Free Republic

Those of us who have shouldered a shotgun a few thousand times in our lives can recall that first time we touched off a 12 gauge, or any gauge for that matter. It reminds us that we didn’t always have the bulk or the muscle memory to handle one. Did it stop any of us from wanting another try, one of our own, or a trip to deer camp with dad? Maybe, its the macho side or just trying to impress Dad. Cheer for a young fella who just got his shoulder popped and in a minute when it quits...

A 32-year-old Marion County, Tenn., mother faces an April court date on child neglect charges after deputies found her driving ahead of her young daughters as she made them walk miles to school on Valley View Highway. The charges are linked to an investigation launched March 1 after Marion County sheriff's deputy Chris Ladd and another deputy responded to a call about the situation and spotted two girls with a dog "walking the fog line just south of Ketner Mill Road and a gold Cadillac parked on the shoulder, engine running, just north of Ketner Mill Road," Ladd's report states....

In many ways I am a girly-girl. I love pretty dresses and going out for afternoon tea. I could sit with a book for hours, snuggled under a blanket, without feeling the need to move. Pink is one of my favorite colors, second only to powder blue. I’m not a huge fan of getting dirty and my relationship with bugs is strained. But my son is all boy. Yesterday I watched him sit on the ground, placing handful after handful of dirt methodically into his lap. Then he stood up, grinned, and fell over onto a plant that, somewhat inexplicably,...

Lula Ann Gillespie-Miller, then 28, left her home in Laurel, Ind. in 1974 shortly after giving birth to her third child, according to the Indiana State Police. Feeling she was too young to be a mother, she signed her children over to her parents and left. ... The woman admitted to the Rangers that her name is actually Lula Gillespie-Miller, now 69 years old, and originally from Laurel, Ind. Gillespie-Miller did not commit any crime by leaving her home in 1974 and wanted to remain anonymous.

Suddenly, Tyler is screaming. Screaming. Tyler’s screams could pierce through the din of any commercial. They could break glass. Gabriel sits up with a start, his heart racing.

When a child’s tooth falls out, many people adhere to the tradition of the Tooth Fairy. Until recently, a baby tooth was worth nothing more than a couple of bucks tucked under a six-year-old’s pillow. Not so much anymore. Now those very baby teeth can hold the key to a healthy future for your child.Many parents already opt to bank a baby’s umbilical cord blood, since this blood contains stem cells that can be used to treat dozens of diseases that the child (or a sibling) might develop later in life. While banking cord blood has become popular, it is...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8dzkygDKDU http://www.kansas.com/news/local/article45444474.html http://www.kake.com/home/headlines/Derby-store-shooting-321395561.html Julie Dombo - James Michael Phillips http://i.imgur.com/5vCo32L.png Sadly, I believe a seriously emotionally damaged James Michael Phillips is a victim of America's expanding and shameful *National Epidemic of Child Abuse and Neglect,* aka *Poverty*, that for decades has deprived untold numbers of emotionally abused and neglected young developing children from experiencing and enjoying a safe, fairly happy American kid childhood. Depraved acts of violence as well as other 'people and community' harming anti-social behaviors often occur when emotionally or physically abused and neglected developing young children mature into depressed, frustrated, sometimes suicidal *(NY Times May 18, 2015...

As many as 15,000 supporters rallied at protests held in eight cities around the globe on Saturday to continue putting pressure on the Norwegian government to release five Romanian Pentecostal children who were removed from their parents based on abuse allegations. As previously reported by The Christian Post, the five children of Ruth and Marius Bodnariu were removed from their parents' custody last Nov. 16 after the principal from the school the Bodnarius' two daughters attended notified authorities of her concern that the children were being spanked by their parents at home as a form of discipline. All five children,...

The child's screams went on for a full 30 minutes from inside the Canton, Ohio, apartment before neighbors called 911 and police arrived on-scene late last week. They discovered that the distraught, 20-month-old boy wasn't simply left home alone. He was stuck in a toilet inside the empty apartment, WPXI in Pittsburgh is reporting. Eventually, police did catch up with the boy's parents. It turns out that the boy's mother, identified as 20-year-old Justice Chance, was shopping at Wal-Mart, according to the news account first reported by Fox 8 in Ohio. Police were still at the apartment when the mother...

Full title: Author Interview with Leonard Sax: The Collapse of Parenting: How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grown-Ups Our feature author interview is with Leonard Sax, MD, PhD, author of the new book The Collapse of Parenting: How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grown-Ups, published by Basic Books. With PC safe-space student protests roiling our nation's campuses, the topic of parenting has never been more topical. How did they get this way? Find out more below! Congratulations Leonard on your new book, The Collapse of Parenting: How We Hurt Our Kids When...

