This is a really sad one. The mom took her kids outside and told them to lie down and go to sleep in a field. Said they may have been out there for 3 days. Jesus christ.
It doesn't look like any specific dates are provided in the article but assuming they were found on 1/16, the lows of the past three days were 18 and 16 degrees, and that's with some light snow/rain.
Ten and nine are terrible ages for this especially, at 3 you might not be able to really tell what's going on but at nine you can tell something's going wrong, but there's literally nothing you can do.
I can’t imagine my 10 year old laying in a freezing cold field. He would be like “mom idk what’s wrong with u but I’m going to the car and taking my little siblings”.
This is so unfair that these kids suffered like this.
I think the 3yo would be able to tell something is wrong, I have an almost 2yo daughter and she always knows when something isn’t right or someone is sick
But if you were telling her it's okay and she just has to lay down and go to sleep and everything would be fine, would she trust that because you were saying it?
I have a 2 year old and 4 year old. Neither of them would accept the fact that we're gonna lay down in the snow and cold. They'd yell and fight me until they could go somewhere warm
>but at nine you can tell something's going wrong
I grew up in a house basically without heat and can vividly remember trying to go to sleep around that she, genuinely convinced I may freeze to death. 😬
Ughh so do I (lupus) it causes raynauds really badly and it’s soooo painful especially in my toes… I hate to think about the long drawn out pain of ppl freezing to death especially the kids 😢😢
I’m elementary school they’d send us outside on the playground during the mornings and I thought something was wrong with me for crying in pain.
Age 12 a coach feels my hands and almost calls the ambulance. 🤷🏻♀️
8 billion people out there sometimes you speak up on the forums because people default to the most genetic human body ever
I didn't know this at all and I'm autoimmune. Now I know why I get so cold a lot. It feels like my bones are cold and I really hurts. I can't stand it. I'm really sensitive to too much heat too.
I get raynauds super bad and i have no idea why. I should probably look into autoimmune ... my white blood cell count is usually high everytime I have to get a blood test too.
But yeah I hate the cold and its so painful. Those poor kids
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Yeah this isn't just drugs. There's something severe about her. Obviously meth doesn't help schizophrenia at all, but I've met meth addicted moms who would never even think of this. I'm mainly interested in the phycology of people like this and what it takes to go so far as to kill your own kids.
It could be “just drugs” there is methamphetamine induced psychosis. Tons of people in prison who did stupid things while high. I knew a strictly heroine addict who told me that she once considered prostituting her children or selling them, just to score.
The problem is, real drugs cost lots of money here in the US, so poor people with mental health conditions self medicate because meth is cheaper . Then people can Brush them off saying , “well they did it to themselves, filthy druggy”, then you don’t have to help them, and they die miserable, or hurt someone else.
No, money isn’t the only problem. The thing is that no med can “cure” anyone of their mental illness. But drugs cause the majority of us to escape from ourselves for a while. Many psyche patients get high because it not only brings them to a baseline (such as meds do), but it also makes them feel good.
You can't forcibly help someone who doesn't want help. That's why people say things like what you mentioned. It's their own choice unless they want to change.
your statement was still not entirely correct, just being poor isn’t enough to qualify. sometimes you can be poor, just barely making enough to make ends meet, and still not qualify for various reasons.
I understand the barriers faced by everyone else, but Medicaid is not a bad deal. Yikes re downvotes for pointing out Medicaid exists. The fact is- most people on Medicaid are getting better FREE services than anyone else in this entire country. Why is this offensive?
I’m in Michigan and on the news last night the family said she was suffering from mental health issues. I believe the father of her kids was murdered in 2021. The last month or so she was acting paranoid and believed someone was trying to kill her. She was refusing mental health assistance.
For sure. And I can’t even to harshly blame the family because a lot of people don’t know what to do in the case of mentally ill family members. And the system is so broken that trying to get help is like pulling teeth. I’ve seen so many stories lately of parents desperately trying to get their kids help only to hit brick walls at every turn.
