Good news! “Twitter, Facebook Revolutionizing How Parents Stalk Their College-Age Kids.” (Thank you again, Onion! And thank you, those who sent this video in.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu4zMvE6FH4
Author: lskenazy
Oh darn! Just when you thought you could inject yourself with hormones every day for about 2 months, bloat like a beachball, have your eggs monitored and retrieved (after loads of blood tests) to then be fertilized in a test tube and plunged back into your womb at about $15,000 a pop so you could, hopefully, get pregnant, give birth and gradually raise a little boy or girl who would be all yours to abuse in just five or ten years, it turns out it’s not that easy! Alas, Australia is about to pass a law that…
Cute For Better or For Worse comic that somehow seems very appropriate! — Lenore Enjoy!
Hi Readers! A magazine reporter is looking for stories of Free-Range concepts being put into practice in real life. Schools insisting on adding back recess. Districts encouraging kids to walk or ride to class. Neighborhoods bringing kids back outside, on their own, communities informally agreeing to tone down the oppulence of the birthday parties. Happy, hopeful signs of a tide turning toward less over-the-top, helicopter parenting toward a more old-fashioned, less parent- (and money-) intensive version of childhood. We’d ALL love to hear these stories. Please — give us hope! Thanks — Lenore
Readers — If anyone ever asks you, “What’s so WRONG about protecting our children?” and you agree that kids should be safe (who doesn’t?), but you’re searching for an example of how the hysteria has gotten out of hand: Here you go. See below. Suffice to say a grammar school in the Fort Myers area of Florida is now INDIVIDUALLY ESCORTING EACH CHILD OUT OF THE SCHOOL as his/ her parents creep to the head of the car line. The parents must show a large I.D. and the child is then RADIOED FOR. Every time I picture this, I hear…
Take your blood pressure medicine before watching this so-called public service announcement . The spot shows two women in a coffee shop, one of them with her kid. The three chat for about 15 seconds, the mom buys a coffee and then off the mom and child go, leaving the other woman — for no apparent reason — with a sneaking suspicion that the mom is a child abuser. The mom has said nothing harsh to her child. The child is communicative and bears no visible bruises. In other words, the mom and child look like me and my child,…
Hi Readers! If you’d like to write a letter of support for the parents who let their 9- and 6-year-olds wait in the car for half an hour, only to have the dad be charged with child endangerment (see blog entry, below), here is the email address for the Utica Observe Dispatch’s letters to the editor page: ddudajek@uticaod.com . Thanks! — Lenore
First off, my heart goes out to Jaycee Dugard, her daughters, her parents, step-parents — everyone in her circle. She was kidnapped 18 years ago and kept imprisoned since then, bearing her rapist/captor two daughters who were also imprisoned until a few days ago, when Jaycee walked into a police station. This is, of course, every parent’s — every human’s — worst nightmare and her story will be seared into our memory forever, along, alas, with the inevitable “advice” we’re now getting on how to avoid this same fate. Advice that makes it seem like abduction/rape/enslavement is…
Hi Readers! My friend Bob Eckstein, a cartoonist for The New Yorker (la-di-dah!), came up with this Free-Range Cartoon: a plea for a little less parental intrusion. Besides being a whole-hearted supporter of this site, Bob has his own obsession. Snowmen. Yes, really — he is the first and only person to study their history. Did you know, for instance, that in pre-printing press Europe, snowmen were the editorials of their day? A wag might erect a prostitute snow-woman, for instance, in front of the mayor’s house, as a way of hinting at certain improprieties. The perp remained anonymous and…
Readers — Here is a story that does not surprise me. It does, however, enrage me and I am hoping that maybe someone who reads this blog knows of a pro bono lawyer in or around Mohawk Valley in Central New York who can help this family. Here is the mom’s letter: I’m not sure if we did something wrong here or not, and I feel myself being pulled every which way. But the morning we left our nine-year-old daughter with our sleeping six-year-old son in a car in a busy parking lot (windows open), we really thought they’d be…