I feel very bad for her. My youngest took the SAT for the first time as a sophomore and scored over 1300. There was no investigation. DD took the ACT her freshman year - only just 13 years old - and scored a 28 which is the equivalent of 1310 ish on the SAT. No investigation. My kids are white, northern European looking, and that is why I believe no one batted an eye at it. If a minority student of the same age/grade scored the same in this district, I do believe it would throw the college board into a tizzy. My kids scores were very well above the average for graduating seniors in this county. But nope....they weren't suspicious of my kids. My nephew stayed out all night goofing off with friends before taking the ACT in April of his junior year. He scored something like a 16. Just bombed it. His parents yelled at him pretty well, and so he buckled down in the fall, studied, got a good night's sleep, and scored a 27. Did it trigger an investigation? No. This is probably not going to be a popular opinion, I think the college board is discriminating, but I am not going to apologize. I see this kind of crap somewhat regularly around here when it comes to minorities being successful academically, particularly on standardized tests, except of course Asian students who are expected to be excellent scorers with high grades.

Actually, 7/10th of the century = 1970. Only 3/10th was left, so it was towards the end of the century. Mid-Century was 1950. There was a very real cultural shift between 1950 and 1970. 1950 medical support for communicable diseases was new. Parents were still tuned into the concept of quarantine and cold fear, and very afraid of those diseases, particularly polio. They'd grown up with it, My grandmother had young children in 1950, and her older brother had died of diphtheria, the family was quarantined, and they didn't even get to have a funeral. He was interred by some of the neighbors who wore the best gear they could come up with to protect themselves from the virus.Well, we think he was interred. There is some reason to believe that the town constable and firemen were actually going off and burning the bodies because they weren't sure if it could infect the ground and water supply. So many children had died that they were pretty darn desperate to stop the spread. I've seen my uncles grave, and suspect that the headstone was a nice ruse pulled together by the town leadership. I think they burned his body along with a bunch of other corpses. Parents of the 1970's had not experienced that. Pox parties, per se, or the concept of deliberate exposure was in vogue in our town when I was a child, and the idea did not come from the mothers, but from the school districts who were sick of shutting down school when pox went around. So if someone in the community got pox during in the late spring or during summer break, school secretaries actually sent letters to the parents asking them to please seek out the infected child so that kids could get the disease and have it over with before school resumed in the fall. My mother saved one of the letters. Honestly, I have to wonder about the stupidity of those administrators. One of the kids in my elementary school died of pox on the brain. Can you imagine if a child whom the school encouraged to "get exposed" died these days? The lawsuit and pay out would be epic!

She saw the vet this morning. UGH! DH nearly put the car in the ditch getting there, and that was after simply barely creeping along. Our roads are just that bad. She is eating, and drinking, able to potty now. So she isn't in pain. She definitely had a mild stroke, and the vet warned MIL that this is really the beginning of the end. MIL made the choice to not put her down since she is perking, and not in pain. However, she did agree with dh that if there is another incident or at the first sign of serious distress, then it is time. MIL is 83, so this is going to be hard. I'm keeping a close watch from here on out because I don't know if MIL's blood pressure will spike when the time comes or not. If at all possible, I'll be on hand for it just to be careful with her. She's been a pretty darn good MIL all things considered, and none of her other kids live in state, so I want to be there if I can. DH is sometimes too distracted to hone in on warning signals.

Yes, often times the reaction to the discovery of the past indiscretion, and in the days following says more about the person than the original offense and especially so if the offense is not aggregious, criminal behavior.

Scarlet, I've lead a pretty low key life by most standards, and I wouldn't want any of those jobs either! But I guess there are people who do really want them, and unfortunately, they have the consequence of dealing with the probing just for seeking the positions. Not my thing for certain, but many I know students majoring in poli sci, and I want to say, "You might just want to lay off the partying. Ya. You're young. But that may not be a legitimate enough excuse some day when you run for state senator or seek some policy adviser position or whatever." And of course when it comes to security clearance type things, if you need a high level one, man there is no room for error or forgiveness.

I think there is a line there of things that can be overlooked and things that can't, and especially so when it relates to specific position, job, or role. It isn't easy to know where to draw that line. However, if you think about it from say a security, public safety, or public policy position, then you can't just say it doesn't matter because it is quite possible that what the person said or did in the past could very much affect them now. So the difference between what the employer should use as disqualifying information for say a job at Walmart vs. a job at the NSA is just vastly different, and the past doesn't matter much in the first instance but can matter substantially in the second. I think it is good in life to be open to people changing, maturing, etc. I do think however there are times when the additional scrutiny and judgment is warranted.