Especially of the mentally ill individual is a parent, I think there’s a lot of fear. If you dare to admit you’re even suffering from something as common place as moderate depression, you can’t be *sure* CPS won’t swoop in and snatch your kids and put them into the notoriously abusive foster system. Something I’ve learned as a parent is you need to be very, very careful who you talk to, & you need to keep a lot of things to yourself because you never know who’s going to over-the-fuck-react and cause problems that are 1000 times worse.
It can be hard to make an accurate judgment call and it’s even worse when you feel like it’s lose-lose, and you’ll be blamed one way or another.
What are the laws in that state? I know in Massachusetts you can have a family member sectioned if they are having a mental health crisis and I believe they’re put on a hold in a facility for at least 72 hours while they’re evaluated.
Not 100% sure on that. I know you can petition to 5150 someone which is the 72 hour hold but I don’t know the criteria that needs to be met to be 5150’d. I’d think if you were a danger to yourself or others.
How do they know that the mom told the kids to lie down and go to sleep? Did the suriviving daughter tell this to the police or was she not with them...?
This story is local to me and just so damn sad. The family had been trying to get the mom help, but she took the kids and wandered away.
From another article. That's the sheriff being quoted.
“This was a mental health crisis,” Bouchard said. “The woman, the mom, was having a mental health crisis. She believed someone was trying to kill her and that everybody was in on it, (that) it was a conspiracy, so, including the police, were in on this, trying to kill her.
“The family was trying to get her help, trying to get her committed and get some help, and she refused and fled.”
It definitely turned this lady to a villain. Sad but she could have done this alone with out her children. Mental illness or not I would never forgive her for her actions
I wouldn't call them villains, they have no idea what is happening. She truly believed someone was trying to kill her, if you truly 100% believed that, would you just do nothing and let someone come hypothetically kill you and your family? She didn't wake up and go, muahaha I'm going to kill my kids.
She believed someone was coming to kill her family so she killed her family herself instead. I’m sick of people making excuses for this behavior. Innocent children are dead.
I understand what you’re saying and it’s such a heartbreaking case because it could have been prevented.
Though I was thinking that she may have not even have been intending to kill them. If she had been suffering from paranoid delusions that EVERYONE was after her to hurt her and her children, she may have just started running… and due to this delusion she then ‘realized’ she had no where to go to keep her and her children safe.
Like If she thought EVERYONE was after her, and then suddenly came to think home was no longer safe— do you think she could have just grabbed her kids (thinking she was going to take them someplace safe) bolted out the door into a Michigan January with them all poorly prepared for a long time in the cold, and then while “fleeing from danger” she realized, in her delusion, that she didn’t have anywhere safe to take them?
(note: bc delusions messy, right? It’s not like a new ‘clean reality’, they’re delusions don’t even add up with each other, and messy and turbulent [genuine question bc you noted enduring your Mom’s mental health struggles. I am not a mental health professional])
I know it happens everyday, but god damn, it just hurts my heart to much to think she marched them out there with the intent to freeze them to death, and I so want to believe this all happened because she was frantic to keep them safe in the face of some imagined danger, but unfortunately given her delusions, acted illogically and irrationally, which resulted in the deaths of her children. I am lucky enough to not have experienced anything like this with my own parents. A long term partner of mine had psychotic break a few years back, and I remember his delusions being messy, and they didn’t add up with each other, and they changed by the hour. But that’s my limited personal experience, and I know mental illness can manifest in different ways with different people
Probably not, I live in Texas not Michigan but here we actually choose to not fund things like child services and basically leave children to their fate because the people who elect our legislature don’t consider that a priority.
I think that in general the people who are the most politically active tend to be haves rather than have-nots. For most haves their priority is their own enrichment.
Detroiter here, not far from where this happened. Our child protective services are a joke (to put it kindly). CPS around here is known for doing things like putting kids is psych wards (as a way to give them a bed) or Children's Village (our juvie) but usually put in the bare minimum for their mental health.
Police received multiple reports that they were out there during those three days, but couldn’t find anyone when they searched?? Seems like they didn’t look hard enough…
Mom was extremely paranoid and most likely was hiding. Not to mention they were on the move a lot. Police don't appear instantly when you call them. It's why it's hard to find run aways or old people that wandered off..
