http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1940395-1,00.html#ixzz0XQYDVrUt

The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting

By Nancy Gibbs

Friday, Nov. 20, 2009

The insanity crept up on us slowly; we just wanted what was best for our kids. We bought macrobiotic cupcakes and hypoallergenic socks, hired tutors to correct a 5-year-old’s “pencil-holding deficiency,” hooked up broadband connections in the treehouse but took down the swing set after the second skinned knee. We hovered over every school, playground and practice field — “helicopter parents,” teachers christened us, a phenomenon that spread to parents of all ages, races and regions. Stores began marketing stove-knob covers and “Kinderkords” (also known as leashes; they allow “three full feet of freedom for both you and your child”) and Baby Kneepads (as if babies don’t come prepadded). The mayor of a Connecticut town agreed to chop down three hickory trees on one block after a woman worried that a stray nut might drop into her new swimming pool, where her nut-allergic grandson occasionally swam. A Texas school required parents wanting to help with the second-grade holiday party to have a background check first. Schools auctioned off the right to cut the carpool line and drop a child directly in front of the building — a spot that in other settings is known as handicapped parking.

We were so obsessed with our kids’ success that parenting turned into a form of product development. Parents demanded that nursery schools offer Mandarin, since it’s never too soon to prepare for the competition of a global economy. High school teachers received irate text messages from parents protesting an exam grade before class was even over; college deans described freshmen as “crispies,” who arrived at college already burned out, and “teacups,” who seemed ready to break at the tiniest stress. (See pictures of the college dorm’s evolution.)

This is what parenting had come to look like at the dawn of the 21st century — just one more extravagance, the Bubble Wrap waiting to burst.

All great rebellions are born of private acts of civil disobedience that inspire rebel bands to plot together. And so there is now a new revolution under way, one aimed at rolling back the almost comical overprotectiveness and overinvestment of moms and dads. The insurgency goes by many names — slow parenting, simplicity parenting, free-range parenting — but the message is the same: Less is more; hovering is dangerous; failure is fruitful. You really want your children to succeed? Learn when to leave them alone. When you lighten up, they’ll fly higher. We’re often the ones who hold them down.

A backlash against overparenting had been building for years, but now it reflects a new reality. Since the onset of the Great Recession, according to a CBS News poll, a third of parents have cut their kids’ extracurricular activities. They downsized, downshifted and simplified because they had to — and often found, much to their surprise, that they liked it. When a TIME poll last spring asked how the recession had affected people’s relationships with their kids, nearly four times as many people said relationships had gotten better as said they’d gotten worse. “This is one of those moments when everything is on the table, up for grabs,” says Carl Honoré, whose book Under Pressure: Rescuing Our Children from the Culture of Hyper-Parenting is a gospel of the slow-parenting movement. He likens the sudden awareness to the feeling you get when you wake up after a long night carousing, the lights go on, and you realize you’re a mess. “That horrible moment of self-recognition is where we are culturally. I wanted parents to realize they are not alone in thinking this is insanity, and show there’s another way.” (See the 25 best back-to-school gadgets.)

How We Got Here

Overparenting had been around long before Douglas MacArthur’s mom Pinky moved with him to West Point in 1899 and took an apartment near the campus, supposedly so she could watch him with a telescope to be sure he was studying. But in the 1990s something dramatic happened, and the needle went way past the red line. From peace and prosperity, there arose fear and anxiety; crime went down, yet parents stopped letting kids out of their sight; the percentage of kids walking or biking to school dropped from 41% in 1969 to 13% in 2001. Death by injury has dropped more than 50% since 1980, yet parents lobbied to take the jungle gyms out of playgrounds, and strollers suddenly needed the warning label “Remove Child Before Folding.” Among 6-to-8-year-olds, free playtime dropped 25% from 1981 to ‘97, and homework more than doubled. Bookstores offered Brain Foods for Kids: Over 100 Recipes to Boost Your Child’s Intelligence. The state of Georgia sent every newborn home with the CD Build Your Baby’s Brain Through the Power of Music, after researchers claimed to have discovered that listening to Mozart could temporarily help raise IQ scores by as many as 9 points. By the time the frenzy had reached its peak, colleges were installing “Hi, Mom!” webcams in common areas, and employers like Ernst & Young were creating “parent packs” for recruits to give Mom and Dad, since they were involved in negotiating salary and benefits.

Once obsessing about kids’ safety and success became the norm, a kind of orthodoxy took hold, and heaven help the heretics — the ones who were brave enough to let their kids venture outside without Secret Service protection. Just ask Lenore Skenazy, who to this day, when you Google “America’s Worst Mom,” fills the first few pages of results — all because one day last year she let her 9-year-old son ride the New York City subway alone. A newspaper column she wrote about it somehow ignited a global firestorm over what constitutes reasonable risk. She had reporters calling from China, Israel, Australia, Malta. (”Malta! An island!” she marvels. “Who’s stalking the kids there? Pirates?”) Skenazy decided to fight back, arguing that we have lost our ability to assess risk. By worrying about the wrong things, we do actual damage to our children, raising them to be anxious and unadventurous or, as she puts it, “hothouse, mama-tied, danger-hallucinating joy extinguishers.”

Skenazy, a Yale-educated mom who with her husband is raising two boys in New York City, had ingested all the same messages as the rest of us. Her sons’ school once held a pre-field-trip assembly explaining exactly how close to a hospital the children would be at all times. She confesses to being “at least part Sikorsky,” hiring a football coach for a son’s birthday and handing out mouth guards as party favors. But when the Today show had her on the air to discuss her subway decision, interviewer Ann Curry turned to the camera and asked, “Is she an enlightened mom or a really bad one?” (See pictures of a diverse group of American teens.)

From that day and the food fight that followed, she launched her Free Range Kids blog, which eventually turned into her own Dangerous Book for Parents: Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry. There is no rational reason, she argues, that a generation of parents who grew up walking alone to school, riding mass transit, trick-or-treating, teeter-tottering and selling Girl Scout cookies door to door should be forbidding their kids to do the same. But somehow, she says, “10 is the new 2. We’re infantilizing our kids into incompetence.” She celebrates seat belts and car seats and bike helmets and all the rational advances in child safety. It’s the irrational responses that make her crazy, like when Dear Abby endorses the idea, as she did in August, that each morning before their kids leave the house, parents take a picture of them. That way, if they are kidnapped, the police will have a fresh photo showing what clothes they were wearing. Once the kids make it home safe and sound, you can delete the picture and take a new one the next morning.

That advice may seem perfectly sensible to parents bombarded by heartbreaking news stories about missing little girls and the predator next door. But too many parents, says Skenazy, have the math all wrong. Refusing to vaccinate your children, as millions now threaten to do in the case of the swine flu, is statistically reckless; on the other hand, there are no reports of a child ever being poisoned by a stranger handing out tainted Halloween candy, and the odds of being kidnapped and killed by a stranger are about 1 in 1.5 million. When parents confront you with “How can you let him go to the store alone?,” she suggests countering with “How can you let him visit your relatives?” (Some 80% of kids who are molested are victims of friends or relatives.) Or ride in the car with you? (More than 430,000 kids were injured in motor vehicles last year.) “I’m not saying that there is no danger in the world or that we shouldn’t be prepared,” she says. “But there is good and bad luck and fate and things beyond our ability to change. The way kids learn to be resourceful is by having to use their resources.” Besides, she says with a smile, “a 100%-safe world is not only impossible. It’s nowhere you’d want to be.” (See pictures of eighth-graders being recruited for college basketball.)

