Free Republic

Pollution, pesticides and fast food is killing our children, with new government statistics revealing that the number of youngsters diagnosed with cancer has risen by 40% over the past 16 years. Analysis compiled by researchers from the charity Children with Cancer UK found new cases of cancer in young people rose by 1,300 every year since statistics were last compiled in 1998. The charity found this is most evident in colon cancer, which has increased by 200%, and thyroid cancer, which has seen its cases doubled during the 18 years since the last report was released. […] Alasdair Philips, science...

Let's say your tenth-grader forgets his lunch. So you receive a telephone call at work. “Mom, I left my baloney sandwich on the kitchen counter,” he tells you. “Can you bring it to me, pretty please?” So, what would you do? I’d be willing to bet a Moonpie that many parents would drop everything and rush to the school to personally deliver their little snowflake’s brown bag lunch. But that sort of coddling is not allowed at Catholic High School for Boys in Little Rock, Arkansas. As a matter of fact – it’s outright banned. Catholic High School prides itself...

A CMS presentation to principals and counselors recommends kids are not referred to as boys and girls, but instead as scholars and students. DOCUMENT: CMS transgender student presentation Eliminating boy and girl references is one of several policies included in the CMS bully prevention regulations. One policy allows students to participate in extracurricular activities and overnight field trips based on their gender identity. A student who identifies as a girl would be allowed to participate in an "all-girl" overnight trip. Another policy says CMS must evaluate all gender-based activities and "maintain only those that have clear and sound pedagogical purpose."

President Barack Obama says he was “fat” when he was a kid growing up in Hawaii, as well as “smart alecky.” “If you met me when I was 10 the first thing you would think is, ‘He’s fat,’” Obama said. “I was husky and I was kind of a smart alecky kid.” Obama participated in an interview with Derek Jeter for the baseball star’s new media platform “The Players’ Tribune.

ITHACA, N.Y. -- A Cornell student is suing New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman after claiming that the legal drinking age of 21 makes him feel "ostracized and excluded" from other graduate students. The action was filed by Matthew Uhalde Wednesday at the Tompkins County Court. According to the documents, Uhalde claims to have graduated in 2015 with a Bachelor of Science degree and was admitted to a graduate program at Cornell University in fall 2015, at the age of 19. Uhalde says that because nearly all unofficial graduate school activities involve alcohol, he is not able to have a...

The war on the pink aisle continues. The newest ad for Barbie’s Moschino doll line features a new figure for the first time ever — a boy. “Moschino Barbie is so fierce!” the boy yells before placing a designer purse on the doll’s arm. The ad features him and two girls touting Mattel’s already popular line that includes clothes and accessories from the fashion designer Moschino. The ad, released earlier this month, is the latest in a series of steps to remove gender from toy shopping. Target made waves this year when it decided to stop labeling toys as for...

Agenda 21 A recent story in the media about 2 children aged 10 and 6 being taken into protective custody by over-zealous officials has introduced a phrase I expect we’ll be hearing a lot more of in coming years - Free Range Children. The children were allowed to play unsupervised in a nearby park, and busybodies called authorities who took the children into custody without notifying the parents. This was a “second offense” as the parents let the children walk home from their nearby school. Basically the kids were given a modicum of freedom to encourage responsibility and independence. I...

Are smartphones making our children mentally ill?Leading child psychotherapist Julie Lynn Evans believes easy and constant access to the internet is harming youngsterstelegraph.co.uk/news/health/children/11486167/Are-smartphones-making-our-children-mentally-ill.html

The “historical Jesus” is only of passing interest in comparison to the Lord of Salvation. The Daily Mail has a piece about how archaeologists, reading medieval manuscripts, have identified a likely place … Hewn into a hillside, this is the humble stone and mortar house where a scholar believes Jesus was raised. It has been dated to the early 1st century by a British archaeologist who says an ancient text points to the building as being the home in Nazareth where Mary and Joseph brought up the son of God. Professor Ken Dark says De Locis Sanctis, written in 670...

A nine-year-old Texas schoolboy was suspended from his elementary school for posession of a “magic ring.” Remember the poptart gun? The Nerf gun? The Lego gun? The pointed finger gun? In another time, these typical childrens’ toys would have gotten as little notice as the old fashioned cap gun but in a world where the list of childhood offenses also includes possession of a novelty pen or a Hello Kitty bubble gun, it comes as little surprise that a Lord of the Rings “magic ring” would land Aiden Steward in suspension from his elementary school in Kermit, Texas. The story...

