Free Republic

As much as I love the vitally important “is ‘thug’ the new N-word?” debate, dumping on a mom for literally dragging her kid away from a riot that could have gotten him killed or sent to prison is my very favorite of this week’s many Baltimore hot takes.How hot do you like it? Do you like it hitting-kids-is-bad-mmkay hot? Extensive research shows that using harsh verbal discipline and physical hostility is counterproductive to good parenting. It increases the risk of delinquency, fighting, misbehavior and belligerence in teens. Science Daily reported that “harsh verbal discipline may actually aggravate” problematic behavior...

We thought it would be clear to most readers that the script was a fictional account. Interestingly, the blog article garnered attention on several web sites and a number of readers on those sites mistakenly thought the article was a non-fiction article. While we're sure some of the scenarios presented in the article have been encountered by parents of youth athletes, we also found it telling about the current state of youth sports that so many people took the script seriously. Installment one ended with a quote from the player who just left practice in tears that read, "Dad, I...

In the moments before the police and county prosecutors and child protective services took over her life, Monique was thinking about dinner. Specifically, she wanted a baked chicken. She had just left a birthday party and was driving home with her two daughters. By the time she pulled into the parking lot of a grocery store near their house, her younger daughter, then 4 years old, was taking a much needed nap. Monique hesitated. She didn’t want to wake her daughter to bring her into the store, where she was liable to be as cranky and difficult as anyone else...

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...

A 65 year old German lady has told German newspaper Bild that she’s expecting quadruplets. This news story is the talk of the day in Europe. There are those who believe it’s a reason to celebrate, while others have a slightly different opinion. See for instance this tweet from a Dutch Twitter-user: Translation: “A women of 65 years old pregnant with quadruplets. This is loathsome. Incredibly egotistical.” Her argument is that the mother is a) too old to take care of one new baby let alone four, and b) that she’s basically nearing the end of her life thereby making...

No tats/angst/mutant posterior/glorification of stupidity-  and the music was better, too: And note Whitney, Sade, et. al. sporting cross necklaces... what a difference 30 yrs can make for an imploding culture: [gallery/video] ______________________________________________ Frompo   mTV   Wikipedia Commons   VanessaWilliams.com

Heather Barwick, who was raised by her mother and her mother's lesbian partner, wrote in an essay this week that same-sex "marriage" is not the same as normal marriage between a man and a woman, that the traditional family is best, and that while growing up she "ached every day for a dad." Heather Barwick, who was raised by her mother and her mother's lesbian partner, says "gay marriage" not only redefines marriage but also parenting and that "as a little girl, I so desperately wanted a daddy." (Photo: The Federalist.) Barwick, who is 31 now, married, and has four...

A South Carolina woman’s new essay about being raised by her lesbian mom contains a surprising revelation: she opposes marriage equality. “Gay community, I am your daughter. My mom raised me with her same-sex partner back in the ’80s and ’90s,” writes Heather Barwick, a 31-year-old mother of four, in The Federalist. “I’m writing to you because I’m letting myself out of the closet: I don’t support gay marriage. But it might not be for the reasons that you think. It’s not because you’re gay. I love you, so much. It’s because of the nature of the same-sex relationship itself.”

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?