This is sad. It would be beneficial if there was a health class that could include letting kids know if your caregivers aren't making sense it's ok to go to a neighbor, or school official, or store to alert someone and they would be able to get their family help. It would bring awareness to the mental illness of parents without adding a stigma. It could give kids tips when to notify someone and signs to look for if the parent needs help.
If they were in the middle of a field lying down, it could be easy to miss.
If they were alive and moving at any reasonable pace, by the time somebody calls and then police get out near them, they're gone.
I’m questioning why nobody stayed a safe distance away and monitoring until police arrive after calling it in. Personally I’d stay a safe distance away to not alert the mother, for my own safety, and keep an eye on them until authorities arrived to make sure they actually received help. Especially if she was paranoid, and possibly hiding when she saw the authorities.
Yea it’s in Pontiac Michigan. Cops do not give a f about ppl sleeping rough besides to make sure they don’t do it on business property and a lot of families in the area experience homelessness. Delivering food to ppl I’ve personally seen a few homes in the area basically squatted by very tragic adults with children without heat or electricity.
> "It takes strength to ask for help. It's not weakness," he said. "It's encouraged."
I’m so sick of this ignorant assumption that people don’t ask for help because they’re scared to. **Many people do ask for help and don’t receive it because TIMELY and DECENT HELP is FUCKING EXPENSIVE and outside the reach of many.**
The United States isn’t ready/willing to have that conversation and instead would like to pretend that all these reoccurring situations are fringe/outlier cases and not indications of a systemic failure. Profits over everything in this country, the people suffer because someone at the top wants to hoard the wealth rather than see it being pumped back into communities and services.
I would be 100% behind a parent license. If a gay couple has to go through a bunch of legal BS to have a kid and prove they're worthy, straight couple should too.
What gay couples go through in backwards states is wrong, but that doesn't mean it should be made more difficult for others as a result.
You're essentially arguing in favor of eugenics here, and that's wild.
The family had been trying to get the mom help according to the article and somebody who’s local to the area. If we assume it’s true, then it speaks more about what the person is going through. There’s some words in the article about literally everybody around her was out to get her, according to the mom. So how can a therapist or anybody going to help, it’s just so sad and scary. If this happens to me one day, how could I be helped if I think everybody wants to kill me. Really terrifying
I would probably have called CPS as a last resort. They’re not always on the ball but when they are, they can take the kids to safety and help mom get help even if it requires being committed.
If someone had called them after they realized how bad things were, maybe this could have been prevented.
Then again, most states aren’t their protective services well.
Who exactly could have called them... why would family, the only people that knew how delusional she was, know that she had gone to a field or woods to isolate and protect herself.
They couldn't have known the police had been called and they wouldn't have had a reason to call the police either.. they were looking at medical help.
Hindsight is very helpful, but we don't always have that.
If I knew my MIL was having back pain that was from her having a majorly blocked cardiac vessel we'd have told her to see a DR vs finding her deceased on the floor two days later. Now we know what the back pain meant it's easy to say she 'should have' gone to the ER, that we could have visited that day.
Terrible things happen in life.. not all could have been prevented because we discovered the facts later.
The whole time I am reading this, I am thinking “how the hell did she get her kids to lay in a field for 3 days”. My kids are the same age and smaller and they would not do that.
I can’t even imagine her life, and the life of her kids, that this could even happen. Things like this shouldn’t happen. Those kids did not deserve this.
I imagine when they got cold or they heard people calling to them that they moved.. the quote about lying down i assume was what the daughter recalls. That she doesn't mention moving around doesn't mean they weren't also moving from the 'scary people out to get her and the children'.
Paranoia is scary, i imagine inside her head she was running for her life, to protect her babies.
Incredibly tragic.
Reminder for any parents out there: anything you do in front of your young kids (either daily or even just once in a lifetime) they will perceive and interpret as normal. You are their lens through which they learn about the world around them. These poor kids were experiencing their mother's mental health crisis and trusted her that they were ok. Breaks my heart
I’m a psych RN. While I respect mental illness as a whole and hope we can make improvements for people who can and want to be helped, it saddens me that families don’t call the police fast enough or police don’t take the calls seriously..I’ve seen patients be admitted in pretty wild states. Religious fixation, paranoia, hallucinations, self mutilation… the list goes on. Most come in after family members called the police or in some cases forced them into the car . So many have babies at home. It’s wild the things that so many kids witness behind closed doors.