Modern Parenting is Impoverishing the Childhood ExperienceIn a fascinating article in The Atlantic, Hanna Rosin reveals how much parenting, and therefore also the childhood experience, have changed since we were kids. It’s hard to absorb how much childhood norms have shifted in just one generation. Actions that would have been considered paranoid in the ’70s—walking third-graders to school, forbidding your kid to play ball in the street, going down the slide with your child in your lap—are now routine. In fact, they are the markers of good, responsible parenting. One very thorough study of “children’s independent mobility,” conducted in...

It was a one-mile walk home from a Silver Spring park on Georgia Avenue on a Saturday afternoon. But what the parents saw as a moment of independence for their 10-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter, they say authorities viewed much differently. Danielle and Alexander Meitiv say they are being investigated for neglect for the Dec. 20 trek — in a case they say reflects a clash of ideas about how safe the world is and whether parents are free to make their own choices about raising their children. “We wouldn’t have let them do it if we didn’t think they...

For Christmas was, is, and always will be, a clear cold, night. Some say that Christmas is too secular, that the glitter, music, gifts and family dinners are really not what the holy day is about. They hold that the Baby Jesus has been forgotten in the cacophony and confusion of commercial Christmas. They say that it is only about the birth of Christ. Everything else, they say, is a distraction or, even worse, sacrilege. Others say Christmas is not a holy day, but a day for family, friends, and presents—that Jesus was an historical figure, whose life should not...

Two cops rush to the scene. “This sounds like a gun battle — over there!” one calls to his partner. They see the suspects: two little boys, wielding rifles. The police officers do not shoot. Rather, they examine the boys’ weapons and break into big smiles: “Hey, is it real?” one officer asks. “Looks like real,” his partner marvels. “And it sounds like real,” the first officer confirms. “Right — every shot!” says the announcer, because this is on television. It’s an ad, from 1967, for the Sound-O-Power M-16 military rifle, a big hit for Marx Toys at Christmas that...

Lena Dunham is now threatening to sue the right-wing website which last week published an article claiming she sexually abused her little sister when they were children. The claim is based on an excerpt from the Girls star and creator's new book, Not That Kind of Girl, and details how she once looked at her sister Grace's vagina when her sibling was a year old and she was seven. Lena defended the action as innocent childhood exploration based on curiosity, but the website Truth Revolt called the memory 'unsettling' and disturbing'. Since then, she has been in a war of...

A whopping 68 percent of Americans think there should be a law that prohibits kids 9 and under from playing at the park unsupervised, despite the fact that most of them no doubt grew up doing just that. What's more: 43 percent feel the same way about 12-year-olds. They would like to criminalize all pre-teenagers playing outside on their own (and, I guess, arrest their no-good parents). Those are the results of a Reason/Rupe poll confirming that we have not only lost all confidence in our kids and our communities—we have lost all touch with reality. "I doubt there has...

America's kids have been suspended for pretending that pencils were guns, but an Ohio school may have topped that. A 10-year-old student at a Columbus elementary school was handed a three-day suspension for making a finger gun and pretending to shoot a classmate. The suspension letter more formally referred to his weapon as a "level 2 lookalike firearm," reports the Columbus Dispatch. Devonshire Alternative Elementary School's principal says students have been frequently told not to play pretend gun games, with a district rep saying kids were warned consequences would follow. Those consequences hit hard last week for fifth-grader Nathan Entingh,...

With the Christmas shopping orgy well under way, never forget that the ultimate gifts that keep on giving throughout life for young and old are guns. For the young boys and girls, cap guns and holsters, nerf guns, toy bows and arrows with the suction cup arrows and other assorted toy guns and associated accessories are the obvious choice. Whatever you do, don’t forget to teach your rootin’ tootin’ boys and girls how to quick draw their cap guns and how to twirl them on one finger Roy Rogers style.

For Eddie Mason, the decision wasn’t difficult. The NFL veteran’s 10-year-old son, Tyler, won’t play tackle football until high school. Mr. Mason’s decision wasn’t a result of the burgeoning national discussion about football’s role in brain injuries. Instead, he believes children should learn the game’s fundamentals without tackling. Mr. Mason, who played three seasons at linebacker for the Redskins before retiring in 2003, sees a problematic culture infecting football’s lowest levels that’s inextricably connected to the safety concerns. “This brash kind of mindset, the underdog mindset,” Mr. Mason said, “this hard-core attitude kind of deal about who hits the hardest...

Today's young parents are confronted with a dilemma; should they obey the clear, strict instructions of the neighborhood school and make sure their child is vaccinated before school starts, or should they 'just say no'. Some folks on side of receiving immunization shots are quick to point out the worrying resurgence of various diseases most Americans thought were almost wiped out. Diseases such as measles, mumps and whooping cough have largely been held in check because of available immunization injections. In 2011 there were 167 cases of Whooping Cough reported. In 2013 there have been 352 so far. These almost...