Number 2 Pencil

Messy rooms, drunken dads

When it comes to the internet, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander:

An exasperated father has discovered to his cost that cyberspace is not the ideal arena for family feuds. Two weeks ago Steve Williams became so fed up with his daughter's messy bedroom that he built a website featuring pictures of his slothful offspring's lair in an attempt to shame her into action.

But the public humiliation proved a short-lived victory. While it did spur his daughter, Claire, into tidying up her room, it also whet her appetite for revenge. With the help of her father's friends, the 20-year-old business student has now set up a rival website that displays photos of him in a variety of compromising situations.

Lesson to be learned: Don't rely on public humiliation via a method that your child can master. And it's probably best not to send the message, "It's okay for me to air your dirty laundry to the world," at all.

A sad story of pre-teen drinkers

It's a sad story. But it's not the school's fault:

A jury ruled Wednesday that a school district was negligent - but not responsible - for the alcohol-poisoning deaths of two 11-year-old boys who skipped class and died after drinking half a gallon of vodka.

Jurors awarded no damages to the parents of Justin Benoist and Frankie Nicolai III, who sued the Ronan School District, alleging officials failed to notify them the boys had left school on Feb. 27, 2004.

It was the school's job to notify them of their child's absence. It was not the school's job to notify them of an absence before their 11-year-olds (!) could drink a half-gallon of vodka.

Kids and economics

The Chicago Boyz stir up a hornet's nest:

So, collectively we all need children and benefit when they grow into productive adults, but the cost of raising children is increasingly being borne by fewer and fewer in the general population.

Childless adults are rapidly becoming economic free riders on the backs of parents...There is already grousing in some blue zones by the childless that they shouldn't have to subsidize the "breeders'" children. How long before child-hostile places like San Francisco become the norm?

The contemptuous attitude towards "breeders" in certain locales is something I've posted about before. Maybe it would help if children in strollers wore t-shirts that read, "In only 15 years, I'll be paying taxes towards your retirement"?

A compromise: Don't punish sleepers unless they snore

Parents: "Start the school day later!"
Schools: "Make your kids go to bed earlier the night before!"

The debate rages on:

The much debated idea of later start times for valley high schools will be tossed around again. The Clark County School Board is holding a special public meeting on the issue Tuesday, Feb. 23.

Armed with the latest research on how sleep-deprived teens don't do well in school, some parents will call upon the school board once again to push back the start times for high schools. But there are plenty of teachers, parents and even students who don't think the benefits of an extra hour of sleep will outweigh the costs.

Whose fault is it when kids overeat?

Well, you can't accuse them of going after the small targets:

Advocacy groups and parents are suing the Nickelodeon TV network and cereal maker Kellogg Co. in an effort to stop junk food marketing to kids. The plaintiffs are citing a recent report documenting the influence of marketing on what children eat. Ads aimed at kids are mostly for high-calorie, low-nutrition food and drinks, according to the government-chartered Institute of Medicine.

Wakefield, Massachusetts, mother Sherri Carlson said she tries her best to get her three kids to eat healthy foods. "But then they turn on Nickelodeon and see all those enticing junk-food ads," Carlson said. "Adding insult to injury, we enter the grocery store and see our beloved Nick characters plastered on all those junky snacks and cereals."

The Center for Science in the Public Interest is involved; not surprisingly, the CSPIScam website is not impressed:

Today the better-living-through-litigation squad at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) held a press conference to announce an audacious new lawsuit against two companies involved with advertising food during children's television programs. At $25 per "violation," CSPI threatened that "the verdict could be in the billions of dollars."

Of course, the actual grounds for the lawsuit are dubious at best. Plaintiff Sherri Carlson charged that "'all those enticing junk-food ads' make her children want to eat 'junky snacks and cereals' instead of 'healthy foods.'" Going out on a limb here, perhaps her kids want these foods not because of ads, but because they're children.

CSPI's lawsuit makes the following three assumptions:

1. Television can't be turned off;
2. Parents have no control over what food they buy; and
3. Parents cannot tell their children to go outside and play.

None of these is true...

Adding to the ridiculousness of CSPI's press conference was Executive Director Michael Jacobson's repeated citation of an Institute of Medicine (IOM) report on advertising and children. What Jacobson omitted in his diatribe is the fact that the IOM report doesn't provide any evidence to support his argument.

But don't take our word for it...

No one's saying it's easy to be a parent these days. I doubt Kellogg and Nickleodeon are the reason that kids are getting fatter, yet it sounds like CSPI is trying to make them the reason some lawyers will be getting richer.

(Hat tip: Reginleif.)

The coddled kids enter the workforce

Good Lord almighty.

A Beverly Hills psychiatrist's office is an unlikely triage center for the mash-up of generations in the workforce. But Dr. Charles Sophy is seeing the casualties firsthand. Last year, when a 24-year-old salesman at a car dealership didn't get his yearly bonus because of poor performance, both of his parents showed up at the company's regional headquarters and sat outside the CEO's office, refusing to leave until they got a meeting. "Security had to come and escort them out," Sophy says.

A 22-year-old pharmaceutical employee learned that he was not getting the promotion he had been eyeing. His boss told him he needed to work on his weaknesses first. The Harvard grad had excelled at everything he had ever done, so he was crushed by the news. He told his parents about the performance review, and they were convinced there was some misunderstanding, some way they could fix it, as they'd been able to fix everything before. His mother called the human-resources department the next day. Seventeen times. She left increasingly frustrated messages: "You're purposely ignoring us"; "you fudged the evaluation"; "you have it in for my son." She demanded a mediation session with her, her son, his boss, and HR--and got it. At one point, the 22-year-old reprimanded the HR rep for being "rude to my mom."

The patients on Sophy's couch aren't the twentysomethings dealing with their first taste of failure. Nor are they the "helicopter parents." They're the traumatized bosses, as well as the 47-year-old woman from HR who has been hassled time and again by her youngest workers and their parents.

I can't say I blame them. Soon, employers will be noting in the fine print that any employee over the age of 21 and/or who is making more than minimum wage will be fired if they involve Mummy and Daddy in any workplace issue. Making sure the Millenial Generation "gets heard" is one thing; allowing them to bitch and whine and avoid responsibility is another. I say there's a limit as to what companies should be willing to adapt.

(Via Right on the Left Coast.)

Update: PhotonCourier has tips for managers:

So, if you're interviewing a prospective new employee, you might want to ask a few questions about how the individual has handled criticism or failure in the past. And you might also want to consider some nontraditional sources of employees. Consider, for example, military veterans--especially veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. These people are likely to have had experiences which helped them develop attitudes and meta-skills which will be of great value in your organization, whatever kind of work that organization does...

Can you imagine if an employer asked a prospective worker how they'd handled criticism in the past, and got an astonished reply, "Why, I've never been criticized! That wouldn't have been very helpful for my self-esteem, now would it?"

A dangerous trip for a young teenager

A troubled 14-year-old probably won't learn a lesson from this:

A 14-year-old Londonderry High School student was near death Friday when school officials discovered her drunk and unresponsive in the woods behind the gymnasium, Superintendent Nathan Greenberg confirmed last night.

Assistant Principal Arthur Psaledas discovered Destiny Foose shortly before 9 a.m., approximately 200 yards behind the school, where she and four friends had apparently gone to drink liquor upon arriving at school that morning, Greenberg said.

“They told us to call family,” the girl’s mother, Lisa Foose, said last night. “We thought she was going to die"...

Lisa Foose said tests revealed her daughter had smoked marijuana, and her blood alcohol content was .387, more than 19 times the legal limit for a minor in the state of New Hampshire. A blood alcohol content of .4 is considered lethal for 50 percent of the adult population. When paramedics responded, the girl’s body temperature was 95 degrees Fahrenheit, which doctors said helped slow the absorption of alcohol, Lisa Foose said.

I agree the security at school should be better...but it hardly seems fair to blame the school for all of this:

Destiny has been suspended several times for alcohol-related incidents this year, her mother said. Foose said she and her husband are looking for an alcohol rehabilitation facility for the 14-year-old. “We don’t feel that even this taught her a lesson,” Foose said. Still, she said administrators should have kept a closer eye on the wooded areas behind the school, where she claims they knew drinking had gone on before.

“If they’re going to this place, why are they not monitoring it, or having some type of security out there if they’re doing it every day,” she said. “And they are doing it every day.”

Greenberg defended administrators, crediting Psaledas with likely saving the girl’s life. Security cameras are located throughout and surrounding the school, but the area where the students were drinking is not visible from school grounds, he said.

"Not visible from school grounds" suggests not being on school grounds, so the school's jurisdiction wouldn't extend that far. If the parents couldn't keep this child from drinking, why would we expect the school to be able to?

When we say "Shush!" we mean it!

I have only one question about the following story:

The West Bloomfield Township Public Library is getting double the complaints it normally receives concerning disruptive children, and now officials want to send a message that the problem won't be tolerated.

The Library Board in December decided to revise the library's long-standing rules of conduct to prohibit inappropriate behavior by children. The revisions include rules on running, gathering socially in a disruptive manner and refusing to follow a staff member's direction or request, said Library Director Clara Bohrer.

"We have found that oftentimes children ages 11 to 15 -- those who are unable to drive -- are being dropped off for many, many hours, and at that age it's really hard for them to be on their best behavior all the time," she said...

Officials typically fielded 10 to 12 complaints per week, mostly after school and in the evenings. But those numbers doubled recently with complaints about children yelling across the room and running around. After warnings have been issued, students can have their library privileges suspended or be evicted.

And that question is: Why didn't the previous rules forbid things like running and ignoring staff requests? Did they not think these things would happen?

Well, perhaps they didn't. Maybe the previous rules were written during a time when children were either more supervised or more likely to follow general etiquette when out in public.

Best sign ever on the related Fark.com thread:

Raising money by doffing their clothes

Go ahead and take those clothes off, Timmy. It's for a good cause:

TEVENSON, Wash. -- A high school fund raiser in Stevenson is raising more than just money. The student calendar is raising some eyebrows. Nestled between the Tylenol and wrap bags at the local supermarket is one of Stevenson's fastest selling products.

"Some of the pictures in there are pretty explicit," one mom said.

It's the Stevenson High School boys' calendar, a fund raiser for the senior's drug-and-alcohol-free, end-of-the-school-year party. "We've gotten a big mix of feedback. The majority of it has been positive. People think it's hilarious, it's funny and it's cool," Mr. December, Jon Medler, said. Most of the boys in the calendar have been friends since they were in kindergarten. Last year they came up with the idea for the calendar, then they put it together with the help of one of their moms.

"They're good kids. They all have good grades. They do a lot of community projects," Mr. May's mom, Robin Aman, said. The students had 200 of the calendars printed, and at $15 a piece, almost every single one of them has been sold.

It's hard to tell how "explicit" any of the photos actually are. For all the controversy, the comments of the naysayers get little coverage (pun intended) in the article.

Hitting the books doesn't mean being rude

First we have stores posting etiquette rules for children and parents, and now even the NYTimes wonders if kids are going too far:

CHILDREN should be seen and not heard" may be due for a comeback. After decades of indulgence, American society seems to have reached some kind of tipping point, as far as tolerance for wild and woolly kid behavior is concerned.

Are children ruder now than in the past? Do parents care? Last month, an Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that nearly 70 percent of Americans said they believed that people are ruder now than they were 20 or 30 years ago, and that children are among the worst offenders. (As annoyances, they tied with obnoxious cellphone users.)

The conservative child psychologist John Rosemond recently denounced in his syndicated column the increasing presence of "disruptive urchins" who "obviously have yet to have been taught the basic rudiments of public behavior," as he related the wretched experience of dining in a four-star restaurant in the company of one child roller skating around his table and another watching a movie on a portable DVD player.

To begin with, if you can afford a four-star restaurant, you can afford a babysitter, so this is not a "the kid has to come along" situation. We have worse problems than manners here; we have affluent parents who apparently see no distinction between what's appropriate for adults and what's appropriate for children. How can society possibly help correct these kids if the parents are so blind?

...what seems to have changed recently, according to childrearing experts, is parental behavior - particularly among the most status-conscious and ambitious - along with the kinds of behavior parents expect from their kids. The pressure to do well is up. The demand to do good is down, way down, particularly if it's the kind of do-gooding that doesn't show up on a college application.

I suppose the roller-skating in ritzy restaurants counts as "extracurricular activities."

Once upon a time, parenting was largely about training children to take their proper place in their community, which, in large measure, meant learning to play by the rules and cooperate...Rude behavior, particularly toward adults, was something for which children had to be chastised, even punished. That has also now changed...

Educators feel helpless, too: Nearly 8 in 10 teachers, according to the 2004 Public Agenda report, said their students were quick to remind them that they had rights or that their parents could sue if they were too harshly disciplined. More than half said they ended up being soft on discipline "because they can't count on parents or schools to support them."

I agree entirely that teachers feel like they have their hands tied with brattish behavior in schools. However, I find it very hard to believe that the new pressure to achieve in schools is partly the cause of this:

Parents who want their children to succeed more than anything, Dr. Kindlon said, teach them to value and prioritize achievement above all else - including other people.

"We're insane about achievement," he said. "Schoolwork is up 50 percent since 1981, and we're so obsessed with our kids getting into the right school, getting the right grades, we let a lot of things slide. Kids don't do chores at home anymore because there isn't time."

Bullspit. Children can learn manners without having to do chores, and hitting the books does not mean parents have no available time left to teach proper behavior. It's hard to believe that there are scores of parents out there who value education so highly that they place it above all else, even table manners.

I think what we're seeing is a new influx parents who don't believe in discipline, who want to be "friends" with their kids, and who don't teach them any useful skills at all. These kids would be doing poorly in school except that now there is pressure on school to raise test scores, so the teachers are trying to make that happen. I doubt that the focus on higher achievement is causing parents to cut back on lessons in manners; the high achievement is most likely happening despite the lack of etiquette training, thanks to NCLB. And if teachers had the clout to allow them to discipline the brats and louts, I bet they'd find it easier to comply with all the new rules and regulations.

At least one new study, in fact, says the way to improving test scores might be tackling behavior issues, at least for the most severely-affected students. Smart parents already knew that in order for their children to succeed, a foundation of good behavior is required.

Parents take umbrage at enforcement of proper behavior

Oh dear Lord.

Bridget Dehl shushed her 21-month-old son Gavin, then clapped a hand over his mouth to squelch his tiny screams amid the Sunday brunch bustle. When Gavin kept yelping "yeah, yeah, yeah," Dehl quickly whisked him from his highchair and out the door.

Right past the sign warning the cafe's customers that "Children of all ages have to behave and use their indoor voices when coming to A Taste of Heaven," and right into a nasty spat roiling the stroller set in Chicago's changing Andersonville neighborhood.

