Good point! If the situation was explained properly to the CPS by the person who made the call i wouldn't of thought they would look into it... but maybe they have to? Either way, whoever made the call is an idiot, cloth diapers are much more inconveinient than the disposable ones so good on you for doing whats best by your children and the environment rather than doing what's easiest.

you might notice that she specified the supposed problem was that the kids were wearing CLOTH diapers, not that they were wearing diapers at all.

school counselors are definitely morons. i wrote about stuff like that too. luckily, my 10th grade English teacher just asked, "Do you still feel like that?" and left it at that when I said no.

Guidence counsellors exist to make your life worse. Whenever you tell them you have a problem, being bullied or picked on by everyone, they tell you that its normal or to laugh it off, and as soon as you try to stick up for yourself, they try to suspend you.... Public school counselling..... What a waste.

I totally feel you there. I wrote very well in middle school and there was a prompt based off a photo of a sculpture one day. To me, it looked like a man in pain and sobbing be comforted by a friend. The teacher, bless her heart, asked me if I wrote the whole thing and "if everything was okay". Yeahhh then I had to go see a guidance counselor the rest of the year. I could have been more productive watching water drip.

A friend of mine almost went to jail because he wrote a poem and the teacher thought she was being threatened.

It's a tough situation for teachers when they read stuff like that. When I read something indicating a student is depressed or may be depressed, or there's any kind of sing that there's abuse or something going on, I'd certainly like to think that it's nothing and just the student being creative. On the other hand, there are students where the only way they will reach out to someone is through their writing. I could always just ask the student, but students will often have second thought about letting anyone know what's going on after they're questioned, and deny that something is going on even when it's true. My province's School Act also REQUIRES me to report it to the school counsellor or the principal. If I don't, and something happens and it comes out that the I knew, or had reason to believe that something could be going on, I could lose my job etc. Frankly, I'd rather err on the side of caution, both for the kids sake, and my sake.

I attend a university with a very high depression rate (it's just the way my university is, and is actually considered normal), and they're trigger happy when it comes to sending kids home. If there's going to be a suicide, they'd rather not have it occur on campus. I worked as an RA for a semester, but my boss was an ass to me and my residents. If I stuck up for them in situations that were clearly contrived (which happened often) he would ask me to resign due to my mental issues. I couldn't put up with it anymore and decided to quit, but he wouldn't let me until I had sought counseling. They traced my "problems" back to something in my childhood, required me to seek further counseling, and if I refused, would kick me out of school. They also threatened to involve my parents (even though I'm a legal adult) if I didn't comply... "they would be sorely disappointed to hear that their daughter was kicked out of school... you'd hate to disappoint you parents, right?" I finally found refuge with the Dean of Students who thought I was normal and happy compared to the average. Once I was out of the housing job everything resumed normalcy. I even got free housing for having to deal with the whole situation (I'd live off campus, but that's more expensive/dangerous). The counselor who blackmailed me is gone, but the hall director still works for the school. TLDR: Counselors suck.......

why are guidance counselors always such unintelligent douchebags? seriously, I'm not sure I've ever seen one do their job right.

"instead of cutting myself like the average moron". Wow. What an insensitive bitch you are. Just because someone cuts themselves, does NOT make them a moron! I cut myself a lot back when I was bullied, so when I read your comment, it really set me the **** off. Learn to think BEFORE you type, dumbass!

You put a liner in and remove the liner when you change the diaper. Any remains left after the liner has been removed and the diaper has been through a hot wash cycle in the washing machine are next to nothing and still a lot better than the chemicals used to make disposables.

Yeah, I hear of a lot of hippies using cloth daipers because they don't want to throw them out and have them end up in landfills. However, you're going to spend thousands more gallons of water washing the cloth ones. So either way, the enviornment loses. Just buy regular daipers like a normal person.

My parents used cloth diapers on me. I came out just fine. If you properly clean them its perfectly safe. And people used cloth diapers for thousands of years before we even had disposable diapers. There is nothing unsanitary or unsafe about it, its all down to a personal choice.

Wrong. Baby poop has a different texture than adult poop, and if you take care of your diapers properly (rinse them right away after changing) and wash them correctly, they will come out completely clean.

That's what water treatment stations are for... Pretty sure 10 or so liters a day isn't remotely close to 10 disposable diapers which can't be recycled or broken down easily. I don't think it has anything to do with being a hippy or not.

My friend just rinses them in the toilet, and doesn't flush so it's a normal amount of water used when someone else comes to use the toilet, then she washes them with the clothes. They're clean and they come out fine. Nothing's wrong with using cloth diapers. If yours dont come out clean you're washing them wrong. :/

what the hell? what about twenty years ago, when disposable diapers were so expensive that most people used cloth diapers? And we all turned out just fine. It is NOT hard to get faecal matter out of the material, you rinse it out and then put it in the washing machine with washing powder and whatnot. There is no reason that faeces would be harder to get out than, say, red wine, beetroot juice, red dirt, permanent marker, etc.

Emperor_Jim - fifteen years ago, cloth diapers WERE 'regular diapers', it's just that disposable ones got cheaper and people got lazier so now society uses disposable ones more. Oh and btw, you can wash a whole bunch of cloth diapers in one load of washing, so I'm pretty sure the amount of water that goes into that load (and can then be recycled via a water treatment plant) is far better for the environment than filling up landfill.

There are services which handle the washing of cloth diapers. Basically you give them the stuff in an (air-tight) container and they give you the new set. They wash with special machines and at high temperatures. You are right though - environmental benefit is not so obvious. Usually there is a slight advantage for cloth diapers, depends how close the service is to your home - if they service a wide area then that could all but disappear. If you do the washing yourself, it's more clear-cut environmentally: there is going to be a benefit. Sure, it takes a lot of water, but that applies to manufacturing disposable diapers, too. It's a lot of work though, and I agree you need to take great care that you wash them properly. As for the argument that "cloth diapers used to be regular diapers" - that is also true. However life expectancy goes continually up, child mortality is ever shrinking. Statistically we are doing better by our kids now, then our grandparents were able to - so some of the things we are doing different must be the right.

As far as the environmental argument, cloth diapers and disposables don't have a clear-cut winner. A 1993 study found that cloth diapers required 13% more energy than disposable diapers over the same time frames, because of the necessity of washing; being less efficient, home laundering required 27% more energy than disposables. Each method required much more water than disposables, while disposables produced twice the solid waste of cloth. The differences are honestly not very important; there is no conclusive winner between the two kinds of diapers.

I'm pretty sure that study can be considered outdated. There have been significant advances in the technology used in washing machines that allows them to use much less water than 16 years ago. I don't know if there's been a more recent study, but data that old isn't usually applicable anymore.

On top of the fact that the study is outdated, slightly higher energy and water requirements don't compare to the lasting effect of filling up landfills with diapers that don't breakdown for a long time.

Lila, I don't think it's a factor of being lazy. For me, I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to properly use them. I was also really concerned about the pins in them. So, I chose to use disposable diapers. Economically speaking, cloth is definitely the way to go, but only if you feel confident with them.