GET AWAY FROM ME, YOU PERVERT…and please bring me a toy firetruck. Assume all Santas are child molesters and teach kids not to sit on their laps. That’s what a well-known “child safety expert” in Australia is suggesting. Child protection activist Hetty Johnston this week backed the concerns of Queensland parents worried the time had come to stop their children sitting on the lap of shopping centre Santas for Christmas photos. “What we would like to see is shopping centre owners updating their child protection policies,” Ms Johnston said. “The directive would be for children to stand beside Santa,…
Author: lskenazy
Then they came for the merry-go-rounds, and I said nothing. Then — The city is putting the brakes on spinning playground equipment following reports of injuries, a Parks Department spokeswoman said. Rotating metal saucers that kids ride at two Park Slope [Brooklyn] playgrounds were recently welded into place so they can’t move, and the city has made similar modifications or removed a total of seven disks citywide “in the interest of public safety,” the spokeswoman said. The spokeswoman declined to discuss how many injuries had been reported or other specifics. Turning the spinning disks into statues angered Park Slope parents,…
Readers — The so-called “Cinderella Law” working its way through Parliament may sound as if it is going to rescue ragamuffins stuck in their own little corner in their own little chair. But in fact, by expanding the definition of child cruelty to include emotional, psychological or even intangible nnzersdana harm, it holds the threat of criminalizing any of us who think our kids can handle more than the state (or some tsk-tsk’ing agent) believes they can. So if I think it’s fine for my kid to play outside unsupervised, or stay home alone a bit, but the state thinks,…
Lots of good ideas here (from Clickhole):
LOOK! Thank you, Marjorie Ingall, for making this into a Bingo Card! (And here’s a site that allows you to do the same. So fun!) Readers — Commenter Jenny Islander sent in this brilliant Child Hysteria Bingo board! Feel free to add more ideas: Welp, I think I’ve finally read enough of Free-Range Kids to make a Bingo board. Make a 5×5 grid, put Free [Range] Space in the middle, scatter the other options randomly over the grid, and play along! SCARY BLACK PEOPLE SCARY MEN SCARY PO’ FOLKS FACTS SCHMACTS, WE’VE GOT A WITCH HUNT GOING…
Readers — The belief that our kids are in constant danger from the worst of the worst of the WORST can (and did) lead to cases like this. As reported in Saturday’s Austin American-Statesman by Chuck Lindell — Austin day care owners Dan and Fran Keller spent more than 22 years in prison after three young children accused them of dismembering babies, torturing pets, desecrating corpses, videotaping orgies and serving blood-laced Kool-Aid in satanic rituals so ghastly, their names became synonymous with evil. It was the early 1990s, when a cottage industry of therapists, authors and investigators argued convincingly —…
Readers — My kids are far from babies, so I don’ t know if the following comment is true across the board. Is it? Sounds quite likely. It came in response to my post about the Owlet device that measures your baby’s blood pressure, movements, oxygen level, etc. — L. On a related note, is it just me, or have baby products become more of a pain to use in the last few years? It is almost as though the product designers said. “If our product isn’t a huge inconvenience to use, parents won’t believe that they are suffering…
Today, let us give thanks for The Onion and pieces like — CNN Holds Morning Meeting To Decide What Viewers Should Panic About For Rest Of Day ATLANTA—Kicking around ideas ranging from an uptick in child kidnappings to a new link between laptops and cancer, senior CNN staffers held their regular daily meeting this morning to decide which topic viewers should panic about for the rest of the day. “It’s always kind of tough to get our meetings going each morning, but once we got some coffee in us, we were able to toss around a few ideas on what…
Most fascinating letter of the week (boldface and headings, mine): Dear Ms. Skenazy: I am the mother of four young children and a reader of your blog, which was introduced to me about a year ago by several unrelated people. I hope you don’t mind that I have a response to your recent post, “The Cult of Kiddie Danger.” I agree with your assertion that a component of your alleged “crime” in allowing your son to ride the NYC subway alone (and writing about it) was a sort of apostasy from the state religion of fear and helicopter parenting, but…
Americans remain confused about reality. As Vox reports: Nearly two-thirds of Americans think violent crime increased over the past year, even though violent crime has been on a general decline for two decades, according to a new Gallup survey. The survey teases out different mini-trends, but in the end Gallup concludes on its own site: For more than a decade, Gallup has found the majority of Americans believing crime is up, although actual crime statistics have largely shown the crime rate continuing to come down from the highs in the 1990s and earlier. …. Some argue that consumption of news…