The owner of A Taste of Heaven, Dan McCauley, said he posted the sign -- at child level, with playful handprints -- in the hope of quieting his tin-ceilinged cafe, where toddlers have been known to sprawl between tables and hurl themselves at display cases for sport.

But many neighborhood mothers took umbrage at the implied criticism of how they handle their children.

Note: He's not telling them how to rear their children. He's not trying to pass laws that affect how they rear their children. He's telling them that when they're in his restaurant, he expects everyone - even precious Taylor and Maximillian - to conduct themselves in such a way that everyone is comfortable.

Here in Chicago, parents have denounced Toast, a popular Lincoln Park breakfast spot, as unwelcoming since a note about using inside voices appeared on the menu six months ago. The owner of John's Place established a separate "family-friendly" room a year ago, only to face parental threats of lawsuits. When a retail clerk in Andersonville asked a woman to stop breast-feeding last spring, "the neighborhood set him straight real fast," said Mary Ann Smith, the area's alderwoman.

Because, as we all know, children cannot be expected to learn inside voices, and breast-feeding women cannot be expected to consider the comfort level of anyone else around them. These kinds of comments are so insulting to parents who DO control their kids and DO teach them manners and DO take the feelings of everyone else into account. I, for one, make sure to compliment every parent who does a great job of keeping their kids occupied on plane trips. I know that can't be easy.

Kudos to the stores who reach out to upset children, and there should be no sarcastic remarks from staff about "screamers," but restaurants should be free to set the general tone of their place and ask anyone whose behavior is out of line to leave. If you ask me, they should also ban loud/stupid cell phone conversations, people who wave their cigarettes around, and customers who substitute bathing in Axe or Giorgio for actual bathing.

I'm also waiting for a bright entrepreneur to open a cinema that is 21-and-up only, but with no alcohol or fattening food served. That way, the audience will consist only of adults who haven't drunk so much they've lost their inside voice. Heaven.

Update: The Ace of Spades offers his take on the controversy:

Don't you even dare suggest that a child's public behavior should meet any sort of standard, oh dear me, no. You see, if you quietly suggest that perhaps children should not run around like Speedy Gonzales whilst screaming at the top of their lungs and bouncing off display cases, then some parents take that as a personal attack and start returning fire.

I can understand Ace's perspective, but I can also understand the feelings of some Devoted Readers who teach their children proper manners but would still feel a bit, well, paranoid in stores that post signs about proper behavior. Ultimately, a lot would rest on how staff members deal with parents whose children are misbehaving. A parent who is trying to get their kid under control deserves sympathy and patience, while those who ignore their child's tantrums can be asked to remove the kid at once.

Learning about the birds and bees

Well, this shouldn't surprise anyone:

The Internet apparently is a key source of sex education — and miseducation — for U.S. teenagers. About half of teens go online for health information, and they have more questions about sex than they do about any other topic, researchers reported at the American Academy of Pediatrics meeting here last week.

The medical director of one teen-health website notes that the questions from many parents are just as clueless as those from teenagers. In related news, Lee at RTftLC links to another article (though his link is broken) about a school that has said to heck with federal funding for abstinence-only sex ed classes. He's in favor of teachers, rather than a computer, educating kids about sex ed, whereas I'm not so sure.

The courage to say no

UK schoolteacher Mike Beale has had enough:

Education expert Mike Beale said teachers are increasingly having to tell mums and dads to stand up to their kids...Speaking at an education conference in Edinburgh yesterday, Beale said: "Heads are too often at the centre of trying to educate parents that it is okay to say no to their children.

"It is essential to draw lines for those children beyond which they are not permitted to go.

"It is not essential that families are democracies. My heart still sinks when mum or dad say to me that they have made a decision, they don't really like it, but Maggie Rose really wants this, that, or the other and they are afraid not to agree.

"After all, we have to be best friends...

He added: "Roots come from discipline and appreciating that the pain of hard work is nothing like the pain of disappointment, from lines being drawn and by not being afraid to say no."

Bravo. But will parents listen?

Personal choices in a very public age

The Anchoress has a lovely takedown of the NYTimes' perplexed coverage of those stubborn women who insist on making personal choices for themselves. One can't help but marvel at the naivete of NYT reporters who write articles like the following:

At Yale and other top colleges, women are being groomed to take their place in an ever more diverse professional elite. It is almost taken for granted that, just as they make up half the students at these institutions, they will move into leadership roles on an equal basis with their male classmates.

There is just one problem with this scenario: many of these women say that is not what they want.

Many women at the nation's most elite colleges say they have already decided that they will put aside their careers in favor of raising children.

Heaven forbid! You mean smart, focused women will sometimes make their own life choices and decide for themselves how to balance work and motherhood? What a terrible "problem"!

If you think the NYT wouldn't have a problem digging up quotes from academics who are just shocked, shocked by this, you'd be right:

...the likelihood that so many young women plan to opt out of high-powered careers presents a conundrum.

"It really does raise this question for all of us and for the country: when we work so hard to open academics and other opportunities for women, what kind of return do we expect to get for that?" said Marlyn McGrath Lewis, director of undergraduate admissions at Harvard, who served as dean for coeducation in the late 1970's and early 1980's.

How does that differ from the old, bad, sexist viewpoint earlier this century when the general consensus that women shouldn't be admitted to college, or hired, because it was assumed they'd all get pregnant as soon as possible? Isn't the subtext here that women are a problem because they insist on thinking for themselves and not doing what their "betters" intend for them to do?

..."What does concern me," said Peter Salovey, the dean of Yale College, "is that so few students seem to be able to think outside the box; so few students seem to be able to imagine a life for themselves that isn't constructed along traditional gender roles"...

For many feminists, it may come as a shock to hear how unbothered many young women at the nation's top schools are by the strictures of traditional roles.

"They are still thinking of this as a private issue; they're accepting it," said Laura Wexler, a professor of American studies and women's and gender studies at Yale. "Women have been given full-time working career opportunities and encouragement with no social changes to support it.

Yup, that's the subtext. These academics and "feminists" are horrified that smart, determined women still insist, despite the best of brainwashing, on making personal choices on very personal topics. By God, they're not listening to those who have the real power to determine who should work and who should stay home with the babies! They're not letting their professors tell them if they should have children or who should rear them! They're making flexible life choices that might involve working from home, flex-time, and non-traditional gender roles such as having the husband stay home with the kids,but they're not "thinking outside the box" in the correct way! How dare they!

Sheesh. The Anchoress sums it up well:

Clearly the “it takes a village” mentality, wherein children are popped out and plopped into the care of others while the superior sorts take on the world, still has a welcome home in the minds of some of these academics, but I think the young women about whom they are fretting are bringing very healthy and thoughtful opinions to the matter...

The saddest side of this issue, which is not addressed by the NY Times, is that those women who do not have the privilege of an “elite” education (and the opportunity to meet an “elite” young man to marry) may find that as much as they would LIKE to stay home and raise their children, they will not have that opportunity, as they will have to work to simply pay the bills and put food on the table.

There are still inequalities - there always will be, that’s life - but it seems to me if the NY Times wants to boo-hoo for women, it might want to boo-hoo for the sisters who want to raise their children and cannot afford to. After all…that whole “sisterhood” idea is supposed to be a real one, right? And the line about women being “free to choose” what they do with their lives, that was supposed to be real, too, wasn’t it?

She has links to other takes on this topic as well.

The proper way to get sick

Um, oops.

A salmonella outbreak that may have sickened dozens of fifth-grade students may stem from a swanky restaurant where the children took a lesson in dining etiquette. Gaston County Health Department officials on Wednesday confirmed eight cases of salmonella poisoning and that a common link in the cases was a Friday dinner at the members-only City Club of Gastonia...

The schoolchildren were at the club for an etiquette training dinner as part of the Junior Assembly of Gastonia. The program teaches etiquette, manners and dance to children in fifth through eighth grades in schools around the region.

Next up: A class in legal manners: How To Be Civil While Filing A Civil Suit.

Special ice for special people

Well, there's being indulgent, and then there's spoiling your kid rotten, and then there's this:

Calling the Orlins ice skating enthusiasts may be a bit of an understatement. The Stamford residents are spending $630,000 to build an indoor ice skating rink in the backyard of their 13-acre property just off the Merritt Parkway...

"Millions of people come down our road to see it because nobody can believe it's there," said neighbor Maria Fedele.

According to plans filed with the city, the 28-foot-tall building will have an ice surface about half the size of a regulation hockey rink. A concrete floor underneath will allow the Orlins to use the rink for roller hockey, basketball and tennis when it's not covered with ice. The building will also have a viewing balcony and wet bar.

The Orlins defy reality, but follow etiquette, by downplaying their little construction job:

City officials said they believe the Orlins are building the rink for their son, a Stamford Youth Hockey player.

The Orlins declined an interview with The Advocate of Stamford. "My husband and I want to keep it low-key," Julie Orlin said. "We don't want to make a fuss about it." She said the Orlins do not think the project is unusual, saying they know of four similar rinks in Greenwich.

I suppose if they've got $600K to spare to build a hockey playroom for their son, they might as well use it in building something that will last. And just think what it will do for the resale value! You know, in case Bill Gates or the Sultan of Brunei ever decides to move to Connecticut.

Corporal punishment down under

Why is a small Christian school in New Zealand in the news? Because its principal distributed a manual on how to properly smack one's child:

Carey College gave guidelines to parents outlining how to smack their children on the buttocks with their hand or a rod in what it calls an expression of love - responsible parenting in the child's best interests. The pamphlet was sent out after steps were taken in parliament last month to ban smacking in New Zealand.

The Children's Commissioner Cindy Kiro says it is irresponsible and misguided for a school to send out the pamphlet. But, Carey College principal Michael Drake says the school has always supported parents right to smack their children and has sent the information to parents in response to the anti-smacking bill.

I assume that their smacking is our spanking (it just sounds funnier their way). Do I think the pamphlet is silly? Well, if the pamphlet is chock-full of parenting advice - including how to control your kids without smacking - then the whole thing doesn't seem quite so silly. The whole anti-smacking thing is a topic du jour in New Zealand; the bill would repeal the section of the Crimes Act that allows parents to claim "reasonable force" if they are charged with assualt. It's a nice thought, but it's hard to understand just how the bill would have any force behind it without physical evidence or witnesses, and it's easy to understand how the bill could be used to erode parental rights and responsibilities.

The pamphlet that was distributed is in direct opposition to the bill:

Principal Michael Drake says it aims to help people understand smacking is completely different from abuse. He says the school wants to encourage a proper evaluation of the anti-smacking bill currently before Parliament. He says the bill does not have the support of ordinary New Zealand parents, who practice smacking and do so in a loving and safe way.

However, the advice has raised the hackles of those seeking to outlaw the practice. Green MP Sue Bradford, who is behind the anti-smacking bill in Parliament, has described the pamphlet as outrageous and slightly perverse.

Michael Drake says the school has always supported parents' rights to smack and he is amazed a politician, in a democracy, is criticising the school simply because it disagrees with her. He says what is needed is open debate on the topic, without emotive name-calling.

Good luck with that. Methinks this is a topic so emotionally charged for some that the debate is almost guaranteed to include accusations that those who oppose the bill are all abusive parents.

An epidemic of pregnancy

Yeeks:

This may seem impossible to you, but it’s true. Sixty-five — again, 65 — of Timken High School’s 490 girl students are pregnant. That’s a number confirmed by Principal Kim Redmond, whose staff, in less than a week, will inherit a problem it had no part in causing.

Whose fault is it that more than 13 percent of Timken’s girls are with child? Some would say fault-finding isn’t a fruitful exercise, but in this case, it’s critical. Suspects range from movies, TV and video games to lazy parents and lax discipline. Only one thing is sure: Schools don’t impregnate children.

“This has gotten to horrible proportions,” said Redmond. “I wish I knew the answer to why it’s happening.”

She’s not the only one who should wonder. McKinley High’s numbers aren’t rosy, either, and its culture is just as ripe for trouble. I recall a day there last spring, while waiting for an English class to let out, that a roomful of kids lauded a boy, no more than 16 or 17, for having become a “dad” the night before. A paper on the kid’s desk suggested he might struggle to spell that word.

Teenage pregnancy is a strong predictor of adult poverty; at least one study confirms that teenagers who become pregnant average two years fewer of education.

At GreatSchools.net, one Timken student defends the school, saying that it has a bad reputation only because of the "wanna-be rapper, gangsters, and the all american-sports players." And now, because of the girls who have chosen early sexual activity and parenthood over education.

Update: A provocative link, via Instapundit, suggests the girls getting pregnant are the normal ones, and perhaps the system should be restructured so that teenage pregnancy isn't a guarantee of dropping out of school and low-income jobs:

It's time someone praised and defended reckless teenage girls and young women who behave badly, dress provocatively, engage in risky sex, and get pregnant. They are the normal ones. The rest of us are the deviants. They are behaving in the most natural way. The rest of us are mutants...

...A woman's body is at its fertility peak between the ages of 17 and 23. So when young women advertise or flaunt their sexuality they are being driven by a force far stronger than the Judeo-Christian ethic. They are driven by the power of peak fertility and a million years of evolutionary biology. Nature has programmed them for pregnancy, genetic diversity and keeping the species going. A big job...

...A healthier society would allow women to have children earlier than they do now. At 32, no matter what people want to believe, the reproductive system is far less robust than it was 10 years earlier. Our aim should be to have children born into a culture where there is plenty of support for child care in addition to the mother, thus liberating mothers to more fully exploit the possibilities that advanced society can offer them.

As I said, provocative.

How not to rear a sweet sixteen-year-old

I must be getting old and grumpy, because this, to me, does not sound like fun, or outrageous, or even interesting. It just makes me - the girl who lived for MTV at age 14 - swear I'd never let a kid of mine watch that channel.

...it only takes a few moments of the second season premiere of MTV's reality show "My Super Sweet 16" to see at least one of the spoils of having a lot of dough.

"I'm a diva, I'm a star," says Sophie, a plump 15-year-old at the center of the episode. "A lot of people will see beauty, because I'm blessed." After watching, though, it's easy to see she's more misguided and overindulged than blessed...

This is not an in-depth look by any means at a girl growing up, but rather a well-done series about teen excess...The blessed part is, of course, because her mother is willing to bankroll $180,000 for a party to honor Miss All That.

Note: $180,000 for a party celebrating, essentially, the fact that her daughter managed to make it to age 16. Even if doctors had said the child wouldn't live to see age 17, this is a bit much.

Luckily, some parents have had the good sense to rear kids that watch these obnoxious shows in order to point and laugh, rather than sigh and emulate. Witness the forum chatterbugs at TV Without Pity, most of whom note that they wouldn't be able to decide who to slap first - the spoiled brat Sophie, or her thoughtless mother who mistakes lavish parties for decent childrearing.

