I Know Children. They Don’t.

SWANK Black Paper Series

I Know Children. They Don’t.

An Analysis of Lived Expertise vs. Institutional Arrogance in Child Welfare Culture

Filed Under: Maternal Authority / Pedagogical Knowledge / Systemic Incompetence

Author: Noelle Bonnee Annee Simlett

I. Introduction: The Authority of Those Who’ve Done the Work

I’ve worked with children since I was ten.

1. First as a babysitter
2. Then as a day care teacher
3. Then as a full-time nanny
4. And finally—as a mother of four

I’ve raised them, taught them, fed them, soothed them, advocated for them, and protected them from harm that came wearing a badge labeled “support.”

Now I work as an AI researcher in ethical systems design, and I can tell you with certainty:

Social workers do not understand children. They understand systems.

And those are not the same thing.

II. Experience vs. Performance

I’ve spent decades in the room with real children.

I’ve witnessed:

1. Sensory meltdowns
2. Language delays
3. Trauma responses
4. Sibling dynamics
5. Grief, growth, boredom, brilliance

I can read a child’s silence, their pacing, their withdrawal, their regression.

Social workers, on the other hand, walk in for fifteen minutes and write:

“The child appears withdrawn.”

“Mother appears overly attentive.”

They read behaviour like tourists—and pathologize what they don’t understand.

III. The Professional Blindness of the Unparented

Let’s say it plainly:

Most social workers do not have children of their own.

They have coursework, checklists, jargon, and procedure.

They have “parenting plans” they’ve never lived.

They speak with confidence about family life while having no first-hand knowledge of:

1. Overnight illness
2. Separation anxiety
3. Sleep regressions
4. Long-term trust repair
5. Or how to raise more than one child in a home with integrity

They confuse observation with understanding, and compliance with care.

IV. Motherhood Is Treated as a Liability, Not an Expertise

Despite my decades of lived childcare,

despite my academic work in ethics, learning, and cognitive development,

despite my daily presence with four thriving children—

I am treated by the state as “suspicious.”

While the undertrained, childless visitor is treated as the expert.

This isn’t about safety.

This is about control.

It’s about a system that trusts its own hierarchy more than lived human connection.

V. The Arrogance of Procedure Over Presence

They don’t listen.

Because if they did, they would hear:

1. Nuance
2. Context
3. Real education
4. Emotional fluency
5. A home built on sovereignty, not performance

But that doesn’t fit the form.

So they erase it.

And what’s left is a file full of projection, and a family forced to prove it’s not broken—because someone with no experience decided it might be.

VI. Conclusion: I Know Children. They Know Protocol.

There is nothing more dangerous than a child “protection” industry run by people who don’t understand children.

Not from cruelty.

From ignorance.

From ambition.

From a culture that prefers theories to touch, policies to parenting, and compliance to care.

I’ve held hundreds of children in real time.

They’ve held clipboards.

And I will never let their credentials outrank my memory, my experience, or my children’s truth again.