Free Republic

Pretty shocking summary of themes we hear about and themes we hear snippets about. Unless you study these topics and are already familiar, you will likely be shocked. If you have children or grandchildren, this will kick you in the gut. 38 Mins. View here.

Chiquita Hill, 33, posted photos of her 10-year-old son being "arrested" to Facebook after she called the police because he was being disrespectful. Hill posted the photos with captions describing how she did not want her son to become a thug. "First let me say that I love my children," Hill wrote on Facebook Tuesday. "They are what keeps me going. But ... I’ll be damned if they are disrespectful to me and anyone else." Her son had been acting up at school and disrespecting his teacher, leading the teacher to show up at Hill's house for a parent-teacher conference....

Over the past decade or so as $10 million apartments have prevailed in New York and more and more neighborhoods have been given over to the kind of luxury shopping required to fill them, it has been common to say that the city has turned into a “playground for the rich.” At the same time, of course, New York has turned into a playground of the more literal kind, with a child-centric ethos bearing well-established variants of urban nuisance: stroller gridlock in gentrifying areas, car services that cater to 5-year-olds, sidewalk whining that in some cases becomes its own source...

The proposed $60bn flotation of Glencore was plunged into a sexism row after the chairman of the world's largest commodities trader claimed young women were a risk to hire because they get married and become pregnant. Vince Cable criticised the remarks by septuagenarian Simon Murray as "unbelievably primitive" and indicated that they could be used to justify any affirmative action in British boardrooms. Murray, who is based in Hong Kong and was only appointed as chairman this month to facilitate the flotation, was forced into a humbling apology after saying that there should not be quotas for women in boardrooms.

Twenty-five years ago, a police officer found a baby in a California dumpster. Last week, the baby – now a grown man – got to meet the man who saved him. Robin Barton shares a bond like no other with retired Santa Ana police officer Michael Buelna. "I hoped that someday I would see him again," Buelna said. The two first met 25 years ago, though Barton was just 4 hours old, in what some would call a miracle encounter. It was Nov. 21, 1989. Buelna was on duty in Santa Ana.

Science News Teach children outside to save their vision, say scientists By Sarah Knapton, Science Editor 5:35PM BST 23 Apr 2015 Children should be allowed to study outside to stop them becoming short-sighted, a new study suggests. Researchers believe that youngsters are spending so long inside for lessons that it is damaging their eyesight. In China, pupils are already being taught in huge translucent boxes to try and halt their vision decline after a study found that 80 per cent of children in Beijing were short-sighted. Around 40 per cent of Britons suffer from myopia, or short-sightedness, with experts warning...

We have forgotten just how deep a cultural revolution Christianity wrought. In fact, we forget about it precisely because of how deep it was: There are many ideas that we simply take for granted as natural and obvious, when in fact they didn't exist until the arrival of Christianity changed things completely. Take, for instance, the idea of children. Today, it is simply taken for granted that the innocence and vulnerability of children makes them beings of particular value, and entitled to particular care. We also romanticize children — their beauty, their joy, their liveliness. Our culture encourages us to...

Check out this old toy gun commercial from the 1950s or '60s and compare it to how children who play with toy guns (or even their own food or fingers fashioned like a gun) are treated today. Do you think kids today are going to want to uphold their 2nd Amendment rights after they are terrorized and suspended or expelled by their schools for chewing a breakfast tart into an L-shape or being forced at age five to undergo a psych eval for bringing a Hello Kitty bubble gun to class? Others not included here are a kid who was...

Teaching children responsibility is a primary task for parents. The question of whether or not an allowance should be paid for completing chores requires parents to consider training in two areas simultaneously: responsibility for work and responsibility for money. I don't think that there's necessarily one right answer to the question of whether completion of chores should be tied to monetary reward or not, but I can tell you how we handled the issue and why. We decided not to tie allowance to chores. We set clear expectations for what the kids were responsible for (unloading the dishwasher, doing their...

