Thursday, December 22, 2011
One child's experience with the iPod Touch is a wake-up call to power-down the handhelds in favor of traditional toys.
Last weekend we were at a Christmas party and as usual, the moms began talking about their latest child-rearing follies, all of which seemed to involve young children and either the iPhone or iPod Touch. With such stories you're bound to hear some interesting tales as the combination of the two is nothing more than a ticking time bomb attached to a Pandora's box of dangerous scenarios. After several moms related their amazement at their child's web navigating prowess, one mom talked about her 7-year-old son's disturbing discovery. The boy's 8-year-old neighbor had just received an iPod Touch for her birthday and was anxious to share it with the group of kids. According to the boy, they wanted to hear their favorite song, LMFAO's "I'm Sexy …
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
A Pennsylvania boarding school goes on the defensive with decision to deny an applicant.
Earlier this month, an elite Hershey, PA, boarding school denied entry to an HIV-positive 13-year-old boy on the grounds that his presence on the campus endangered the other children. Connie McNamara, a spokeswoman for the Milton Hershey School, said that after much contemplation, school officials determined it was in the best interest of the student body that the child be denied entry on the grounds that he posed a sexual risk. "We had to balance his rights and interests with our obligation to provide for the health and safety of the other students," McNamara said in a statement to ABCNews.com. The school is home to 1,850 students ranging in age from pre-K to 12th grade. Children live on campus in groups of 10 to 12. According to McNamara…
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Parents of first-graders cry foul when a celebrity with a past participates in a district reading program.
When I heard about this little gem, I envisioned dads (and maybe moms) of first graders at Emerson Elementary School in California counting the minutes until the guest reader arrived. In the past, they never would have considered calling in sick. But today was different. Sasha Gray would be reading. Gray is a former porn star chosen earlier this month by an outside talent agency to participate in the Compton Unified School District's celebrity reading program. She was dressed appropriately. No plunging necklines. No moans at the turn of every page. No sex advice given. No goody bags filled with lube and condoms. Just a book read to some unsuspecting 6 year olds. No one would have known about her past had parents not publicly cried foul, …
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
A group of university and college officials believes the current minimum drinking age does little to curb risky drinking. Would you let 18 year olds drink?
Eighteen is the magic number. It's the birthday so many teens anticipate as the day they gain autonomy from parents and become masters of their destinies. They can vote, marry and go to war. But should they be allowed to drink alcohol? John McCardell, former president of Middlebury College in Vermont and current vice chancellor and president of the University of the South, thinks so. As a member of the Amethyst Initiative, a group comprised of university and college presidents and chancellors, he and his cohorts believe the 21 drinking age does little to curb irresponsible drinking on college campuses and in homes across the country. "This law has been an abysmal failure. It hasn't reduced or eliminated drinking, it has simply driven it …
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Parents who fear vaccines use social networking to infect their children with chicken pox and other infectious diseases.
It's one thing not to have your children vaccinated. But it's a truly different story when parents go in search of bodily fluids from total strangers in an effort to infect their children with chicken pox or a myriad of other infectious diseases like measles, mumps and rubella. A story broke this week about a Facebook group, "Find a Pox Party in Your Area," in which parents can locate children with the disease and expose their children in an effort to gain natural immunity. What makes this disturbing is that parents on the site are offering to mail bodily fluids from their sick child to other parents across the United States and Canada. One mother announced on the site that her children had come down with pox. Within 48 hours, lollipops …
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
There's nothing neighborly about a guy with a dangerous past. But would the presence of a convicted child molester (or worse) make you think about selling your house?
When a registered child sex offender moved onto our street, neighbors gathered together to discuss everything they knew. Bus stops became places where parents would linger long after the bus had picked up their children to discuss everything from the color of his car (red) to why he would put a swing in his back yard. Should they sell their homes and move to a "safer" neighborhood? Would he hand out Halloween candy? (By law he could not display Halloween decorations or offer candy and so far he's followed these rules.) He has children, a wife, a nice house and a neighborhood of people who grow quiet when his car passes. The idea of this man — who, according to the Illinois Sex Offender Registry, had molested a 13 year-old child (he was 33 …
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
What if your kid isn't as good as the other kids on the team and doesn't get as much playing time? Youth sports highlight issues of fairness and entitlement.
"It's just a game." "It's not about winning and losing." "Why doesn't my child get the same amount of playing time as her child?" "Practice makes perfect." But what if it doesn't? What if your child, after hours and hours of practice, doesn't improve at the rate of the other kids on the team and, as a result, doesn't receive the same amount of playing time? I've attended countless sporting events, both as a former athlete and parent, and have witnessed the frustration of parents at every level who compare their child's total playing time to another's as though the contest isn't between the teams as much as it is among the players. Age does make a difference and benching a 5-year-old soccer neophyte is quite different from the high school …
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Product tagline implies new children's supplement could unlock the door to better classroom performance.
If a nutritional supplement could improve your child's test scores, would you buy it? The makers of BrainStrong, a gummy formula containing DHA, docosahexaenoic acid, are hoping you will. With a tag line like "BrainStrong: Nourish their potential" the message is pretty clear. The key to your child's behavioral and academic performance lies in your hands. DHA, an omega-3 fatty acid, while found in cells throughout the body, is particularly prevalent in the nervous system. The idea is that by incorporating the supplement into your child's daily routine, you'll be giving him or her an intellectual edge. The company's website doesn't outwardly claim to improve intelligence, but it does maintain that "DHA is brain nutrition." One clinical trial…
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Schools across the country are spending less time on penmanship and more on computer lessons.
I remember a cold, dark Spring day when my mom gave my brothers and me paper and pens and asked us to write get-well letters to Dr. McGuire, our family doctor who had delivered many Blackmore babies, administered polio serums and vaccines to all of us and sent us off with a safety pop and a pat on the head every time. Dr. McGuire was dying and my mom hoped that our letters, in his final days, would remind him of how highly our family regarded him and his wisdom. I curled every cursive L and elegantly glided through the capital S in my shaky third-grade hand. It was with the utmost care that my letter was written. So when I read in this Sunday's paper that schools across the country were scaling back, some altogether eliminating, their …
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Should schools allow PTO programs to offer special treat days to students?
Playgrounds are great places for MomTalk ideas. And this particular one involved a bit of eavesdropping as I listened to two moms discuss what they consider an ice cream crisis at our public school. One mom expressed her utter disgust when her kindergartener came home with a form announcing a once-a-month ice cream day in which parents can choose the ice cream flavor their child would like and it would be delivered by PTO parents to the lunchroom or to the kindergarten classroom. This mom, who was a teacher in another district, compared the food policies at her school to those at ours and said she could see no reason why schools would create such a program given the high rates of childhood obesity and diabetes. According to her, the …
Nabeha Zegar
5:16 pm on Friday, December 23, 2011
How horrible that the kids were exposed to that! I agree, the problem is that most parents do not know how to disable their child's device from being able to view the adult themed content. It is really simple. Go to settings, general, restrictions and choose the age range. You can also disable specific apps individually or disable wifi altogether. I think 8 years old is much too young to have … more ›