As always, experts save the day

I'm trying to figure out why tests get all the blame for childhood anxieties when we have parents like this:

Haley Califano is a pretty normal 5-year-old. She likes coloring books and the Hula Hoop. But her mother, Christine, was concerned that with kindergarten fast approaching, learning her ABCs was throwing Haley for a loop.

"It wasn't that she had any kind of limitations," Christine Califano says, "It was that she really wasn't interested, and she needed to be motivated a little more."

So she took Haley for private tutoring at the Sylvan Learning Center in Huntington, L.I. "It is unfortunate that you have to do all this preparation for kindergarten, but you really do," Califano says...

Lesson learned: Mom will not try to motivate you herself, but she'll be glad to pay someone else hundreds of dollars to do so.

If you wonder why Christine Califano doesn't teach what Haley needs to know, believe it or not, Haley said it was easier for her learning from her teachers. Experts also say that's sometimes the case because teachers are trained to teach and parents just aren't.

Wow. I guess all those homeschooling parents are just completely missing the boat. What would we do without those experts to tell us that we're incapable of teaching our children?

Kudos to Joanne Jacobs for the link and the phrase, "star anecdote" to describe poor Haley.

The Indoor Generation

I'm as pro-technology as the next person, but this doesn't strike me as a change for the better:

The fundamental nature of American childhood has changed in a single generation. The unstructured outdoor childhood — days of pick-up baseball games, treehouses and "be home for dinner" — has all but vanished.

Today, childhood is spent mostly indoors, watching television, playing video games and working the Internet. When children do go outside, it tends to be for scheduled events — soccer camp or a fishing derby — held under the watch of adults...

The shift to an indoor childhood has accelerated in the past decade, with huge declines in spontaneous outdoor activities such as bike riding, swimming and touch football, according to separate studies by the National Sporting Goods Association, a trade group, and American Sports Data, a research firm. Bike riding alone is down 31% since 1995.

A child is six times more likely to play a video game on a typical day than to ride a bike, according to surveys by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the CDC. Dakota Howell says his favorite video game —Tony Hawk's Pro Skater— is more fun than actual skateboarding.

In the more rural areas where my nieces and nephews are growing up, the lure of the cell phone and the Internet only occasionally outweighs the desire for four-wheeling, overnight camping in the woods, fishing on the lake, etc. But even I've noticed how much more time they spend indoors - or interacting with electronic gadgets - than I did as a kid. And, at least where they live, the issue isn't safety.

Also, I wonder if the constant push on students, from college age on down, to be aware of the "environment" and to vote/act ecologically will have much effect on kids who are going through school without experiencing much of that environment. Perhaps the class of 2015 won't be quite so concerned about global warming and rainforests.

Between the (book) covers

I'm torn here, between sympathizing with the parents and suggesting they thank heavens their kids are reading anything at all:

Although few parents would object to their teens reading during the summer, more might object to the content in some of this summer’s books for teens. Issues such as teen sex and drug use are often addressed in coming-of-age literature, but some worry that new novels are not only more graphic, but make such behavior more glamorous.

An example is “Rainbow Party” by Paul Ruditis, which has created a stir among librarians and booksellers. The book is about a group of teens who plan an oral sex party. Discussion of the book has focused on whether its merit as a warning against such behaviors outweighs its graphic content.

Barbara Wakefield, the children services manager for Cleveland County Library system, said racy books for young adults would probably not end up in the library...

As reading for teens becomes more controversial, some groups are calling for libraries to label graphic books similarly to how records with explicit content are labeled.

Ms. Wakefield said a labeling system might be helpful.

Perhaps parents now have a harder time keeping such things straight, because the "young adult" sections of the bookstores have gotten humongous. I've never seen so many books targeted at teenagers. It's hard to believe that our pool of good authors has suddenly increased tenfold, so my guess is that a lot of the books are the type of useless fiction that adults get stuck with in airport bookstores. Some of the fiction may indeed be more smutty than adults remember.

Regardless, my sympathies with the parents are tempered by the memory of how pissed I was at the age of six when my sister's best friend took her copy of Carrie away from me. I ended up getting the book back, and loving it too.

Your child's only "reality show" should be his real life

A new study reveals that some parents are crazy enough to let eight-year-olds have their own TVs:

The July issue of Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine reports that third-graders with TVs in their bedrooms did worse on tests in school than those without them. In the study, which comes on top of studies that have shown excessive TV viewing to be detrimental to children’s mental and physical health, children with televisions in their bedrooms consistently scored lowest on standardized tests, and children who had computers but no TVs consistently scored the highest.

The lead author, Dr. Dina L.G. Borzekowski of Johns Hopkins, said the problem didn’t appear to be television viewing per se but rather something about the way (and extent to which) children watch TV when they have complete control over it.

Dr. Borzekowski told The New York Times that the findings pointed to a simple, and obvious, course of action. “It is a physical object,” she said. “And it is a pretty straightforward thing to unplug the television set and remove it physically from the children’s bedroom.”

The effort can be reduced even farther by not putting a TV into an eight-year-old's room in the first place. The article concludes by noting that removing the child's TV might "make some parents uncomfortable." Not the parents I grew up with.

However, I doubt TV is really the causal factor here. Certainly, one could argue that perhaps people with this many TVs to go around are not poverty-stricken and are doing good by their kids in other ways. I, however, would argue that parents who are okay with putting the boob tube in their child's room are perhaps not the most attentive parents, and such lack of attentiveness could be related to low test scores as well. I wonder if the TV isn't the cause, but is, like low test scores, a by-product of parents who don't mind their kids watching MTV rather than doing supervised homework.

You're supposed to wear your heart on your sleeve, mom

It's always heartwarming to see a mother make sacrifices so that her child can enjoy a good education... isn't it?

For $10,000, Kari Smith has gone ahead and had her forehead tattooed with the Web address of a gambling site. Bountiful [sic], 30, who sold her unusual advertising space on eBay, said the money will give her 11-year-old son a private education, which she believes he needs after falling behind in school.

"For the all the sacrifices everyone makes, this is a very small one," she said. "It's a small sacrifice to build a better future for my son," she said.

Lee has the photo, and this comment:

What a moron. Hopefully sending her son to private school will help him get into college, where he can get a good enough education to get a good enough job making a good enough salary so that his moron mother can have major plastic surgery to remove that s--t from her forehead.

Sleepwalking through school

Groggy teens + early school openings = low test scores?

A new study found that teenagers lose nearly two hours of sleep each night during the school week. That sleep loss may be due to adolescents' increasingly busy schedules. Or it may be because their circadian rhythms -- biological clocks -- seem to be set to a later schedule than younger children or adults. This makes it harder for teens to get to sleep early...

"We found that there is much less sleep during school days. Teens lose about 10 hours of sleep per week, and on weekends they sleep more," said study co-author Margarita Dubocovich, a professor of molecular pharmacology, biological chemistry, psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine.

Dubocovich said that later school start times might help improve academic performance.

This makes me wonder why the big admissions tests - LSAT, SAT, GMAT, etc. - have traditionally started so early in the morning. Was the theory that 8 am was when most young adults would be sharpest? Was the test considered less stressful if you got it out of the way early in the day? Was that the easist time to reserve locations and find proctors? Or was it just assumed that the tests should begin at the same time that school/work usually does?

There's a pot of controversy at the end of this rainbow

Young adult literature takes a turn for the smutty:

A battle could be brewing in the book stacks over a new novel about teens and oral sex. Rainbow Party, aimed at the teen market (ages 14 and up), has some booksellers and librarians wondering whether author Paul Ruditis sensationalizes the subject — and, more significantly, whether they should carry it on their shelves...

Rainbow Party (Simon & Schuster, $8.99) is about a group of teens who plan an oral-sex party at which each of the girls wears a different color of lipstick. Ruditis says the book was never meant to sensationalize sex parties. "We just wanted to present an issue kids are dealing with," he says..
.
Suzanne Kelly, a buyer for the Chester County Book and Music Co. in West Chester, Pa., which will stock a limited number of Rainbow, agrees. She says the book's message that oral sex "really is sex" and that teens can contract STDs through such sexual practices far outweigh the controversial story line.

"I can't imagine anyone reading this book and saying, 'Hey, what a great idea. Let's send out invitations,' " Ruditis says...

Something tells me Ruditis doesn't know a lot of teenagers. Not surprisingly, conservative columnists are appalled:

...In the end, the kids in the book abandon plans for the event and news of an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases rocks their school. But the front cover and book marketing emphasize titillation over education, overpowering any redeeming value the book might have. Indeed, according to Publisher's Weekly, the bound galleys sent to booksellers carried the provocative tagline, "don't you want to know what really goes down?"...

[Author Ruditis said]...I raised questions in my book and I hope that parents and children or teachers and students can open a topic of conversation through it. Rainbow parties are such an interesting topic. It's such a childlike way to look at such an adult subject with rainbow colors."

Teenage group orgies are "an interesting topic?" Is Ruditis out of his mind? We can only pray Simon & Schuster keeps him away from the preschool "Rubbadubbers" books.

Ace of Spades notes the "cautionary-tale" cover for smut has been around for some time:

The whole idea of a "cautionary tale" is just ass. In the fifties, there were dirty-ish magazines featuring names like Teenage Confidential and the like that would be all about good girls going bad and taking barbituates and having lots of sex and then having an epiphany or some tragedy that convinced them that they had chosen the wrong path.

But, obviously, no one was reading those stories for the obligatory moral point cynically packed in to the last two pages. They were reading for the barbituates and the sex.This is so well-known and so obvious I'm surprised this guy even attempts this spin.

Editors in Pajamas has the most concise response:

Like Malkin says, "You can't make this stuff up." Home schooling it is.

The customer reviews on Amazon aren't too great, but the thoughtful comments from some who have actually read the book lead me to think that perhaps parents should be reading this.

Coddling today's youth

Christina Hoff Sommers is a favorite author of mine; her article in USA Today is a prime example of why:

Purple is replacing red as the color of choice for teachers. Why, you may ask? It seems that educators worry that emphatic red corrections on a homework assignment or test can be stressful, demeaning — even "frightening" for a young person...

...Are schoolchildren really so upset by corrections in primary red? Why have teachers become so careful?

It seems that many adults today regard the children in their care as fragile hothouse flowers who require protection from even the remote possibility of frustration, disappointment or failure. The new solicitude goes far beyond blacklisting red pens. Many schools now discourage or prohibit competitive games such as tag or dodge ball. The rationale: too many hurt feelings...

Lest you think she's exaggerating, don't miss the recommendation from one Phys Ed expert that kids juggle scarves instead of tennis balls. Equally funny is the early ed professor who notes that we should probably expect little humans to be at least as mentally sturdy as rodents:

Is the kind of overprotectiveness these educators counsel really such a bad thing? Sooner or later, children will face stressful situations, disappointments and threats to their self-esteem. Why not shield them from the inevitable as long as possible? The answer is that children need challenge, excitement and competition to flourish. To treat them as combustible bundles of frayed nerves does them no favors.

Anthony Pellegrini, a professor of early childhood education at the University of Minnesota, has done careful studies on playground dynamics. I asked him what he thought of the national movement against games such as tag and dodge ball: "It is ridiculous. Even squirrels play chase"...

The good intentions or dedication of the self-esteem educators and Scout leaders are not in question. But their common sense is. With few exceptions, the nation's children are mentally and emotionally sound. They relish the challenge of high expectations. They can cope with red pens, tug of war and dodge ball. They can handle being "It."

I don't know if I can go with her as far as dodgeball, but I agree with everything else she said.

"When I say 'get dressed for school', I mean actually put some clothes on!"

OK, I'm not a parent, but I've been to the mall recently, and I call BS on these complaints:

Midriff-baring shirts, low-rise pants, pajamas and slippers will all be off limits this fall for thousands of student in Modesto. So, what will students wear? Several students that KCRA-TV in Sacramento talked with said they don't know what they will wear when the new dress code rules go into effect because almost everything in their closet does not comply with the dress code. Violating the dress code can draw a suspension.

"I think it is ridiculous. Everywhere you shop, there is nothing to get," said student Ashley Taylor. Student Alexis Thompson said the new school rules will wipe out her current wardrobe. "I will probably have to buy all new clothing for next year. It is going to be hard because pretty much all the stores sell lingerie," Thompson said.

I agree that stores tend to sell tummy-baring pants and shirts, but that's not all they're selling (for example, Delia's, whose clothes I used to fit into, has plenty of adorable stuff that doesn't show that much skin). It's not so much a case of students having nothing to wear as students having nothing of the latest, sexier trends to wear. Sounds like high time for parents to point out that perhaps such trendy wear, if it's bought at all, could be more appropriate for after-school events.

And pajama pants and slippers? Or boxer shorts showing under the pants? To school? Please. I know I sound like the world's most crotchety old fart here, but I would never have gotten away with wearing anything weird or risque in high school just by using the excuse, "Well, that's what's in style now!"

After all, here's at least one promgoer who managed to find an outfit that sounds sophisticated, yet age-appropriate. Oh, okay, yes, it's a guy wearing the black dress in this situation - but I bet he was dressed less skimpily than some of the girls at the same prom.

Learning a lesson about kindergarten topics

Wizbang's got the scoop on an interesting story making the rounds in Massachusetts (and now, the Internet):

For David Parker, the first alarm went off in January, when his 5-year-old son came home from his kindergarten class at Lexington's Joseph Estabrook School with a bag of books promoting diversity. Inside were books about foreign cultures and traditions, along with food recipes. There was also a copy of ''Who's In a Family?" by Robert Skutch, which depicts different kinds of families, including same-sex couples raising children.

The book's contents concerned Parker and prompted him to begin a series of e-mail exchanges with school officials on the subject that culminated in a meeting Wednesday night with Estabrook's principal and district director of instruction. The meeting ended with Parker's arrest after he refused to leave the school, and the Lexington man spent the night in jail.

The charge is trespassing. Wizbang asks the question:

...what I think is the bigger issue is getting ignored. Whether or not you agree with Mr. Parker's beliefs, the fundamental question is this: are his demands that he be notified about what material is being taught to his son about a clearly controversial issue unreasonable? I think not...Right or wrong, he certainly has the right to make his stand.

And I really can't blame the schools too much. For too long, they've taken on more and more of the responsibilities that parents have abrogated over the years. It's understandable that some of them might view those additional obligations as their natural right, and feel that a parent who is intruding into "their" turf is in the wrong.

But the parent isn't. The school is. And they need to wake up to that fact damned fast. They are entrusted with the EDUCATION of our children, not their GUARDIANSHIP. "In loco parentis" is a very limited concept, and in no way should be construed to be superior to parental rights. If they want to override a parent's wishes in regards to a child, they better be ready to go to court -- not simply wave regulations around and call up the cops to back them up.

At this point, Mr. Parker is now forbidden to step foot on school grounds; I certainly hope he withdraws his child from that school system while this injunction is still in order. I'm also interested in seeing whether the school can back up the claim that teaching kindergarteners about alternative lifestyles is both necessary and not dependent on parental permission (as sexuality/sex education classes would be).