She is so entrenched in her beliefs and so illogical, that I think she could end up killing one of her children through medical neglect. I have no doubt. The eldest has scarring not only from the pertussis but from the pneumonia that she got in the throes of the disease which went untreated until the father's mother threatened legal action which prompted a visit to the ER which prompted chest x rays which of course netted treatment that she is totally against but reluctantly agreed to. The ex mother in law now lives in Florida so no watchful eyes there, the father is useless, and because she is determined to do things her way, she now restricts all extended family visitation to her children. The other father of the younger two is a knucklehead though at least loving and gentle, and his mother is every bit as radical as niece. Since my brother has been taken in by his wife's equally dangerous philosophies, the one person who could be advocating for their safety isn't. I haven't seen these kids in months since she knows where I stand. I do get facebook posts from other people in the community whom she hasn't blocked who share some of the nuttier things she believes, an occasional "update" on the family none of which sounds remotely healthy or safe. And she is in a mothering group of 13 other women who think the same way she does. THIRTEEN! Fourteen total mothers who are willing to put their children's lives in total peril over delusional beliefs about the evils of "allopathic medicine". That's a substantial number in an area of such low population which makes me wonder how many of them are out there. Are there enough of them that we are on the brink of some pretty radical state or federal legislation to take parents rights away in order to save some kids? I don't know. But I have to honestly say that social media allows them to rapidly disseminate their beliefs, fight for their cause, etc., rile each other up, and as a result, what might only be a very tiny minority of parents could appear to officials to be a much larger number than it may actually be. I mean, I know people who have "liked" her pages and what not because they don't want to get blocked or want to keep the "friendship" open in order to kind of keep an eye out. However, for the powers that be they can't tell the difference between a "like so I can keep an eye on you" and a "like because I believe what you believe" kind of thing which could cause the numbers to appear inflated. Then again maybe not. Maybe that many people have no ability to think critically at all. We talk all the time about lack of critical thinking skills in this nation. Is it far fetched that there could be hundreds of thousands, if not millions of parents who would rather put EO on a cut than get a tetanus anti toxin shot? i don't have the answer to that. Feelings aren't facts by any stretch of the imagination though we kind of have a society who thinks they are. But if I went off "feeling", I'd have to say it feels like the number of radical anti-medicine parents is growing to a scary number. This is where I hope feelings are radically overblown compared to the actual fact.

This! My parents owned a business and were swamped there, but they always knew what my brother was up to no matter how sneaky he was. I swear my grandparents who lived in town did nothing but keep a car we'd never seen under wraps someplace so they could drive around stalking him and then reporting back to my parents. It was UNCANNY. LOL, I was at the piano practicing. My mother used to laugh that as long as there was a piano to babysit me, she could go on tour in Hawaii and leave me home entirely unattended with no worries at all. I never understood why my brother kept it up. The only thing I could think of us was some deep, burning desire to finally, just once pull one over on them, a victory of deception. It never worked. Ever. He left for college without meeting his goal, and then discovered that some how, some way, they had spies at college and knew what he was up to there as well! Crazy. Now that said, we were a bit free range with our kiddoes. The boys went hiking without supervision on state land when they were 9, 11, and 12. I figured safety in numbers, and they had 12 mile walkie takies and I kept mine clipped to my jeans pocket here. I really didn't worry. So walking a few blocks at 9:30 at night would not be on my radar for danger unless there was a bad storm or something.

UGH! I get it. Our middle one, the one that is medically underweight, got sick back in November - food poisoning on top of then some sort of respiratory thing - and didn't call us. He didn't have his friends who found him passed out in his room call us either!!!! I found out after the fact. And he lost 10 lbs while sick which is something he cannot afford to have happen. I would have been down there in a heartbeat with him at the ER first, then back home to his physician and nutritionist to made a plan, but nope...two weeks later I find out. Thanksgiving was not a long enough break for me to get him built back up. We managed to get 3 lbs on him at Christmas, but he still hasn't regained the other 7 lbs.