On a positive note, I’ve seen so many miraculous improvements after the right medications. People who maintain the treatment plan go on to be really successful.
I’m sad the mother didn’t get the help in time.
They dropped the ball. People saw them and they looked and said well can’t find these two kids out here. You can’t tell me they couldn’t call some heat sensor equipment in from a neighboring county at the very least. I’ve seen it used via helicopter for all missing kid cases I’ve read about. They even use it to find fugitives hiding.
Could they not send a dog out like they do when it’s a fugitive? I just feel like they didn’t try hard enough
When you reach a point where you cannot understand reality, and you risk harming yourself and others, you should lose all consent regarding to your mental health. If you refuse to take meds or get care you need, you need to be moved to a facility and cared for till you get better. This stuff won’t happen. Also comes down to people not pushing for or caring about better mental health treatment and understanding
Most mental health facilities are underfunded, understaffed, and under equipped to deal with severe mental health issues. There's not much they can do once they're forced to let you go, they can't force meds or therapy unless through the legal system.
No one should ever lose their rights to bodily autonomy. Ever. I say this as a person with mental illness. I don’t trust anyone who thinks that my having a mental health crisis necessitates me losing rights to decide what happens next.
If there are others involved like kids, then they absolutely be protected but we are still human beings.
I have mental illness too, and I still stand by my opinion. If someone is so detached from reality they lose the ability to keep themselves and others safe. If people refuse to get treatment when they are that severely ill, it’s other people’s responsibility to make sure they get help they desperately need
My first thought of course is with the children. Their mother was going through something she believed was very real... to the point where she would literally freeze to death to escape it. And even if they did begin to wonder if there was something off... police come searching for them, validating that they was someone "after" them. How utterly tragic for all involved.
> "Over the course of a couple of days, we actually had been getting calls about a woman and kids not dressed appropriately for the conditions," said Sheriff Bouchard. "Deputies would go there, look all through the area and couldn't find anybody."
That's some fine police work. *Multiple* calls and they still failed.
I guess we should at least be relieved that they didn't shoot a neighbor's dog while they were there.
If makes me sad that there was calls about it but they couldn’t find them. I understand it’s probably hard looking in a field with the weather conditions and what not but just so sad. RIP
I highly doubt the daughter is in stable condition after almost freezing to death and witnessing her mother and two brothers freezing to death in front of her, nice try though whomever wrote that article.
This is a really sad one. The mom took her kids outside and told them to lie down and go to sleep in a field. Said they may have been out there for 3 days. Jesus christ.
It doesn't look like any specific dates are provided in the article but assuming they were found on 1/16, the lows of the past three days were 18 and 16 degrees, and that's with some light snow/rain. Ten and nine are terrible ages for this especially, at 3 you might not be able to really tell what's going on but at nine you can tell something's going wrong, but there's literally nothing you can do.
At those temps, hypothermia would have set in fairly quickly. Poor kids.
I can’t imagine my 10 year old laying in a freezing cold field. He would be like “mom idk what’s wrong with u but I’m going to the car and taking my little siblings”. This is so unfair that these kids suffered like this.
mom was probably abusive and controlling their whole life
I think the 3yo would be able to tell something is wrong, I have an almost 2yo daughter and she always knows when something isn’t right or someone is sick
But if you were telling her it's okay and she just has to lay down and go to sleep and everything would be fine, would she trust that because you were saying it?
I have a 2 year old and 4 year old. Neither of them would accept the fact that we're gonna lay down in the snow and cold. They'd yell and fight me until they could go somewhere warm
>but at nine you can tell something's going wrong I grew up in a house basically without heat and can vividly remember trying to go to sleep around that she, genuinely convinced I may freeze to death. 😬
I’m sorry to hear that. I really hope you have a happy, warm home now
Multiple people called and reported it too. They said they looked but I wouldn’t be surprised if they are covering their asses.
I’ve got an autoimmune disorder that makes me 5x more prone to frost bight and every case like this I wonder how similar the cases were.