It's also interesting to look at this in the context of the kindergarten standards that were discussed earlier this week. Do any of my Devoted Readers think family structures should be a topic of classroom discussion for kids that young?

Malls: Babysitters for the 21st Century

Now here's an interesting concept (that is most likely a losing battle, too, but oh well):

NASHUA, N.H. (AP) - Every kid knows hanging out with Mom or Dad can be kind of a drag. Kids who want to spend time at the Pheasant Lane Mall on Friday or Saturday nights might not have a choice. In response to recent "disorderly and disruptive" incidents, mall security two weeks ago started distributing fliers outlining the mall's "general code of conduct," according to mall Manager Ginny Szymanski.

From 6 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, mall security guards now stand outside two entrances to make sure anyone under 16 has a parent or someone over 21 with them....

If kids are found to be disrupting the mall's business, Szymanski said they will be escorted to the command center to call a parent to pick them up.

Am I sympathetic to the kids here? Not really, but it's mainly because I certainly didn't hang out in malls alone while I was under driving age. My parents didn't consider the malls to be a safe or appropriate place for me to hang out without supervision, but many parents do.

Hopefully, those parents will make smarter statements to the press than this mom:

"I feel as though if I want to drop my kids off, I should. They're responsible," said Leann Newcomb of Lowell, Mass., who was shopping Monday with her 15-year-old daughter, Ashley...

Szymanski said the mall doesn't have a gang problem, but that people with certain attire - such as long chains that fall below the knee or studded dog or wrist collars, all of which can be used as weapons, she said - will be asked to remove them. If they don't comply, they will be asked to leave the mall, she said.

Leann Newcomb questioned the rule. "They sell that stuff," said Newcomb. "How are they going to tell the kids after they buy that stuff not to wear it? Isn't that a violation of your constitutional rights?"

Ha ha ha ha! Oh, wait, was she serious? Does she really believe that (a) because she considers her kids to be responsible, she should be allowed to let them roam without supervision anywhere they like, and (b) they have a constitutional right to wear outrageous clothing anywhere they like?

Sheesh.

Tough questions to answer

The Anchoress notes a chilling post from parent-blogger CiderPressHill:

Last night when the lad came home, he hoisted himself onto the kitchen counter and said, “Let’s talk"...

“What’s chlamydia?” he asked. With my coffee scoop suspended in mid-air, I turned and looked at him. “This is an academic question, right?”

“Geez yes,” he said. “There’s an outbreak of it in the freshman class. A few of the girls were talking about it.” I explained that chlamydia is a sexually transmitted infection that both males and females can get. It’s transmitted by sexual intercourse and oral sex. It’s not something that one catches from a sneeze or a cough.

Other things that the 14-year-old girl's at this boy's school were talking about were rape lists:

“Let’s put it this way,” he said, “there are a bunch of freshman girls who have lists. They call them Rape Lists. They have a list of guys on them that they want to give beejays to. It’s like a competition. The more they can cross off the list, the hotter they are.”

And while that was sinking into my brain, he said, “I’m on a couple of those lists.”

“Oh, buddy,” I said. “That’s not good, is it?”

“Not really.”

“What happens when they don’t cross you off their list?”

“I go on their Death List,” he said.

“What does that mean?!”

“I’m dead to them. I’m a nerd. It’s a pressure thing. A lot of guys don’t want everyone to think they’re a sexual nerd.”

The Anchoress, as usual, doesn't mince words:

Why are the girls so out of control?

...if they are watching MTV and VH1 and looking at fashion magazines, or going to the movies, the role-models they’re being exposed to are (I’m sorry, but I have to say it) pigs like Paris Hilton. If they stay up past midnight, they’re watching “Girls Gone Wild” infomericals that make it look like exposing themselves and acting like sluts is the thing to do...

I don’t think it’s a good thing. I think televisions have way too much power, force and sway over our lives, our values and our reason. Turn ‘em off, say I. Then maybe a 14 year old daughter won’t have chlamydia.

Anchoress also notes that the NYTimes insists the the big picture is much more comforting. Being a statistician, I wonder quite a lot about those numbers, and I wonder about self-reported sexual behavior among teenagers. And I wonder just how they were defining "sex" or "virginity" on these surveys. Certainly, it wouldn't be contradictory for there to be a rise in the amount of casual oral sex that teenagers are having (although Brooks seems to think this isn't the case) and an increase in the number of teenagers who still consider themselves to be virgins.

How many of these so-called virgins have chlamydia, I wonder?

Boys vs. Girls

My first reaction to the title of Stanley Kurtz's, "Can We Make Boys And Girls Alike?" is, why on earth would we ever want to? And Kurtz wonders how much damage is being done in this futile quest to erase gender:

...the last 40 years have seen tremendous changes in the social roles of men and women—changes that could never have happened were there not significant flexibility in gender roles. From the standpoint of feminism’s ideal of androgyny, though, the shift is still very partial. Until the link between women and child rearing completely breaks down, neither corporate boardrooms nor Harvard professorships of mathematics will see numerical parity between men and women. In the meantime, in disproportionate numbers, at critical points in their careers, women will continue to choose mothering over professional work.

From either a biological or cultural point of view, then, the feminist project of androgyny is ultimately doomed. But that doesn’t mean that it can’t do harm in the meantime. In America, many boys are slipping behind in school; their sisters are significantly more likely to go on to college. Yet thanks largely to the influence of academic feminists, legal and educational resources still flow disproportionately to supposedly victimized girls. In the end, gender won’t disappear, whatever the mavens of women’s studies hope, but the careers of some bright young men probably will.

Differences that make all the difference

The Manhattan Institute's spring edition of City Journal is, as always, chock-full of great reads. This month, Kay Hymowitz wonders, "What's Holding Black Kids Back?" Hymowitz covers Bill Cosby's infamous arguments before singling out one in particular:

...why have we been able to make so little headway in improving the life chances of poor black children? One reason towers over all others, and it’s the one Cosby was alluding to, however crudely, in his town-hall meetings: poor black parents rear their children very differently from the way middle-class parents do, and even by the time the kids are four years old, the results are extremely hard to change. Academics and poverty mavens know this to be the case, though they try to soften the harshness of its implications...

But these explanations shy away from the one reason that renders others moot: poor parents raise their kids differently, because they see being parents differently. They are not simply middle-class parents manqué; they have their own culture of child rearing, and—not to mince words—that culture is a recipe for more poverty. Without addressing that fact head-on, not much will ever change...

...poor parents differ in ways that are less predictably the consequences of poverty or the lack of high school diplomas. Researchers find that low-income parents are more likely to spank or hit their children. They talk less to their kids and are more likely to give commands or prohibitions when they do talk: “Put that fork down!” rather than the more soccer-mommish, “Why don’t you give me that fork so that you don’t get hurt?” In general, middle-class parents speak in ways designed to elicit responses from their children, pointing out objects they should notice and asking lots of questions...

There's also a study cited in which researchers discovered that infants and toddlers of educated parents heard nearly three times as many words per hour, on average, as kids from welfare homes, along with an in-depth discussion of the need for parents to be "Missionaries." Read it all (along with Joanne's take on the subject).

Feed your own kid and mind your own business

Now this is a food fight worth writing about:

The food fight started after the birthday girl came with doughnuts. And then the star student came with Twinkies.

The health-conscious mother had seen enough. She fired off a mass e-mail to the parents of other children in her son's kindergarten class, calling for a truce on these treats, saying they are adding to the national epidemic of child obesity. Meredith Roth said the Millburn School District should put an end to the time-honored practice of bringing in cupcakes or candy to celebrate holidays and birthdays.

Oh my Lord. Talk about pretentious. Even better, she's not a homeowner, but a renter in the neighborhood - and from the sound of it, she's been harping for a while on the whole childhood obesity thing. It's not that it's wrong to want kids to have access to healthier foods, but it sounds like she's going about it in the worst possible way. A pilot program with a grocery store that many parents can't afford to shop at? An email to all the parents in her child's class quoting statistics about overweight NJ kids? Please.

The rest of the parents' response to her? "Stuff it." Preferably with whipped cream.

Making motherhood everything

Is a sense of "wonderfulness" and a total focus on the child necessary for child-rearing?

Today's parents are trying to have wonderful relationships with their children. Our foremothers and forefathers were not, realizing that a child required leadership first, and that a parent could not provide proper leadership if the parent's energies were focused primarily on having a "wonderful" relationship with the child...

Today's moms orbit around their children, dedicated to trying to make them happy. Yesterday's moms were at the center of their children's attention, dedicated to teaching them to stand on their own two feet...

Yesterday's parents were attuned to the voice of common sense, which is why they did not complain that raising children was the hardest thing they'd ever done. For today's parents, the voice of common sense has been drowned out by a deluge of psychobabble, which is why so many parents tell me that raising even one child leaves them emotionally and physically exhausted at the end of many a day.

It's not just middle-class moms who make their kids the center of their worlds. For some living in poverty, kids are the only things worth living for:

The teenagers who put motherhood before marriage -- before even high school graduation -- become pregnant not because they lack contraception, access to abortion or even access to jobs, though economic deprivation does play a role. They don't give birth simply for a larger welfare check.

They have children to give meaning, structure, purpose and love to their lives, in the only way they know how. Marriage is revered but rarely attained and largely irrelevant. Men are untrustworthy and more trouble than they're worth. Motherhood is everything.

''These bleak situations create a drive for meaning and identity that a middle-class person can't understand,'' says Edin. 'I didn't understand it until I lived in Camden. We treat teen pregnancy prevention as just handing out condoms. It's not about birth control. It's really about meaning, and we're going to have to deal with that.''

Both articles say marriage should be present - and be meaningful - for childrearing to have the most chance of being successful.

Bad language and bad manners

Is the f-word now not only acceptable, but appropriate for high-class events? And does part of the problem stem from a general lack of attention to manners, especially in child-rearing?

One night at the opera with my father, I noticed that the respectable-looking, rather dowdy middle-aged couple sitting next to me began to almost vibrate with excitement when the curtain rose. Evidently the set struck them as rather spectacular. "Oh, this is gonna be so f***ing great!" exclaimed the wife to her husband, who nodded benignly in agreement. While I was happy for them and their enthusiasm, I couldn't help but wonder: Since when did the f-word become so acceptable in what used to be called polite society that we now can even hear it at the opera?...

...there's a...disinclination to prevent actual children from behaving like foulmouthed banshees. Rachel Simmons' 2002 bestseller Odd Girl Out marshaled page after page of depressing tales of female adolescent cruelty...but never suggested that the perpetrators were simply badly brought up brats ill-suited for polite society.

Instead, Simmons argued, "girls in our society are not encouraged to express their anger, and so it goes underground" — oozing up in toxic little bubbles of middle-school sniping and ostracism. I'd say the real problem is that girls (and boys) are encouraged all too extravagantly in our society to express anger from an early age. Anyone who's seen a preschooler smack his mother or scream in a restaurant or push another child down at the playground — only to be earnestly asked by the concerned parent about what feelings led to such behavior — knows this is true.

Ms. Seipp isn't the only one who thinks parents are falling down the job. Muriel Grey writes that children who are not taught proper manners and behavior are seriously handicapped in life:

...we fail to take this as seriously as we ought. The bad manners of children, particularly of deprived, working-class and benefit-class children, is so often the subject of middle-class contempt, but very rarely examined with any real pity or concern. Just as we know full well that a great many children, leaving poor schools with no qualifications, are not stupid, but have just been sold short, we must also accept that the absence of anyone teaching them how to be charming, friendly and considerate, does not mean that they do not have the innate capacity to be so. It’s a sign that society at large does not consider the possession of good manners sufficiently important...

My parents certainly had no qualms about enforcing manners. I once saw a 10-year-old kid in Target hit his mom on the arm because she wouldn't buy him a toy. He told he hated her as he slapped her. Had I ever done that - or used the f-word - to my mom, I wouldn't be here writing this post today.

Give me a home where the jump-ropers roam

The NYTimes reports that, even in the more livable cities, families with kids are choosing to live elsewhere:

It is a problem unlike the urban woes of cities like Detroit and Baltimore, where families have fled decaying neighborhoods, business areas and schools. Portland is one of the nation's top draws for the kind of educated, self-starting urbanites that midsize cities are competing to attract. But as these cities are remodeled to match the tastes of people living well in neighborhoods that were nearly abandoned a generation ago, they are struggling to hold on to enough children to keep schools running and parks alive with young voices.

San Francisco, where the median house price is now about $700,000, had the lowest percentage of people under 18 of any large city in the nation, 14.5 percent, compared with 25.7 percent nationwide, the 2000 census reported. Seattle, where there are more dogs than children, was a close second. Boston, Honolulu, Portland, Miami, Denver, Minneapolis, Austin and Atlanta, all considered, healthy, vibrant urban areas, were not far behind.

The birth rates for American women are down, and city public schools tend not to be as highly-rated as suburban schools, but that's not the whole story. Parents just can't afford the space they need to rear children in most cities.

I find this article fascinating in part because I work in Philadelphia. I don't know where it is on the list of "healthy, vibrant" urban areas, but certainly there are some trendy neighborhoods where crime is very low. However, the cost of housing here has skyrocketed lately. The last place I rented in the Art Museum area was a house that was only 700 square feet and in desperate need of repair, yet its price nearly tripled in six years. When I looked to buy, almost anything safe in Philly was far more than I wanted to pay.

So I ended up in the 'burbs - albeit burbs that are contiguous to the city, but the 'burbs nonetheless. Upper Darby has incredibly inexpensive housing, and a family with only one breadwinner can easily afford to buy a 1500-square-foot rowhome. I don't remember seeing that many kids in the city neighborhoods I inhabited before, whereas my current block is stuffed to the gills with children of every shape, size, and color. The humongous Upper Darby High School has close to 3000 students, and there's another public high school (in a separate district) just a mile or two away. Upper Darby is 80,000 people packed into less than 8 square miles, and I'd bet half the inhabitants are under 18 (there are nine public elementary schools in the district).

Portland may be suffering the loss of school district monies, but if you ask me, Upper Darby has a bit too much of a good thing. It's fun on Halloween, but not when you're trying to parallel park on a narrow one-way street with parking on both sides and little girls double-dutching in vacant spots.

(Via Joanne.)

Punctuality begins at home

From The Apple Doesn't Fall Far From The Tree department:

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - Prosecutors summoned parents of repeatedly truant children to attend a meeting about the law concerning excessive absences, but 241 of the adults didn't show up. Knox County District Attorney General Randy Nichols mailed letters about the Tuesday evening meeting to 582 parents, and about 41 percent were absent.

State law allows prosecutors to to hold parents accountable for their children's school absences. Knox County in February arrested 19 parents whose children had 10 or more unexcused absences from school. Parents found guilty can be punished by a year in jail.

