In Colorado, a Catholic school has refused readmission to the children of two lesbian parents. “Parents living in open discord with Catholic teaching in areas of faith and morals unfortunately choose by their actions to disqualify their children from enrollment,” explains the Archdiocese of Denver. Now, the conservative in me thinks that it’s entirely reasonable …
The best part of this story about the drastic increase in the average American child’s diet as a consequence of snacking (168 more calories per child a day than kids thirty years ago) is the disclaimer at the end: “The surveys depended on parents’ or older children’s recall of what they had eaten, so there …
Jim Taylor on instilling self-esteem in children: “Parents were told to love and praise and reinforce and reward and encourage their children no matter what they did. Unfortunately, this approach created children who were selfish, spoiled, and entitled. . . without [a] sense of ownership, children are thoroughly unprepared for the adulthood because in the …
“Four M&M’s if I poop,” Isaiah explained. This is how we finally got him potty-trained, you see. With bribery. He was getting M&M’s for peeing as well, but then he started doling it out in little dribs and drabs in order to optimize his candy intake. And people think economics is hard to understand.
I always suspected as much, given that my children behave like angry drunks when they can’t have a Hershey bar.
On the one hand, I can appreciate the fear that nefarious people will spirit away Haitian children for wicked ends. On the other hand, I doubt this class of people includes Baptists from Idaho. And there is the sticky question of what constitutes an orphan in Haiti, where parents and other relatives routinely hand over …
This is why I write to you, boys with me, girl who is gone. I write to you because when I am with you, when I look into your soft brown eyes, I do not have the words. They come to me in pieces, in a thought or a dream, and always our time is …
The doctor who claimed a link between child vaccinations and autism has been rebuked by British medical authorities for irresponsible and unethical conduct. The folk theory will continue for generations, unfortunately, because autism tends to emerge around the time children receive vaccinations. For a time my family was in the anti-vaccination camp, until I looked …
Bad faith makes bad medicine, and so does bad math Read More »
I recently saw a news clip about a mother who ordered her son to kill his pet as punishment for bad grades (the son’s, not the gerbil’s). An investigator says the woman was raised by a good family. Maybe so. When it comes time to decide, however, where to place her three children (for she is surely …
A new study suggests parenting reduces blood pressure. Keep in mind that they’re only looking at averages, which means that when you spike after watching your two-year old do a back flip off the bed, and then collapse into a coma at nap time, you come out right about normal on average.
Perhaps most disturbing about Robin West’s attack on homeschooling is that it’s published in a scholarly journal, even if it does come out of the University of Maryland. One might expect more thoughtfulness, even from a second-rate scholar. But instead we get breathless fear mongering like this: “In other words, in much of the country, if …
Joanna Moorhead offers another example of surprisingly good advice flowing from disastrously poor premises. Among her flawed bits of wisdom: “Our children are entirely different from us. . .”; and “. . . the more you hold things to be important and significant and – worst of all – improving, the less they will care …
Leslie Fields muddles about in Calvinism and Darwinism before arriving at good advice for every Christian parent, which is to pray your child toward Heaven. I think “the perfect parent myth,” however, is itself a myth. None of us envisions he can be a perfect parent. But we ache for our children to know God, …
Some of you might recall research floating about suggesting that having children reduces happiness. My own point of view has been that immediate happiness is not the point of a fulfilling life, at least not for the Christian. Now I’ve just come across research (this is always the case for me — a day late …
Judith Woods reminds us that there’s a difference between good parental involvement and hovering overkill (i.e., “helicopter parenting“). We ought to dispense with calling it helicopter parenting, in fact, and call it marionette parenting. Parents should be in the helicopter, hovering about their children’s lives. That’s their bloody job, after all — to supervise, counsel, protect. …
Fewer and fewer people favor spanking children, but increasing numbers of us are fine with abusing them via prescription.
I suppose it’s helpful to hear some expert advice on when my children can have sleepovers and get their own mobile phones, but there’s some other milestones I have in mind, like the age when they can operate a chainsaw, when I can send them down to the basement to catch an intruding snake, and …
. . . hates his child. Didn’t know that was in the Bible, did you? And now a new study suggests that children who are spanked as youngsters go on to be happier and more successful. I’m sure even now a phalanx of Ivy League psychologists with one medicated child a piece are lining up …
I don’t know which is creepier, the fact that U.K. public schools are going to start teaching five year-olds the names of private body parts, or the fact that the U.K. has a “Children’s Secretary.” And given the aberrant practices of ruling politicians and Royals over the years, does anyone in the U.K. really want …
What my kids call theirs are just fine, thank you Read More »
A woman and her boyfriend beat her two-month old baby to death on Christmas Eve in Detroit, and the Wayne County Prosecutor suggests parenting classes might help stem the tide of such abuse. While we lose the traditions and practices of civility and self-restraint, while we laugh at the Church as anything more than a …
He sees her as we circle the parking lot a second time, an aimless, wandering circle, a time-killing circle while we wait for their mother to finish a bit of shopping. I have already seen the woman — a girl, really, with tangled dark hair and downturned gaze. She sits on a little concrete median …
Stephen Caleb is now our willing accomplice in perpetuating the Santa myth. Some of you might recall my last year’s Wall Street Journal piece arguing that there’s something to be said for encouraging, for a time, your child’s belief in the magical. But there’s also a point at which a kid is no longer going …
(I really did intend just to write about zombies and vampires. Somehow this became something else, which long-time readers, as well as my therapist, know happens with me. ) I don’t know why I prefer vampire movies to zombie movies, but I think it has something to do with the pornographic violence that lurks at …
Yesterday morning Isaiah came to our bedroom, enacting his self-appointed role as Mr. Rise and Shine. He stepped on our knees and ankles and flopped about with sharp elbows until he staked a position between us. Isaac followed. Wife rose to roust the rest of the household and begin her daily routine of re-establishing the …
So, what do you do when the Tooth Fairy forgets to visit? This happened recently to Eli, and I had to explain that it was because he forgot to leave the tooth on his bedside table, opting to tie the little Tooth Fairy’s special tooth container to his bedpost instead. Now he has the impression …
The average child between the ages of two and five in the U.S. watches over 32 hours of television per week, according to the latest Nielsen numbers. Nearly five hours a day, in other words. Given the greater sleep needs of children, this means roughly a third of the typical young child’s time is spent …
I must confess that my first reaction, upon hearing about the thug who had his seven year-old tattooed with his gang’s symbol, was that the solution seemed pretty straightforward: a bullet under the chin of the sperm-donor, along with a good home for his son, and if someone will pay for two plane tickets to …
The problem with too many modern commentators on parenting, I think, is their inability to distinguish love from acceptance. This confusion is apparent in Alfie Kohn’s New York Times essay, where he writes: “In 2004, two Israeli researchers, Avi Assor and Guy Roth, joined Edward L. Deci, a leading American expert on the psychology of …
The Columbine killers, a new book says, weren’t twisted little psychopaths who intended to kill dozens. They were one twisted little psychopath and his pathetic sidekick, and they hoped to kill hundreds. But otherwise they were regular kids. USA Today reports this as if it’s news, though the article is strikingly similar to Slate‘s breakdown in 2004. …
We have this plague in our house that bounces about from person to person, lingering mostly in the lungs, with occasional forays to the intestines. I’m thinking that if it stays with us much longer I can claim it as a dependent on next year’s tax forms. Come to think of it, the little bug …