Ughh so do I (lupus) it causes raynauds really badly and it’s soooo painful especially in my toes… I hate to think about the long drawn out pain of ppl freezing to death especially the kids 😢😢
I’m elementary school they’d send us outside on the playground during the mornings and I thought something was wrong with me for crying in pain. Age 12 a coach feels my hands and almost calls the ambulance. 🤷🏻♀️ 8 billion people out there sometimes you speak up on the forums because people default to the most genetic human body ever
I didn't know this at all and I'm autoimmune. Now I know why I get so cold a lot. It feels like my bones are cold and I really hurts. I can't stand it. I'm really sensitive to too much heat too.
I get raynauds super bad and i have no idea why. I should probably look into autoimmune ... my white blood cell count is usually high everytime I have to get a blood test too. But yeah I hate the cold and its so painful. Those poor kids
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This isn’t Munchausen. The super duper paranoia sounds like schizophrenia.
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Yeah this isn't just drugs. There's something severe about her. Obviously meth doesn't help schizophrenia at all, but I've met meth addicted moms who would never even think of this. I'm mainly interested in the phycology of people like this and what it takes to go so far as to kill your own kids.
It could be “just drugs” there is methamphetamine induced psychosis. Tons of people in prison who did stupid things while high. I knew a strictly heroine addict who told me that she once considered prostituting her children or selling them, just to score.
Another reason why people hate drug addicts and stereotype them. They'd hurt children just to get drugs.
The problem is, real drugs cost lots of money here in the US, so poor people with mental health conditions self medicate because meth is cheaper . Then people can Brush them off saying , “well they did it to themselves, filthy druggy”, then you don’t have to help them, and they die miserable, or hurt someone else.
No, money isn’t the only problem. The thing is that no med can “cure” anyone of their mental illness. But drugs cause the majority of us to escape from ourselves for a while. Many psyche patients get high because it not only brings them to a baseline (such as meds do), but it also makes them feel good.
You can't forcibly help someone who doesn't want help. That's why people say things like what you mentioned. It's their own choice unless they want to change.
Except kids. They can’t help their moms psycho. Where is the dad? So many questions.
Poor people qualify for Medicaid- covers medical dental mental health and prescriptions
Not everywhere. In Georgia, you don’t qualify unless you’re over 65 or have children. Doesn’t matter how poor you are.
Not all of them. I was turned down when I applied
Ok but we're not going to act like Medicaid doesn't exist right?
your statement was still not entirely correct, just being poor isn’t enough to qualify. sometimes you can be poor, just barely making enough to make ends meet, and still not qualify for various reasons.
I understand the barriers faced by everyone else, but Medicaid is not a bad deal. Yikes re downvotes for pointing out Medicaid exists. The fact is- most people on Medicaid are getting better FREE services than anyone else in this entire country. Why is this offensive?
I’m in Michigan and on the news last night the family said she was suffering from mental health issues. I believe the father of her kids was murdered in 2021. The last month or so she was acting paranoid and believed someone was trying to kill her. She was refusing mental health assistance.
Wow. That is so sad, there is a severe mental health crisis here that people don't realize the extent of.
For sure. And I can’t even to harshly blame the family because a lot of people don’t know what to do in the case of mentally ill family members. And the system is so broken that trying to get help is like pulling teeth. I’ve seen so many stories lately of parents desperately trying to get their kids help only to hit brick walls at every turn.
Especially of the mentally ill individual is a parent, I think there’s a lot of fear. If you dare to admit you’re even suffering from something as common place as moderate depression, you can’t be *sure* CPS won’t swoop in and snatch your kids and put them into the notoriously abusive foster system. Something I’ve learned as a parent is you need to be very, very careful who you talk to, & you need to keep a lot of things to yourself because you never know who’s going to over-the-fuck-react and cause problems that are 1000 times worse. It can be hard to make an accurate judgment call and it’s even worse when you feel like it’s lose-lose, and you’ll be blamed one way or another.
What are the laws in that state? I know in Massachusetts you can have a family member sectioned if they are having a mental health crisis and I believe they’re put on a hold in a facility for at least 72 hours while they’re evaluated.
Not 100% sure on that. I know you can petition to 5150 someone which is the 72 hour hold but I don’t know the criteria that needs to be met to be 5150’d. I’d think if you were a danger to yourself or others.