This response is just classic:

Cecelia Donaldson, who received a letter about her 5-year-old grandson's absences, went to the school where the meeting was held but refused to enter the auditorium where the other parents heard remarks from county officials. Donaldson said the boy has asthmas and other medical problems. "I don't want to hear what Randy Nichols has to say," she said. "He needs to call my house when (my grandson is) up at 3 in the morning throwing up everything he ate."

Donaldson said she was furious after receiving Nichols' letter. "I sat down and I ate three Mr. Goodbars because I was so angry," she said. "You can't lump parents in one group."

You can if they refuse to come speak to the principal, as Donaldson apparently did. It's hard to understand why she thinks she should not be hindered by the state laws, nor informed of what she should do if she has a chronically-sick child in her home.

Nothing hurts worse than stepping on a Lego

From the American Spectator, a reminiscence on the plague of toys in American households:

HOW DOES THIS PLAGUE of toys come to be? Through generosity, of course. You cannot invite grandparents or a favored uncle and aunt over and tell them, cuttingly, "Don't buy the kids any toys." Toys are part of the deal there. Adults love to buy toys. It takes them back --- no, actually, their own childhoods did not include experiences like buying toys or even receiving them very much. Buying presents today creates a nostalgia for what never really was, the most powerful nostalgia there is. Few parents can resist the impulse to buy toys, either. (I can, but I'm a grouch.)

Some toys are undoubtedly superior to others. Lego's a good one. So is Play-Mobile. Both share the irritation of requiring tiny pieces by the hundreds. Remote control vehicles create cacophony for a day or two in our house, then lie forgotten. Car racing layouts do not charm for more than a week.

I have to admit I am madly nostalgic for paper dolls, but then I was completely obsessed with them until about the age of 14, and I had dozens of them. I designed all their clothes and spent hours drawing, coloring, cutting out. Perhaps my parent's generation did not actually receive many toys in their childhood, but my generation sure did. And I have heard parents my age request others not to buy toys for their offspring, on the grounds that "they already have so much." Sounds like they're trying to push the pendulum back the other way.

Some mistakes are worse than others

Note: I've moved this post to the top, because of two updated links.

I don't have the stomach for this story, but Wizbang is of a stronger constitution. Funny how we've become so PC that statutory rape and dangerous underage sexual behavior with multiple partners can be labeled as an"unfortunate pattern of behavior."

Oh, and when young girls engage in this type of depravity, repeatedly, they're just "super kids" who made "a couple of mistakes" - mistakes that were much easier to rent when the parents rented a hotel room for the kids.

Avoid responsibility much, Dad?

My take on the whole thing is one of horrified wonder - I find it fascinating/appalling that our society has made sexual urges so sacred that even young adults and old children (whose sexual urges are unfocused, immature, and sometimes very strong) are encouraged (either by lack of parental control or laxness of societal expectations) to express that sexuality as soon as possible and in any way possible, with no stifling discussions of acts being "wrong," "abnormal," or "dangerous."

Update: Good God Almighty. Illuminaria takes us all to task for missing what might be the most obvious conclusion.

Concerns about cutting

Michelle Malkin expresses concern aboutthe recent popularity of “cutting”:

Have you heard of "cutting?" If you're a parent, you'd better read up. "Cutting" refers to self-mutilation— using knives, razor blades, or even safety pins to deliberately harm one's own body— and it's spreading to a school near you.

Actresses Angelina Jolie and Christina Ricci did it. So did Courtney Love and the late Princess Diana. On the Internet, there are scores of websites (with titles such as "Blood Red," "Razor Blade Kisses," and "The Cutting World") featuring "famous self-injurers," photos of teenagers' self-inflicted wounds, and descriptions of their techniques. The destructive practice has been depicted in films targeting young girls and teens (such as Thirteen). There is even a new genre of music — "emo" — associated with promoting the cutting culture.

Mmm, not really. Emo is basically a moody/introspective/whiny (depending on your take on it) outgrowth of punk that keeps the thrashing energy but injects more depression into the lyrics. It’s gotten more popular as of late, I’ll agree, and there’s no denying that emo will be popular with some self-destructive kids. But emo as a whole isn’t that new, and doesn’t “promote” that culture any more than Pink Floyd “promoted” drug use just because a lot of people liked to get high and put on Dark Side of the Moon. An emo listener will engage in cutting behavior only to the extent that the underlying pathology led them to the music in the first place; emo won’t make a healthy kid suddenly pull out the razor blades.

Cutting isn’t really anything new, either, and the seemingly-recent upswing in it may be partly the result of a recent willingness to admit to such behavior. There may be scores of websites that promote such behavior, but there are also a few books written by therapists, and cutters who have recovered, that exist to help those. Cutting, by Steven Levenkron, is one such book. Another, Bright Red Scream, appears to have the best reviews on amazon.com, and it’s six years old. I wouldn't be surprised to see more of these types of books out soon.

I agree with Malkin that it’s sad to see famous actresses “glamourize” such behavior, but there may be a fine line between admitting to something in the hopes that others can learn to avoid it, and promoting it.

Cutting is something I have more than a passing interest in, because it does overlap a great deal with the more dysfunctional aspects of goth culture. Certainly, there are aspects of goth that do promote self-mutilation in this fashion, and that has more than a little to do with the perceived coolness of vampires and the vampiric lifestyle. I'm a supporter of goth culture, and have been goth to some extent since 1988, and even I realize that the tolerance for such behavior in that milieu is not healthy.

I'd be concerned more about the goth promotion of such behavior - and the celebrity interviews where young women talk about the "coolness" of such behavior - than about any link there might be with emo.

Update: Links are fixed now. Also, Malkin has this to say in an update to her original post:

Yes, it's true, emotional, woe-is-me music has been around a long time. But the kind of "emo" music embraced now by young people who cut themselves (Taking Back Sunday is one of the most popular cited; the Apathy Code, which depicts cutting on its album cover and in the lyrics to "No Alarms") is new. And it is cited repeatedly on kids' websites and blogs. Take a cursory look here.

Look, you can mock me for paying attention to this problem, but something very wrong is going on here--for whatever reason you want to believe--and parents have asked me to help get the word out. I hope it helps.

I don't think she deserves mocking for paying attention to the problem, nor for being concerned about the link between cutting and popular culture. When I made my comments about emo above, I did so only to correct what I saw as a misconception of the genre; I didn't expect Michelle to be an expert on emo, nor do I think she's wrong to be concerned about self-mutilation. Unfortunately, it sounds like a lot of people wrote emails just bitching about the emo part, and missing the whole point of her post.

I thought Illuminaria's post on the topic was very intelligent and balanced, while Blind's Eye take on it is exactly what I'd expect a metalhead (like my fiance) to say.

Nothing like real life to burst the bubble

USA Today jumps on the "There's artificial self-esteem, and then there's life" bandwagon (via Wizbang):

Andrea Sobel shudders at those oh-so-positive messages aimed at boosting kids' self-esteem. She has heard her fill of "good job" or "great picture" or any of the highly exaggerated claims that parenting experts and educators spouted as the way to bring up well-adjusted children.

"I often get students in graduate school doing doctorates who made straight A's all their lives, and the first time they get tough feedback, the kind you need to develop skills," says Deborah Stipek, dean of education at Stanford University. "I have a box of Kleenex in my office because they haven't dealt with it before."

And if the touchy-feely educators had their way, even graduate students wouldn't be getting that feedback now.

Self-esteem became a buzzword more than 20 years ago, fueled by parenting experts, psychologists and educators. Believers suggested that students who hold themselves in high regard are happier and will succeed. That culture was so ingrained in parents that protecting their children from failure became a credo. This feel-good movement was most evident in California, which created a task force to increase self-esteem...

"When you correct writing, they'll say, 'It's just your opinion,' which is infuriating. Bad grammar and spelling and sentences being wrong is not my opinion, it's just bad writing," she says.

What amazes me is that anyone is surprised at this outcome. I've never been able to figure out just how any educator could equate praise for a good job with praise for a bad job, in terms of the impact that it has on self-esteem and performance. Of course these kids now believe that everything is an "opinion." Removing cold hard facts of life is the only way there is to convince every child that they are doing equally well in all areas of life, and all equally-deserving of praise.

I'm also amazed that it's taken this long to see the false-praise syndrome for the child abuse that it is. An adult who needs counseling because they're receiving tough academic feedback for the first time in their lives is an adult who was severely shortchanged by the authority figures of their youth.

Rationing the goods

Well, harking back to WWII rations is one way to fight childhood obesity:

Children are getting a taste of the frugal 50s as rationing returns - in the local sweet shop. Parents write a daily allowance in the 1950s-style ration books and children get them stamped at Hope and Greenwood in East Dulwich, south-east London. Owner Kitty Hope said the idea was introduced after she was asked to stop selling so many sweets to children.

On this side of the pond, though, we're surrounded by foods for which there just isn't a healthy daily allowance:

When Becky Cleaveland is out with her girlfriends, they all pick at salads except for the petite Atlanta woman. She tackles the "Hamdog." The dish, a specialty of Mulligan's, a suburban bar, is a hot dog wrapped by a beef patty that's deep fried, covered with chili, cheese and onions and served on a hoagie bun. Oh, yeah, it's also topped with a fried egg and two fistfuls of fries.

"The owner says I'm the only girl who can eat a whole one without flinching," Cleaveland said proudly.

When a diner is proud of finishing a dish that could have fed an entire family of Brits during WWII, you know that we've got a ways to go towards tackling the issue of obesity.

...nutritionists have found it's hard to teach an old region new tricks. How can Southerners give up delicious staples fried chicken, fried seafood, fried green tomatoes and cornbread slathered in butter?

One way to do this - the one I followed - is to avoid learning how to prepare these meals, and then move out of the South. If I still lived at home - or if I cooked as well as my sister does - I'd If you can manage to stop eating it for a while, you'll lost your taste for all that fat. The last time I ate a really Southern meal (cornbread, porkchops, fried squash, fried okra, black-eyed peas and rice - all of which were cooked with butter and pork fat), I felt a tad nauseated afterwards.

This "dad" is not house-trained

This guy gets my Loser of the Week - if not of the year - Award:

A man who allegedly put a 13-year-old girl in a dog kennel for days at a time, hit her, read her diary, and strip searched her, was charged this week with unreasonable restraint of a child.

Bare is not the girl's father, but she called him dad, according to charges. The girl's mother, Deborah Lee Cameron, was also charged.

"Unreasonable restraint of a child"? That's it?? There are probably harsher laws about keeping dogs in kennels. Appalling. If the kennel was so damn nice, why didn't he sleep in a few days? In fact, can we ask that any sentence he serve be naked, in that same kennel? Seems only fair.

The Farkers put it best: "Man, this guy would get kicked out of a trailer park for being ugly."

Update: Yes, there are always worse stories, unfortunately.

A clothes call

A Massachusetts middle school enacts a dress code as a reaction to girls who come to lunch in bras and sweatpants:

The new dress code at Michael E. Smith Middle School that seeks to limit the amount of skin pupils may bare in class had its genesis last year after some female students fell out of their tops. "We had girls fall out of their shirts in the sixth grade," principal Melodie L. Goodwin said during a recent interview at the school about the code, which takes effect March 21...

"This year we had a young lady come into the cafeteria with only a bra and sweat pants on," Goodwin said. "Her mom agreed it was very inappropriate."

One would hope. Stiletto heels? Bras without tops? In middle school? Not only is the dress code needed, but so is a good selection of schoolmarm-ish clothes from the bargain bin, to be kept in the principal's office and handed over to any girl foolish enough to think a bra is outerwear.

To help the cause, the school's student council will hold a fashion show in March or April featuring clothes appropriate for the classroom.

Great idea.

The new code bans flip-flops, high heels, hats, caps, bandannas, clothing items that have "obscenities, fighting words, incitement or defamation on them" and clothes that are "sexually suggestive and therefore distracting to learning and inappropriate for school."

The code requires that shorts and skirts reach the fingertips of the person wearing them when the person's arms are at his or her side. No underwear should be showing and spaghetti straps and halter tops are not allowed. All shirts must cover the skin between the bottom of a shirt and the top of a skirt, shorts or pants.

By not limiting free speech, the dress code avoids the possible lawsuits from those who insist on the right to wear sexually-suggestive messages on t-shirts. Between those kinds of lawsuits and the clothing that today's "role models" wear, I feel for any administrator who attempts to impose modesty in the classroom. It's not an easy job.

A swat on the behind saves nine

For those who believe in "Spare the rod and spoil the child," but don't happen to have any suitable rods lying around the house, have I got a deal for you:

To raise a child, one needs three invaluable allies: the Bible, the help of an extended family and "biblical-based resources" -- 9-inch-long spanking paddles of blue polyurethane, according to Steve Haymond from Bakersfield, who sells the paddles online for $6.50 apiece.

Corporal punishment has long been an accepted method of child discipline among evangelical and fundamentalist groups, but an increasing number of Christians are raising objections, arguing that advocates of spanking wrongly cite Scripture to justify a practice that should be banned. Lawrence, who peppers her conversation with quotes from the New Testament, says striking children defies the Golden Rule from the Gospel of Matthew: "In everything do to others as you would have them do to you."

It's not just evangelicals who believe in spanking - an ABC News poll in 2002 found that "two-thirds of the public approve of corporal punishment as a disciplinary measure." The new tools being sold appear to be updates of old faithfuls - the "rod" looks like nothing but a plastic version of the thin branch that any of us reared in the country were threatened with at one point or another. And I remember that my middle school was quite well-stocked with thick wooden paddles.

What does appear to be new is this intra-religious war of Christians who believe in spanking vs. Christians who believe that that's not what Jesus would do (and who are most likely embarassed to be lumped in with the evangelical crowd).

While I can understand opposing corporal punishment, I wonder about the people who are trying to get it banned entirely. Does it help a child more to avoid a spanking or two if Mom gets fined or imprisoned for trying it? It may be difficult for some judges to distinguish between corporal punishment and child abuse, but I'd rather they keep trying, instead of criminalizing disciplinary contact.

What's more, what worked very well on me as a child was the threat of a spanking, with the actual event rarely if ever occuring. If such contact was somehow outlawed, these useful threats would become quite hollow; the reason it worked was because I was sure my mom was quite willing to follow up on it. She always combined it with humiliation, too - "Do you want me to pull your pants down and spank you right here in public?" - in such a way that would gall any touchy-feely, self-esteem types - but it was 100% effective.

Best Freeper quotes:

It's like, there aren't enough things around the house that you could hit your kids with ?

Use corporal punishment, but only do so rarely, else it will lose its effectiveness. Legitimate corporal punishment causes very little physical pain.

But I bet they kept their Lexus in great shape

These people deserve to never again look as happy as they do in these photos:

A Florida couple accused of torturing and starving five of their seven children were taken into custody Friday night in Utah after detectives were able to track their cell phone signals, authorities said.

