Is it child abuse to be taken away from parents who love you and desparately want you?  Is it abuse to be put in a separate foster home than your siblings and have no contact with them? 
Is it better to be abused or neglected by foster parents who don't even love you and are doing it for the paycheck only?  Many former foster children have said that although their parents did abuse or neglect them it was SO MUCH WORSE in foster care.

Your points are all interesting discussions to have and to philosophize about BUT no matter what we decide neglect or abuse is, the government has no better answers.  The government getting involved and removing children from loving parents just makes those childrens' lives much worse than before.

Having a family who loves you is what is most important.

Hi taraz. It has to be a judgement call on the parents part. I smacked my son for nearly burning down the house. What was i meant to do ? Put him in the corner. In my view it depends on the situation. It didn't do him any harm as we often talk about it. He understood why he was punished.
I used to get caned at school on a regular basis. If I didn't get punished one day in a week it was a bonus. The teachers used to love it and it was an abuse of power.
On the diet of a child normally if a parent eats junk food then the child will to. Why would a parent who eats crap because they are too lazy go and make a special meal for their child.
Just down to the luck of the draw to who you are born to. I had an absent father for most of my life which does affect you in other ways and I think that is neglect and therefore a form of abuse. I think your daughter is lucky as you are not some wacko and both of you have her best interest at heart.

It's really unfortunate that child "protection" has come to the state that it now is in. There are some much more extreme cases where a child does need help from someone to be protected from a horribly abusive parent. That said, there are now too many triggers for child services interventions. Where I live (Ontario, Canada), for example, there are legal regulations that require certain care givers and other professionals to engage protective services at a very low threshold. Without going into great detail, I have seen examples in my work where a new mother will be reported to the protective services before she has even left the hospital. Now if she is a homeless crackhead, this maybe makes sense but if she is struggling with PPD and perhaps is just in need of greater support in her initial experience with motherhood or if her spouse appears to be prone to aggressive behaviour, these should not be triggers to report her but the practitioners are scared NOT to make a report because they fear reprisal if anything were to happen to the child. Consequently, people members of the public are scared to even take their children for medical services because of fear for being accused of neglect. 

It's wonderful to do everything we can to protect children but a lot of them do not need protection. I agree with the author, we all grew up in eras where a certain degree of humanity and imperfection was permitted for parents and we all survived and even thrived in many cases. Now the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction.

This is just too balance compared to one sided posts most people write about child protection. 
At times, children are  safe with the cps than for them to be in the hand of their biological parents. 
If you see the way some of these parents abuse the right of their children especially in this part of the world, you will be blaming God for giving them such child in the first instance. 
The only thing is that more attention should be given to this children to ensure they do not suffer, remember they are at the receiving end of everything.

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These are important questions to ask. What constitutes abuse and who has the right to decide?
Do we need some agency or person to intervene when a line is crossed. I believe that we do but it is complicated because there will always be a gray area somewhere between sexual abuse and letting your child eat french fries or watch TV.

I'm glad that it is not my job to draw this line and decide over other families. I'm also glad that CPS never investigated me (as a nomadic, homeschooling, Christian living in a trailer) to see what lines I have crossed.

> How much limitation can you place on a child's potential before it becomes abuse?

 I think it's a question of what kind of limitation you place on them. You raise some very worthwhile points of view, as usual. But we only view abuse in the narrow terms defined by the law, by the mainstream. 
I've met people who force their child to go to the local school, despite depression and very worrying behavior in the child, despite signs of emotional dissonance...Now, I consider that to be abusive. But the state does not. Her parents and her school do not. 

Abuse has a very limited definition. Which is what sparks all these horror stories you read, about kids being taken away because the CPS and the state deem the parent abusive. In their own terms. 

Basically, to answer your title question, whatever the state wants to call abusive.

I love my education very well. Very intelligent post.