Agreed. Again, it is the culture of American Individualism where no one else is of any consideration. I think that one thing that will eventually come into play could be a children's bill of rights or other type of amendment to the constitution that bestows constitutional rights to children which they do not have in this country at present. Children are largely, legally, chattel/property under the law hence the issues we have with family courts/custody/not considering the best interests of the child, medical rights issues for children, etc. At some point if something like this is adopted, it will be interesting to see how it plays out because then the wider community of children would have the right to be protected by vaccination programs. I am not saying I am for parents losing their rights to make these decisions, but people like my niece that let her kids run like feral cats around the woods and won't allow them to get tetanus anti-toxin at the ER or rabies shots, and tries to cure everything with veggies, vitamin c, and EO's denying that there is any danger whatsover to childhood diseases (she even believes that people never died or were disabled by polio, that it is all made up by the government) may force the issue. It will always be the radical ones, the totally illogical ones that will force the parents truly trying to do the best they can by their children to lose their parental rights. The state most certainly has a vested interest in public health and safety so by not doing something in our culture with societal pressure, education, etc. to reign in the extremists, a time is likely coming when parental rights will be restricted in favor of children's rights. As for my niece, I am fairly certain given the health problems her eldest child has which she refuses to treat in any competent way that she will lose her children to foster care where they will ping pong back and forth between her and the system and their fathers who are all rather bad men. My only hope is that during the time they are in foster care, they end up vaccinated and especially for tetanus, diphtheria, and polio, and hear some other messages about the good that medical science can do such as "If you get a bad cut, you go to the ER so they can close the wound to keep it from infecting and stop the bleeding. They will give you a shot if you need it to keep you from dying from tetanus infection." Another good message for them would be, "Paramedics are good people who want to help. If someone calls an ambulance for you, do not be afraid. They aren't trying to kill you poison." (Yup, she's told her kids that the drug box paramedics carry is full of poisons that could kill them.) Seriously folks, people like my niece have convinced me we need some sort of children's bill of rights. She has a whole mommy group of women just like her. 13 of them! I shudder to think.......

The dog food is Royal Cannin. I misspoke. The dog is 13 years old which is I think also towards the later range of expected lifespan for the breed. She did finally get up from her rug. She could hardly walk though so DH took her to her water dish. She tried to lap but couldn't, so he used a syringe and gave her several drinks. She snuggled right into his arms so now she is laying in his lap while he works. The vet practice is not open due to the ice. The emergency on call vet said she could see the dog tomorrow. I called another practice, and they are not open either. When I say that we have dangerous roads right now, I'm not exaggerating. We live rural and those are the only two vet practices within 20 miles. I hope doggie either passes quickly or perks more because if she gets into signs of pain, mil is going to have a really, really hard time with it, and she has serious problems keeping her blood pressure down due to kidney function. This is bad for both of them.

Thanks. I'll call her and have her watch for that.

She feeds her some sort of high end from the vet canned dog food because she has so few teeth left. We'll see if she holds on to tomorrow. The roads are so bad there is a four car pile up just a few miles from our house. MIL is 83 and shouldn't even walk to her car. I'm just not sure how to gauge if the dog is in pain or not.

The stem cell line is from aborted fetuses from back in the 60's. They have not used any new fetal tissues in decades, and if they needed them, have indicated that they can simply get stem cells from donated chord blood which is really getting to be a big thing in researching, no need to take tissues. No new abortive tissues necessary. Here is one of many articles on it. https://www.verywellhealth.com/do-vaccines-contain-aborted-fetal-tissue-260337

MIL just called and her ten year old king charles spaniel is unable to walk, not eating and drinking, but she isn't doing a lot of panting. She threw up yesterday but had no other symptoms of anything else being gone. She doesn't lift her head - currently laying on her side on her rug - but she does make eye contact with MIL when she pets her. She has been slowing down a lot lately and was a rescue from a puppy mill so she has never been in good health. We've had an ice storm here and the roads are really bad so I'm trying to suss this out before making a treacherous trip to her house and from there to the vet. What are the other signs of pain besides panting? Thanks to everyone who responds!

I had blood drawn last year and as part of the panel my titers were checked because I work with children so much, and we travel regularly to a vulnerable country. My titers were still good. DH needed a two shot series because his immunity waned. We were totally unwilling to risk it. Neither of us want measles in our 50's!

I got weighed down in First Man. The thing is, I wanted to love it and there were a ton of good things about it. But at some point the never ending litany of acronyms and numbers concerning every last one of the experimental aircraft he flew, caused it to bog down enough that I kind of lost it. Maybe someday I'll finish. But, I'm having a much nicer read with Gene Kranz autobiography. The first attempt I made a at "Godel, Escher, Bach: The Eternal Braid" ended with me having too much college homework and practicing to do. I put it away about half way through, forgot about it, graduated, married, and had kids. I picked it up again when the kids were little and managed one more chapter. But then it was another five years before I finished it. I'm not generally like that, however, sometimes your brain simply needs to give up on something for a while or altogether. Life is short.

I need to do this.