The accusations include pulling out the children's toenails with pliers and keeping them so malnourished they "looked like pictures from Auschwitz," authorities said.

Seven kids lived with them - seven kids who never left the house:

In the past two years, the Dollars have moved their family to at least three different homes in the Tampa area after living in Tennessee, secluding themselves behind fences and in piney groves. The children were home-schooled and rarely played with neighbors or enjoyed the family's pool.

"Who has seven kids and the kids never go out and play?'' asked Dawn Crescimone, who lived near the family in suburban Tampa two years ago.

The Education Wonks say: "There should be a special type of hell reserved for people/disgusting little creatures that do these kinds of things to children."

Homesteading Today forum: "Here's some background. Linda Dollar's father was a very abusive man. So abusive that her sister committed suicide. Apparently, the cycle was never broken."

Outside the Beltway: "The juxtaposition of their accused deeds and the file photos is rather disturbing." (I'll say.)

Samizdata: "There are two benefits of even the most useless schools. Children meet other children their own age, which is useful if one is not intent on becoming a hermit. Of course there is plenty of unreported abuse that occurs in full view. In some schools abuse is ignored or even inflicted. But most basically of all, a 12 year-old child turning up weighing 35 pounds with burn marks and bruises in rags might be noticed. So having children turn up somewhere where their disappearance or injury will be noticed is a valuable function of schools. Perhaps they need to open twice a month for roll-call and then let them go home?"

Outlawing obnoxious teenagers

Live in Norfolk, VA? Bothered by obnoxious teenagers? One persnickety lawmaker is trying to regulate the most ridiculous behavior out of existence:

Heads up to all the front-seat leaners and thong-barers. A Norfolk legislator wants you to pull up your low-riding pants and to sit your butt up while driving. While you are at it, turn down the blasting car stereo, and do not try to watch movies on your in-car video player while driving.

Howell also has filed bills dealing with drivers who lean way back and people who play their car stereos obnoxiously loud. Howell said he's seen enough and heard from enough folks to know they are as bothered as he is by folks who expose their undergarments.

I can understand his annoyance. On the other hand, the local police might have enough to do without spending time giving out tickets for baggy pants.

Another benefit of homeschooling - no proms

Well, I'm officially old. I was already feeling sort of old this evening, because I'm eBay shopping for black concert t-shirts. My beloved Thrill Kill Kult and NIN and Alice in Chains t-shirts have literally disintegrated, and I need more of them.

Then I read this article, and now I feel really old, because my first reaction was, "No way in HELL would a daughter of mine wear this." And I don't even have a daughter.

This prom dress is so skimpy, even the designer's CEO wouldn't let his teenage daughter wear it. But the dangerously revealing gown, prominently advertised in Seventeen Prom, YM Prom and Teen Prom, and on sale in a Midtown shop, is a top seller for the company this season.

"I was shocked when I first saw it, but now it's one of our top 20 dresses nationwide," says Nick Yeh, the CEO of Xcite, the Stafford, Texas, company that designed the dress and some 200 other styles this season. "I have a 15-year-old daughter and, no, I would not recommend she wear this dress. As a businessman," he adds, "I'm not judging what a teenager should wear or not wear. It's up to the parents to decide for their own children."

Nice cop-out, dude. Just admit that you're making clothes so scanty that double-sided tape and parental permission slips are required (pepper spray would come in handy, too). So what if your own daughter doesn't wear them? Obviously, you think it's just fine if someone else's daughter does.

It's too early to tell how many girls in New York City will buy the dress, but those who do may have a hard time getting through the prom door. While it's up to individual school administrators to rule on prom fashions, the Board of Education maintains a disciplinary dress code that prohibits "wearing clothing or other items that are unsafe or disruptive to the educational process."

"On the night of the prom, we have chaperones at the entry looking at every dress. We also provide needle, thread and pins to close up holes and fix dresses to the appropriate length," she says.

Good for them. I'd back 'em all the way if they went even further and sewed several yards of muslin onto any girl who had parents dumb enough to pay $495 for this ridiculous dress. They ought to send the bill for the thread and muslin to the parents while they're at it.

What's so very sad is that this sends a message to teenage girls, and that is: This is what is sexy, desirable, classy, and "grown-up." Unfortunately, some of them will have parents clueless enough to second that notion. When a prom dress advertisement has to use a model over 18 years of age - otherwise, the photographer would be skirting the edge of child pornography laws - something is very, very wrong.

(Hat tip: Right Thinking From The Left Coast.)

Update: Reader John Stark notes that the Post photo in fact features the dress being worn backwards. According to the link he provides, he's right about the reversal, and probably right with the theory that this was done just to drum up publicity about the dress. The possibility remains that the dress isn't very clearly marked as to front vs. back, though, and perhaps some stores were marketing the reversed version.

That much said, the true frontal design isn't exactly modest, especially if a young girl is well-endowed. When the dress is worn correctly, it doesn't make my jaw drop - but it's still inappropriate for the prom.

Wizbang also caught the trick. His comment section features a discussion about whether or not the dress is actually on backwards, by some readers who have obviously been (ahem) studying the photos of the models far too long, and far too closely.

Parents choosing a truly simple (and good) life

Good to see some parents putting their foot down over the potential invasion of a particularly nasty "cultural" event at their local public school:

The Fox TV reality series "The Simple Life" will not be using a South Jersey school as the setting for one of its episodes. "The show will not come to Cleary School," Buena Regional School District Superintendent Diane DeGiacomo said Monday night...

School district officials initially were amenable to the idea, and permission forms and a letter from the show's production company were sent home to parents last week. But some responded angrily, saying that Hilton, whose celebrity was fueled by an X-rated home video that made the rounds of the Internet, was not a fit role model for middle school students.

What does it say that school district officials were originally amenable to the idea of letting a porn star and an ex-heroin addict, both famous for nothing other than being rich and wearing very little, teach the local students, on camera, for a sleazy reality show? Thank God at least 34 parents had the nerve to protest this attempted farce (sadly, they were in vast minority). I suppose that letting Paris Hilton substitute-teach is what homeschooling opponents have in mind as the vaunted "socialization" that homeschooled kids miss out on.

And, uh, I suppose that means the district is amenable to letting other porn stars, and women with past convictions for heroin possession, into the classroom? You know, to be consistent.

Incompetency - for life!

The Scotsman is all aflutter over a new poll that shows UK youngsters hopelessly stumbling through life, bewildered by potatoes and shampoo bottles:

A new generation of children is growing up as "life incompetents", unable to sew, care for their clothes, or even realise that potatoes are boiled before being mashed. Research published yesterday, after a three-year study by Stirling University, revealed youngsters today fail miserably in "Mrs Beeton’s skills" - the basics of cookery, cleaning, repairing and money management, which their grandparents took for granted.

She said: "Some did not know that you mash potatoes only after boiling them - and they were ‘educated’. Some children could not interpret wash care instructions on clothes labels and one girl took everything to a dry cleaner. Others discarded perfectly good clothing because they did not have the skills or the inclination to effect small repairs, such as replacing a button.

One could argue that some of these skills aren't as necessary as they were in Grandpa's day. Yes, it's good to know how to sew on buttons, but one can get through life nowadays without ever wearing a shirt with buttons on it, and clothing isn't quite as pricey and precious as it was back then.

On the other hand, I don't think home ec is at the heart of the issue for kids who can't understand labels on households goods. Especially we when meet this hapless chick:

It is a situation known only too well by young people such as Margaret Dyer, 20, who comes from a middle class home in Clarkston, near Glasgow.

She added: "To a degree I still am, but I’m not nearly so bad as I once was. I was a whisker away from phoning helpline numbers on shampoo bottles.

Helpline numbers on shampoo bottles? That's not so much a failure of childrearing as personal hygiene and basic smarts, if someone can reach the age of 20 without knowing how to use a shampoo bottle. Something tells me that more than new home ec classes are required here.

Life, liberty, and the avoidance of thuds

I know some of my Devoted Readers out there are quite protective parents. Some of you homeschool because you don't trust crappy public schools and the pervasive negative social influences therein. Some of you are quite watchful and insist that even teenagers should be chaperoned away from home. Some of you wouldn't dream of letting your child watch TV at all hours or surf the web without filters in place.

But I bet I'm safe in assuming that even the most protective of you wouldn't strap this dorky helmet on your kid's head - while he's learning to walk:

The 'Thudguard' protective safety hat will cushion a child's head against bumps, bruising and laceration, whilst developing and exploring newfound mobility. Between the ages 7 to 20 months the fontanelle, temples and back of head are particularly vulnerable when an infant is learning to walk. It also protects adventurous toddlers up to the age of 3 years old who are already walking but who may benefit from extra safety in play parks and other environments.

As protective parent Michelle Malkin puts it:

You think any toddler forced to wear that silly helmet on the street or playground swing is going to have "confidence?" Look at them: These poor munchkins are wearing helmets just to walk on the sidewalk. As blogger Cerberus' wife asks: "What kind of loser would put that thing on their kid’s head?" Exactly.

But Thudguard? Somebody please tell me this is a joke. If the California legislature hears about this, we're doomed.

Michelle sees the Nanny State rearing its ugly head. Me, I'm just cheeved that Mamamontezz thought of this title first.

Rearing good kids

I have a sneaking suspicion that I have quite a few "natalists" among my Devoted Readers:

There is a little-known movement sweeping across the United States. The movement is "natalism." All across the industrialized world, birthrates are falling - in Western Europe, in Canada and in many regions of the United States. People are marrying later and having fewer kids. But spread around this country, and concentrated in certain areas, the natalists defy these trends.

They are having three, four or more kids. Their personal identity is defined by parenthood. They are more spiritually, emotionally and physically invested in their homes than in any other sphere of life, having concluded that parenthood is the most enriching and elevating thing they can do. Very often they have sacrificed pleasures like sophisticated movies, restaurant dining and foreign travel, let alone competitive careers and disposable income, for the sake of their parental calling.

As long as we're talking about sacrifice, can you say, "homeschooling?" I knew you could! Funny that it doesn't get mentioned anywhere in this thoughtful article, which describes the political and social ramifications of natalism:

If you wanted a one-sentence explanation for the explosive growth of far-flung suburbs, it would be that when people get money, one of the first things they do is use it to try to protect their children from bad influences...

Like most Americans, but maybe more so, [natalists] suspect that we won't solve our social problems or see improvements in our schools as long as many kids are growing up in barely functioning families.

You'd think the educational establishment would be more in line with this sort of mindset, since they're always saying that parents, and not teachers, should be held accountable for the factors that produce lower test scores. What could make them happier than parents who agree to do their part in childrearing?

Then again, all the natalists I know believe there are so many problems with public schools that no fully-functional kid should be forced to attend one.

Don't hang your hopes on driver's ed

Tim Blair lets loose a fine rant about the recent hand-wringing and fretting over driver's education specifics in Australia. The Daily Telegraph, you see, is worried about the "supercars" available to provisional drivers, and wants to hold the government - and car manufacturers - responsible for making such cars available. But Tim notes that when tragedies (such as a 15-year-old pregnant girl killed in a crash) happen, those responsible are usually those in the driver's seat:

Please. Do you think the driver was unaware that it is not a good idea to drive at 200km/h in a 50km/h zone with a pregnant teenage passenger? Speaking of whom, her 33-year-old boyfriend was also on board. Why wasn’t he demanding that his youthful friend slow the hell down? For that matter, why didn’t Mr Schyf [the dead girl's father] educate his kids about not getting pregnant at 15 to men more than twice their age?

Excuse me? She was knocked up by a 33-year-old. Congratulations!...

In its zeal to pursue the NSW government, The Telegraph has missed the bigger story. We've got here a 20-year-old so irresponsible he drives a car containing a pregnant girl at four times the speed limit; a 33-year-old so irresponsible he has sex with 15-year-olds; and parents so irresponsible they allow it. And the Telegraph is worried about ... driver ed.

There are irresponsible idiots here, but the car manufacturers - and the government - aren't the problem.

Thankfully, children's heads are NOT like china plates

Joanne Jacobs links to a British educator who states the obvious - well, it's obvious to everyone outside of the education world, that is.

Of course, schools are bound by law to be concerned with children's safety. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's motto, 'That which does not kill me makes me strong', is catchy, but it makes poor childcare advice. But the culture of fear has rarely resulted in reasonable policies and accurate information. In fact, reactions are likely to prove more harmful to children's development and education than the risk from which they are being protected.

For example, in the early 1980s the TV programme That's Life ran a series of stories on the risks of school playground surfaces causing head injuries, showing films of china plates smashing on the floor. But children's heads have little in common with china plates, and serious head injuries from falls do not appear at all in the statistics on playground injuries.

An overcautious approach makes for dull environments. Such environments present too little challenge for children, and some children respond by looking for other opportunities for adventure, sometimes with much greater risk of personal injury.

I believe I learned to swim by falling into a lake, although my grandmother was pretty quick to yank me out by my heels. I also got knocked out when some kid climbing down a metal jungle gym wasn't looking below him and kicked me in the head and off the contraption entirely. If I recall correctly, that kid got a talking-to from the principal like I've never seen before - but the jungle gym stayed in place. I'm sure it's been replaced now with safer plastic construction, but as long as kids continue to be kids, the dangers will be there. Better to have them learn the rules in a reasonably-safe environment than to try to remove all risk entirely.

Update: Perhaps I should clarify. When I say that parents should not be over-cautious, and should allow their children to roam and risk danger, I don't mean this (first letter). Or this. Allowing children to experience danger doesn't mean abdicating all sense and responsibility, or letting your young daughters spend a lot of time around complete idiots.

Thank God they didn't live in Minnesota

You know the saying, "Make the punishment fit the crime"? Sometimes parents need to be reminded of that:

A woman who forced her son to rake leaves in the nude as punishment for misbehaving in school has pleaded guilty to a child cruelty charge. However, the 47-year-old mother might avoid a felony record...

According to evidence, the incident occurred on April 27 in the Mayfield subdivision. The 12-year-old boy had aggravated his mother by continuing to get in trouble at school, and the mother responded by sending him outside that evening to rake leaves naked.

Well, it is a non-violent solution, true, and April in Virginia is probably not too chilly outside. But what on earth could have been going through this mother's mind to think this was a suitable punishment for anything? Being forced to rake the leaves, okay, fine. Nude? I would never have even thought of that, much less imposed it on a child. I know the law allows parents some latitude in discipline. But when a mere photograph of your child performing the punishment would be enough to put someone in jail for years, you've gone beyond what's acceptable.

Girls still not figuring out why the birds are different from the bees

Hot on the heels of the fashion mavens who tell us that skin is not in - something concerned parents always knew - come the worried experts telling us something else that concerned parents always knew - girls who take pride in promiscuity face myriad dangers:

Heather, a 16-year-old with sandy blond hair, remembers how it felt the time she had sex on the same day with two different boys. Neither was her boyfriend. "I felt like I was in control," said the Neenah, Wis., native, who like other teens interviewed for this story is being identified only by her first name. "I felt like a player."

