational” and “family oriented.” I really do hope they stop this before it does damage to their child.

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Clarissa

May 3, 2015
“That being said, I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing to take a young child out of school temporarily (and the key word is temporarily here) if the family is going to be doing some extensive travelling. I can see it being quite a lovely/educational thing for a child to travel to significant historical/natural sites throughout the country. But it would take a certain amount of money and planning: a nice motor home, staying at lovely campsites near something special (i.e. the Grand Canyon), making sure the camp grounds have special activities for children, cooking outdoors over open fires. etc. etc.”
- Oh, I agree, that would be beautiful. But what he described in the now deleted post was very different: dirty, scary, noisy parking lots, an absence of a toilet, zero privacy, and a 5-year-old trapped in all that.
“The parents seems to be experiencing some type of collective antisocial nervous break down and are cloaking their erratic behavior as “educational” and “family oriented.” I really do hope they stop this before it does damage to their child.”
- Yes. And what’s scary is the number of people applauding all this. Why couldn’t they leave the kid with the grandparents or aunt and uncle while engaging in this “adventure”?
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1. Evelina Anville
  
  May 3, 2015
  
  Even with the posts he did leave up, it seemeed terrible. Almost as if he is revelling in how ugly it all is. Why a Walmart parking lot? He lives in Colorado– a lovely area of the country. He could pay the 40.00 or so and stay in a pretty campground. But instead he stays somewhere hopeless. Clearly there are deep issues here. Poor little girl.
  
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  1. Stille (@aperfectbalance)
    
    May 3, 2015
    
    Even presuming 40$ a night is too much, it still boggles the mind how there seems to be no effort made whatsoever to improve the comfort of one’s life. All that long description of discomfort “this is what real life is like” makes me want to facepalm. “Real life” involves making one’s circumstances as comfortable as possible considering one’s resources and one’s goals, doubly so when said circumstances involve one’s kids, and I don’t really see any of that happening. And the post linked here is really high-density fucked-up-ness.
    
    I’m not sure actually getting CPS involved would improve the situation (not directly familiar with CPS but from what I’ve read it tends to be really fucking dysfunctional) but I’m at least hoping some of the criticism penetrates.
    
    For what it’s worth, my parents tried to show their kids the world too. In 2-week-a-year episodes, when me &my sister were around ~10 years old, with way more private space than the setup described in the original posts allows. It was utterly terrible, not in the least because my father resembled the original blogger in being barely able to deal with his own emotions. Having such loose cannons around will ruin any activity/mode of existence that involves prolonged interaction with them.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      May 3, 2015
      
      “And the post linked here is really high-density fucked-up-ness.”
      
      Yeah. . . This is the perfect definition. Imagine experiencing all that joy at five. And with this guy constantly and inescapably there.
      
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Ellie

May 3, 2015

Oh god I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at his response! Yes, taking your daughter to the library for a few hours to meet other children is JUST LIKE making friends you see for 30 hours each week.
Hilariously stupid how they use the child’s lack of complaints as confirmation for their actions. ‘Well we didn’t literally drag her, figuratively obviously yes, but NOT literally.”
Oh and how dare you fail to call this person personally before commenting on their public blog post, Clarissa!

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Clarissa

May 3, 2015

The part about calling him was downright bizarre. I don’t know him in person and obviously don’t have his phone number. This was such a weird response.

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disperser

May 18, 2015

Holy crap, is this ever depressing.

To read this post and the associated group-think comments have me wondering what strange cerebral wasteland I’ve dropped into.

The sad part is that you guys don’t even recognize yourselves as bullies. No, not bullies . . . stalkers. Stalkers taking a perverse pleasure in making someone’s life miserable.

Oh, that’s right . . . you guys just “know better”, right? That must be what gives someone the right to refer to others as “freaks”.

. . . but, perhaps I should not be so judgmental. Perhaps there are legitimate reasons why educated people would be so dismissive, so condescending, so utterly dickish toward people they don’t even know.

Explain them to me, you know, using small words so that I can understand and not think of the collection of comments I just read as written by no more than wasted human flesh.

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whc03grady

May 18, 2015

Well, if you’d bothered to read the blog you’d realize that staying in WalMart parking lots was just the staging ground for a much larger trip they’ve planned. I suppose you all have similar invective for this family?
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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Clarissa

May 18, 2015

It’s extremely rude to come to a blog band try to promote some idiotic links without being allowed to do so.

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whc03grady

May 18, 2015

I have to say, the faith expressed here toward the good of public education in this country is amazing. I wonder, do any of you have kids in public education? Do you realize that it’s not great?

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Clarissa

May 18, 2015

In public education, kids don’t get their body parts mowed off by tractors and aren’t forced to sleep in parking lots.

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bickerishallsorts

May 19, 2015

Jeez, what a small-minded bubble-think group of people you lot are.