MESA, Ariz. (KSAZ) - A woman has been arrested after telling police she beat a 16-year-old teen after finding him in bed with her teenage daughter inside her Mesa home on Thanksgiving.According to court documents, Jeanette Woods found the boy in her 16-year-old daughter's bed after the two had consensual sex. The two teens had fallen asleep when the boy says he awoke to Woods yelling at him and punching him in the face just after 1 a.m.The boy says Woods was straddling him and repeatedly punching him in the face and body. The boy eventually broke free, but Woods...

December 10, 2015 (ThePublicDiscourse) -- Obergefell v. Hodges was decided by five robed justices, but only one man both wrote and signed his name to the majority opinion. The four concurring justices chose to concur silently, adding nothing more than their signatures. This case is the brainchild of one man. That man and his state of mind—indeed, his character—matter. Recently, Justice Anthony Kennedy dismissed conscientious objectors to Obergefell, such as Kim Davis, by pointing out that very few Christian judges resigned when the Nazis imposed the Nuremberg Laws on Germany. Leaving aside how offensive it is to compare gay marriage supporters to Nazis, Justice Kennedy’s...

I have NEVER been able to ride in a car reading a bookThe head down position makes me motion sick

The parenting trend of building self-esteem has taken a dark turn in recent years. Studies show that we are raising narcissists, with all this unwarranted praise creating a sense of entitlement in children. But even the ones who deserve praise for their accomplishments can be ruined by too much of the stuff as is evidenced by the great fall of UFC women's bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey, who not only lost her title on Saturday night, but also lost many fans who admired her.

Legal Kidnapping: Government’s Assault on Parents How Did We Get Here? The Slippery Slope of Government “Protection”by Monica MearsHealth Impact NewsWhen most people today hear of a terrible child abuse case, their immediate reaction is to call on the government to protect the child and bring justice to bear on the situation. This reliance upon government to enforce child protection, rather than families, churches or non-profit groups, is a relatively new concept in history.As American government has grown ever larger in response to society’s expectations that it should be all children’s protector, Americans have discovered these good intentions have created...

White House officials pushed to ban conversion therapy for LGBT youths, pointing to new findings that debunk the therapy. A ban on the conversion therapy for minors was introduced in Congress on Thursday, following a report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. "The science rebukes this so-called practice and so do we," White House Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett told reporters on a call Thursday. The report from the administration includes a consensus from an expert panel held by the American Psychological Association earlier this summer.The panel found that variations in "sexual orientation and gender identity are normal,...

My son, Cory, will leave our Northern California home to start college back East in the fall, prompting other mothers to offer condolences about my soon-to-be-empty nest. Though they expect me to break into tears, my overriding emotion when my youngest departs will be relief. I will finally be freed from the constant scrutiny of the ever-vigilant eco-warrior I raised. I can do nothing right in my teenage son’s eyes. He grills me about the distance traveled of each piece of fruit and every vegetable I purchase. He interrogates me about the provenance of all the meat, poultry, and fish...

Last night, I told my kids, "Make sure you have an outfit picked out for the first day of school, so it will be easy to get ready on time!" This morning, I discovered that they heard me say, "Make sure you have an outfit picked out mentally, so we can spend the first morning frantically tearing through mountains of laundry in the hopes that your My Little Pony tank somehow miraculously found its way into a basket." This is just the little kids, who more or less want to look like all their friends. I do have teenagers, too,...

The author of Paranoid Parenting says that far from needing a stricter ‘Asian’ approach, Western parenting is already way too intensive. Last night, in a debate in London titled ‘Western parents don’t know how to bring up their children’, regular spiked contributor Frank Furedi clashed with Amy Chua, author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother , and others. Furedi’s opening remarks are published below. When it comes to discussing parenting, everyone thinks they are warranted to take their own personal story and recast it as a philosophy. On no other issue are you allowed to communicate such prejudices and...

CNN contributor Katia Hetter is the author of one of the strangest, weirdest, and downright craziest articles I’ve ever read on that website — and that’s saying a lot. This deluded mom writes: 'My daughter occasionally goes on a hugging and kissing strike. 'She’s 7, and she’s been holding these wildcat strikes since she was 3 or 4. Her parents can get a hug or a kiss, but many people who know her cannot, at least not all the time. And I won’t make her. “I would like you to hug Grandma, but I won’t make you do it,” I...