PrivateTim

Seriously this all cracks me up. What has Brad done that was more like a "ruthless businessman" than a loving parent? Firing the accused child molester body guard? Hiring the Marine was only a mistake in hindsight, but he was vetted and following Will's actions on the raft trip on the heels of his other bad decisions in Rome bringing in someone who it seemed would bring some discipline to Will wasn't a bad idea. The only place Will had personal discipline was in school work, his life decisions up to that point and in the ensuing weeks were not great decisions. Other than hiring the Marine where did Brad ever try to control Will? Will has always been free to do as he wished with Brad even to the point of undermining Jeanine's authority and Will played that game very well. Who ever supposed that Brad didn't cherish Will or JJ and Darius for that matter, but cherishing is not the same as allowing a young teen to engage in any behavior he chooses, including going to college parties, getting high, having sex with adults, naked dancing and ejaculations in gay clubs and more. Will is hardly smarter than Brad, but he is better at manipulating the family and taking advantage of situations than Brad is. Are we really given to believe that this man-child who is supposed to be the size and demeanor of someone 17-18 (5'10", 170lbs?) was in any danger from his mother who is probably a good bit shorter, lighter and considerably weaker physically? No, Will just knew how to play the wounded child. How about we list all that Will has done on his own since Paris as a yardstick of how mature and how ready he is to manage his own affairs?

Ummm, no. The child doesn't get to decide if the parent has that power or not, the state has already made that decision for them. The law is rather inflexible and it is incredibly difficult to terminate parental rights. Ask any CPS worker in LA how many times they've seen children sent back to or left in incredibly abusive situations and it'll make you physically ill to hear the tales. Look at what Josh Powell did.

The trouble is parents ARE expected to make decisions for their 14 year olds, 14 year olds really don't have a lot of options other than following what directions parents give them. Parents are responsible for their children up to the age of 18, legally and morally and have no obligation to involve children in that decision making process. Parents are also under no obligation to be truthful with their children, they tell them what they think to know and it is their call on what that entails.

I wonder what Jeff thinks. I also wonder what Wade really thinks. I wonder what any kid who has really suffered at the hands of bad or brutal father would think about Will's perceptions of his father. Have Brad's decisions really been bad or is Will being petulant that he wasn't consulted? Was the decision to just give Michael severance and send him on his way that bad of a decision and is there more to that dismissal than we know? The Pat thread has been dropped from the story (or so it seems), but was dismissing Pat a bad decision? For the life of me I can't see the mountain of bad decisions that Brad had made that make him a bad father and certainly not compared to kids who really have had bad fathers.

So you know how I feel, I just can't get past Will being a 14 year old, barely 14. I've never known a 14 year old who was capable of making good decisions for themselves and I don't think Will is an exception. I've struggled to think of where he has shown good, mature judgments and I can't come up with any. But it was an incredibly well written chapter with lots of drama and raw emotions, can't wait for the next chapter.

I get the fiction and poetic license is allowed, but I think some do forget it is fiction. Also not prudery, it is a number of things, some address Will's maturity, some address normal adolescent behavior and some address whether or not the behavior is healthy, not a question of its morality.

So you knew guy's who ejaculated, naked, on stage, in a gay club in Rome when they were thirteen, drugged and bound a caretaker, stole thousands of dollar's from their parents, destroyed their parents wardrobes, destroyed their cars, ran away, had sex with guys over 18 when they were 13, had sex with 4 guys in a few day span, a couple or three in one day, possibly four and all before they were 14 years and 2 months old? Even by the end of his freshman year 11 sex partners would be a lot in ANY time and era and not the norm.