Yes you are right kids dont need youtube and other gaming stuff to be entertained in young age, as being a Scientist and biologist I know these things act in an adverse way. These limit the creativity because kid doesn't get to figure out the things on their own but everything is just in their plate. This restricts the brain development in way that they dont become the critical thinkers. And and health consciousness is very low in people my cousin herself was feeding her son of age 1.5 year a cold drink(pepsi) and I was like **What in the world are you doing**. its a dire condition and  all other the questions you raised are very valid.
what you think we should have seminars for parents for awareness ????

The question you raise to the _parameters_ are all very valid.

The premise is flawed though, I think.
The premise comes from a perspective of another authority - someone else - the state -  deciding for a parent what _is_ and what _isn't_ .

Parents can never get right all the time obviously, but 'we' as a race have been doing a pretty good job for the last millennia or two.

Real education would minimize 'bad parenting' (IMO, as a non parent.lol)
The state could provide this education if 'they' truly cared.

We never had a state to decide what _is_ and what _isn't_. Not until this last few of decades.
It was social contract in communities, with no government intervention. 
Communities generally fill the role fairly well. Perfect? no.
But they _care_. 

In my opinion, this has nothing to do with the welfare of a child, or abuse of a child, but a cultural marxist take over of the parents authority and ultimately, parents agency.

A state strategy to take control of children.

...and this is where it leads...
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/13189587.Named_person_law__clashes_with_human_rights_/

So the question is not so much about are you abusing your child, but more of 'are you willing to let the state decide what your role as a parent, is'.

A little off track - but not very...

these services were created to ensure the integrity of children but, currently there are many irregularities beginning with the process itself, the investigations, the files and even the professionals who are taking home children supposedly with the aim of providing improvements in his life. There are abused children is true but the social service does not use psychological evaluations or psychotherapy for these children, they place them in shelters where they often lose their lives or continue to be abused, some go with replacement families and have no real control over who will stay with the infant. There are many irregularities of our own that many of us have lived because we touched and another we know because we work there

You raise some interesting questions. 
The problem comes when you start giving the state the power to overrule parents.
What happens when Creationists are the 51%, and decide that teaching Evolution to your children is abusive? 
What if vegans are in charge and legislate that children shouldn't be fed meat, eggs, dairy etc?  
The best thing the state could do for genuinely neglected/unwanted/abused children is to allow their parents to sell them into loving homes.

yes, really nice writing, about children.thanks for sharing this dear

I'm a bit annoyed that I missed your post on brainwashing with technology. Sitting your children down in front of these things is something I've never been comfortable with yet there was so often the endorsement from outside sources that it is good for them. Thankfully my instincts went against it and I wonder now how much of that endorsement was an attempt to justify it themselves. I recently read an article by @hickorymack where  she actually found information on [how we get addicted to our phones.](https://steemit.com/writing/@hickorymack/what-i-learned-without-my-phone)

I have never gotten my daughters phones. I refuse to even have a phone which does any more than calls or texts myself, because I know I'll use it way too much! I justified not getting phones for my girls for two reasons, firstly it's a waste of money because there is no reason my daughters would need a phone. They were either with me or somewhere where they could be contacted... and that actually concludes both reasons they didn't need to have a phone. My eldest now has one, but that was her decision at 16 and she pays for it. She probably uses it way more than she should, but I've seen worse. 

Just as an aside, when my eldest was 9 I had a conversion with her teacher and she was telling me how she had to take iPhones from the children each morning. We were baffled as to why 9 and 10 year olds would need a phone, nevermind an iPhone! 

Anyway, on to this post. I'll not touch on CPS as I realise from the comments that is not the point you were trying to get at. It obviously is a topic that touches a raw nerve that it jumped to the forefront for so many of us. 

I think this is a telling phrase:

>not until it crosses a line 

This is something that is used a lot, but in recent times I'm realising that lines are hard to draw. The line for everyone and every circumstance sits in differen't places, doesn't it? Can we, as parents, draw those lines for anyone but ourselves? 

I'm very much with you on parenting I think. At least today I am. I've always been one to cook at home as much as possible, but my girls also got the occasional junk food treats when they were younger. I realise that woman across from you feeding her kids fast food could have been me while out, because that's when they would most likely have gotten that treat. 99% of people wouldn't have seen a problem with that and the ones that wouldn't touch it were the "weird hippy" minority.

