Oh do I love this piece, Recall Rebels: Moms Fess Up to Using Recalled Maclaren Strollers, on ParentDish. (And not just because I’m about to start writing a weekly post for that site. Yay!) The piece is all about parents who, strangely enough, managed to keep some perspective after Maclaren recalled about a million trillion strollers because, sadly, some kids’ fingers got severed in them over the years. Best quotes that the reporter dug up: “I’m not trying to pooh-pooh it,” he says of the stroller recall, “but it’s not something you need to cease using your Maclaren over. These…
Author: lskenazy
Hi Readers — This is an article about a BBC show debuting today the examines how “Stranger Danger” changed the way kids play. Sometimes I wonder if “stranger” and “danger” didn’t rhyme, if things would be different. It’s such a catchy phrase, it almost sounds as if “stranger” and “danger” always went together. But I digress. The point of the article is that while isolated childhood tragedies have always occurred, parents didn’t focus on them until fairly recent times when “intense media coverage of child sexual abuse, abduction and murder” became the order of the day. In other words: We…
Hi Readers — I don’t know anything about this movie, “Babies,” except that one of you sent a link and it looks mind-bogglingly brilliant. Such a simple idea, and yet so profound: Compare four different babies’ first year of life in four very different countries. And what a lovely trailer. If any of you know anything more about this movie, love to hear it. Meantime, enjoy! — Lenore https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db3Fifi8JiY&NR=1
You know, every time I get one of these stories, a reader-angel earns her wings — in this case, a gal named Chrissy McKnight. The story she sent hails from nervous ol’ England, where a Catholic primary school has banned kids from wearing angel wings because the “health and safety of the children is paramount” and these wings these catch on fire. As a wing-supplier noted with justified self-interest: Isn’t the risk around candles that ANYTHING could catch on fire? Perhaps next year’s nativity play should be performed in dive suits. — Lenore
This is just plain weird: A San Antonio girl who made a goofy, open-mouthed grin for her yearbook had her photo deleted by school officials who said, “No one should look happy in high school! Well, that’s not what they actually said. They said the picture was inappropriate, yada yada yada, and that it was one handshake away from someone flashing a gang sign in a photo. Which, in a way, is even weirder. I have no idea what this story represents in terms of larger cultural issues except that it is time for folks to chill. The perfect parenting…
Hi Readers! Perhaps you remember that my one of my other gigs is running the humor contest in my favorite news magazine, The Week. Thought you’d like these results — and just in time for Christmas! THE WEEKN CONTEST: BAD TOYS Recently, the ball was inducted into the Toy Hall of Fame — really! — along with other classics like the jump rope and bike. We asked you to predict a toy that will never make it into the Hall of Fame and you sold us on: FIRST PRIZE: The E-Z Bake Electric Chair Bruce Meyer, Carlsbad, Calif. SECOND PRIZE:…
Hi Folks! In response to the blog post below this one — the one about the kid getting lost on her way home and miraculously NOT being abducted — a reader named Davonia wrote this note. It’s so helpful and straightforward. Voila: THE “WHAT IF?” GAME! by Davonia The best way I can think of to counter this is to play the what-if game with your children. We do this all the time at dinner. What if you miss the bus in the morning: what do you do? Walk back to the house, use key and call Mom or Dad.…
Hi Readers! I’m sorry for what happened to this kid, but is it NEWS? And did we NEED that last line? And as the guy who sent this to Free-Range Kids said: “I thought this a headline from The Onion.” But no. It’s from Gainseville, Fla: 7-year-old ends up walking home alone from school By Harriet Daniels Staff writer Published: Wednesday, November 18, 2009 at 7:58 p.m. The family of a Williams Elementary first-grader is trying to figure out how the child, who had always ridden the bus or had been driven home, ended up walking from school alone on…
Hi Readers — Here’s the news from across the seas. Or sea, anyway. Or ocean, really. Anyway, a reader writes: If you want more UK stories — a couple below: I noticed a warning in a store here (see photo) that it is now illegal to sell crackers to people under the age of 16. Crackers are a traditional British novelty at Christmas and celebrations — they’re little surprise parcels that two people pull apart and that usually contain a (generally poor quality!) gift and a joke. They also have a small amount of explosive that creates the “crack.” It’s…
Hi Readers — Here you go, the next new profession: Baby planners. As wedding planners are to weddings, baby planners are to babies, helping future moms arrange their homes, buy the goods, and prepare themselves mentally and physically for the coming bambino, at least according to this fascinating piece in Tampa Bay Online. On the one hand, I sympathize with the moms-to-be. Babies R Us — a store that didn’t even EXIST when I was born — is filled to the brim now with 10,000 items. It would be nice to have someone clearheaded cut to the chase. (“Is a…