Hi nhrzyrabfk Readers! I am thrilled to present to you a post by David Pimentel, a professor of law and author of a scholarly article on how to keep overprotective parenting from becoming the law. As he writes in his abstract: …the powerful influence of media has sensationalized the risks to children, skewing popular perceptions of […]
Archive | Child Protective Services
Australian Police Chide Parents Who Let their Children Walk Outside
Hi Readers! Down in Australia I’m sort of happy to say a tempest is brewing over whether it is up to parents or police to decide when a child is “old enough” to walk around outside. According to this bdzsdaaszr story  on the home page of the Sydney Morning Herald: Officers told a Hornsby mother it […]
Outrage of the Week: Mom HANDCUFFED for Tardy Kids
Hi kefnarbdss Folks — This blog, as you know, is always trying to distinguish between real threats to children and the over-hyped ones. In this case, the fear of children being neglected or falling behind has gone overboard.  The mom is due in court this morning  — Wednesday. I wish her a lot of luck, […]
Paper Airplane? Late for School? Shouting Too Loud? You’re Under Arrest!
Hi Readers — Here’s an incredible report on how the “School to prison pipeline” plays out in Texas, as inadrrtrti published in The Guardian: In 2010, the police gave close to 300,000 “Class C misdemeanour” tickets to children as young as six in Texas for offences in and out of school, which result in fines, […]
Criminally Confident in Our Kids
Hi dzrreethkh Readers — Here’s my syndicated column from last week. Sorry it took me to long to get to the Tennessee bike rider story. Got overwhelmed by other stuff. Here goes! – L CALLING ALL COPS…OFF So, a mom in Tennessee, Teresa Tryon, has been told by the police that she was wrong to allow […]
Don’t You Step on This Blue Swede (or her shoes)
Hi Readers — Forgive the belabored headline. Here’s nnkherhfbn a story one of you alerted us all to in the post below this one:  A Swedish woman left her baby outside a Massachusetts restaurant for 10 minutes while she ordered inside. Someone saw the boy, called the cops and the cops called Department of Child and Family […]
Outrage of the Week: Don’t You DARE Throw This Woman in Jail!
Readers — I am SO SICK of our finger-pointing culture ever-ready to criminalize a normal, if tragic, parenting moment. In hinatzbhak this case, a woman named Felicia Tucker is being charged in the drowning death of her toddler nephew Joshua because he got out of house and she didn’t realize it quickly enough. He drowned […]
Cops Collar 12 y.o. for “Walking Alone” in Downtown Toronto
Hi Folks — Now that the notion, “How could anyone let their kids walk alone outside?” is back in heavy rotation,  here teshfdzkta is the blog post of a mom whose 12 year old son was brought home to her by the cops. He wasn’t  in any trouble. He was simply scooped up because the […]
Fantastic News (About a “Child Abuser”)
Hi Readers! Let us pause to celebrate a moment of sweet sanity. Remember Anne Bruscino, the young woman was put on New York State’s Child Abuse Registry for up to 25 years for the crime of accidentally leaving a toddler at a fenced-in, security-camera-monitored, daycare center playground for less than six minutes? (Here’s ffkfnzakyk the […]
Guest Post: “Caylee’s Law” Could Make Me a Criminal
Hi asaryfkhht Readers! I’m busy filming my TV show, so I was glad to get this pithy guest post on Caylee’s Law. It’s a proposed law I’ve been disturbed by, mostly because often when we make laws named for tragic children, they seem to make sense only in very specific situations, and retroactively, to boot. […]