We've recently had a bad situation in our family. My cousin, who was determined to find a baby her mother had given up for adoption several years before she herself was born, did the DNA thing with contact information. There is a lot to the story that I don't feel comfortable relating here, suffice it to say, the details are such that going and looking for this stranger was VERY VERY unwise. The consequence of which has been a family terrorized by an unstable, stalker who is in fact a biological relative, but would never known about them or where to find them if cousin had been willing to listen to reason. Strangers are just that. Strangers. DNA means nothing. Really. It isn't always unicorns and rainbows. So please everyone who is doing this to find blood relations or for genealogy, watch out. Think carefully before giving any identifying information, any contact information. OP, I don't blame you at all for refusing to give up information to this person. Who really knows what kind of human is on the other end?

I agree with this. The state itself is not a medically trained entity. They should not insert themselves between the doc and his/her patients. Oh, there will likely always be a doc here and there who can be paid off to say whatever, but they are few and far between. Most go into the profession to help, not kill, and not lie to the state and lose their medical licenses. So, yes, this is over-reach.

I think the three that astound me the most, people being against them, is tetanus, diptheria, and polio. Seriously. Tetanus is nearly always fatal in children. You can get it simply from pricking your finger on a rose or blackberry bush. It is a misnomer that one must cut oneself on something rusty. It lives in the soil. Therefore, the concept that "I'll just get my kid the anti toxin at the ER or Doc's office when they get cut" is nuts. Truly nuts. Do these people run to the ER every time their child has a scrape on their foot, pokes a finger on something outside? Really. Nope. They aren't going anywhere until that kid starts getting sick and by then it is too late. Tetanus deaths are making a comeback. It is a HIDEOUS death! HIDEOUS. And neonatal tetanus is fatal, fatal, fatal so unvaccinated mothers leave their unborn at great risk. Go google it Google infant tetanus. Newborns of unvaccinated mothers have no antibodies to inherit. Here's a link if you can stomach the photos and diagrams. If you are sensitive, you probably ought not look. https://www.google.com/search?q=neonatal+tetanus+pictures&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=RqHswRVXvuoA3M%3A%2CKVLn593M6Sv7UM%2C_&usg=AI4_-kTRXmb7dpZTzFCDPo_mbdkif06MQw&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiXt9GszaXgAhULoYMKHesqDLIQ9QEwAXoECAUQBg#imgrc=RqHswRVXvuoA3M: Diphtheria, my great uncle, Mitchell, died when he was five of diphtheria. It was an agonizing, traumatic, way to die, and all of his siblings were permanently traumatized by it because he died at home since the whole family was under quarantine back in the day. One my grandmother's strongest memories was of him begging, "Mama, mama, mama, I need air, I need air. Help me!" While he lay in a slow, horrifying several day descent into death, my great grandmother sat there sewing his burial suit. The only people in developed nations who experience the grip of diphtheria are the unvaccinated. Sure, we have supportive care now. Sure. But even with that the mortality rate is around 10%, and there are debilitating, lifelong respiratory problems associated with having survived it not to mention myocarditis, paralysis, and polyneuropathy. Polio - I guess "bring back the iron lung" is the mantra of those against that vaccine. I don't know what else to say. No cure, high mortality rate, debilitating to survivors, no cure. When the NIH says treatment is "bed rest, pain relievers, and portable ventilators" note the lack of anything else, then it seems to me one would be really NOT wanting their child to get polio. I watched dh's aunt drag a foot, leaning on a cane, in chronic, awful pain for decades due to polio as a child. No thanks. Polio is spread through contaminated water and food. Well contrary to the popular belief of deniers, guess what, we have plenty of that in the US these days so it wouldn't take much to get an epidemic started. And as for measles, it utterly wipes out your immune system. So there ya go. You didn't get the "toxins" from the vaccine, but if you get it, then in exchange for that perceived risk, you get to become prey for every other darn thing you ever had immunity to because it is so savage. So much for all of those chicken pox parties. No more immunity there. My mother had measles. She can attest to how sick she was for years afterward with ZERO ability to fight off a darn thing. It went through her school, and the teachers noted that none of their students were healthy for years afterward. But I guess that's preferable. On these ones, I just don't get it. I really don't. But my niece thinks she can cure them all with vitamin c and veggie smoothies. Sigh..........