Parenting is tiring, but, as you say, we chose to have children so I made that time to interact with them. My own parents weren't very hands on and I remember cherishing those rare times they did pay us attention, so I knew I wanted that for my own children. Before my eldest could read she used to recite her favourite books at bedtime as we turned the pages. If she forgot what the next page said I only needed to say the first word and off she'd go! They are teens now and I don't have the traditional teen issues. We're still close. 

A final thought is, are we even being given the best guidance as parents by everything around us? When my children were your daughter's age we had no internet connection to be able to find out the things I now know about nutrition and the effects of technology, so I was guided more by media, health carers and teachers. The effects of screen time are also something we're probably only just starting to get long term information on, because it's relatively new. Our generation didn't grow up with it and the first generations to have it in large amounts are only now reaching adulthood.

In conclusion, I think it's going to be an incredibly hard line to draw to determine where abuse begins. Sorry for the essay!

>I can understand parents raising questions in their children but instilling belief systems is not that as it is fundamentally going to shape a child's experience of the world in which they live. Some people say that they were born a specific religion. No, they were born into an environment where some components of that religion were believed and encouraged to believe similarly. It is hard to find the truth when from birth, one is told what the truth is

It does not even end there, it is even more difficult to believe that there is a possibility of the existence of a totally different perspective, when from birth one is told there is only one way!

> Is it abuse for a parent to brainwash a child? 

I think this abuse, it leads to mental slavery which causes an adverse effect on the imaginative/creative capabilities of the child as the mind is mentally barricaded by the so called *truths* 

>How much limitation can you place on a child's potential before it becomes abuse?

A lot of people think when the matter of abuse arises, it has to do with physical

Let us assume that all parents love their children and want the best for them, where is the line drawn from wanting the best to spoiling the child or from wanting the best to abusing the child

Is there a balance really?

This is an interesting topic debate, we need to understand the difference between when a child is abuse and when he is not by depriving a child his fumdamental right to good living , good health  and quality education . That is what I know as child abuse , but by restricting my child to social media and some certain things that I know is not good for his spiritual growth as a parent I don't see that as child abuse. Because the parent knows better than the government on the best ways for them to train their child.

So many parents in the world today has failed as parents. Not because they cannot provide shelter, not because they cannot provide food or send their kids to school. But they have failed to give their kids the essential moral value kids needs to excel in future to come. 

CPS to me isn’t the best remedy to poor children upbringing, in some areas of the world the practice is so mean that your beloved child could be taken away from you anytime all because of some un favourable circumstances either by your incapability or by close monitoring of this CPS thing 

Smacking a child in some part of the world is considered the best and in some parts , it’s a crime. I don’t think taking away children from parents is the solution to so considered ill upbringing of a child , instead I think parents should be educated on the proper way and of course they should be empowered if they are financially incapable

Another great piece. My father and mother were church going folks and believed in corporal punishment which in those days was legal, but they never smacked any other place, but our buts and never in anger. The punishment was always balanced with the level of bad behaviour. My parents were balanced people with my father being a teacher and my mother being a nurse. They gave a lot of love and attention and also guided us in regards to respect, for oneself, others, the elderly, animals and nature. We were taught the importance of balance in our own lives and to ask questions in order to learn while respecting the views, cultures and religions of other. My parents ate healthy food, but in balance also allowed the occasional burgers and chips, milkshakes and soda's & sweets. We were allowed some TV time, after dinner and providing our homework was done. Friendships and playing outdoors was encouraged and also sports activities, but we were not forced to excel in sports based in my parents preferences, try it and see how it goes till you find some that you really enjoy. 

I believe that balanced parenthood is the key and a government should not be allowed to interfere in a system in which good parents guide their children well, but that abusive parents should, instead of being locked up (depending on what they had done to the child) be forced to attend better parenting classes, like community service till they come to terms with what it takes. The severe cases of malicious abuse and this must include messing with a young child's mind and emotional state should be locked up for good in the worst place to found on earth.