It seems to me all you are is an enabler. You have a ready built excuse for everything Will does. There was no indication that Will had anything on his mind in that club other than he was digging that people dug him. Are you really telling me that as a mental health professional you think a gay club is a healthy environment for a 13 year old? "Not completely" is a pretty sly way of giving approval. As to the raft trip. It is normal for teens to drink and do illicit drugs in high school, what is immature and downright stupid is to do those things and then go to school (the idiots who show up to a school dance drunk, like the staff won't notice" or do it on a school sponsored trip. THAT is immature because you do not have the maturity to know it is a really, really, really bad idea that can have serious consequences. Will already had his plan in mind long before the Marine guy showed up. Brad did not run away with Robbie because he was a spoiled brat, he (they) ran away because they did not see any other option to an immediate threat to Robbie. Will had lots of options, his lack of maturity led him to follow a completely out of control, irrational path. I'll look to Jeremy to confirm the number, but 11 sexual partners from someone barely 14 is an extraordinary number. According to Mosher, Chandra, & Jones, (2005), men age 30-44 report 6-8 partners up to that point. Will is already double the low end number. Mosher, Chandra, & Jones further say that only 16% of men by age 18 have had as many as 11 partners. How many did Will have in Norway? 4 was it? Are you really telling me that your considered opinion as a mental health professional that a boy of 14 having 4 sexual partners in 96 hours or so is healthy? Are there no emotional consequences for promiscuity in an adolescent? No cheapening of sex to a mere physical act and no desensitizing to sex?

13 year olds do not belong in clubs with adults. You may be too young to remember when Arena was an all ages club, but I do. You'd go in on a Friday night and there'd be 13 year old boys mixing in with guys much, much older and I came to know several of those 13 year olds later when they started hitting Tiger Heat and those clubs. To a person everyone had bad, bad stories about what happened to them and how in retrospect they felt exploited and abused even in relationships that at the time they consented fully to the relationships. Research is showing more and more that juveniles are incapable of making prudent and rational decisions and have been the basis of the Roper and Miller decisions by the Supreme Court. I can't think of anyone who has ever had a child thinking that it would be healthy for their 13 year old to be in a club like Will was. And Will isn't a young innocent discovering sex with his peers like John and Ryan, he is engaging adults as well and he is being over the top in promiscuity. Maybe Jeremy can provide us with the total number of partners Will has had already. I think the number would be stunning for someone barely 14. In general, not Will specific, how much decision making power over their own life does the average 14 year old, 9th grader have? Not a lot and that is for a reason. As to Will specifically, was his decision making leading up to the Norway trip mature? Was his behavior on the trip mature? I'm gonna say no. If your behavior is such that it is the buzz of a skating competition, that is probably not a good thing.

I think that is all really good insight. I actually like Will, like Will as a narrator, but I just am not in love with "Will the Great and Impervious" as some seem to be. I agree with the insight that Brad and Robbie have become cartoonish in order to be Will's foils.

OMG, hasn't any one ever been to Disneyland or Disney World? When was the last time a straight guy played Prince Charming, Peter Pan, Aladdin or Prince Eric? I dated Peter Pan the whole summer of 1995.

Oh hell, someone 'splain this one!

I am dumbstruck by this "Will is mature", "Will is more mature at 14 than Brad at 17". Less than six months ago a naked 13 year old Will was ejaculating on a stage in a gay club, got drunk and high on a school trip risking expulsion, then destroyed tens to hundreds of thousands worth of personal property belonging to his fathers and finally ran away? Blue and Centex, please point out where Brad had similar actions in Be Rad. How is what Will did "controlling" his anger? His anger seemed rather out of control to me. Those actions alone are reason enough no judge would ever grant him an emancipation even if he had parental approval. Age and maturity are not automatic, but 99.999% of the time maturity comes with experience and experience comes from age. Are either one of you trying to say you think you were just as mature your freshman year in high school as you were as senior year in high school? Was it the same for all your friends maturity level? And did you have the same level of maturity your freshman year in college as you did your senior year in college?? Heck, by the end of my freshman year in college I was much more mature just by the fact of living away from home and having to be completely self reliant when it came to getting to class, getting assignments done, etc. Just become some people are immature at older ages does make it the norm, it is the outlier.

As to the new chapter of Paternity there are just so many potential directions things could be heading. Are Jeff and Elizabeth headed to divorce or estrangement? Is Elizabeth going to have a reduced role in the Senator's job, life, policies, etc? If this were Hollywood, Wade would be awarded a spin off series. I think the leak was pretty clearly from Elizabeth and as part of her continuing assault on Wade to try and prove him not capable of handling his trust fund.

