A blind girl in Britain has been told she cannot use her cane at school because it presents a tripping hazard. A tripping hazard, that is, to the people who can see her — and her cane. According to the Bristol Post: Lily-Grace Hooper, who is seven, suffered a stroke when she was just four days old, which left her virtually blind. But her school, Hambrook Primary School, has now told the youngster she can no longer use her walking cane, because it could trip up teachers and other pupils at the school. A risk assessment by Gary Learmonth from…
Author: lskenazy
Okay, okay, the mom shouldn’t have left the keys in the car when she ran in to do something quick at work before taking her son, age 8, to school. But here’s what happened next, in Norfolk, VA: Two men who stole a car from outside a Norfolk post office discovered a young boy inside the vehicle… so they dropped him off at school! Norfolk Police say they responded to a call shortly after 8 am in the 400 block of W. 20th Street for a possible stolen vehicle. 13News Now has learned that two carjackers got into a car…
The Evening Standard announced that Facebook will “automatically warn parents if they share pictures of their children with the public by accident.” Thank goodness! Imagine if the public saw a photo of my child at the park! All bets are off! Here’s how Jay Parikh, Facebook’s vice president of Engineering, explained the new feature: “If I were to upload a photo of my kids playing at the park and I accidentally had it shared with the public, this system could say: ‘Hey wait a minute, this is a photo of your kids, normally you post this to just your family…
Just had to share this, a few days late: An emu on the loose in Delaware caused two schools to go into lockdown. As one student told his grandpa, a big bird was outside and police were chasing it, so couldn’t play on the playground. And they say Americans are getting soft. Here’s a picture of the elusive threat:
While I can’t be sure that these incidents of overkill are increasing, what I am certain IS happening is the demonization of men in the vicinity of children. It also seems to me that we must have a surfeit of police, at least in some neighborhoods, or why would this non-incident warrant NINE cops’ attention? From The Daily Kos comes this story: ….After about 25 years in the NYC metropolitan area, I recently returned home to where I grew up in south Jersey. My stepfather had passed away last October, and my 88 year-old mother didn’t want to leave the…
This piece was written by a University of Pennsylvania junior, Alec Ward, back in April, long before campus speech became such a major national story. He found himself puzzling over the same thing I was pondering the other day: If students are unhappy, uncomfortable, or offended, isn’t that a very different thing from feeling literally “unsafe?” And yet “unsafe” is the word being used. Why? This ran in the Daily Pennsylvanian, the college paper: Reconsidering the rhetoric of safety, by Alec Ward On Monday of last week, conservative writer David Horowitz gave a speech on Israel at the University of…
This comes up a lot — the disconnect between the adventure in children’s books and the reality of kids’ lives today. The mom who wrote this (now edited down) post blogs at listentograce. She, her fighter pilot husband, and their tot Sean live in South Carolina. Safety vs. Freedom, by Meredith Last night I read A Pocketful of Cricket, by Rebecca Caudill, to Sean as a bedtime story. For the most part he tends to be more interested in watching my face than in looking at the pictures, because he’s a baby. But anyway: A Pocketful of Cricket is a…
Recently I re-read Little Women, the book I read over and over (and over!) as a kid. When I got to Chapter 38, I couldn’t believe it. A whole chapter on helicopter parenting! I loved it, just as I love Meg, John, Marmee and the twins, who are the stars of this chapter. And yes, it’s a book from 1880, and yes it’s “sexist.” And yes, it is also brimming with observation and kindness and humor and truth, just like the whole book. If you have a toddler and want to glimpse your life, skip to the part where son…
Please tell me I am not the only person who would see a Facebook note like the one below (with a photo of the gosh-darn camera-wielding stranger) and write a comment like, “Taking photos of kids at play does not make a person a predator,” or, “Can we please give the guy the benefit of the doubt?” or even,”So what if he DID take pictures of your kid?” Here’s the post: ATTENTION all parents! I caught this sketchy dude taking pictures of little kids including my daughter yesterday whilst we were playing at the new park off Santa Fe. I…
UPDATE: Here is an email address to write to the US Sentencing Commission: public_comment@ussc.gov. You’ve probably heard of this incident by now: 100 or possibly even more teens and pre-teens busted for sexting in Colorado. This is hardly an isolated incident. Teens. Phones. Cameras. As if we couldn’t all guess what would happen. The only ones who don’t seem to get it, yet, are the approximately 30 states where the legislators have still not amended the laws to recognize sexting is not child porn. The plea for more rationality AND compassion, below, comes to us from Diana Green, a social…