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One child had a BMI measurement of 35, which for a six-foot man would mean weighing 19st. Britain's obesity epidemic, which sees NHS hospitals dealing with 1,000 cases every day, is a reversal of the traditional problem when children were undernourished. Increasingly social workers find youngsters being fed a high-fat, sugary diet, which can be just as bad for their health. The phenomenon is known as "killing with kindness" because the child craves the unhealthy food and a loving parent feels unable to say no. Professionals say they have to make complex decisions in care proceedings and a family's gross...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sNlcwAh83Y Great commercial.

A study of how older teenagers use social media has found that Facebook is “not just on the slide, it is basically dead and buried” and is being replaced by simpler social networks such as Twitter and Snapchat, an expert has claimed. Young people now see the site as “uncool” and keep their profiles live purely to stay in touch with older relations, among whom it remains popular. Prof Daniel Miller of University College London, an anthropologist who worked on the European Union-funded research, wrote in an article for the academic news website The Conversation: “Mostly they feel embarrassed even...

Newspapers are among the last places in America that have close to zero tolerance for [expletive deleted]. I could give you a hint about what word is between the brackets, but I’d best not for fear of arousing the ire of the editing Comstocks. About twice a year, I quote a profanity from a public figure, using just the first letter of the word and then some bowdlerizing asterisks for the rest. No dice, my editor tells me. You’re writing for a family newspaper. There was a time when such standards were the norm at major media institutions in America....

The saga goes back to February. The 15-year-old was getting treated for Mitochondrial Disease, which affects the muscles. When symptoms grew worse, Justina Pelletier ended up at Boston Children's Hospital. Doctors there came up with a startling diagnosis. They said Justina wasn't physically sick, but mentally sick with Somatoform Disorder. It's a mental illness where someone actually experiences physical pain. When her parents tried to take her out of the hospital, they were stopped. It's now become a custody battle between the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families and her parents.

**SNIP** A classmate told NBC News that Karl Pierson was an avid reader of a notorious bomb-making bible, "The Anarchist Cookbook" and was packing a grudge against debate coach Tracy Murphy, the school librarian. “Speech and debate was his life, and the fact that he wasn’t there crushed him a little bit and made him really tense and angry,” Joe Redmond, the team co-captain said. He said Pierson and Murphy “did not get along, and whatever it was escalated to a death threat.”

"Our house is as quiet as a tomb." So said a friend who's at the same stage of life -- that is, a mother of three with only one child still living at home. Her youngest, unlike mine, is an introvert, but like my Ben, he is exceedingly busy in his last years of high school, thus leaving the house echoing with emptiness. As a college sophomore, I visited my academic adviser with a problem. "I don't know what I'm going to do after graduation," I confessed. He cocked his head sideways. "Most people don't come to me with this...

If there’s one thing education experts agree on, it’s that Common Core isn’t creating a lot of common alliances! In an interesting political twist, the President’s national standards seem to be producing plenty of strange partnerships. Republicans and Democrats are reaching across the aisle for and against the policy, while tea partiers hatch odd coalitions with teachers unions and President Obama saddles up with Exxon-Mobil. The coalitions around Common Core are as diverse as they are unpredictable. “That wonderful old line [is] that the problem with national standards is: Republicans don’t do ‘national’ and Democrats don’t do ‘standards,” said one...

Vid at link.

An organization representing Louisiana parents shouldn't be allowed to intervene in a federal lawsuit against the state's school voucher program, the Department of Justice said in a response to a motion requesting legal intervention. The Louisiana chapter of the Black Alliance for Educational Opportunities, a group of parents who seek to improve educational opportunities for disadvantaged students, filed a motion to intervene in the DOJ's lawsuit against Louisiana's school voucher program, which the Obama administration says violates a Carter-era desegregation court order. The DOJ response says the organization's application does not satisfy criteria for a right to intervene and does...