Dispatches from the Front Lines

Eleven parents are sitting in a circle in an airy, glass-walled living room in south Austin, Texas, eating organic, gluten-free, nondairy coconut ice cream. This is a Slow Family Living class, taught by perinatal psychologist Carrie Contey and Bernadette Noll. “Our whole culture,” says Contey, 38, “is geared around ‘Is your kid making the benchmarks?’ There’s this fear of ‘Is my kid’s head the right size?’ People think there’s some mythical Good Mother out there that they aren’t living up to and that it’s hurting their child. I just want to pull the plug on that.”

The parents seem relieved to hear it. Matt, a textbook editor, reports that he and his wife quit a book club because it caused too much stress on book-club nights, and stopped fussing about how the house looks, which brings nods all around the room: let go of perfectionism in all its tyranny. Margaret, a publishing executive, tells her own near-miss story of how she stepped back from the brink of insanity. On her son’s fourth birthday, she says, “I’m like ‘Oh, my God, he’s eligible for Suzuki!’ I literally got on the phone and called 12 Suzuki teachers,” she says, before realizing the nightmare she was creating for herself and her child. Shutting down your inner helicopter isn’t easy. “This is not a shift in perspective that occurs overnight,” Matt admits after class. “And it’s not every day that I consciously sit down and ask myself hard questions about how I want family life to be slower or better.”

Fear is a kind of parenting fungus: invisible, insidious, perfectly designed to decompose your peace of mind. Fear of physical danger is at least subject to rational argument; fear of failure is harder to hose down. What could be more natural than worrying that your child might be trampled by the great, scary, globally competitive world into which she will one day be launched? It is this fear that inspires parents to demand homework in preschool, produce the snazzy bilingual campaign video for the third-grader’s race for class rep, continue to provide the morning wake-up call long after he’s headed off to college.
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Parents Behaving Badly

Some of the hovering is driven by memory and demography. This generation of parents, born after 1964, waited longer to marry and had fewer children. Families are among the smallest in history, which means our genetic eggs are in fewer baskets and we guard them all the more zealously. Helicopter parents can be found across all income levels, all races and ethnicities, says Patricia Somers of the University of Texas at Austin, who spent more than a year studying the species at the college level. “There are even helicopter grandparents,” she notes, who turn up with their elementary-school grandchildren for college-information sessions aimed at juniors and seniors. (See pictures of Barack Obama’s college years.)

Nor is this phenomenon limited to ZIP codes where every Volvo wagon just has to have a University of Chicago sticker on it. “I’m having exactly the same conversations with coaches, teachers, parents, counselors, whether I’m in Wichita or northern Canada or South America,” says Honoré. His own revelation came while listening to the feedback about his son in kindergarten. It was fine, but nothing stellar — until he got to the art room and the teacher began raving about how creative his son was, pointing out his sketches that she’d displayed as models for other students. Then, Honoré recalls, “she dropped the G-bomb: ‘He’s a gifted artist,’ she told us, and it was one of those moments when you don’t hear anything else. I just saw the word gifted in neon with my son’s name …” So he hurried home and Googled the names of art tutors and eagerly told his son all about the special person who would help him draw even better. “He looks at me like I’m from outer space,” Honoré says. “‘I just wanna draw,’ he tells me. ‘Why do grownups have to take over everything?’ ”

“That was a searing epiphany,” Honoré concludes. “I didn’t like what I saw.” He now writes and lectures about the many fruits of slowing down, citing research that suggests the brain in its relaxed state is more creative, makes more nuanced connections and is ripe for eureka moments. “With children,” he argues, “they need that space not to be entertained or distracted. What boredom does is take away the noise … and leave them with space to think deeply, invent their own game, create their own distraction. It’s a useful trampoline for children to learn how to get by.” (See pictures of college mascots.)

Other studies reinforce the importance of play as an essential protein in a child’s emotional diet; were it not, argue some scientists, it would not have persisted across species and millenniums, perhaps as a way to practice for adulthood, to build leadership, sociability, flexibility, resilience — even as a means of literally shaping the brain and its pathways. Dr. Stuart Brown, a psychiatrist and the founder of the National Institute for Play — who has a treehouse above his office — recalls in a recent book how managers at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) noticed the younger engineers lacked problem-solving skills, though they had top grades and test scores. Realizing the older engineers had more play experience as kids — they’d taken apart clocks, built stereos, made models — JPL eventually incorporated questions about job applicants’ play backgrounds into interviews. “If you look at what produces learning and memory and well-being” in life, Brown has argued, “play is as fundamental as any other aspect.” The American Academy of Pediatrics warns that the decrease in free playtime could carry health risks: “For some children, this hurried lifestyle is a source of stress and anxiety and may even contribute to depression.” Not to mention the epidemic of childhood obesity in a generation of kids who never just go out and play.

Remember, Mistakes Are Good

Many educators have been searching for ways to tell parents when to back off. It’s a tricky line to walk, since studies link parents’ engagement in a child’s education to better grades, higher test scores, less substance abuse and better college outcomes. Given a choice, teachers say, overinvolved parents are preferable to invisible ones. The challenge is helping parents know when they are crossing a line.

Every teacher can tell the story of a student who needed to fail in order to be reassured that the world wouldn’t come to an end. Yet teachers now face a climate in which parents ghostwrite students’ homework, airbrush their lab reports — then lobby like a K Street hired gun for their child to be assigned to certain classes. Principal Karen Faucher instituted a “no rescue” policy at Belinder Elementary in Prairie Village, Kans., when she noticed the front-office table covered each day with forgotten lunch boxes and notebooks, all brought in by parents. The tipping point was the day a mom rushed in with a necklace meant to complete her daughter’s coordinated outfit. “I’m lucky — I deal with intelligent parents here,” Faucher says. “But you saw very intelligent parents doing very stupid things. It was almost like a virus. The parents knew that was not what they intended to do, but they couldn’t help themselves.” A guidance counselor at a Washington prep school urges parents to find a mentor of a certain disposition. “Make friends with parents,” she advises, “who don’t think their kids are perfect.” Or with parents who are willing to exert some peer pressure of their own: when schools debate whether to drop recess to free up more test-prep time, parents need to let a school know if they think that’s a trade-off worth making.

A certain amount of hovering is understandable when it comes to young children, but many educators are concerned when it persists through middle school and high school. Some teachers talk of “Stealth Fighter Parents,” who no longer hover constantly but can be counted on for a surgical strike just when the high school musical is being cast or the starting lineup chosen. And senior year is the witching hour: “I think for a lot of parents, college admissions is like their grade report on how they did as a parent,” observes Madeleine Rhyneer, dean of students at Willamette University in Oregon. Many colleges have had to invent a “director of parent programs” to run regional groups so moms and dads can meet fellow college parents or attend special classes where they can learn all the school cheers. The Ithaca College website offers a checklist of advice: “Visit (but not too often)”; “Communicate (but not too often)”; “Don’t worry (too much)”; “Expect change”; “Trust them.”

