Readers — Our country has grown delusional creative when it comes to thinking up new child dangers to be worried about. The latest involves a San Antonio, TX, school where kids were going on a field trip, but forbidden to bring sunscreen, which the school classifies as both a “medication” and “toxic.” Now, if kids were generally inclined to guzzle the Coppertone, maybe this would make some sense. But…have you ever witnessed this? I don’t think they even drink liquid soap, the gateway drug for sunscreen. But according to school district spokeswoman, Aubrey Chancellor, as quoted on KSAT.com: “Typically, sunscreen…
Author: lskenazy
Hi Readers — This comes to us from a mom of four in Canada, sick of the hysteria shoved (like pool water!) down our throats. — L Drowning in HysteriaThis article about “secondary drowning” (based on this one) is going viral on Facebook right now, thanks to George Takei sharing it with his 7,000,000+ followers with the admonishment: “Parents: This is something everyone with kids should know, especially as the summer months and days of swimming pools and ocean beaches are soon upon us.”As most of us already know, any article that contains the phrase “Hidden Danger” in…
Readers — Here are some facts and ideas I drew from your comments on the story of the mom who let her kid wait in the car and, after a “Good Samaritan” videotaped the (happy, safe) child, was criminally charged. SKL WROTE: I just did a little internet research to update my knowledge about kids dying in cars from heatstroke. One thing I had not noticed before was that many of these deaths are caused by safety considerations and fears! – A young child wanders away and climbs into the car to play, then either falls asleep or can’t figure…
Loved this comment on yesterday’s post about the mom who let her son wait in the car for a few minutes, and ended up arrested. It’s from a reader named Lex: A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on…
Readers, “The Day I Left My Son in the Car” is a great, long piece by a mom who called me up a couple months ago, Kim Brooks. As it says in her subtitle: I made a split-second decision to run into the store. I had no idea it would consume the next years of my life Kim was running an errand and had her 4 year old son with her. He didn’t want to come in, so: For the next four or five seconds, I did what it sometimes seems I’ve been doing every minute of every day since…
Readers — How I love the ruling this judge made. So unhysterical. So human — note the passage I put in boldface. So why wasn’t the prosecutor as wise? U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said that while he couldn’t define pornography, he knew it when he saw it. Brooklyn Family Court Judge Steven Mostofsky (See Profile) suggested in a recent decision that he knows what’s not pornography when he sees it, and the images a camera-ready Brooklyn mother took of her kids are neither lewd nor obscene. Rather, Mostofsky said, they are the product of a mom who…
Today’s guest post comes from Michelle Icard, a.k.a Michelle in the Middle. I met Michelle when I was giving a talk in Charlotte, NC. Afterward, we were on a panel together and I found her ideas so compelling I had to ask for a piece of paper to take notes! What she knows about middle schoolers could fill a book — and now it does: She’s the author of Middle School Makeover: Improving The Way You and Your Child Experience the Middle School Years. (Boldface is mine.) — Lenore Assistant Managers Needed in the Risk Department by Michelle Icard If…
Readers — This is a plea for standing back and letting childhood happen. When care about our children’s safety and success, but do not obsess to the point where we can’t magine either happening without our immediate and constant intervention, we free up both generations. What can our kids do with that free time not spent with flash cards, Kumon, or classes? Goof around, “waste” time and stumble upon the things they love to do. Or so it seems to me, especially in light of this little insight from Linda Stone, coiner of the phrase “continuous partial attention,” as quoted…
Readers — What’s interesting about this lockdown story, which took place at Wharton High School in Tampa, FL, after a student reported hearing something or other about a gun, is not just that kids were locked in their classrooms for seven hours. It’s not just that one kid admitted (on camera!) that he ended up peeing in a bottle. It’s not even that in the end, a girl said she was grateful to the school for “keeping us safe” — from a threat that never materialized. No, what’s interesting is that I have no idea how we can stop this…
Readers — Let this not be the future of fun (from The Toronto Star): Staff and Grade 8 students at an inner-city Toronto school were looking forward to the three-day graduation trip to an idyllic nature camp in Eastern Ontario — until they were informed they couldn’t canoe, kayak or try archery. And swimming, rope activities and campfires? Only if “sufficient proof of safety” was provided ahead of time, along with “a script of safety routines and insurance in case of injuries.” With the requested documentation and swim tests near-impossible to complete before kids were to leave June 10, the…