So cute........

Its seriously a matter of much grief. Your points are true to their fullest.And  Lot of countries have child-labour in vogue. Its really a bad situation. I want everyone to know these it really important for peoples to know. We neglect it. and as you said
> Does the frequency matter? 
>
I truly believe it should be stopped and I know your daughter has bright future because she has a dad like you.
@tarazkp thanks for sharing I wanna resteem it so others can get to know how valuable it is.

It's a slippery slope to consider things like diet, screen time, and belief systems. No family is perfect and if these areas were taken into account, no family would be safe. If CPS needs to exist, they should do nothing more than determine whether or not a child is in *danger.* Everything else will work itself out in time.

I had personal experience with CPS. My children were never taken, but ridiculous "problems" were noted like the fact that my 3 year old wet the bed and she wore a pull up at night. It is proven that this is a result of a combination of a small bladder and deep sleep and in no way put her in danger, but they overstepped their bounds and put conditions on me like *must have adequate furniture* (when I was going through a tough time and we were staying at my moms house) and *must call within 3 days of losing a job.*  Now a year after the case being dropped, they are in my life again and I believe they would've left us alone if it weren't for the fact that I'm homeschooling again. 

Kudos to you for restricting devices in your home! Just the fact that you're pondering all of this tells me you're a great parent, but I wouldn't overthink it. :)

This post was upvoted and resteemed by @thethreehugs. Thank you for your support of @familyprotection.

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Good article..
I am agreed with your article....

Self realization is key for individuals. You may have been born into a family in a particular religion or belief system but what is important is to self discover the truth which you’ll behold. Truth should not be fed to us. Truth should be discovered.
> This is the issue isn't it? When it comes to these borderline areas like TV and diet, it is hard to know where the lines are until the symptoms present themselves. But with many of these things from a young age, it won't appear as a symptom, it will appear as the child was born that way.

I totally agree to this statement. What ever your efforts in training a child is. Moderacy settles it. 
In my part of the world, the community sees smacking a child as very necessary in child training. They say, if you don’t beat them they will get spoilt. But one thing I’ve notived is that, when they often beat a child they develop some sort of resistance and then it would not have as much effect as it had when you first did it. i believe moderacy helps to keep a normal level at everything.

I am not a father yet but when I am I will love my children as much as I can love anyone. This does not mean that they will not be corrected if they are wrong or make mistakes. 
There are some mistakes I would rather not have them make, e.g. jumping off a flight of stairs or putting hands into boiling water, so I have to be there and I also have to make them see the danger of doing so in case I am not there. 
***
Will I spank my child, yes I will. Why? Because correcting a child comes in different forms; there is a time to talk to a child and there is a time to show you mean what you said. What I will endeavour to do at the end is explain the reason for the spanking so my child will not think it was arbitrary. 
***
Families will always have influence over the young. It could be religious, political, career choice, social behavior but it is always there in small or large amounts. As a child grows up, the child should be let loose to see the wider world. 
My family is Roman Catholic; My father and mother both. I and an elder brother arebRoman Catholics but my rest siblings have all left the Roman Catholic Church and worship wherever they chose. 
***
I think the key is allowing your child the room to ask questions, to question even your own beliefs. It is in those questions, he or she will find his or her own path in the future.

The word "relativity" comes to mind here. I dont believe these questions can be answered in any absolute way. I mean cultures across continets and time all have different perspective on morality and what is good for children. In parts of africa the girls are force fed to become extremely obese so they can find a good husband, hopefully with wealth to support the family. That is viewed as good for the society/family although it most definitely is contributing to shorter life and health issues. I think most of our world sytems are extremely flawed at best and producing "people" to chase after happiness  (aka whatever culture deems). People always chasing the future in hopes to get something. Then something arrives and its off to the next whatever. Anyone who controls anothers parenting style for better or worse is using force or threat. My mind could go many directions with this post. Another interesting read and i like your parenting style.