Rest in peace, possibly, oh ye International Boy Scout Jamboree. As you may recall, readers, England’s excessive new rules require everyone who has ever even BEEN a child (or at least, everyone who may ever come in contact with one) to undergo a pedophilia background check. That being the case, the yearly jamborees that have been a staple of English scouting since the 1920s are now threatened. Why? Well figure if you get 40,000 scouts together from a whole lot of countries, you need a whole lot of volunteers helping out. And if each of those volunteers needs to undergo…
Author: lskenazy
No, not Sarah Silverman. A cute comic STRIP. About parenting. Sent to us by a US soldier stationed in Iraq. Voila!
At last — the kind of safety info any new parent could use. You’ll be so glad you looked! Click here!
Six-year-old Suspended for Bringing Beloved Cub Scout Fork/Spoon/Knife To School. That’s about all you need to know. Oh — and now he has to be homeschooled for 45 days (no problem for any parent to suddenly take off a couple months of work, right?). Or he can go to reform school. I guess with all the other bloodthirsty Cub Scouts. Read all about it here, in this New York Times article. But basically, I think you can guess what transpired. A little Delaware boy, thrilled with his new scouting utensil, brought it to school to use it to eat his…
Can we think up some great trick to play on the town supervisors in quaint and quaking Bobtown, Pennsylvania, who are OUTLAWING HALLOWEEN in order to “keep kids safe”? Perhaps they missed Chapter 7 in the book Free-Range Kids, “Eat Chocolate! Give Halloween Back to the Trick-or-Treaters.” Allow me to quote myself a little bit: Was there ever really a rash of candy killings? Joel Best, a professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware, took it upon himself to find out. He studied crime reports from Halloween dating back as far as 1958, and…
Hi Readers! Here’s a helpful new product, brought to us by Andrew Tallman, a talk show host on KPXQ in Phoenix! Meteor Safe! Hello, this is Derek Baskerville, the president of Meteor Safe, a company I founded thirteen years ago when I discovered just how real the threat of being struck by space debris is to our children. Now, as most of you probably know, the majority of small asteroids and meteors which enter our atmosphere burn up long before they come to earth, but not all of them do. In fact, more than once each year, a rock…
Hi Readers — Here’s a dilemma almost every “good” parent will face at some point. Does it take just one, normal, harried parenting decision with ZERO consequences to make others find us BAD? Sometimes it seems the parenting path is narrow indeed. Dear Lenore: I am currently reading your book, am only about halfway, but I have to write and tell you my story. Even now, in relating this, I fear your judgment of my decisions. A part of me is thinking that you will read this and say “I’m all for Free-Range, but that was just plain dangerous of…
Just when you thought Pedophile Panic couldn’t get any weirder comes this comment from a reader: A training document distributed at my church a few weeks ago for people who work with children actually tried to instruct in how to hug a child. The sentence said, “Remember: Side hugs are best.” Side hugs? How about being even a little safer and saying hi with a friendly elbow-to-elbow tap? Or quick pinky-to-pinky press? Or perhaps the “Heel Hello” — whereby two people meet backwards, heel to heel. That way there’s no accidental nipple grazing, either!
Hi Readers — Here’s a letter from a United Nations worker in Italy. Kinda puts our fears for our kids in perspective: Hi Lenore! UNICEF just published their 6th report on what the world is like for children. It is a scary one, but I would like to draw attention to what makes it scary for them. It is NOT: – The male teacher / Sunday school helper giving them a kiss (most of them would wish they had one that did give them a kiss) – Nor is it the dangerous homemade cupcake (many never even had…
Hi Readers! Here’s a list we could all learn from, sent in by a reader named Mike: I was definitely scared for my daughter, so I did a little research on how to keep her safe. These are the steps we’re taking: 1. No contact with any family members. Statistically speaking, they are the most dangerous. 2. No church, or religious groups. You think schools are a hotbed of pervy men? Try the church! 3. Never use the same babysitter more than once. If you’ve read about pedophiles “grooming” victims, you know…