Fourteen-year-old Mia of Racine, Wis., explains with pride how she uses a calculated approach to flirting and dating to extract money from multiple boys. "I've been pimping," Mia said. "I've got dudes who give me money every day."

My guess is that parental influences - or lack thereof - play a big part in these sorry tales. Or perhaps this is due to the great public school "socialization" factors that we hear so much about?

A lot of adults may not want to believe it, but these and other teenage girls are adopting some stereotypical "male" attitudes toward sex, according to reports from a national research firm and interviews with girls and officials who work with them...Planned Parenthood says that promiscuity is helping fuel the rise of sexually transmitted diseases among teenagers - diseases that can rob girls of the ability to bear children. There's also evidence the trend is turning dangerous in other ways, with girls sexually harassing and even assaulting boys.

Kieran Sawyer, executive director of the TYME OUT Youth Center, a Catholic organization in Waukesha County that runs teen programs that focus on relationships, agreed.

When even Planned Parenthood is siding with the worried parents and the Catholics, you know things have gone too far. It's understandable that, in the revolutionary 70's, feminists trumpted the notion that a woman's independence might depend on her acting like a man - in bed and out - but it's appalling that the notion is still around in this day and age, and for teenagers, no less. Women might have come a long way, baby, but STDs, unwanted pregnancies, and fractured relationships still abound, and ghetto wear that encourages women to objectify their body parts is no more "empowering" now than it would have been in 1972.

To counter these aggressive attitudes, Planned Parenthood is reworking the teen workshops it runs in schools and churches and through other community organizations to place greater emphasis on the importance of healthy relationships. The workshops will force girls who act like pimps and players to examine why.

"We want to ask girls who play boys: `What was the value? What do you get out of this?'" Lathen said. "We want to help girls understand and reject the stereotypes the media projects of them so they can make positive, healthy decisions about their bodies."

Good luck. Given all the "you should be as sexy as you want" messages that have been pushed by "feminists" over the years, Planned Parenthood may find themselves stymied by young girls who literally do not understand any other way to be than as a sex object. And if they don't drag parents into these conferences as well, it's unlikely that will change.

And what would such an article be without a "parents just don't understand" line?

"What a lot of boys and a lot of adults don't understand is that the door swings both ways," said Lisa, 18, of Brookfield, Wis. "It's not just boys who sometimes want something purely physical. Girls have needs too."

Guess what, Lisa? You're not the first girl to think that. You're also not the first girl to think that all those negative things - pregnancies, AIDS, date rape, horrible relationships - aren't going to happen to you. I wish you had more responsible adults in your life to tell you that these bad things can happen, and that satisfying your physical needs does not now, nor has it ever, nor will it ever, come without a high price. Too many girls nowadays are willing to ignore it.

Before any of my Devoted Readers jump in and say this - yes, if I had a daughter, she would be called Alice; she would be homeschooled, and kept in pigtails, and dressed in tights, flat shoes, and jumpers until she was 16 years old. If you think my attitudes mean that I would probably drive any child of mine crazy, yes, you're right.

Proud wearer of long skirts and blazers since 1991

Just think, all you homeschooling parents - here you were keeping your kids away from the "socialization" of hooker-chic fashion, so you don't get to sigh with relief now that Vogue has declared it's okay for a young girl to look like she's not for sale:

Sitting down is a complicated maneuver when you're wearing low-rise jeans.

A word long missing from the style lexicon, it's suddenly on the tongue of every trend-watcher, on the runways of London, Paris and New York, and in the latest issues of magazines as different as Seventeen, InStyle and Vogue.

Aren't you homeschooling parents pleased? The runways of Paris have deemed that it is okay to encourage you to dress your daughters modestly again! Don't you feel bad that your girls didn't get to experience the hooker craze while it was popular?

In a single season, fashion has flipped from cheesy to cutesy...The backlash against revealing fashions has been unusually virulent in recent months, says Lyn Mikel Brown, an associate professor of women's gender and sexuality studies at Colby College in Waterville, Maine.

In other words, try explaining "hooker chic" to an 8-year-old.

What, you mean you homeschooling parents never did have to explain that, because your daughter wasn't surrounded by pre-teens in thongs and low-rise jeans all day long? What were you thinking, not letting your daughter be "socialized" appropriately? Don't you know that unless she wears whatever Vogue tells her to, she'll be doomed to a life of unhappiness?

Update: Thanks to Devoted Reader Liz for posting the links to dressing modestly sites on my comments. A Google search for "modest prom" or "dressing modestly" will also find a lot of sites. Why am I not surprised to find that the very skirt I am wearing today is featured on the Hannah Lise: Modest Clothing for Women and Girls site? Okay, mine has a zebra-pattern in place of the block pattern (and Boston Proper charged three times as much as this site does) - but it's the exact same skirt. And I'm very happy to have found a site that sells long skirts WITHOUT slits.

Cost of unsupervised mall trip and Hello Kitty cards: Lots of $$$. Teaching your kids that they can't have everything they want: Priceless

Joanne Jacob's latest entry on FoxNews Views (where she mentions N2P - yay!) has this link to new credit cards - for the preteen set:

"Freedom! You can use the Hello Kitty Debit MasterCard to shop 'til you drop," the card's Web site enthuses. The prospective audience? The young women who grew up with the 30-year-old icon -- as well as much younger girls. "We think our target age group will be from 10 to 14, although it could certainly go younger," said Bruce Giuliano, senior vice president of licensing for Sanrio Inc., which owns the brand.

"It's no different than an allowance; just a safer way to manage an allowance because if you're a parent, you can find every place your daughter spent her money: how much, when and where," Klamka said. "You get a higher level of control than just giving your daughter $100 and say, 'Go to the mall.' "

I love Joanne's succinct reply:

I achieved an even higher level control by never giving my daughter $100 to go to the mall.

Seriously. I don't recall going to a mall unsupervised between the ages of 10 and 14, much less being given money in addition to my allowance for spending. How is it "control" to give your daughter a card (with fees described by one insider as the worst they'd ever seen) and let her go shopping unsupervised?

When parents try sometimes, they just might find, kids get what they need

Joanne Jacobs rightfully rolls her eyes at the idea of parents needing support groups in order to say no to their kids. The cause of this eyerolling is an MSNBC article that suggests parents these days have no clue about how to rear responsible, non-materialistic children:

Eloise Goldman struggled to hold the line. She knew it was ridiculous to spend $250 on a mini iPod for her 9-year-old son Ben. The price tag wasn't the biggest issue for Goldman, a publicist, and her fund-raiser husband, Jon. It was the idea of buying such an extravagant gadget for a kid who still hasn't mastered long division. If she gave in, how would Ben ever learn that you can't always get what you want? Goldman knew there was a good chance the iPod would soon be lost or abandoned, just like Ben's toy-of-choice from last year, a bright blue drum set that now sits forlornly in the basement of their suburban New York home. But Ben nagged and pestered and insisted that "everyone has one." Goldman began to weaken. Ben's a good kid, she reasoned; she wanted him to have what the other kids had. After doing a neighborhood-mom check and finding that Ben's peers were indeed wired for sound, Goldman caved—but not without one last attempt to salvage some lesson about limits. She offered her son a deal. We give you an iPod, you forfeit your birthday party. "Done," he said. Then, without missing a beat: "Now what about getting me my own Apple G4?"

Oookay. The electronic gadgets, by the way, are not the issue here. After all, it's normal for children to want things that members of their peer group have, and it's not ridiculous in this day and age for children to want their own computers. What's appalling here is the idea that the parents seem to be held hostage to their 9-year-old's idea of what is acceptable for him to have. The party-iPod bargain seems born less of ingenuity than of desperation on the mother's part.

One could argue, as does MSNBC, that there are more materialistic goods targeted to kids these days, and that it's more difficult than ever to keep a kid who is a gadget/clothing/accessories "have-not" from noticing how much other kids seem to have. But the theory behind rearing healthy kids really hasn't changed, and the expert statements quoted here shouldn't seem new to responsible parents:

While it's certainly true that affluent parents can raise happy and well-adjusted children, the struggle to set limits has never been tougher. Saying no is harder when you can afford to say yes. But the stakes have also never been higher. Recent studies of adults who were overindulged as children paint a discouraging picture of their future. Kids who've been given too much too soon grow up to be adults who have difficulty coping with life's disappointments. They have a distorted sense of entitlement that gets in the way of success both in the workplace and in relationships.

Psychologists say parents who overindulge their kids may actually be setting them up to be more vulnerable to future anxiety and depression. "The risk of overindulgence is self-centeredness and self-absorption, and that's a mental-health risk," says William Damon, director of the Stanford University Center on Adolescence. "You sit around feeling anxious all the time instead of figuring out what you can do to make a difference in the world."

This is human nature. This is also something good parents have known for almost as long as there have been kids to rear. But today, parents apparently feel the need to band together just to learn to say "no" to their kids:

This generation of parents has always been driven to give their kids every advantage, from Mommy & Me swim classes all the way to that thick envelope from an elite college. But despite their good intentions, too many find themselves raising "wanting machines" who respond like Pavlovian dogs to the marketing behemoth that's aimed right at them. Even getting what they want doesn't satisfy some kids — they only want more. Now, a growing number of psychologists, educators and parents think it's time to stop the madness and start teaching kids about what's really important — values like hard work, delayed gratification, honesty and compassion. In a few communities, parents have begun to take action by banding together to enforce limits and rules so that no one has to feel guilty for denying her 6-year-old a $300 Nokia cell phone with all the latest bells and whistles. "It's almost like parents have lost their parenting skills," says Marsha Moritz, 54, who helped found the Parent Engagement Network, a support group in Boulder, Colo.

Joanne's response?

The parents need a support group? What wimps!

When my daughter said, "I want" too much, her father would sing, "You can't always get what you want" till she begged him to stop. I just made it clear that nagging, whining and sulking never would be effective strategies. Keep asking and what you get is a mean, crabby mother.

One of the best child-rearing skills is the ability to act crabbier, crazier, and more annoying than a whiny kid. The image of Joanne's daughter being driven mad by a father warbling old Rolling Stones tunes is just hysterical - not to mention effective.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing

Sharkblog tells us about his evil genius toddler:

My son is a genius. You probably already knew that, but here is the latest proof.

My son is also a threat to our nation's automobiles. The other day when he was behind the wheel of the Subaru, he shoved his little plastic bubble wand all the way into the slot of the in-dash CD player. Now the CD player is useless.We're afraid to put any CDs in there lest they jam up or start sounding like Lawrence Welk. But there are serious consequences for toddlers who commit such dastardly deeds. He's not getting the keys to the BMW until he makes me whole for the Subaru.

A minute on the lips, forever on the mind?

Given the wide variety of increasingly-dangerous hot sauces that are available these days, I say any parent who wants to try this had best be careful. And for the record, has anyone ever heard of this? I sure hadn't.

The practice of "hot saucing" a child's tongue as a method of discipline may seem cruel to some parents, but those who regularly use the punishment say it teaches their charges valuable and long-lasting lessons.

Lisa Whelchel, who played Blair on the popular 1980s TV series Facts of Life, is an advocate and practitioner of "hot saucing." Whelchel, the author of Creative Correction: Extraordinary Ideas for Everyday Discipline, says the practice worked for her children when other disciplinary actions did not.

"There's no room for pain and humiliation and fear in disciplining healthy children," Kendrick said. "I think it's a rather barbaric practice to say the least."

I can't decide what's weirder about this - the idea that there is no room for any kind of humiliation in child-rearing (embarassment is a useful learning tool for kids and adults), or the fact that this is how Blair from The Facts of Life is getting press again. And don't some kids like spicy foods? I suppose it's unlikely that hot sauce could become positive reinforcement instead of punishment, but with kids, you never know.

And the part about Virginia considering this "an actionable offense" is just ludicrous. Does this mean if an adult leaves a spicy taco lying around so that a kid can eat it and burn his lips, the adult is guilty of criminal negligence? Ridiculous.

A wider range of role models

In Thomas Sowell's "Random Thoughts" column comes this provocative comment:

The idea of providing black students with "role models" is counterproductive because it insinuates the notion that you can be inspired only by people who look like you. How in the world did the Nisei generation of Japanese American children ever learn, when their fathers were mostly farmers and these children seldom, if ever, saw a Japanese American teacher, much less Japanese American engineers, scientists or other professionals in fields in which these children went on to excel?

There's no doubt that plenty of today's black children are negatively affected by black, negative role models (like gangsta rappers). But perhaps part of the problem with finding positive role models today is, as Sowells suggest, the racial segregation theory which insists that role models of any kind must be the same race as the children they inspire. This seems like it would limit the possibility of models for children of all races.

Swinging the pendulum back towards character and tradition

Kay Hymowitz has a long and very interesting article in City Journal entitled, "It’s Morning After in America," in which she argues that the "Millenial Generation" (kids born between 1981 and 1999) are more Jimmy Stewart than James Dean:

Yet marketers who plumb people’s attitudes to predict trends are noticing something interesting about “Millennials,” the term that generation researchers Neil Howe and William Strauss invented for the cohort of kids born between 1981 and 1999: they’re looking more like Jimmy Stewart than James Dean. They adore their parents, they want to succeed, they’re optimistic, trusting, cooperative, dutiful, and civic-minded. “They’re going to ‘rebel’ by being, not worse, but better,” write Howe and Strauss...

Fed up with the fallout from the reign of “if it feels good, do it”—not only as it played out in the inner city but in troubled middle-class families across the land—Americans are looking more favorably on old-fashioned virtues like caution, self-restraint, commitment, and personal responsibility. They are in the midst of a fundamental shift in the cultural zeitgeist that is driving so many seemingly independent trends in crime, sex, drugs, and alcohol in the same positive direction.

Read the whole thing; it's very interesting. And while Hymowitz notes the changing trends in parental discipline and education in schools, she leaves out a growing trend that I think has a lot to do with producing more level-headed kids and more tightly-knit families: homeschooling. It's an odd admission, because Hymowitz does notice that parents want a more traditional and character-based education for their kids:

A 1999 Yankelovich survey found that 89 percent of Gen Xers think modern parents let kids get away with too much; 65 percent want to return to a more traditional sense of parental duty. “Character education” is hot in school districts across the country—as are the Girl Scouts, because, as official Courtney Shore told the Washington Times, “parents and communities are returning to values-based activities.” Today’s parenting magazines do a brisk trade in articles with titles like ARE YOU A PARENT OR A PUSHOVER? GET A DISCIPLINE MAKEOVER AND TEACHING YOUR CHILD RIGHT FROM WRONG.

"Character education"? "Values-based activities"? Sounds like a lot of the current motivating factors behind homeschooling to me.