MARSHFIELD (CBS) – A Quincy couple has been indicted on charges in the death of their infant daughter in Marshfield two years ago. Five-month-old Mya Barry died of opiate poisoning on September 23, 2011 after drinking from a bottle containing baby formula and heroin, prosecutors said EMTs found Barry on the living room floor of the family’s apartment on Castle Green. She was described as being cold to the touch, not breathing, and her pupils were fixed and dilated. CPR was unsuccessful, and Barry died at the hospital. At the time, police say they found three grams of heroin and...

Gov. Jerry Brown has signed legislation allowing children to have more than two parents. Leno's measure grew out of an appellate court case involving a biological mother, her same-sex partner and a man who had an affair with the mother while she was temporarily separated from her female lover. In the 2011 case, the California Court of Appeal held that courts could not recognize more than two parents even if doing so would protect the child from harm.

HUNTINGTON, WV - A mom and dad are facing charges after officers say the parents had no idea the toddler was found in a store parking lot wearing nothing but shoes. Charles Grieco, 41, and Patricia Grieco, 40, of Baltimore Street in Huntington, are charged with felony child neglect, according to court documents. Officers with the Huntington Police Department say they found a two-year-old boy in the parking lot of a store in the 2900 block of 5th Avenue Sunday morning. Officers say the boy only had shoes on and managed to walk across Irvine Avenue to the parking lot...

Last week, WCSC-TV reported that after Benjamin and Hope Jordan relocated to Charleston, S.C., they needed to find a baby sitter for their 7-month-old son, Finn, but what they found was a wolf in sheep's clothing. Benjamin and Hope wanted a loving, nurturing baby sitter, just like any other concerned parents who work during the day but have no family or friends to watch their child. They had done their homework and thought they had discovered her in 21-year-old Alexis Khan. She passed a background check and had credible work experience as a baby sitter, and both of Finn's parents...

Way back in the 1980s, were you the one playing "When Doves Cry" over and over? Well, don't be surprised if your kids wind up doing the same thing. Young adults have strong positive memories of the music their parents loved when they were the same age, a study finds. That flies in the face of the cultural stereotype that children reject their parents' taste in music. Participants in a study on musical memory didn't just say they remembered and loved the music that was popular in the early '80s, when their parents were young. They also loved the music...

It’s hard being a parent in today’s world. Everywhere you look, your child is being constantly being exposed to influences that most likely run counter to your beliefs. Kids today are hyper-exposed to sexuality, vulgarity, violence, and a culture that little values discipline, manners, and respect. A parent’s authority is undermined on many fronts, with the classroom being an example, but one of the most effective tools against the authority of parents is television.The progressive left has been targeting the youth of America for decades as they have long recognized that children are the most impressionable and that if they...

"What do we do about our kids?" The group of parents sat together in my office, wiping their eyes. I'm a high school pastor, but for once, they weren't talking about 16-year-olds drinking and partying. Each had a story to tell about a "good Christian" child, raised in their home and in our church, who had walked away from the faith during the college years. These children had come through our church's youth program, gone on short-term mission trips, and served in several different ministries during their teenage years. Now they didn't want anything to do with it anymore. And,...

The weak economy of the past five years could end up exacerbating a long-term trend toward more one-child families, as the cloud of financial uncertainty causes some parents to fret about the burden of taking on everything from daycare costs to college tuition for more than one child. The percentage of women who reach ages 40 to 44 and have given birth to just one child has risen sharply over the past few decades, from nearly 10 percent in 1976 to nearly 19 percent in 2010, according to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau data available. That age range signals...

In 2012, 36% of the nation’s young adults ages 18 to 31—the so-called Millennial generation—were living in their parents’ home, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. This is the highest share in at least four decades and represents a slow but steady increase over the 32% of their same-aged counterparts who were living at home prior to the Great Recession in 2007 and the 34% doing so when it officially ended in 2009. A record total of 21.6 million Millennials lived in their parents’ home in 2012, up from 18.5 million of their...