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Clarissa

May 19, 2015

It is a mystery to me why one would waste one’s single life on posting comments on the blog of “a small-minded bubble-think group of people.” Do you not value your own time at all? Why do you despise yourself so much?

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1. bickerishallsorts
  
  May 20, 2015
  
  Oh the irony, it burns! I spent about five seconds of my life writing that comment. You seem to be spending an inordinate amount of time writing intolerant blog posts. Do you not value your own time at all? And have you heard of the psychodynamic concept of projection
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    May 20, 2015
    
    Buddy, my blog makes me money. And the money goes to support the heroic Ukrainian Army. So the money you bring me with your commenting is going to a very noble cause.
    
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    1. bickerishallsorts
      
      May 20, 2015
      
      So what? Do you want a medal? Noble by association rather than deed?
      
      I notice too that you have sidestepped the irony and the projection and the bile you displayed simply because I questioned your position. Quite the authoritarian aren’t you?
      
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      1. Clarissa
        
        May 20, 2015
        
        I was simply explaining to you what uses I get out of my blog. Please try to concentrate.
        
        Now it’s your turn to answer my simple question: why do you value your one and only life so little that you waste it on the blog you purport to hate?
        
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        Stille (@aperfectbalance)
        
        May 20, 2015
        
        Aw c’mon Clarissa, he’s probably trying to help you contribute to the Ukrainian army. Seriously though, bringing in the discussion the psychodynamic concept of projection is comedy gold, considering which blog allows everyone to read and comment and which blog periodically goes private.
        
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        Clarissa
        
        May 20, 2015
        
        ” Seriously though, bringing in the discussion the psychodynamic concept of projection is comedy gold, considering which blog allows everyone to read and comment and which blog periodically goes private.”
        
        What’s really sad is that these people rant and rave about how horrible and useless schools are and then demonstrate such depths of intellectual impotence that it’s scary.
        
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bickerishallsorts

May 20, 2015

Well, I thought Clarissa’s response about people wasting their time was a non sequitur. What on earth has donating to the Ukrainian army got to do with this? And why on earth would that put me off posting? I might be in the Ukrainian army for all you know. Bizarre.

But then along you come Stille and try to connect projection with whether people take their blogs private or not.

Are you people incapable of thinking in a straight line? Is logic, emotionally and/or intellectually beyond your grasp? Do you lack insight into yourselves? You demonstrably lack the capacity for insight into others

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Clarissa

May 20, 2015

Again, just try to concentrate for a moment and answer my very simple question:

Why do you value your one and only life so little that you waste it on the blog you purport to hate?

You can do it! Just concentrate really really hard and proceed to answer.

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bickerishallsorts

May 20, 2015

Why do you value your one and only life so little that you waste it on blogposts full of hate?

You can do it! Just concentrate really really hard and proceed to answer.

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Clarissa

May 20, 2015
“Why do you value your one and only life so little that you waste it on blogposts full of hate?”
- I already answered you. This blog brings me money. Do I need to repeat this response again or is twice enough for you to process this simple information.
And now that I have answered your question twice, will you finally manage to answer mine?

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bickerishallsorts

May 20, 2015

Oh sorry! I can see that I was being a bit slow.

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Clarissa

May 20, 2015

Yes, you are very slow. That’s not in dispute.

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bickerishallsorts

May 21, 2015

Ah haha! Who’s the authoritarian controlling person willing to shut down free discourse? Some progressive you are.

You’ll probably won’t publish this but, if you are brave enough, just to let people know – Clarissa has cut out the salient parts of my last comment

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Clarissa

May 21, 2015

What salient part? What comment? Are you insane?

You have trolled enough. Go away now, back to your child – abusing buddies.

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Anonymous

May 21, 2015

You know the salient points very well, you moral and intellectual coward. I shall be gone from your inconsequential blog and spend my time reading better writers and enjoying better photography.

It’s been a slightly bemusing couple of days. Bye

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Clarissa

May 21, 2015

You’ve been announcing your departure for ages, yet you never seem to deliver on this promise. Go away already, creep.

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jeff

May 21, 2015

I’m confused. Is “bickerishallsorts” and this Anonymous the same person? Or not?

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1. Clarissa
  
  May 21, 2015
  
  The IP addresses are completely different, from different parts of the world. So who knows. All that is certain is that this is either one troll or several of them.
  
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  1. jeff
    
    May 21, 2015
    
    What I don’t get is why people would waste their time like that. You are letting them comment and they could have expressed their position many times. Do they think it’s OK that this little girl lived in a parking lot for weeks? Do they think it’s fine for her to be taken out of school and live this nomadic life? Do they think it’s OK that she suffered the injury? Do they believe her parents are emotionally stable?
    
    Why aren’t they saying anything to the point?
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      May 21, 2015
      
      These are trolls, not regular commenters. Trolls are chronophages. All they want is to involve you in their senseless bickering, in trying to figure out what they are saying, in following their bizarre dramas. I’m a seasoned blogger and I don’t play these weird games.
      
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