Teresa Meyer, a former PTA president at Hickman High in Columbia, Mo., has just sent the youngest of her three daughters to college. “They made it very clear: You are not invited to the registration part where they’re requesting classes. That’s their job.” She’s come to appreciate the please-back-off vibe she’s encountered. “I hope that we’re getting away from the helicopter parenting,” Meyer says. “Our philosophy is ‘Give ‘em the morals, give ‘em the right start, but you’ve got to let them go.’ They deserve to live their own lives.” (See the 10 best iPhone apps for dads.)

What You Can Do

Among the most powerful weapons in the war against the helicopter brigade is the explosion of websites where parents can confide, confess and affirm their sense that lowering expectations is not the same as letting your children down. So you gave up trying to keep your 2-year-old from eating the dog’s food? You banged your son’s head on the doorway while giving him a piggyback ride? Your daughter hates school and is so scared of failure she won’t even try to ride a bike? “I just want to throw in the towel and give up on her,” one mom posts on Truuconfessions.com. “This is NOT what I thought I was signing up for.” Honestbaby.com sells baby T-shirts that say “I’ll walk when I’m good and ready.” Given how many books and websites drove a generation of parents mad with anxiety, a certain balance is restored to the universe when it becomes conventional for people to brag about what bad parents they are.

The revolutionary leaders are careful about offering too much advice. Parents have gotten plenty of that, and one of the goals of this new movement is to give parents permission to disagree or at least follow different roads. “People feel there’s somehow a secret formula for parenting, and if we just read enough books and spend enough money and drive ourselves hard enough, we’ll find it, and all will be O.K.,” Honoré observes. “Can you think of anything more sinister, since every child is so different, every family is different? Parents need to block out the sound and fury from the media and other parents, find that formula that fits your family best.”

Kim John Payne, author of Simplicity Parenting, teaches seminars on how to peel back the layers of cultural pressure that weigh down families. He and his coaches will even go into your home, weed out your kids’ stuff, sort out their schedule, turn off the screens and help your family find space you didn’t know you had, like a master closet reorganizer for the soul. But any parent can do it just as well. “We need to quit bombarding them with choices way before their ability to handle them,” Payne says. The average child has 150 toys. “When you cut the toys and clothes back … the kids really like it.” He aims for a cut of roughly 75%: he tosses out the broken toys and gives away the outgrown ones and the busy, noisy, blinking ones that do the playing for you. Pare down to the classics that leave the most to the child’s imagination and create a kind of toy library kids can visit and swap from. Then build breaks of calm into their schedule so they can actually enjoy the toys. (See how to plan for retirement at any age.)

Finally, there is the gift of humility, which parents need to offer one another. We can fuss and fret and shuttle and shelter, but in the end, what we do may not matter as much as we think. Freakonomics authors Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt analyzed a Department of Education study tracking the progress of kids through fifth grade and found that things like how much parents read to their kids, how much TV kids watch and whether Mom works make little difference. “Frequent museum visits would seem to be no more productive than trips to the grocery store,” they argued in USA Today. “By the time most parents pick up a book on parenting technique, it’s too late. Many of the things that matter most were decided long ago — what kind of education a parent got, what kind of spouse he wound up with and how long they waited to have children.”

If you embrace this rather humbling reality, it will be easier to follow the advice D.H. Lawrence offered back in 1918: “How to begin to educate a child. First rule: leave him alone. Second rule: leave him alone. Third rule: leave him alone. That is the whole beginning.”

Of course, that was easy for him to say. He had no kids.

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Chalk D H Lawrence on the famous and childfree list. It is good to Skenazy mentioned in the article, whose animadversions on helicopter parenting is world famous. Overparenting has indeed caused more harm that good for today’s children. Parents need to give their children breathing space so they grow into mature adults and not be smothered to death. There are no pedophiles or predators around the corner of your house. No child ever died from scraping a knee. Once new parents learn that children are highly physically resilient, maybe they will back off, get a life of their own, and stop destroying the lives of their children who they claim to love and care about so much.

http://www.wthr.com/Global/story.asp?S=11568681

Statewide survey shows “ball tapping” problem widespread

Posted: Nov 24, 2009

WTHR’s survey of school nurses shows ball tapping is common in Indiana middle schools and high schools. WTHR’s survey of school nurses shows ball tapping is common in Indiana middle schools and high schools.

Jake Arend endured years of repeated ball tapping by classmates, resulting in surgery. Jake Arend endured years of repeated ball tapping by classmates, resulting in surgery.

Jake’s father says parents must talk to their kids about the problem. Jake’s father says parents must talk to their kids about the problem.

Mary Conway says teachers, principals and school nurses must be more aware of ball tapping, too. Mary Conway says teachers, principals and school nurses must be more aware of ball tapping, too.

It’s a disturbing game with devastating consequences, and a new WTHR survey suggests it is rampant in Indiana schools.

“Ball tapping” is the act of intentionally hitting or kicking a male in the genitals. Earlier this month, an Eyewitness News investigation showed the game has become commonplace in some area schools, resulting in serious injuries for students.

As part of the investigation, WTHR also conducted a statewide survey of school nurses. The results are in, and they show the problem of ball tapping is more common and widespread than many school officials had realized.

“New perspective”

School nurses from 163 Indiana schools participated in the anonymous survey, and 33% of those nurses said they’re aware of ball tapping happening at their school within the past twelve months.

But a closer look at the statistics shows the problem is much more serious in some schools than in others.

23% of school nurses who work at the elementary level say they’ve seen or heard of ball tapping at their school. That number nearly doubles in high schools, where 43% of school nurses say they’ve seen it.

And in middle schools, 62% of school nurses said they’re aware of students engaged in ball tapping.

“I would have expected it to be a low number,” said Mary Conway, president of the Indiana Association of School Nurses. “I would not have expected [school nurses] to have had much experience with it at all … because I think it’s something most kids won’t talk about with a nurse. I’m very surprised by this whole issue and it’s given me a new perspective.”

Among the 72 middle school and high school nurses who participated in WTHR’s survey, 50% said they had seen students who came to the school clinic seeking assistance related to an incident of ball tapping. Half of those nurses also reported they had observed the problem several (more than two) times each school year, and about 10% said it happens at their school on a daily or weekly basis.

Some nurses offered comments with their survey responses. A sample of those comments provides insight into what those nurses are dealing with:

* “This is not a new situation. It has popped up periodically in our school system from year to year. Students seem to think it is “funny” or “harmless”. We have gone to a great length to educate our students (esp. middle school aged students) that this is not acceptable conduct and that it can result in horrible injury. It seems to be a middle grade mentality type of thing. We have issues with both boys “tapping” other boys, and girls “tapping” boys because it gives an immediate reaction.”
* “I have had on occasion had a student come in complaining of pain in that area, and never a reasonable explanation of why he hurts in that area. I am better informed to possibly identify that this is taking place.”
* “I have seen it done both maliciously and just as guys goofing around. I heard from one student that he had to have one testicle surgically removed after being kicked in his genitals during summer school. Our school may treat this as an assault if a student or family complains that it is done in a malicious manner. It is probably more often overlooked as horseplay.”
* “I had a case early this school year of an injured boy, with that type injury, but it was claimed to be accidental & no adults witnessed it. Now, I wonder.”
* “We had a local male pediatrician talk to the boys about this last year and we have seen a dramatic decrease in incidence of this behavior since then. He talked specifically about the physical harm that occurs and it was very effective. I would recommend a similar discussion at other schools experiencing this problem.”

