This entire New Yorker piece is so great: “HISTORY’S WORST PARENTS FACE THE WRATH OF THE COMMENTS SECTION,” by Eileen Curtright. It’s shocking to think how much history took place before Internet shaming. How did those rotten parents ever learn? Here’s Curtright’s take on one parenting fail you may have read about: In response to “Twelve-Year-Old Lost on Vacation Found Preaching in Temple of Jerusalem” veganmama: First of all, how do you lose your kid on vacation? I don’t care if he’s not a toddler, you watch your child every second. It’s called good parenting. I made my son hold…
Author: lskenazy
Today’s post is excerpted from Erica Reischer’s WHAT GREAT PARENTS DO: 75 Simple Strategies for Raising Kids Who Thrive. Erica got her PhD from the University of Chicago and is now a clinical psychologist and parent educator in Oakland, CA. She’s also a former consultant with McKinsey & Company, and leads popular parenting classes and workshops at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital, Habitot Children’s Museum, and the University of California. Her website is here! And I agree with her — it is hard to resist jumping in to “fix” our kids’ bad feelings. Great parents resist the urge to “fix” feelings,…
A Houston mom identified only as Jennifer learned to her horror that the video camera she’d installed in her daughters’ room was being live streamed around the world. As Yahoo reports: “We have security cameras to protect them,” Jennifer, from Houston, Texas, told ABC News. “They’re in my house. People are watching my kids in their home, dressing, sleeping, playing.” The private webcam, aimed at the beds of her two eight-year-old girls, was intended to keep a watchful eye over them but it had been hacked and the live footage was open for anyone to view. Now, agreed: That is…
What a week it has been for Tammy O’Haire, a cowgirl (and online fitness trainer) in Bozeman, MT, who’s mom to a 9-month-old bouncy baby boy. On Monday she put him in daycare for the very first time: a warm, welcoming place in Belgrade, MT, where the food is organic. On Tuesday, Tammy got a call at work — a cattle feedlot — from Child Protective Services. The agency had to meet with her immediately. She and her husband were suspected of child abuse. The daycare center had called CPS to report a bruise on the baby’s chest. A Free-Ranger…
Gotta love this kid — and the pithy writer. This came from a friend’s Facebook page, filed under #yellowspringspolicereport:
This Buick ad is airing on the Olympics. It’s about a tracker for kids old enough to drive (the Buick). It shows a mom and dad realizing that their at-least-16-year-old daughter has parked on Lover’s Lane. Yikes! As the Taliban would say: Let us stop this whoring spawn of Satan! But, being Americans, they do this with a playful smile, and an app. Thank goodness we don’t ever have to let our offspring out of our sight anymore, at least electronically. Why should they be allowed to grow up when we can make sure they don’t, so they’re safe? -…
This comment came in response to the post by Mean Girls’ author Rosalind Wiseman about whether or not to spy on a child’s online activity: There are so many monitoring apps out there, and the aim of using them is to keep loved ones safe. I don’t think it is too controlling of me or any parent to use monitoring apps (e.g. xnspy) to track a child’s GPS location history to make sure that he/she is safe. I am no authority on the subject of parental care, but I feel that it is important to let them know that we…
Okay, readers: Please help me figure this out. Why is this idea — college students living for free in an old peoples’ home — so appealing? Is there anything Free-Range about it, other than celebrating the idea of people connecting? Or maybe it’s just a new and good solution to a couple of problems at once, and it’s always fun to encounter one of those? Or maybe it’s how I have always wanted to live, which is basically in a dorm? Or maybe it’s remembering that old and young didn’t used to be completely separate? Not quite sure, but I…
There have been a spate of, “What I Learned about Parenting by Living in Country X” articles. Most of them are pretty interesting. The French, Japanese, Scandinavians — they all do it differently from us, and usually the biggest difference is less hovering/handwringing. This piece by Mihal Greener in Salon adds one angle I hadn’t read before. In addition to being less materialistic than the “average American” and giving kids more freedom and responsibility, she writes that Dutch parents don’t see their kids as a reflection of their parenting: A lifeline for us expat moms were the coffee mornings where…
It is with dread and despair that I must tell you that a creepy clown has been spotted wandering around Green Bay, Wisconsin. And you thought the idea of “Cheese Heads” was already disturbing. (Heads made OF cheese? Encased IN cheese?): Wisconsin residents are calling police, asking about a disheveled clown walking through Green Bay with four black balloons. But, there’s not much police can do. The clown doesn’t appear armed or dangerous — just really creepy. “This person is not breaking the law,” said Captain Kevin Warych of the Green Bay Police Department. “He can walk in a clown…