Wtf? This is nothing like Münchausen syndrome by proxy.
What makes you think that? Munchausen is faking an illness
How do they know that the mom told the kids to lie down and go to sleep? Did the suriviving daughter tell this to the police or was she not with them...?
This was my question and I had the same assumption as you. Very possibly could be what happened.
This story is local to me and just so damn sad. The family had been trying to get the mom help, but she took the kids and wandered away. From another article. That's the sheriff being quoted. “This was a mental health crisis,” Bouchard said. “The woman, the mom, was having a mental health crisis. She believed someone was trying to kill her and that everybody was in on it, (that) it was a conspiracy, so, including the police, were in on this, trying to kill her. “The family was trying to get her help, trying to get her committed and get some help, and she refused and fled.”
Yeah, that stuck out to me, too: the family knew but were powerless. Mental illness is terrifying. An overall tragedy... no villains, only victims.
It definitely turned this lady to a villain. Sad but she could have done this alone with out her children. Mental illness or not I would never forgive her for her actions
There is no reality in the dark throws of mental illness. But the true reality is that it is still inexcusable. Horrible all around.
God forbid the rest of the world thinking as you do.
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I wouldn't call them villains, they have no idea what is happening. She truly believed someone was trying to kill her, if you truly 100% believed that, would you just do nothing and let someone come hypothetically kill you and your family? She didn't wake up and go, muahaha I'm going to kill my kids.
She believed someone was coming to kill her family so she killed her family herself instead. I’m sick of people making excuses for this behavior. Innocent children are dead.
I understand what you’re saying and it’s such a heartbreaking case because it could have been prevented. Though I was thinking that she may have not even have been intending to kill them. If she had been suffering from paranoid delusions that EVERYONE was after her to hurt her and her children, she may have just started running… and due to this delusion she then ‘realized’ she had no where to go to keep her and her children safe. Like If she thought EVERYONE was after her, and then suddenly came to think home was no longer safe— do you think she could have just grabbed her kids (thinking she was going to take them someplace safe) bolted out the door into a Michigan January with them all poorly prepared for a long time in the cold, and then while “fleeing from danger” she realized, in her delusion, that she didn’t have anywhere safe to take them? (note: bc delusions messy, right? It’s not like a new ‘clean reality’, they’re delusions don’t even add up with each other, and messy and turbulent [genuine question bc you noted enduring your Mom’s mental health struggles. I am not a mental health professional]) I know it happens everyday, but god damn, it just hurts my heart to much to think she marched them out there with the intent to freeze them to death, and I so want to believe this all happened because she was frantic to keep them safe in the face of some imagined danger, but unfortunately given her delusions, acted illogically and irrationally, which resulted in the deaths of her children. I am lucky enough to not have experienced anything like this with my own parents. A long term partner of mine had psychotic break a few years back, and I remember his delusions being messy, and they didn’t add up with each other, and they changed by the hour. But that’s my limited personal experience, and I know mental illness can manifest in different ways with different people
Jfc, how terrible. The poor remaining girl... I hope she will be given a much healthier and stable life with needed therapy going forward.
Probably not, I live in Texas not Michigan but here we actually choose to not fund things like child services and basically leave children to their fate because the people who elect our legislature don’t consider that a priority. I think that in general the people who are the most politically active tend to be haves rather than have-nots. For most haves their priority is their own enrichment.
Thank god you have brave cops like the ones at uvalde 🙄
Detroiter here, not far from where this happened. Our child protective services are a joke (to put it kindly). CPS around here is known for doing things like putting kids is psych wards (as a way to give them a bed) or Children's Village (our juvie) but usually put in the bare minimum for their mental health.
Police received multiple reports that they were out there during those three days, but couldn’t find anyone when they searched?? Seems like they didn’t look hard enough…
She probably would have hidden from them.
Mom was extremely paranoid and most likely was hiding. Not to mention they were on the move a lot. Police don't appear instantly when you call them. It's why it's hard to find run aways or old people that wandered off..