“Just want to fall and cry”

Jake Arend doesn’t need survey results to convince him ball tapping is a serious problem.

Classmates began hitting him in the groin when he was in sixth grade and it continued for years.

“I was just the scrawny kid everybody picked on to make themselves look better,” Arend said. “If you get hit in that area, you just want to fall and cry, but I tried not to.”

By the time Jake got to Danville High School, he says he was being ball tapped every week – sometimes even three or four times a day.

“Sometimes it would be just the flick of a wrist, and there was one time I actually got hit in the area with a socket wrench,” he recalled. “When I got hit with that, I actually just hit the ground and just laid there in the fetal position for five to ten minutes for the pain to go away, then I got up and went to class.”

Jake never told his parents and he never told his teachers, fearing the bullies at school would hit him ever harder if they got in trouble.

“I just thought ‘It’s pain. I’ll deal with it,’” said Arend.

When Jake graduated in May 2009, he thought all that pain would be a thing of the past. It was just getting started.

Emergency surgery

In late October, Jake was rushed to Hendricks Regional Hospital in Danville where doctors performed an emergency operation. Years of enduring ball tapping had finally taken its toll. Undetected scar tissue had completely sealed off Jake’s urinary tract, resulting in horrifying pain.

“It was a pain like I’ve never felt before. It was like taking a knife and just jamming it down in your stomach and dragging it all the way down through your genital area,” he said. “The urologist said the signs can go undetected for years until it hits you like it hit me.”

Doctors placed a catheter in Jake’s urethra and told him he will need another operation to fix all the damage caused by repeated blows to the groin.

For Jake’s father, that recent trip to the emergency room was the first time he had ever heard of ball tapping. “I never in a million years would have thought this was happening to him,” said Eddie Arend. “Evidently it’s happening at a lot of schools. It’s not just his school.”

School nurses confirm that’s true.

“A real wakeup call”

“It’s a more serious problem than what I had imagined,” Conway said. “I had no idea the kids were that violent with it. Watching your video, I was appalled and the survey is somewhat surprising.”

Conway says the Eyewitness News investigation and survey should be “a real wakeup call” to schools and school nurses across Indiana. She says the IASN board of directors will further research the issue because Conway believes more education and awareness is needed for teachers, administrators and school nurses to help protect students. 52% of school nurses who completed the 13 Investigates survey said they had never heard of ball tapping prior to learning of WTHR’s investigation.

“I’m surprised nothing has really been said about it,” admitted Conway. “I think any issue that impacts health in a permanent way needs to be addressed.”

Jake’s father says parents must address it, too.

“A lot of times as parents, do we forget to talk to our own children? I guess we do,” he said. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to take away his pain. I just never knew it was happening and the sad truth is, [Jake] has to pay the rest of his life for this.”

It’s a costly and terribly painful lesson Jake wants other students to remember.

“If you’re in school right now and you’re dealing with it, don’t be afraid to say something,” Arend said. “Ask teachers, go to counselors, ask the nurses … I wish I told somebody.”

For advice about how to talk to your kids about ball tapping, see WTHR’s original investigation.

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Back in my day, when I was a child, I was taught I was to never hit or touch another child for any reason unless it was in self defense. These boys will grow up sterile if they don’t wind up being eunuchs. Parunts out there, do try to teach your child to act civilized and not like the Golden Sprog from Christ. These people are just getting themselves looked down upon more and more every day. Teachers need to take back their right to discipline children at school. And from wherever these kids are learning to kick each other in the privates, needs to terminated immediately.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2009/11/23/toronto-baby-pearson-fall.html\

Mother lost grip in child’s airport fall: police

Family was travelling to Argentina to get infant baptized, says friend

Monday, November 23, 2009
CBC News

A 15-month-old boy died Sunday night after wriggling out of his mother’s arms and falling about 15 metres at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport.

The child fell from the upper departures level in Terminal One to the lower arrivals level at around 7 p.m. Sunday, said Peel Regional Police Sgt. Peter Riemenschneider.

Peel Regional Police Const. J.P. Valade said Monday that the mother was holding the boy when she turned to pay attention to the toddler’s four-year-old sibling. The mother lost her grip on the child when he began to wiggle in her arms, he said.

The child was rushed to hospital with serious injuries, but died late Sunday night.

“The father just ran. He didn’t even look at the mother, and he just ran and held the baby in his arms until the ambulance got here,” said Karima Lalani, who works at the airport.

“I heard the screams. It was horrible. It was horrible. I haven’t slept all night.”

Const. Jodi Dawson of Peel Regional Police told CBC News that there were no signs of foul play. “At this point, it appears to be a really unfortunate accident,” Dawson said.

Guillermo Bellido, the best friend of the baby’s father, identified the boy as Lucca Romano. He said Lucca’s parents, Flavio and Veronica, and his four-year-old brother, Massimo, were devastated.

At the time of the accident, they were on their way to Argentina to have the baby baptized, Bellido said.

Family moved from Winnipeg

Bellido told CBC News the family moved to Burlington, Ont., from Winnipeg nine days ago.

A bank account has been set up in Winnipeg to accept donations to help the family with travel and funeral expenses, said Bellido. They plan to bury Lucca in Argentina, he said.

They had lived in Winnipeg for about 10 years, Bellido said. Both Lucca and Massimo were born in Winnipeg, he added.

A makeshift memorial was set up Monday morning near the area where the baby fell.

Bellido said cash donations can be made in person at any TD Canada Trust Branch in Canada for The Romanos, using account no. 6977-6326978.

Cheques, made out to Guillermo Bellido in trust for The Romanos, should be mailed to TD Canada Trust Vista Place, 1631 St. Mary’s Road, Winnipeg, MB, R2N1Z4.
With files from The Canadian Press
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Exactly how does a child wriggle from the mother’s arms to its death? Why was the mother giving her attention to her four year old when her husband should have been doing that job? There is a lot of wtf’ery going on here, not to mention the fact the family was on its way to Argentina to get their baby baptized. I have never heard of a child being so squirmish as to find its way from its mother’s arms and fall over a guardrail. It sounds to me like this case really needs to be looked into.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2741085/Mum-of-13-I-wont-stop

-until-Ive-had-twins.html

Mum of 13: I won’t stop until I’ve had twins

November 22, 2009

A MUM-OF-13 who costs taxpayers £50,000 a YEAR has said she won’t stop having kids until she gives birth to twins.

Baby machine Sara Foss, 39, is due to give birth to her 14TH child in April but will try to get pregnant again as soon as possible to realise her dream.

The brazen mum said today: “All I’ve ever wanted is twins or triplets. It’s my biggest wish, and I’m going to keep trying until I do it.

“It would be fantastic. In fact, I won’t stop trying until I’ve done it. I love having babies - it’s the most wonderful thing in the world.”

Allowance

Sara was 16 when she had her first baby, Patrick, in 1986 - but, traumatised by giving birth, she vowed not to have any more children.

It was a decade before she changed her mind and had a second son, Stephen - and she has almost averaged a birth a YEAR ever since.

