Much to the chagrin of my mother, my father had a pretty straightforward parenting philosophy: he’d let us try anything once, as long as he knew it wouldn’t kill us. Now, lest you think my father was a permissive parent, let me assure you he wasn’t. He was a disciplinarian who believed children should be seen and not heard, but he also bristled at the overprotective women in my life. One summer, he let a group of us walk a mile and a half to this little family grocery store in my childhood town of Greenfield. My mother acted like he let us storm the Bastille, unarmed.
Unfortunately, that latter mentality seems to be increasingly pervasive in today’s society, with nosy Nancies getting into people’s business, like the one who called child protective services (CPS) on a dad who climbed El Capitan with his 7-year-old son.
A Colorado father who climbed Yosemite’s El Capitan with his 7-year-old son says someone reported him to child protective services, questioning his parenting. pic.twitter.com/iMZvkcYlac
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) October 9, 2026
Here’s more (emphasis added):
Joe Evermore and his wife Ann have made a name for themselves by taking their young sons on daring climbing expeditions.
In May, Evermore’s son Joey Danger Evermore completed a climb of El Capitan, reportedly becoming the youngest person ever to accomplish the feat.
But while some social media users have celebrated the boy’s remarkable achievement, others have tried to get his kids taken away.
“There’s a lot of bullying that goes on online,” Joe told PEOPLE. He explained that some critics have gone as far as reporting him and his wife to Child Protective Services.
The family even received a letter from CPS stating that the agency had reviewed multiple complaints but decided not to pursue them.
“There’s people that think, ‘Hey, your kids would be better put in a foster system’ or put in front of a television, rather than training daily for an epic mission,” Evermore said.
There are so many avenues to take here.
We do have a childhood obesity problem, where 21.1 percent of children ages two to 19 have obesity, and 7 percent of that same age group have severe obesity. It’s increased exponentially since the 1970s, nearly quadrupling. Sedentary lifestyles, as Evermore mentions above, are partly to blame. There’s this notion that if my kid sits at home on the PlayStation or laptop, he’s “safe” from a “dangerous world.”
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I live in the flight path of an airport. One bad bolt on an engine could prove that notion very wrong.
In 2024, we went to Hawaii. One of the things we did was take a boat out into the Pacific, strap on life vests, flippers, and goggles and jump into the open water to swim with wild dolphins. Including my 11-year-old son. We saw a shark, too, that drove us back to the boat just to be on the safe side. But it was, according to my sons, the best day of that trip, and every day was a good day.
Second, how is it anyone’s business what the Evermores are doing with their kids. It’s not illegal to climb El Capitan, is it? These are the same people who see a kid at the playground and call the cops because his parents aren’t hovering over his every move like the Goodyear Blimp.
I don’t know how to spell it out for you, but you won’t always be there for your children. Death comes for us all, most of us if we’re elderly. But my ex-husband died of an infection at 54, leaving three sons to navigate the world without him. My eldest now lives on his own with roommates, my middle son is driving and currently at a party with friends, and my youngest regularly walks to the corner store.
Were I to shed this mortal coil tomorrow, I believe they’d be well-equipped to handle life without me. If I had smothered them, refused to let them drive or visit friends or take trips to Italy or explore the world, I couldn’t say the same. Kids have to learn to deal with adversity because the real world — no matter how you try to coddle them — is cruel and unforgiving. It will not care one jot about your feelings or your safety. You have to learn to deal with it.
Evermore isn’t the only parent who has had CPS called on him for doing normal parenting things. There are the Karens who call the cops on kids walking around outside, and a woman I follow on Instagram, who happens to use a wheelchair, has had CPS called on her because people think her disability renders her incapable of being a good mother.
I’m not one to play the “ableist” card, but if there ever was a time to do so, that would be it.
Some might say Evermore is stupid for sharing his adventures on social media, given how sensitive and scolding people can be. I disagree. There’s nothing to be ashamed of in what he’s doing; why hide it from the world like it’s a sin?
If Evermore got on Instagram or Facebook and posted a pic of his kid sticking dollars in the costumes of drag queens, the Internet would applaud. If Evermore said Joey was suddenly Josephine, the Internet would say he was a great father. But Evermore took his son mountain climbing and for that, CPS was called numerous times. Our priorities are all out of whack.
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