…”bad” parents are the ones who parent the way OUR parents did – loving and encouraging us, but not hovering over every outing and stressing over every issue.
Author: lskenazy
It’s front page news out here in San Francisco where I’m visiting, but it’s probably front page news out by you, too: The tragic story of 8-year-old Sandra Cantu, who was abducted and murdered last week in California. Today’s front page story is as inevitable as the media attention: “Case Forces Parents to take Tougher Look at Children’s Safety.” http://tinyurl.com/cfsyyw It’s hard not to take a tough look after a killing like this. As the parents interviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle say, they are hugging their children closer and talking to them about safety. This is good news. Children…
NEW STUDY SHOWS HUGE INCREASE IN ARRESTS OF ON-LINE PREDATORS!!!!! I can guarantee you, that is the headline you are about to hear on TV and read in the papers. And, terrified for your children, you will keep watching or reading, which serves the media darn well. They have lured you in and are holding you captive. Sort of like…online predators! But the folks who actually DID the study would like to clear things up. David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center and his co-director, Janis Wolak, took a look at the number of arrests of on-line…
In case you had a sneaking suspicion that when schools chip away at recess time, they are doing their students no service, along comes this nice little study to say: You’re right. And while we’re at it: Grrrrrr. Thanks to No Child With A #2 Pencil Left Behind, more and more schools are sucking time out of play and handing it over to classroom larnin’. Nothing wrong with larnin’ of course. (Except spelling it that way.) But this study, released last week, found that kids who took a brisk 20 minute walk on a treadmill actually read at a GRADE…
Hello, Readers! We have another guest post today, this one from developmental psychologist Dr. Helene Guldberg, a founder of the wonderful, British, on-line current affairs blog, Spiked (www.spiked-online.com). She’s also author of Reclaiming Childhood: Freedom and Play in an Age of Fear. The thing I found most shocking in this post is that you can’t even take photos of any kid other than yours at a birthday party in England anymore. It’s considered tantamount to porn. Oy. By Helene Guldberg Growing up on the outskirts of Bergen, in Norway, I was given a lot of freedom to roam outside from…
A comment on my post, “Of Peanuts and Pedophiles,” included a link to a Salon story on child sexual abuse. Voila: http://tinyurl.com/cc2qys It’s a disturbing piece, by a guy who worked for a year in a treatment center for juveniles who have raped and molested other kids. Hearing their histories gave him a, “peek inside a dark world I never wanted to see.” A peek so disturbing, he wrote, that he never even hired a babysitter after that. “The risk wasn’t worth the reward of a night on the town or attending an event for my own enjoyment.” From his…
You’ve probably read about the new, possible cure for peanut allergies. One very hopeful study at Duke ( http://tinyurl.com/cmbh39) found that by administering first a dust-size speck of peanuts to an allergic child, and then a slightly larger speck and so on and so on, you can sometimes train the child’s immunological system to stop violently overreacting. It is wonderful to think that for some people, this may be a cure at last. But it’s also wonderful to think of the peanut story as an analogy to, of all things, stranger danger. If a child is allowed to explore…
Hi Readers! Today’s guest blogger is Jen Singer, who is so smart, funny and wise it’s a pleasure to inrtoduce you to each other! She’s got a new book out (don’t we all?): Stop Second-Guessing Yourself: The Toddler Years, and her blog is fun, too: http://mommasaid.net/ . Here’s her take on playgroup parents with a different worry/scold threshhold: BY JEN SINGER You’re at your playgroup when another mom jumps up, runs across the room and picks up your toddler, who had just fallen down. He was not crying. He was not perilously close to a sharp-edged table or fireplace. He…
This sounds like a good book — “Until It Hurts: America’s Obsession with Youth Sports,” by Mark Hyman( http://untilithurts.com/). Apparently Hyman’s 14-year-old son came home with an arm super-sore from playing too much baseball, too hard. Hyman told the boy to get out there and pitch again — after all, it was the playoffs. Just a few years later, the kid ended up in surgery. Sports injury. For his part, the dad ended up with an epiphany: There is no reason to push our offspring to this point. So he examines how sports went from something spontaeous…
Dearest Readers — I have been thinking of what to say about this new product but frankly, my jaw just keeps going slack. Ditto my sarcasm skills. So here goes, from the website Baby Sounds 4 Pets I have 2 passions in my life,my pets and becoming a mother. Three years ago while my sister was expecting her first child, I was looking for a CD of baby sounds to prepare her two dogs and cat for the arrival of my nephew. I couldn’t find one ANYWHERE! So I decided to create BABY SOUNDS FOR PETS! THE FIRST CD OF…