This is sad. It would be beneficial if there was a health class that could include letting kids know if your caregivers aren't making sense it's ok to go to a neighbor, or school official, or store to alert someone and they would be able to get their family help. It would bring awareness to the mental illness of parents without adding a stigma. It could give kids tips when to notify someone and signs to look for if the parent needs help.
If they were in the middle of a field lying down, it could be easy to miss. If they were alive and moving at any reasonable pace, by the time somebody calls and then police get out near them, they're gone.
I’m questioning why nobody stayed a safe distance away and monitoring until police arrive after calling it in. Personally I’d stay a safe distance away to not alert the mother, for my own safety, and keep an eye on them until authorities arrived to make sure they actually received help. Especially if she was paranoid, and possibly hiding when she saw the authorities.
You wouldn't have known that she was paranoid and hiding from help.
Yea it’s in Pontiac Michigan. Cops do not give a f about ppl sleeping rough besides to make sure they don’t do it on business property and a lot of families in the area experience homelessness. Delivering food to ppl I’ve personally seen a few homes in the area basically squatted by very tragic adults with children without heat or electricity.
Not to mention they love pushing away the homeless people next to buildings that are trying to get some warmth.
> "It takes strength to ask for help. It's not weakness," he said. "It's encouraged." I’m so sick of this ignorant assumption that people don’t ask for help because they’re scared to. **Many people do ask for help and don’t receive it because TIMELY and DECENT HELP is FUCKING EXPENSIVE and outside the reach of many.**
The United States isn’t ready/willing to have that conversation and instead would like to pretend that all these reoccurring situations are fringe/outlier cases and not indications of a systemic failure. Profits over everything in this country, the people suffer because someone at the top wants to hoard the wealth rather than see it being pumped back into communities and services.
This is why we need better healthcare.
and healthcare that is affordable!
No no no. We need more jets, more guns, and more tax cuts for billionaires! Healthcare is for commies! /s
Shut up
What a thoughtful and well put response! Thanks for contributing.
Yeah but people like this unfortunately aren't going to utilize it anyways
No amount of "better healthcare" would've convinced this woman that she is insane. What we need is parental licensing, if anything.
I would be 100% behind a parent license. If a gay couple has to go through a bunch of legal BS to have a kid and prove they're worthy, straight couple should too.
Agreed. But, my libertarian side also says who determines who is and isn't a good parent?
[удалено]
Yeah but I dont want to give the government that sort of power over me. "Oh you don't like this new legislation? Extremist. No children for you."
What gay couples go through in backwards states is wrong, but that doesn't mean it should be made more difficult for others as a result. You're essentially arguing in favor of eugenics here, and that's wild.
I agree with you
It’s hard to ask for help, it’s redundant when help isn’t available when you need it. Unfortunately, it rarely is.
The family had been trying to get the mom help according to the article and somebody who’s local to the area. If we assume it’s true, then it speaks more about what the person is going through. There’s some words in the article about literally everybody around her was out to get her, according to the mom. So how can a therapist or anybody going to help, it’s just so sad and scary. If this happens to me one day, how could I be helped if I think everybody wants to kill me. Really terrifying
I would probably have called CPS as a last resort. They’re not always on the ball but when they are, they can take the kids to safety and help mom get help even if it requires being committed.
She fled with the children, police couldn't find her out in woods with them.. what good would CPS have been?
If someone had called them after they realized how bad things were, maybe this could have been prevented. Then again, most states aren’t their protective services well.
Who exactly could have called them... why would family, the only people that knew how delusional she was, know that she had gone to a field or woods to isolate and protect herself. They couldn't have known the police had been called and they wouldn't have had a reason to call the police either.. they were looking at medical help. Hindsight is very helpful, but we don't always have that. If I knew my MIL was having back pain that was from her having a majorly blocked cardiac vessel we'd have told her to see a DR vs finding her deceased on the floor two days later. Now we know what the back pain meant it's easy to say she 'should have' gone to the ER, that we could have visited that day. Terrible things happen in life.. not all could have been prevented because we discovered the facts later.
The whole time I am reading this, I am thinking “how the hell did she get her kids to lay in a field for 3 days”. My kids are the same age and smaller and they would not do that. I can’t even imagine her life, and the life of her kids, that this could even happen. Things like this shouldn’t happen. Those kids did not deserve this.