She said: “I got over my fear of labour and just started having kids. They’re all brilliant. They don’t give me any bother. They’re fantastic.”

Her mammoth brood now comprises Patrick, 23, Stephen, 13, Malachai, 12, Peppermint, 11, Echo, 10, Eli, nine, Rogue, eight, Frodo, seven, Morpheus, five, Artemis, four, Blackbird, three, Baudelaire, two, and nine-month-old Voorhees.

All bar Patrick share a three-bedroom council house with their mother and father, Sara’s long-term partner Stephen Smith, 40.

Even though Stephen works as a canal boat builder, the couple receive £4,200 in tax credits and family allowance every month.

Yet Sara, who has just run up a £5,000 bill buying her children’s Christmas gifts at Toys R Us, claims they have to watch every penny.

She insisted: “I had been saving up all year so that we would have enough money to get all the presents. It was really hard work.

“We were in the shop for hours. Stephen had to do several trips home to take back what we had bought. I had blisters afterwards.”

Each week the family forks out around £600 on groceries - including 32 loaves of bread, 75lb of potatoes and 126 pints of milk.

They also buy 36 rolls of toilet paper, three boxes of washing powder and eight boxes of cereal during their regular supermarket shop.

The annual school uniform bill is £2,000, and their holiday at Butlin’s costs even more - mainly because they have to hire a minibus.

Sara, of Derby, begins her chores at 4am every morning and keeps the house spotlessly clean to avoid being tagged a layabout scrounger.

She said: “If people saw us living in a pigsty they would say that we were a scrounging, low-life family who begged from the State.

“They would say I was a slapper for having so many children and that I couldn’t even be bothered to keep the house looking nice.

“And that’s so not true. Even when I’m straight I can’t put my feet up. I’ve been known to take down curtains at midnight and wash them.”

She added: “We have a lot of bunkbeds and cots. All the furniture in the bedrooms is on wheels so that we can move it at bedtime.

“Baudelaire sleeps in a travel cot, and a couple of the lads use an airbed. It’s a squash and a squeeze, but it’s cosy. It’s home.”

Now 20 weeks’ pregnant with baby number 14, Sara is preparing to welcome the clan’s latest arrival - and already planning for more.

She said: “I wanted two - that’s the disappointing part of this pregnancy. But there’s always next time. I’m going to keep trying, that’s for sure.”
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Converted to American dollars, £50,000 comes to about $82,000.00 a year. That is indeed an obscene amount when you consider Sara Foss is a social parasite in the UK. That sort of thing would never be tolerated here. This is just one more reason the Labour Party is becoming more and more unpopular in the UK. It is not bad enough when a woman like Foss lusts for twins as she has lusted to have all of those other children. She clearly makes babies just to get extra welfare checks a month even though her partner Stephen works. It is a shame he does not have the backbone to say “No more babies to her.” Maybe the UK can legislate a law mandating women to get sterilized. Babies are one thing no women “needs.”

http://www.parentdish.com/2009/11/18/gender-disappointment-when-
parents-dont-get-the-child-they-wan/

Gender Disappointment: When Parents Don’t Get The Child They Wanted

by Amy Hatch (Subscribe to Amy Hatch’s posts) Nov 18th 2009 12:44PM

Parents wait with bated breath to learn the gender of their unborn baby — and sometimes, the answer isn’t what they wanted to hear. Gender disappointment is a real and often heartbreaking matter for mothers and fathers who had their hearts set on a boy or a girl.

We chatted about this in the office when our colleague, an AOL editor who’s expecting his first child, admitted that had his heart set on a girl.

“Everybody in my family has girls,” he tells us, preferring to remain anonymous. “I guess we need a boy in the family, but when the doctor told us we were having a boy, I was so disappointed.”He says he knows he shouldn’t be upset, and that as long as his son is healthy he’ll be a happy dad, indeed. But that doesn’t stop him from thinking about what could have been.

Joyce Venis is a psychiatric nurse in Princeton, N.J., who works with parents who have similar reactions. Gender disappointment is often dismissed or not discussed, she recently told MSNBC, because parents feel they will appear ungrateful.

Venis adds that it’s not wrong for parents to hope for a specific gender, and it does not mean that they don’t want the child. “They have the right to want the certain sex,” she tells MSNBC. But if the problem is severe enough to cause symptoms of depression, parents should not be ashamed to seek the advice of a therapist.

In some cultures, gender disappointment takes on even greater import. In China, for example, where the government limits the number of children parents can have, boys are preferred because they continue the family line. In too many cases there, parents have been known to abandon or even kill their newborn baby girls.

Back in America, our colleague knows that he’s lucky, and jokes about how his wife tells him to stop talking about having a girl in front of their unborn son.

“She really wanted a boy,” he says. “She always tells me when I talk about it, ‘The baby can hear you!’” He adds that one reason he wanted a little girl is so that he could see a “cute little version of his wife running around, but I’m still super excited either way.”

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The one thing that really stands out here is when the colleague admits he wants a girl just so he can have a miniature version of his wife. Now how is that for living up to the standards of the childfree? That is eaxctly something I would say: the man wants a child just so he could have a miniature version of his wife. God forbid he has a child to actually love. I guess the miniature version takes precedence over everything else for people like this colleague. That just goes to show you why people have children for all of the wrong reasons. But I am of the school of thought that people do not have babies just to have someone to love; they just want a tiny version of themselves to lavish certain things upon that the adult version never received as a child. It must be that $800.00 stroller. No, it might as well be a “Look at what I have!” statement to the world.

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/news/575565/This-11-year-old-schoolgirl
-had-a-baby-on-her-wedding-day.html?mode=error

This 11-year-old schoolgirl had a baby … on her wedding day

By Jane Atkinson in Sliven, Bulgaria, 01/11/2009

HOLDING up her tiny baby for the camera, 11-year-old bride Kordeza declares: “I’m not going to play with toys any more - I have a new toy now.”

For the youngster barely old enough to start senior school has just become a MOTHER after going into labour during her WEDDING to her teenage boyfriend.

She was still wearing her flowing white dress and tiara when she arrived at hospital and gave birth to 5lb 8oz Violeta.

But after spending the night with her newborn, Kordeza - who you can see on video below - changed back into her wedding dress and nipped out to finish the ceremony.

And the Zhelyazkova family couldn’t be happier for their child bride - the youngest girl ever to give birth in a city where 13-year-old mums are routine.

After leaving hospital this week, Kordeza - who fell pregnant within two weeks of her 11th birthday - spoke exclusively to the News of the World.

With proud husband Jeliazko Dimitrov, 19, at her side, Kordeza admitted: “It feels strange to be a mum and have a baby.

“I used to play with my toys but now she is my new toy. She is so beautiful, I love her. Violeta is the child and I must grow up. I am not going back to school - I am a mother now.”

Kordeza met Jeliazko in the playground of her Roma gypsy school in Sliven, Bulgaria, when he rescued her from bullies.

The worried teenager - who is facing up to six years in prison for having sex with a minor - wrings his hands as he recalled: “I was walking past the school when I saw some boys mocking her and I told them to leave her alone.

“Then she arranged to meet me and asked me out on our first date. I thought she was 15. She didn’t tell me she was 11.”

Kordeza giggled: “I didn’t want to say in case he wouldn’t fancy me.”