In the case of my sister in law, she calls herself a naturopath but has ZERO training other than some Reiki certification, and some classes from a non-accredited, for profit, the degree isn't worth the paper it is printed on kind of organization. She's never even had an anatomy and physiology class! It is a problem in Michigan. There isn't enough regulation or enforcement. There are some really great programs for this, one of which is in Arizona and was headed up by an MD, medical professor, Dr. Andrew Weil. Really good stuff. So I know there are very legitimate programs that help blend traditional western medicine with legitimate alternative methodologies. But my sister in law would never agree to study something like that because unless a person needs trauma surgery to save their life or a bone cast, or a prosthetic, she doesn't otherwise believe in traditional medicine. One of her "treatments" for cancer is to tell the patient to starve themselves with radically low blood sugars so they "starve their cancer". I am waiting for someone to die of this and their family to sue her. I would help them find an awesome attorney! She is just that dangerous.

My boys all had to provide proof of MMR vax or titers in order to attend college. Maybe there are colleges that don't require it, but think a lot of the public universities in Michigan do, and especially so for dorm residents. I'm all for it. What I love about my boys' schools is that the health center offers them for free, all kinds of vaccines, and freshmen who want to attend but who weren't vaccinated prior, can start accessing shots a month before school begins. They can get a waiver on their MMR and tetanus in order to move into the dorms because they have started the process so it doesn't delay starting classes. They also offer some that we can't get at our rural health department, meningitis B is one of them. So all of my guys were able to get that vaccine for free. Meningitis scares me when it comes to college students living on campus. It is fatal so quickly, and everyone lives in such tight quarters.Meningitis has been known to make its rounds of college campuses with devastating results, so I was thrilled when they could get the second type.

Agreed, For my niece, the disconnect began with her mother. Her mother embraced some sort of anti-medicine, "natural" healing, essential oils cure everything, iridology, reflexology, Vitamin C and veggies will cure everything including cancer, nonsense and then discovered she could make huge money off it by calling hersel a naturopath and giving very dangerous advice to people in a "practice". She told her daughter that a month after being given her MMR vax, she contracted pneumonia so obviously the vax killed her immune system. REALLY???? She got it because her father had pneumonia first. (It was viral pneumonia.) So she grew up thinking this crap. But, I just can't give her a pass anymore. She's dangerous, and I think her children should be taken away from her because she is so incredibly extreme. I've seen them put in very real peril over lack of medical treatment. When they all came down with pertussis (which she did have confirmed by blood work because she wanted to brag that she and her kids had it and survived - staggers the imagination), she sent her very contagious eldest child to her ex husband's house to infect his pregnant wife as revenge and bragged about it. Wife was fully vaccinated, and pretty wise, told her husband that she could have no part in the insanity of his ex, and promptly sent her step daughter home to mommy until she was better. It was a huge fight because niece kept insisting they take my great niece back because she was doing them a favor by building their natural immunity! I couldn't believe it! Who uses a child as typhoid mary???? It was like that scene from Star Trek Voyager where the family deliberately bred a child to sacrifice to the Borg in order to infect the hive with a disease. For the record, my ex nephew in law has exactly NO SPINE. He should be trying to get custody of his daughter, but he makes no effort at all. Her child was horrifically ill for six weeks. I thought that child would bust her ribs from the coughing, and end up with a secondary infection that would kill her. All her mother would do was feed her high doses of vitamin C and veggies. After six weeks, symptoms began subsiding, and niece announced, "See! I'm curing it with nutrition and vitamin c!" No one could convince her that this was not true, and the virus had just run its course with her body finally able to form enough antibodies to attack it. Nope. Not in her head! How do you argue with someone so delusional? Yes, she has been turned in to CPS more than once for medical neglect. But nothing she does is bad enough, yet, for them to be willing to get off their asses and do anything. I guess she has to be allowed to kill a child before someone goes, 'Well darn. I guess we should have intervened." And she works as a waitress at a very busy restaurant so the worst thing is she is in prime position to transmit a lot of disease to a lot of people. Makes my brain bleed.

My head exploded the other day when my niece who allows no vaccinations, not even tetanus and has said that if her children were exposed to rabies she wouldn't even allow them to have those shots, is hoping for an epidemic in Michigan so she her three kids can get it and have "natural immunity!" Thankfully, we don't have anyone immune compromised in the family at this time, but I did say to her matter of factly that she needed to keep her kids away from us. I just simply won't be the one that gets in on my hands or something from babysitting her kids, and then transmits it to the transplant patient in my place of work. I know it is supposed to be only airborne. But I don't want to risk it! I am very concerned about these diseases making a comeback. I think there is a lot of complacency here in America where the assumption is that either we are now too healthy to die from these illnesses, or there is so much medical support that it's no big deal. They don't seem to get it! Vaccines were invented BECAUSE these viruses are so dangerous since we don't have treatments. Her take on it is that she can cure her kids of anything with large doses of vitamin C and vegetables. It scares me.