Free Republic

WINTER PARK, Fla. – A Florida parent was forced to take drastic measures when her public school refused to release her child during a dispute over standardized testing.Jacqui Myers says another mother with a child at Winter Park’s Brookshire Elementary School called her after she arrived at the school to opt her fifth-grade daughter out of standardized testing related to the Common Core national standards initiative.“They’re not giving me my child, can you help?” the mother told Myers.Myers, the mother of a first grader, is active in a group working to opt children out of state tests and was at...

Valentine’s Day is a big deal around our house. Our first child was born on Valentine’s, and she loves all things pink, pretty, and frilly. And chocolate.She loves her princess shoes, sparkles, fancy hair doo-dads (she’s also asking me for hair rollers, and she’s only five), hearts, ribbons, make-up, purses, clothes (the more sequins the better). And chocolate. Did I mention that she really likes chocolate?How such a bubbling passion for feminine farrago took hold in her heart is something of a mystery to us. Our family tends to be more of a low-key, sweatshirts and sneakers kind of crew....

Authorities say they enlisted help from the aunt's co-worker, who lured the child into his pickup after he got off a school bus Monday. Authorities said the man told the boy he wouldn't "see his mommy again," and that he'd be "nailed to the wall of a shed," the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. He showed the boy a handgun in an effort to make him stop crying, authorities said. The man tied the child's hands and feet with plastic bags and blindfolded him with a jacket, the sheriff's office said, before he drove the boy to his Troy home. Authorities...

A Kirksville, Mo. doctor righteously and very satisfyingly slapped down a substitute teacher after she sent a note home condemning the lunch his second-grade daughter had brought to school. The doctor and mad dad is Justin Puckett, reports ABC News. As Puckett — who is certified in obesity medicine — later observed to the principal at the school, the teacher and a cafeteria worker didn’t see the whole lunch. Sure, they saw a pickle, a bag of marshmallows, some Ritz crackers and four tiny chocolate bars. Importantly, what the sub and the lunch lady missed were four pieces of ham...

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...

Hey moms and dads, if you’re like me, before you had kids, you imagined yourself teaching them, raising them, and being responsible for them.  After generations of our parents and grandparents shedding their responsibility to the government in exchange for a selfish, me-centered life, we no longer have primary authority to raise our children as we see fit.  That authority now lies with the government. We’ve given away so much authority to the all-powerful state in the name of protecting children, that it’s a crap-shoot when kids who really need protection will get it.  And when the state gets it...

....researchers looked at the diets of children ages 2 to 11 and teens aged 12 to 19 from 2003-2010. They found that pizza makes up about 20% of kids’ daily calories on days when they eat pizza—and despite the insistence of some politicians that pizza should be considered a vegetable for its ample tomato sauce, those calories aren’t coming from an onslaught of veggies.....

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...

HARTFORD — The state Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a Windsor Locks teen is not legally mature enough to decide against life-saving chemotherapy. The unanimous decision, after a 75-minute hearing, upheld a lower court ruling that the state can force treatment for Hodgkin´s lymphoma on the girl, identified as Cassandra C. The state Department of Children and Families had been awarded custody of the child, who is "doing well" with chemotherapy at Connecticut Children´s Medical Center, a lawyer for the state told the justices. The court Thursday heard arguments from lawyers for Cassandra and her mother, Jackie Fortin, who supports

Adults are awful. Is there anything adults don’t eventually ruin? The economy was ruined by adults, the national debt was rung up by adults. Wars, famine, you name anything and somewhere there’s an adult somewhere on the verge of ruining it. The ruining of things was generally reserved for adulthood, making things more expensive or illegal for adults to engage in. But kids, well, they’d been left largely alone to be kids. Over the last few decades the line of fun ruining has been creeping down, younger and younger, to the point now that kids have gone from being kids...