Back to Basics: A Summary of the Teaching of the Catechism on Holy Matrimony By: Msgr. Charles PopeThere’s an old story told about the legendary football coach, Vince Lombardi. At one point he was so concerned that the players on his team had lost any sense of the basics of the game that he summoned them all into a classroom and had them all sit down at desks. Most of them expected a detailed review of the playbook, with diagrams on the board of X’s, O’s, and arrows. But to their surprise, the blackboard was empty and no playbooks were in sight. Lombardi walked in...

Dear LGBT Community, I am not your daughter. I never carried a flag in one of your gay pride parades. I have never written a letter on your behalf to a congressman or anyone else, and I have never felt the need to make people accept the fact I am the daughter of a lesbian. Perhaps it’s because she never felt the need to force people to accept her for being one. I knew from a young age that living with two women was not natural. I could especially see it in the homes of my friends who had a...

The pint-sized subject of this note is clearly headed for a life of crime. The neighbor charged that the small child was: Running free in his backyard Laughing Giggling Carrying on without end My advice to this neighbor: Get out and get some fresh air — maybe even engage in a little “carrying on” yourself. I bet your dogs will thank you for it! How would you respond to the busybody neighbor?

The Maryland parents who let their “free-range” kids walk home alone and were found responsible of unsubstantiated child neglect are under fire again for leaving the children unsupervised in a park. Child Protective Services is investigating Danielle and Alexander Meitiv after their children were found alone in a Silver Springs park Sunday, NBC Washington reported.

A growing body of research highlights the importance of how kids feel and how they manage those feelings, or not. Emotions drive attention, learning, memory, and decision-making. They affect relationships and psychological well-being. Learning to handle emotions well is especially important in adolescence, a time when neural networks are being sculpted that will influence behavior patterns for life.

Coach or First Class? Why walk through a desert to get to the United States when you can just fly? That’s the new policy being adopted by the Obama administration for illegal alien children whose parents want them to come to the United States. As long as the parent maintains any kind of legal status they can apply to have their child picked up in central America and flown to the U.S. to be reunited. Millions of children may qualify for the program under refugee status. And because of the refugee designation, once the children arrive in America their families...

Apparently, parents should visit the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) website to find out how to teach their children good eating habits.The agency in charge of the country’s agricultural sector is now in the nanny business, thanks to First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” initiative to fight childhood obesity, which links to choosemyplate.gov on its website.In the kids’ section of My Plate, advice is dished out on how parents can help pre-schoolers “develop healthy eating habits,” including a warning about praising an empty plate.“Avoid praising a clean plate,” the website states. “Your child should stop eating when he or she...

A bill, ready for a House vote, would allow private adoption agencies to use religious and/or moral reasons to deny gay couples wanting to adopt children. ... Republican Rep. Jason Brodeur said if gay couples want to adopt, they can go to the Department of Children and Families or a private agency that don’t have a problem with it.

A three-year-old named Lee defends the abortion of his sister in a new children’s book – by an author with her own “ghost sister.” “Sister Apple, Sister Pig” by Mary Walling Blackburn focuses on an adult topic: abortion. The story follows Lee as he (or “she,” as the author stressed) searches for his sister – who might be an apple, a pig, or somewhere in a tree. Lee later decides “Sister is a happy ghost!” and explicitly says he’s glad Sister isn’t around to inconvenience his parents.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is promoting a giant full-body exhibit for kids to walk through to promote healthy eating habits.While encouraging schools to apply for nearly $6 million in grants to help them comply with the First Lady Michelle Obama-promoted Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act new lunch standards, the USDA highlighted efforts by the Kansas State Department of Education.“Body Venture, a traveling health education exhibit sponsored by Kansas State Department of Education travels to schools to teach students about nutrition and physical activity,” the USDA said in a blog post Friday.Body Venture is a 45-foot by 50-foot exhibit that starts...

While waiting at the airport for a recent flight, I observed a bright-eyed little girl who came running over into the gate area. She was full of the exuberance you would expect from a six or seven-year-old. Rushing over to the window, she gazed in amazement as the planes took off and landed. I could not suppress a smile as I saw her bright eyes and cheerful face. However, my smile faded as two women came over to grab her hand and lead her back to the seating area. Both women were wearing wedding rings and there were visible signs...