The pair went on their first date to their local park then met at his mum Violeta’s house near the gypsy ghetto where they both grew up.

But within a WEEK of them meeting, their daughter was conceived. Kordeza admitted: “I haven’t had sex education classes and I didn’t know how to get pregnant. I’d never had a boyfriend and I’d never heard of condoms.

“I didn’t know I was pregnant until my grandmother saw I had put on weight. I just thought I’d eaten too many burgers.”

By then Kordeza was five months pregnant and living with her grandmother Dida, 55, because her parents were both working on vineyards in Spain.

Home is a ramshackle one- bedroom bungalow with no bathroom tucked away in a labyrinth of filthy alleys in the ghetto - ironically called Hope.

Dida said: “I noticed she was getting fatter and asked if she was OK. But she’s a shy girl and she just shrugged at me. I never imagined she was having sex. She’s the kind of girl that likes to play on the computer and loves her schoolwork - her favourite subject is maths.

“I was still worried though and when she told me she had met a boy I bought her a pregnancy test. I hit the roof when it was positive, and she cried and cried.”

Incredibly, it is not uncommon for Roma girls to fall pregnant in their teens. Sliven is the underage mums capital of Europe with 177 cases last year.

Dida, who herself married at 13, explained: “It’s normal for our girls to have babies young. It’s our tradition. But I didn’t want it for my Kordeza - I felt she was too young.”

When Jeliazko found out he was going to be a dad he dashed back from Spain, where he had been working on farms.

He recalled: “I was really scared. We didn’t plan to have sex or a baby although I fell in love with Kordeza the moment I saw her.”

Her mum Raina, 33, said: “I fainted when I found out Kordeza was pregnant. I couldn’t believe it but I knew I had to stand by her.”

The family quickly planned a three-day Roma wedding for October 22 - so Kordeza and Jeliazko could be married before the baby was born.

His mum Violeta, 36, married at 13 and had him when she was 14. She explained: “It is so important for our women to be married when they have a baby.”

Nobody presides over the ceremony, but Roma gypsies believe the weddings - where most brides are aged 14 to 17 - are legal in their tradition and more important than a conventional service.

But as the families marked the second day of celebrations, Kordeza went into labour a week early. She explained: “I had been having pain in the morning and a couple of hours into the wedding it got worse.”

She was rushed to hospital and gave birth 20 minutes later. Kordeza said: “It was quite easy but painful too. I was very happy when I saw her. She has a nose like me and hair like Jeliazko.”

The new mum then returned to the ceremony in time to be married before getting back to the hospital to feed her baby.

Both grandmothers will be guardians of baby Violeta, easing the concerns of local social services who initially wanted to take the baby into care. Kordeza and her daughter will receive £70 a month in state benefits.

Hospital doctor Sonya Mihaylova confirmed: “This is the youngest child who ever gave birth in our ward.”

Raina said: “Kordeza is still a child and I hope to do everything I can to make sure she isn’t robbed of her free time.”

Prison

But her new husband Jeliazko is not allowed to live with her as the Prosecutor’s Office is investigating the case. For having sex with a girl under 14 he could face two to six years in prison.

Jeliazko said: “I’m scared. I want to look after my wife and child. Instead I may be going to prison. I made a mistake but I am not going to apologise for that because now I have beautiful Violeta.” Raina added: “Everybody seems to be against Kordeza and Jeliazko but what have they done wrong? They are a young couple in love.”

They are already planning their future together. Jeliazko said: “We know that having a baby is a big responsibility. My wife is young but I will make sure that I look after both of them if the law allows me.”

And he dreams of giving his daughter a better future. “I am going to work hard and make sure we all have a good life,” he promised. “I want Violeta to be educated, to be able to read and write. She was born famous and maybe she will stay famous like becoming a doctor who invents brilliant medicine or saves lives.

“Whatever she does I will be proud of her - she is my little girl.”

Kordeza adds: “I don’t want more children right away. I think one is enough for now.”

The family are planning a huge party next week to celebrate Violeta’s birth. Jeliazko’s mum said: “We want to show her off. I just hope that my son does not go to prison.

“He is a good boy and a hard worker. He loves his wife and he will support his baby.

“I don’t think it matters that they are young. They are in love with each other and the baby. Surely that is enough.”
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“My daughter is my new toy.” Excuse me? I thought it was bad enough American women consider their babies to be the newest Louis Vuitton handbag, but toy? What the hell is wrong with this child? I have nothing against gypsies, but this is outrageous. To top that off, her husband is facing prison time. What a prize he turned out to be - not. Kordeza’s mother is only 33 and a grandmother. I can’t see that that is somethig to be proud of or brag about - all that does is give her a bad image of having babies at such a young age. Most gypsies are dirt poor and live in extreme poverty due to lack of education. What’s even worse is that these people have bought into that myth of “my child will grow up to cure cancer one day” myth. It just goes to show you even gypsies are not above the child and baby-centered culture of the planet Earth. Such sadness for an 11 year old! Her life will be full of hardship, having to care for a baby and not go to school. And Jeliazko belongs in jail for the rest of his life for doing something he never should have done: have sex with a child.

http://www.modbee.com/local/story/330185.html

Monday, Jun. 16, 2008

Police shoot, kill man who savagely beat toddler to death near Turlock

Driver stopped when he saw man slamming something into road

By MICHAEL R. SHEA

The officer who tried to stop a Turlock man from savagely beating his 2-year-old son fired one shot and struck the man in the forehead, killing him, Modesto police said today.

Officer Jerry Ramar shot the man as he raised his middle finger to the officer and resumed kicking the child lying in the road, a Modesto police statement said.

Ramar had flown to the scene aboard a Stanislaus County sheriff’s helicopter. The pilot, Deputy Rob Latape, landed the chopper in a cow pasture near where the man was beating his son.

Latape said the decision to land wasn’t difficult.

“It was the right thing to do,” he said. “That baby needed help and I knew we had to do something.”

UPDATE — 2:08 p.m.TURLOCK — The Stanislaus County coroner will use DNA technology to confirm that the toddler savagely beaten to death on a rural road near Turlock was killed by his father, the sheriff’s department said today. Detectives said Sergio Aguiar, 27, had no criminal record.

A sheriff’s statement said Chief Coroner Krist Ah You is working with the state Department of Justice to expedite results from the DNA test within a week, instead of the usual four to six weeks.

Toxicology tests on Aguilar’s body and on the body of the child, Sergio Axel Aguiar, will be taken. Those results are expected in about four weeks.

The sheriff’s department encouraged anyone with information on the case to call the office at 209-525-7114. Callers also may call Crime Stoppers at 521-4636.

Editor’s note: The spelling of Aguiar has been corrected from earlier reports. —–

UPDATE — 12:40 p.m. TURLOCK — The toddler who was beaten to death on a dark country road Saturday night was killed by his father, The Bee learned today. At the scene of the beating, someone left a teddy bear and a rose today, apparently a memorial for the boy who was killed.

Sergio Aguilar, 27, parked his gold 2002 Toyota truck on West Bradbury Road near the intersection of South Blaker Road in rural Stanislaus County, then punch, kicked and stomped the small boy to death until a Modesto police officer, dropped on the scene by a helicopter, shot the man dead.

Birth records show the baby boy was born May 8, 2006. The mother, Frances Liliana Casian, did not want to comment this morning.