Looking and acting like an adult has nothing to do with emotional maturity. it has been reiterated over and over that Will looks like an 18 year old not that he acts like an 18 year old. Even 18 year olds are pretty immature still and a 14 year old is that much more immature. In the same way that a lot of gay men can act straight, a 14 can act like an adult, but that is just what it is, acting. All anyone needs to do is think about how much they changed, grew and matured from their freshman year in high school to their senior year in high school and then again from their freshman year in college to their senior year in college. And again how much you mature from leaving to school to working your first career job.

Wasn't Brad older when he was the narrator in Be Rad? Like 17? Big difference between that and 13. I also don't think Will controls his temper much better. He had the implosion where he potentially did hundreds of thousands of dollars damage and then ran away. And JP may have done better with Brad, but not with Billy. I think Cody will provide the needed fatherly functions and be around as needed, but he won't be a Wade and unlike most fathers not married to the woman he had a child with, he doesn't have to worry about the financial support. I expect the family to take care of that. So Cody's role will be different from Wade's, but adequate.

Yes Mark, it is remarkable not just that you have been able to keep up the amazing CAP series, but the horny sailor story too. I've had to put that aside while I've read the CAP series due to time constraints. Can't believe how you can bang them out. Truly marvelous. A tip of the cap.

I still think Will thinks it is kind of a turn on, he was just mad that someone tried to use them to hurt someone else and he is using it for leverage.

Actually NBC did a great job in showing the events, they were on MSNBC, CNBC, NBCSports, Bravo and NBC daytime TV. It was their nighttime, Prime Time show that sucked. It had stupid commentary and weird cuts of sports, weird "human interest" stories, but you could have watched virtually every event on either TV or streaming off the Internet.

It certainly would, which is what I said earlier that given how rare and isolated the incidents have been a court would order mediation and counseling long before they terminated parental rights and remember emancipation and termination of parental rights are two very separate and different things. In CA you can NOT have an minor emancipation without the consent of the parent or guardian. You just can not, it is the law. A granting of emancipation could follow the termination of parental rights, but it is far from automatic, especially with a 14 year old. They are more likely to assign a guardianship in a case like Will's, but for your average Father Tim type kid it would be assignment to a foster home or a group home like Father Tim's.

I am an attorney. Maybe the Professor needs to get out of the classroom and into a court room. I could flood you with case law where parents with abuse 50x worse than Jeannie did not have their parental rights terminated. Will is this 14 year old "with the body of an 18 year old" and they are going to go into court with a single account of where Jeannie scrathed and bruised Will's wrists and that is abuse severe enough to remove her parental rights? God why can't I face people like the Professor in court. Ca Fam § 7122 is black letter law in CA. Perhaps your DA friend should read it and In re Olivia A. (1986) so he understands his obligation under the law. Do I need to drop Bonnie an email about further legal education for her peeps?

Can Rio stage a successful Olympics? How will they address the favelas in Rio? And the issues of street crime? Can they use the Olympics to remove or improve the shanty towns? Will the world economy allow them the funding to do so?

While I think the opening ceremonies dragged on too long and weren't that great, the Games themselves were marvelously managed and the venues were great. Rio has a huge challenge ahead of it to match the accomplishments.

Tom Daley had a marvelous Olympics. That he performed so well in the 10m platform is a testament to his ability and mental toughness. He did everything he had to do to win a gold medal. He dove the appropriate dives to put pressure on his opponents, at least Boudia who dove a slightly tougher program than Daley and Qui who dove the same exact program. I think Qui benefited from rather generous judging, especially on dive 5255B and was not penalized on a dive where he missed vertical.

And any competent attorney would argue that Jeannie was merely using it as a tool to stop Will's promiscuity, especially with people over the age of 18. If you add up how many people Will has already had sex with at barely the age of 14 and how many of them are over 18, it might be a compelling argument especially when the other adults in Will's life have done nothing to curtail his sexual escapades and in some cases, enabled them. Stop me if I am wrong, but we are still less than six months from Will's kidnapping and sexual abuse in Paris and his naked pole dance in Rome. It would be very easy for a lawyer for Jeannie to put on expert after expert about how Will is suffering post traumatic stress and all his erratic behavior (naked pole dance, promiscuity, underage drinking, running away, destruction of ten's of thousands of property, etc) is a cry for help and Jeannie was using the only tool she could think of to shock the adults in Will's life to look at his behaviors and get him help.