FAYETTEVILLE (WTVD) -- The parents of two teens involved in a Fayetteville store burglary have turned their sons in to police after seeing the surveillance footage on ABC11. Police said Thursday that the parents of 14- and 16-year-old brothers returned home from Watch Night Service, had recorded the evening news, and recognized their sons in the surveillance. "I'm just glad the parents decided to do the right thing," said Jesse Hill, the co-owner of Tech Boyz, who provided the surveillance video to ABC11. The video, which aired on New Year's Eve, showed five teens breaking into the store at 2126...

Overprotective parents hurting child's growth?

When Kevin Jones discovered that his 10-year-old daughter had created several secret social media accounts and was dating a boy, he was understandably upset. His response was to dress her in a pink T-shirt that reads: “I’m 10 Years Old” on the front and “5th Grader” on the back. She also donned barrettes, pink shoes, and a Sofia the First cartoon backpack. Jones posted photographs from all angles on his Facebook page as punishment for her rule-breaking, along with an update that reads, “Here’s the consequence behind her actions. An age-defining shirt. Yes people she is 5’9” & 10 years...

We don't have to love our parents. We have to honor them. Last week PragerUniversity.com released 11 five-minute video courses: each of the Ten Commandments and an introduction. We received over one million views this first week. The reason we made these videos is that we believe that everything needed to make a good world is contained in the Ten Commandments. This month, my columns consist of transcripts of some the courses, each of which I present. Whatever your faith, or if you have no faith, I invite you to watch the videos at www.prageru.com. They are cleverly animated with...

Like most moms, Mek needs a break. The mother of the four fast-growing Malayan tiger cubs at Fresno Chaffee Zoo has frayed nerves and needs some space. “You can tell Mek has had it,” says Lyn Myers, assistant curator for mammals at the zoo. “It’s like the end of summer, when kids have been home all the time, and mom wants school to come. They’re ready for them to go.” Born Jan. 5 at the zoo, the cubs are now 11 months old. They are in good health and are receiving training from zoo officials to become more independent. They...

David T. Fagan has eight kids and his oldest daughter is a senior in high school–and he hasn’t saved a penny for his children’s college education. But Fagan isn’t stressing. In fact, Fagan says he would prefer it if his children didn’t go to college at all. Fagan and his wife lay out their parenting philosophy in new book Guerrilla Parenting, scheduled to be released in January, and say they encourage their children to strike out on their own and create businesses from the time they’re in elementary school. If the children are set on going to college — and...

FReepers, we are in desperate need of some levity. Please share your favorite funny story about the ins and outs of parenthood. I'll go first!

Pornography is everywhere. It’s an evil with far-reaching affects that damage many layers of society. But no one is hurt more by the overwhelming presence of pornography in our society than children.According to a study by the London School of Economics, nine out of ten children who go online (by the way, many of them just doing their homework) will view pornography. Even when kids are acting responsibly and innocently, adults in the pornography business are so fixated on creating new porn addicts that they have made it virtually impossible for children to escape their grasp. Think about it—90 percent...

Ideas. Am I cursing my future children to a life of being social outcasts because mommy wants to feed them green smoothies? Right now, there are at least a handful of people who I KNOW will never babysit my imaginary, yet-to-be born child. As far as they’re concerned, my baby will be more under wraps than “Blanket” Jackson was. Yes, I want nothing more than to have a full stock of potential babysitters, but sometimes these people—my friends—say things that make me get the Scooby Doo face. “Your kids ain’t gon have any friends!” “I’m going to feed your kids...

The image of Adrian Peterson’s son’s legs has ignited a welcome cultural conversation. This is unusual. Most of these contrived “conversations” are efforts to take one headline and shoehorn it into a narrative that liberals want to advance, usually about race and racism. Those “conversations” are never truthful. But the discussion of a four-year-old boy’s wounds has elicited some brutally honest commentary. Writing on CNN.com, Steven Holmes blasted what he regards as excessive tolerance for spanking and child abuse in the black community. He dispatches the “I was whipped and I turned out all right” excuse. Holmes cites the abundant...