The boy’s name has not been released.

Passers-by calling 911 at 10:13 p.m. described a horrific scene 10 miles west of Turlock and 15 miles south of Modesto. At least one tried to stop the attacker, who swung and slammed the toddler into the asphalt and stomped on him behind his parked four-door pickup.

Dan Robinson, 52, the chief of Crows Landing Volunteer Fire Department, who jousted with the man before police arrived, said the attack spoke of “demons” in the child and had a “total hollowness in his eyes.”

A Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department helicopter, flown by a deputy with a Modesto police officer in the second seat, was on patrol in the Turlock area. It arrived six minutes after the first 911 call, said deputy Royjindar Singh, sheriff’s department spokesman.

The helicopter landed in a cow pasture and the Modesto police officer jumped out. He drew his gun and commanded the man to stop from about 10 feet away from behind a set of electric and barbed wire fences. When the man “continued to stomp the child,” the officer fired, Singh said.

The toddler was rushed to Emanuel Medical Center in Turlock, where he was pronounced dead.

Singh said on Sunday that DNA testing may be required to identify the toddler because he was beaten beyond recognition.

The Modesto Police Department, which is handling the officer-involved shooting, said more information will be available this afternoon.

——

TURLOCK — A crazed man parked on a dark country road, took a toddler from the car seat in his pickup and beat the boy to death until a Modesto police officer, dropped on the scene by helicopter, shot the man dead, authorities said. As of late morning, the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department had not released any new details on the case, including the identity of the child and the man who killed him.

Passers-by calling 911 at 10:13 p.m. Saturday described a horrific scene on West Bradbury Road near the intersection of South Blaker Road in rural Stanislaus County, 10 miles west of Turlock. At least one tried to stop the 27-year-old attacker, who swung and slammed the toddler into the asphalt and stomped on him behind his parked four-door Toyota pickup.

“In the shadows and light it looked like he had hit an animal,” said Dan Robinson, the chief of Crows Landing Volunteer Fire Department, who came upon the chaos on his way home from a late dinner in Turlock. “As we backed up again, I could see that he had blood on his arms. I could see that it was a small child.”

Robinson, 52, jumped from his vehicle and confronted the man, who lunged at him. Robinson said the man wasn’t screaming and wasn’t loud, but was forceful, saying “demons” were in the boy.

“Give me the knife. Give me the knife,” the man said as he grabbed for a pen in the fireman’s front pocket.

“There was a total hollowness in his eyes,” Robinson said, “like I could see right through to the back of his head.”

A Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department helicopter, flown by a deputy with a Modesto police officer in the second seat, was on patrol in the Turlock area. It arrived six minutes after the first 911 call, said deputy Royjindar Singh, sheriff’s department spokesman.

“The helicopter spotlights the scene and sees this guy just beating on this infant or baby in the middle of the road. I can’t imagine what that looked like,” Singh said.

The helicopter landed in a cow pasture and the Modesto police officer jumped out. He drew his service pistol and commanded the man to stop from about 10 feet away from behind a set of electric and barbed wire fences. When the man “continued to stomp the child,” the officer fired, Singh said.

“They intervened to try and save that infant’s life. They thought they could change the outcome of this thing,” Singh said.

The officer’s name, the number of times he fired and where the dead man was shot were not released Sunday. The officer was placed on paid administrative leave, which is departmental policy for all officer-involved shootings. He is 37, with more than six years in law enforcement, four of them with Modesto.

The toddler was rushed to Emanuel Medical Center in Turlock, where he was pronounced dead.

Authorities would not disclose the identity of the dead man or his relationship to the boy pending family notification. Singh said the boy was 12 to 24 months old, but DNA testing may be required to identify him because he was beaten beyond recognition.

“Our firefighter was doing CPR on the baby when I arrived,” said Mountain View Fire Chief Kevin Blount, who was there shortly after the shooting. “It’s never easy, but it’s always harder with little children, especially in circumstances like this.”

Confusion and spotty cell phone coverage had dozens of police scrambling through Ceres and Turlock until the location became clear. The violence, Singh said, was so graphic from the helicopter’s bird’s-eye view that there was no hesitation on the part of the officer, who shot the attacker dead after less than two minutes on the scene.

Dozens of law enforcement personnel, set up under giant spotlights, worked through the night trying to piece together what happened. The attacker and the little boy were traveling west, but his gold truck was parked in the wrong lane, facing oncoming traffic.

Modesto police, the Sheriff’s Department and the Stanislaus County district attorney’s office are investigating the officer-involved shooting. Sheriff’s personnel are investigating the baby’s death.

By Sunday afternoon, the detectives had cleared out.

Short rows of fresh planted corn lined one side of the road, cows were pastured in another. The helicopter rotors washed a big dirt circle into the green pasture. Two long, dark bloodstains streaked the road.

Neighbors mingled on the fence line of nearby Thomas Dairy asking the same questions as investigators: Was the attacker on drugs? Mentally ill? All of the above? Why did it happen here?

Isabelle Thomas, who lives a few hundred yards from the scene, was working at Emanuel Medical Center, a nurse in the surgical unit, when her son called her with word something bad had happened. Soon she heard of the little boy who died 500 yards from her front door.

“I couldn’t go to sleep. I couldn’t rest without seeing it and all that blood. I couldn’t believe all that blood,” she said.

Sunday morning, she watched a tow truck haul away the pickup. The inside cab, she said, was smeared with blood. A rosary swung from the rearview mirror.

“I’ve been here 53 years,” said her brother, John Thomas, “and I’ve never seen anything like this. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

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This is sickening beyond reason. Too many idiots are breeding and they are proving to the world that they are very bad parents. Men like Aguiar do not even deserve the titles of parent or father; just because they squeeze one out means only one thing: their reproductive organs are in working order and nothing else. He got what was coming to him though. Having a child is never an exclusive right, it is a responsibility, and people who abuse their children like this must be prepared to receive the punishment that fits the crime.

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/national/northeast/view.bg?articleid=1208638

Naked woman slams baby to ground in NYC suburb

By Associated Press

Saturday, October 31, 2009 -

NEW YORK — Police in Mount Vernon say a naked, screaming woman took her 5-month-old baby into the street and threw him to the ground at least twice before a witness intervened.

The violent episode happened in front of a church at about 1:40 p.m. Friday in the New York City suburb.

The baby was badly injured and was being treated at Westchester Medical Center.

The woman was undergoing a psychological evaluation at a different hospital. Police say she will face charges.
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Chances are she was as thrilled as hell while pregnant, getting attention from everyone as usual, but once the baby came, forget about it. Hopefully her child will be rescued from her, then her tubes will be tied, as one commenter said. There is no need for a baby to suffer at the misery of its parent. And people call the childfree selfish.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/janice_turner/article6916343.ece

November 14, 2009

Worship of children has gone too far

Since when did raising a child elevate you to a state of grace with big benefits attached?

Janice Turner

At 86 my parents don’t get out much, but once a week they like to have lunch at the café of their local supermarket. Since both now walk with a stick — my ma is registered disabled, my dad recovering from a stroke — they need to park close to the store.

But this week the disabled places were all full so they took the nearest one, a parent-and-child bay. Later they returned to their car to find a note pinned to the windscreen.