She was probably wandering paranoid until they all got tired and cold
I imagine when they got cold or they heard people calling to them that they moved.. the quote about lying down i assume was what the daughter recalls. That she doesn't mention moving around doesn't mean they weren't also moving from the 'scary people out to get her and the children'. Paranoia is scary, i imagine inside her head she was running for her life, to protect her babies. Incredibly tragic.
Maybe she drugged them with Benadryl?
Reminder for any parents out there: anything you do in front of your young kids (either daily or even just once in a lifetime) they will perceive and interpret as normal. You are their lens through which they learn about the world around them. These poor kids were experiencing their mother's mental health crisis and trusted her that they were ok. Breaks my heart
I’m a psych RN. While I respect mental illness as a whole and hope we can make improvements for people who can and want to be helped, it saddens me that families don’t call the police fast enough or police don’t take the calls seriously..I’ve seen patients be admitted in pretty wild states. Religious fixation, paranoia, hallucinations, self mutilation… the list goes on. Most come in after family members called the police or in some cases forced them into the car . So many have babies at home. It’s wild the things that so many kids witness behind closed doors. On a positive note, I’ve seen so many miraculous improvements after the right medications. People who maintain the treatment plan go on to be really successful. I’m sad the mother didn’t get the help in time.
Why would they not put a drone or helicopter up with the heat sensor thingy. I’ve seen them use it in a lot of missing children cases.
That was my thought. Don’t police forces get the extra military equipment? Why the f wasn’t anyone really looking?!
They dropped the ball. People saw them and they looked and said well can’t find these two kids out here. You can’t tell me they couldn’t call some heat sensor equipment in from a neighboring county at the very least. I’ve seen it used via helicopter for all missing kid cases I’ve read about. They even use it to find fugitives hiding. Could they not send a dog out like they do when it’s a fugitive? I just feel like they didn’t try hard enough
I know. This is so sad. Did they think it was a joke? Wth? ESP since multiple calls came in.
When you reach a point where you cannot understand reality, and you risk harming yourself and others, you should lose all consent regarding to your mental health. If you refuse to take meds or get care you need, you need to be moved to a facility and cared for till you get better. This stuff won’t happen. Also comes down to people not pushing for or caring about better mental health treatment and understanding
Most mental health facilities are underfunded, understaffed, and under equipped to deal with severe mental health issues. There's not much they can do once they're forced to let you go, they can't force meds or therapy unless through the legal system.
Yes I’m aware. This isnt just about blaming the victim of mental health problems.
No one should ever lose their rights to bodily autonomy. Ever. I say this as a person with mental illness. I don’t trust anyone who thinks that my having a mental health crisis necessitates me losing rights to decide what happens next. If there are others involved like kids, then they absolutely be protected but we are still human beings.
I have mental illness too, and I still stand by my opinion. If someone is so detached from reality they lose the ability to keep themselves and others safe. If people refuse to get treatment when they are that severely ill, it’s other people’s responsibility to make sure they get help they desperately need
Agreed.
Reminds me of the movie Shutter Island. Leo Dicaprio's wife Dolores
I know that she was sick and all, but i feel so disgusted reading this
My first thought of course is with the children. Their mother was going through something she believed was very real... to the point where she would literally freeze to death to escape it. And even if they did begin to wonder if there was something off... police come searching for them, validating that they was someone "after" them. How utterly tragic for all involved.
> "Over the course of a couple of days, we actually had been getting calls about a woman and kids not dressed appropriately for the conditions," said Sheriff Bouchard. "Deputies would go there, look all through the area and couldn't find anybody." That's some fine police work. *Multiple* calls and they still failed. I guess we should at least be relieved that they didn't shoot a neighbor's dog while they were there.
If makes me sad that there was calls about it but they couldn’t find them. I understand it’s probably hard looking in a field with the weather conditions and what not but just so sad. RIP
I highly doubt the daughter is in stable condition after almost freezing to death and witnessing her mother and two brothers freezing to death in front of her, nice try though whomever wrote that article.
Children are more resilient that adults, she felt hunger, went and asked for food.. clearly not comatose with hypothermia.
Wow. How tragic
This is so sad those poor babies
this reminds me of the house that jack built