Cellphones or Medicaid?

I normally don't comment on issues related to welfare and Medicare. But whenever I read that parents can't be expected to pay the smallest amounts, or make the smallest efforts, to ensure their health, or the health of their children, I am just stunned:

Many Washington residents easily part with $5 a day at their local coffee shop. For others, $5 means they'll be able to buy groceries, pay the electricity bill, or get school supplies for their children. In the next 10 days, legislators will decide whether poor families can afford $5 a month in Medicaid premiums for their kids. Both sides of the debate agree it's a question of responsibility.

Annette Hensley, 43, says that if the Legislature imposes premiums she will do whatever it takes to pay them and keep her 14-year-old on Medicaid. "It would put a big strain on us," said Hensley, whose family income is about $25,000 a year. "Something would have to go. I don't have cable, so probably the Internet. Maybe my cellphone."

I assume the reporter, limited by space, thought this one quote was the one that would generate the most sympathy from readers. But I'm just left wondering why someone who has a computer and an Internet connection and a cellphone considers it a "big strain" to pay $5.00 a month for Medicaid for her child. Does she consider the need to surf the web more important than medication?

Sen. Joe Zarelli, R-Ridgefield, the Senate's chief budget writer, says taxpayers can't afford to give Medicaid families a free ride. He noted that premiums wouldn't cost more than 1 percent of Medicaid families' income. He and other Republicans said they believe parents will be able to pay.

Her comments prompted an "oooh" of disapproval from the Democratic side of the Senate.

"Disapproval" because someone said that poor parents aren't stupid and would be willing to spend the five bucks on something this crucial? Are we to assume that the Democrats really do think poor parents are stupid?

The problem with premiums isn't just the expense, it's the hassle, said Jon Gould, deputy director of the Children's Alliance, a statewide child-advocacy organization. The state Department of Social and Health Service does most business by mail. Many poor families lack checking accounts and would have to pay by money order each month. There are no credit-card payments, online bill-paying or direct-withdrawal plans.

Money orders cost 85 cents at the post office, which even poor people have in their towns. And if most poor people don't have checking accounts, then it makes sense that the system is not set up for online bill paying or credit card payments. The system is set up to accomodate people who can mail in money orders. That's 85 cents plus a stamp. Is the assumption that poor parents are by definition too lazy or stupid to do that? Or is the assumption that poor parents cannot be expected to endure any sort of hassle whatsoever, even for something as crucial as health insurance?

Must be something in the water of the Northwest; last year I posted about how people in Oregon aren't expected to be able to mail in six bucks for their own health coverage. And now parents in Washington are not expected to give up their cellphones in order to afford a $5 Medicaid premium.

To me, this isn't about money. It's about removing entirely the responsibility that parents have to ensure the health of their children, and removing entirely the assumption that even the poor must get their act together in order to safeguard their health. And that seems to me to be very similar to the "soft bigotry of low expectations," where poor kids are considered to be entirely a product of their income, and can't be expected to perform up to the same level as other children in school.

(Via Best of the Web and their "World's Smallest Violin" feature.)

Update: Sharkblog has more:

Would spending $5 a month on health coverage prevent a lower income family from buying food for their children? The most recent USDA survey of American food intake reveals that the average child (6-11) in a family with income below 130% of the poverty level consumes each month 13.5 cans of carbonated beverages, 2 pounds of "cakes, cookies pastries, pies" and 12 oz. of "crackers, popcorn, pretzels, corn chips". [look at the numbers for average daily intake in grams and do the math] At my local Safeway that costs $8.12 assuming store brand cookies and a 2-for-1 special on Doritos. I imagine that even most poor families can afford $5 a month for their children's health care if they manage their budget responsibly.

Who is to blame when kindergarteners bite?

Fark.com labeled this story, "Cincinnati Public Schools expels kindergartners for stabbing classmates in face, bringing weapons to school. "Experts" blame everything under the sun except terrible parents."

Fark is exaggerating, though; "fractured families" are on this list of causes - after TV and video games:

A student at Quebec Heights School in Price Hill strikes his classmates and kicks a teacher. A student at Princeton's Woodlawn Elementary stabs another kid in the face with a plastic fork. A student at New Burlington Elementary in Springfield Township urinates in a garbage can.

Experts blame many factors: Sex and violence on television and in video games, undiagnosed mental illness, poverty, fractured families and zero-tolerance for trouble at school. Kids are stressed out. And many kindergartens did away with naptime a decade or more ago.

Hard to believe that removal of naptime alone is responsible for an upswing in violence in the ABC's set. And if five-year-olds are watching violent videos, um, whose fault is that?

And the violent kindergarteners do have some defenders - their parents:

But others, including some parents and child advocates, say biting, kicking and temper tantrums are normal behavior for 5- and 6-year-olds. This group says that expelling or suspending kindergartners just sets children up for failure - at a far too tender age.

"If a child does something extreme, you have to look at why," says Rochelle Morton, former vice president of education and youth development at the Urban League of Greater Cincinnati. "Putting a child out of school is not going to help."

Yes, but is a school permitted to say, "We looked at why this child is biting everyone withing teething range, and we decided it's the parent's fault?" If schools don't have the power to say that anymore - and I bet that power is diminishing every day - why should they look for root causes instead of applying discipline?

"Overindulged child syndrome"

Love this New York Observer article (that Joanne found way before I did) on the immense self-esteem suffered by upper-middle-class kids who have been coddled all their lives:

[Too Much Positive Reinforcement] has now officially reached epidemic proportions...After decades of upper-middle-class parenting designed to shield Junior from all possible failure, and from any honest judgement of his talents, it’s no wonder we need television shows like American Idol and its fellow showcase for TMPR victims, The Apprentice. These shows are delivering the spanking—sorry, the time-out—that our culture of bloated self-evaluation is subconsciously craving...

"Kids will come in wanting to be a staff writer at Esquire right out of college," said Eliot Kaplan, editorial talent director for Hearst Magazines. "I had this girl come in from this failed dot-com one day—that was her only experience. I interviewed her and asked her how much money she wanted, and she said $300,000. I couldn’t help it—I laughed in her face." Mr. Kaplan added: "We’re happy to bring them back to earth."

I'm sure they are. But those "down-to-earth" experiences for spoiled kids used to come when they started school and learned the world didn't revolve around their needs. Now, even colleges are trying to protect pampered students from the real world:

"When I was at Andover in the 1940’s, one in every third kid would not make it," said Dr. Paul McHugh, head of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University. "Now in a school like that and even colleges, it’s really hard to fail out. They pick you up, prep you, dust you off."

It’s the work world that increasingly functions as the personal reality-check service for TMPR victims...

The psychologists have a word for it: "overindulged child syndrome":

"One of my pet peeves is to hear parents praising a child’s accomplishments as if they’re professionals," he said. "A child who draws very well is a great artist, a child who dances very well is a great dancer. That implies that they are able to replicate every good performance. Instead, I’d like to hear parents praise the event, what they did. That’s a very different compliment; it doesn’t fill the child with expectations of being a great artist," he added. "You’ve built up the popinjay to the point where they don’t have the credentials and skill to prove it"...

Not surprisingly, the cult of self-esteem clashes with the cult of accountability and "back-to-basics" in schools:

If the teacher doesn’t give you an A, have Daddy pay! If you can’t get into Yale, put a check in the mail! "The extreme obnoxious example is the child who has a fit when she doesn’t get an A, and the parents go to the school and raise hell about the teacher’s unfairness and the grade gets changed," Ms. Murphy said. "You’ve done that child a huge disservice." Mr. Flamenbaum added...

Joanne also linked to an Education Next article about the dangers of the "Gentleman's A":

Our results indicate that students benefit academically from higher grading standards. However, these results were not uniform: high-ability students appear to benefit more than low-ability students from high grading standards. Moreover, initially low-performing students appear to benefit more from high grading standards when they are placed in high-achieving classrooms. Likewise, high-performing students appear to react best to high grading standards when placed in low-achieving classrooms.

And grade inflation benefits no one, especially now that so many standardized yardsticks exist for comparison:

It turns out that the grades teachers assign are highly correlated with students’ ITBS and FCAT scores. But teachers also tend to grade far less stringently than the state standards indicate they should (see Figure 1). For instance, just 9 percent of students who were awarded A’s by their teachers attained a score of 5 on the FCAT. In fact, just 50 percent attained even a 4.

Even those students whose talents coincide with their inflated self-esteem might not do well in adulthood. This 2002 research report correlates childhood overindulgence with adult temperament. The results aren't pretty, because, as the authors note, overindulgence of children is done not for the child's benefit, but for the parental ego, and lack of responsibility due to parental pathologies can also translate to overindulgence:

Overindulgent parents inundate their children with family resources such as material wealth, time, attention, experiences, or lack of responsibility at developmentally inappropriate times (Bredehoft, Mennicke, Potter, and Clarke, 1998). Overindulged children grow up in an unrealistic world and as a result they fail to learn skills such as perseverance, coping with failure in effective ways, and getting along with others. Parents overindulge to meet their own needs, not the needs of their children (Bredehoft et al., 1998)...

In this first study (Bredehoft et al., 1998)...the findings...paint a less than happy picture for adults who were overindulged as children. A high percentage of ACO’s [adult children of overindulgence] came from violent homes and homes in which parents were addicted to alcohol, drugs, work, or food. ACO’s reported the following life problems which they associated with their overindulgence: not knowing what is enough, overeating and gaining weight, money management problems, parenting and childrearing conflicts, conflicts with interpersonal boundaries, difficulty in decision-making, poor self-esteem, poor health, and being involved in excessive activities. As a result of being overindulged ACO’s reported mostly negative feelings: confused, embarrassed, guilty, and ignored.

Sadly, the problems tend to repeat themselves across generations:

...dysfunctional attitudes are closely associated with a variety of negative attributes ranging from the need for approval, being self-critical, perfectionism, poor social adjustment and depression. Parents who were overindulged as children subsequently believed in fate, that their child controlled their life, thought that they were less effective parents, had little control over their child’s behavior and have a more chaotic family system.

All the more reason for firmer discipline in schools, both in terms of classroom discipline and effectiveness of teaching. Why should students have to wait until they're faced with the working world to get a valid assessment of their capabilities?

Can we put him in Gucci prison scrubs?

Do you parents out there wonder if you're rearing your children properly? Here's some consolation: It's a given that you're doing a better job than this parent did:

A TEENAGER nicked his father’s credit card — and blew £12,000 in a FOUR-DAY splurge.

And after blowing a fortune on designer gear by forging his dad’s signature, he whined: “If Dad had got me these things in the first place I wouldn’t have had to steal his card.”

His dad, after cursing him a bit, has forgiven him, and has hired a (presumably high-priced) lawyer. Just how absent a parent do you have to be to produce a kid this shallow? A kid who considers Gucci and Prada to be his God-given right and is willing to steal over 22 grand (in American money) from his dad to get it? I doubt this is the kid's first larcenous act, and probably not his last.

The King of Abdicating Responsibility

According to this Wisconsin man, his kids are "lazy channel surfers" - but it's not his fault. It's the cable company's fault:

Charter employees called police to the local office at 165 Knight’s Way the evening of Dec. 23 after [Timothy] Dumouchel showed up with a small claims complaint, reportedly intimidated an employee and made “low-level threats” to employees’ safety, according to a police report.

“But the reason I am suing Charter is they did not let me make a decision as to what was best for myself and my family and (they have been) keeping cable (coming) into my home for four years after I asked them to turn it off.”

I...see. What's amazing is that Dumouchel can, in the same breath, completely abdicate responsibility for his childrens' behavior (the wife's weight gain is her own issue), and claim that he would otherwise have tried to enforce behavior that was best for his family. Apparently he made a deal with his wife that allowed her to watch cable, and then did not enforce the spirit of the deal (as opposed to the letter) when the cable was not disconnected. But, um, where do the kids come into that deal? Was monitoring their TV-watching behavior not an option?

Sheesh. He's threatening to sue for $5000 or three computers and a lifetime of free internet service. Isn't the internet supposed to be addictive too? Can't heavy internet use also contribute to weight gain? And does Du plan to sue the web for internet pornography after his kids get hooked on that, too? I wouldn't put it past him, not if he blames the cable company for his desire to drink alcohol and smoke every day.

The problems of parental permissiveness

The pendulum of child-rearing techniques seem to be swinging back from the overly-permissive to the more sensible, as Parent magazine wonders, "Are You A Parent or a Pushover?" Betsy Hart of Jewish World Review thinks she knows the answer:

In the article "Are You a Parent or a Pushover?" in the January ('04) issue of Parents magazine, author Kellye Carter Crocker reported on a Parents survey that showed most mothers expressing "deep concern over today's discipline methods." For starters, 88 percent said parents "let children get away with too much."

Well, excuse me, but, um, "duh."

Hart links the Time magazine article on child violence with these overly-permissive techniques:

The authors largely blame violence in the media. Well, OK. But then why do many kids who see the same images not act this way, and how is it then that adult criminal activity has been on a significant downward spiral for years?

As Ronald Simons, a sociologist at the University of Georgia in Athens, told Parents: "without structure, children become self-absorbed, selfish and unhappy _ and they make everyone around them miserable, too."

Oh, but Time made sure that the "root cause" of testing stress got mentioned, and as we all know, that's so much more indicative of violence than parental neglect or over-permissiveness.

As for those kids who are acting out violently, schools are now resorting to arrests rather than handling problems in-house:

In cities and suburbs around the country, schools are increasingly sending students into the juvenile justice system for the sort of adolescent misbehavior that used to be handled by school administrators. In Toledo and many other places, the juvenile detention center has become an extension of the principal's office.

School officials say they have little choice. "The goal is not to put kids out, but to maintain classrooms free of disruptions that make it impossible for teachers to teach and kids to learn," said Jane Bruss, the spokeswoman for the Toledo public schools. "Would we like more alternatives? Yes, but everything has a cost associated with it."

In some places, juvenile arrests are up three-fold:

According to an analysis of school arrest data by the Advancement Project, a civil rights advocacy group in Washington, there were 2,345 juvenile arrests in 2001 in public schools in Miami-Dade County, Fla., nearly three times as many as in 1999. Sixty percent, the project said, were for "simple assaults" — fights that did not involve weapons —and "miscellaneous" charges, including disorderly conduct.

Many of the court cases around the country involve special-education students whose behavior is often related to their disabilities, Mr. Block and others say.

Part of the problem is, of course, inane zero-tolerance policies that punish kids who have no intention of causing violence, and not having the right mental health facilities in place for poor youngsters. But the parental influence isn't being denied:

What has also changed, Dr. Steinberg said, is that principals are less able to depend on parents to enforce the discipline schools mete out. "I think in the past the threat of getting in touch with a kid's parents was often enough to get a kid to start behaving," he said. "Now, kids feel parents will fight on their behalf."

Can you say, "overly-permissive?"