“This is not a disabled space,” it said. “This is for parents, you stupid old bastards.” So, it appears that some young and able-bodied mother or father — the note, of course, was anonymous — thought that their own inconvenience in having to walk small children a few yards farther across a car park took precedence over the needs of the elderly couple they had clearly observed struggling inside. And they were so enraged by this injustice that they took out a Biro and penned words calculated to scare or shame them into line.

The note-writer is ignorant as well as cruel: a Blue Badge holder has the right to park in any space — even on yellow lines — by law. Parent-and- child parking is just a gimmick, a marketing wheeze: families, with their megapacks of Pampers and Frubes, their £100-plus weekly shops, are customers worth cultivating. And while, a decade ago, when I had babies myself, I appreciated the extra room to open doors wide and fiddle fat-fingeredly with pesky car-seat buckles, I saw those spaces as a courtesy, not a right.

When did parents grow so entitled? Obviously this note-writer is at the farthest end of the spectrum. But in recent years there has been a burgeoning belief that to raise a child elevates you to a state of grace, precludes any accusations of selfishness — since motherhood is one, long selfless sacrifice — and the world must listen up to your shrill, me-first demands, however egregious.

This week, a London mother, Lisa Smith, was ordered off a 139 bus because her pushchair was too large to fit into the space reserved for buggies and the driver believed that it was blocking the doors. “He actually wanted me to take my child out into the pouring rain and walk,” she said aghast, as if 19-month-old Oliver dissolves like bath salts when damp. But why, a legion of women were wondering, didn’t Ms Smith do what bus-going mums have always done and fold the bloody buggy?

A decade ago we had no choice. Extract wriggling boy, clutch shopping bags in one hand, wrestle pram’s cussed mechanism with other, catapult across aisle when bus took off. There was no buggy area on buses. Or, rather, no space designated for wheelchairs, since that was London Transport’s primary intent. Now folding a buggy, even to admit a disabled passenger, is treated as an outrageous inconvenience, accompanied by glares and harrumphing.

That Ms Smith’s buggy was too humungous even to fit in that space was telling. Pushchairs have expanded like obese toddlers over the years. Those £400 celeb-endorsed off-roaders with the fat-boy wheels are as long and low-lying as Formula One racers, able to traverse the Serengeti but not squeeze on to packed Tube trains. Many fancier pushchairs are now so unwieldy that they aren’t much smaller when collapsed.

Designers deduce that parents feel entitled to dominate public space and to assume that crowds of commuters will part in awe at the early morning entrance of the Quinny Zap bearing His Majesty the Baby. Indeed, on public transport you witness a reversal of the natural order. Children were once taught to stand up for older folks or at least squeeze two to a seat, the littlest on a lap. Now you see a great lunking line of kids smugly filling a carriage, their own parents standing like stoic pack animals carrying everyone’s coats. I see mothers relegated to the back seats of their own cars, surrendering all hope of adult conversation or control of the radio, so that a seven-year-old can ride up front with Dad.

Little wonder then, if adults feel obliged to deliver ludicrous, super-luxe levels of comfort and care for their children, that they start to regard parenthood as akin to a disability. From Gordon’s “hard-working families” to media mummies penning tear-stained farewells to careers that they can’t combine with caring for one small baby, we never stop hearing how near impossible it is to raise a child.

Yet if you are Western woman, blessed with a healthy baby — and not a single mum trapped in a broken-lifted council flat — motherhood has never been a bigger doddle. The gadgets, the gazillion cartoon channels, a whole internet bubbling with advice and affirmation, the airlines with their early boarding and kiddy pencil sets, the fathers who look after their kids more than any men yet born. A family-friendly faith is universally preached: you can breast-feed in church, let your toddler eat at The Ivy, take your Year 6 son to a White Stripes gig, change a nappy on a pub table at midnight and few would dare to suggest that this is not the right place.

And whatever government is in power next year, the centrality of families in public policy will not change. Long gone are the Eighties Tory grandees who laughed at Harriet Harman for suggesting that afterschool clubs were the State’s concern. Flexi-working, extended maternity leave, paternity rights — political shifts that have enhanced millions of lives — will not be scrapped under David Cameron. Or Downing Street would be blockaded by Bugaboos. The outcry over the Government’s plans to cut the childcare vouchers scheme that rewards parents earning more than £42,000 a year shows how even middle-income families believe that they should be subsidised by the (possibly poorer) childless.

Yet, for all these gains, do parents ever express gratitude or grace? Instead, their dissatisfaction fed by the family-feeding companies flogging them bigger people carriers, flashier prams, they lament only what they lack.

So your baby woke you at dawn, you’ve gained a stone, you’re short on sex or fun or “me time”. Shuffle the playlist, sister. It will pass, all of it, quicker than you think. And the decades will dissolve until you too are struggling across a supermarket car park, barged aside by pious pram-pushers, and wondering how it came to be that caring for your own progeny comes with a free pass not to give a damn about anyone else.

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I find this totally disgusting: the article writer’s parents needed a parking spot close to the store because they were disabled, and they come out to find a nasty note on their car condemning them for parking in a spot meant for entitled young parents. Hello! Parents need to exercise off the fat from having a baby. Disabled people have limited mobility. What the hell is wrong with people nowadays? It’s not her parent’s fault there were no more available handicapped parking spaces.

I think it is high time to do away with child/parent and so-called “expecting” parking spaces, everywhere. Women who are pregnant, and have young children, are NOT disabled. It won’t kill them to walk a few more feet in a regular parking spot. Who the hell do they think they are, dictating to how the world should treat them? They are not better than childfree people, handicapped people, or anyone else. These people made a choice to get pregnant (presumedly because they do not know how to use birth control in any shape or form) and have a baby (or should I say sex trophy?). All these entitlements minded mothers do is whine, bitch, and whine some more about how haaaaard it is being a mother. They made their bed, now they must lie in it.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091111/ap_on_fe_st/us_odd_airport_aquarium_crash_3

Woman drives into aquarium at Tampa airport
AP

Tuesday November 10, 2009

TAMPA, Fla. – The driver and the child in her lap survived when a pickup truck slammed into a 1,500-gallon aquarium at Tampa International Airport. The tropical fish were not so lucky. Airport officials said 36-year-old Yamile Campuzano-Martine lost control of her truck and drove into the saltwater tank outside the American Airlines baggage claim Monday night. Airport spokeswoman Brenda Geoghagan said the driver had an unrestrained 6-year-old boy in her lap.

About 90 percent of the 30 to 40 saltwater fish in the tank were killed.

The aquarium was part of a public art program. The airport spent $200,000 on the exhibit, which included the 12-foot tank.

Campuzano-Martine was cited for careless driving. No number was listed for her in public records.
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Cited for careless driving and not cited for endangering a child’s life. She needs to be forced to pay the Tampa International Airport every penny of the $200,000 plus money so they can replace the fish. Nobody feels sorry for a moo and her crotchdump. The poor fish get my sympathy, though. People are stupid enough as it is. There was no reason for her to have a child in her lap while she was driving. State law dictates that if a child is in a moving vehicle, he or she has to be in the back seat, wearing a seatbelt. Throw Campuzano-Martine in jail where she belongs, and have CPS remove the child from her care. It isn’t bad enough that so many children need to be rescued from their parents.