Talk about driving a hard bargain:
Click on the link to read Kids as Young as 1 Exposed to 4 Hours of Background Television a Day
Click on the link to read Letting Kids Take Risks is Healthy for Them
Click on the link to read Study Reveals Children Aren’t Selfish After All
Talk about an absurd idea!
PRISON staff from scandal-hit security firm G4S took the fingerprints and mugshots of children as young as two who visited inmates at a new jail.
The practice was stopped only after a string of complaints to jail bosses at HMP Oakwood, a privately run prison in Staffordshire that holds 1,605 offenders.
The Mail on Sunday has discovered that over-zealous staff forced children who were visiting family members to pose for pictures and have electronic fingerprints taken, which were then stored on a computer at the prison.
The practice, which has drawn strong criticism from prison groups, continued for four weeks earlier this year until prison governors held an inquiry and put a stop to it.
Click on the link to read Why Are Parents Defending this Sick Priest?
Click on the link to read Schools Putting Spy Cameras in Toilets and Change Rooms
Click on the link to read Is There No Better Way to Teach Fitness to Kids than Pole Dancing?
Click on the link to read Filling Our Children With Hate and Negativity
Click on the link to read The Toy that Stopped a Child Porn Ring
We all know how seriously Facebook takes its age restrictions:
Facebook has an ugly little secret, a number disclosed nowhere in its voluminous filings to become a public company and now only vaguely addressed by corporate officials.
An estimated 5.6 million Facebook clients — about 3.5 percent of its U.S. users — are children who the company says are banned from the site.
Facebook and many other websites bar people under age 13 because the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) requires websites to give special treatment to children 12 or younger. The law aims to stop marketers prying personal information from children or using their data to advertise to them. Sites must get parental permission before allowing children to enter, and must take steps to protect privacy.
Facebook declines to acknowledge that many of its efforts to block children are not working.
The issue has taken on new relevance as the Federal Trade Commission finalizes rules to further restrict companies and websites that target youths or are geared to young audiences.
Facebook, the world’s leading social media company with 955 million users, has said that the law does not apply to it because it explicitly restricts use of its site to people aged 13 and older.
Click on the link to read Parents and Teachers Should Not Be Facebook Friends
Click on the link to read Introducing the App that will Give Parents Nightmares
Click on the link to read Facebook’s Age Restictions are a Joke
Click on the link to read Facebook and Child Exploitation
Newsflash: Prison doesn’t just exist to rehabilitate, it is also there to take the scum off the street. A known paedophile should be locked away for a substantial period of time, regardless of whether or not it will ‘cure’ him of his sickness.
A paedophile who downloaded child porn has been spared jail after a judge said locking him up could be more dangerous to society in the long term.
Jason Fairfax, 35, of Bargoed, south Wales, had amassed a collection of around 2,700 indecent images when police raided his home earlier this year.
The photographs and videos were later graded from one to five – with the higher the category, the more serious the offence.
Cardiff Crown Court heard almost a third of the images were at the higher end of the scale – with 786 level four and 29 level five images.
The details of the photographs were so serious, Judge David Wyn Morgan asked the media not to publish their details.
He said: ‘When the police investigated your computer, they found a staggering number of images that were indecent.
‘There was a very large number of them at the top end of the scale, at level four and five.
‘The natural reaction of any decent human being would be that you should go to prison for as long as possible.
‘But when the revulsion has subsided, the court must consider precisely what that would achieve.
‘You would go into prison as sex offender and still come out as one – just as dangerous if not more so than you are at the moment.
‘And the protection of the public must be of paramount concern to the court.’
Furthermore, Fairfax is not allowed to have any contact with any children under the age of 16 – either in person, on the telephone or via the internet – without the approval of their parents.
He is also banned from deleting the browsing history on his computer as well as erasing any images from a digital camera or camera phone without permission from the police.
Click on the link to read Confronting a Teacher Can Be Very Difficult
Click on the link to read Tips for Teaching Children With Depression
Click on the link to read Most People Think This Woman is Fat
It is just bewildering how some schools struggle to provide enough time for children to finish their lunches:
Two sixth-graders at a Minneapolis public school say kids in the district are being forced to gobble down food at lunch because they have only 15 minutes to eat — which in reality is more like 10 — and that schedules like this are making kids feel sick and contributing to the country’s obesity epidemic.
Talia Bradley and Antonia Ritter, students at Seward Montessori School, wrote about the problem in the Star Tribune, saying:
“Having to rush to eat is part of the reason for the obesity epidemic, eating disorders, indigestion and kids not doing well in school. There is research that proves all of these points. Kids just need more time to eat at school.
Rushing to eat high-calorie meals at school, or at home, is the cause for the gastroesophageal reflux. This is often called heartburn. Heartburn feels bad — the symptoms are burning in the chest, overall chest pain, burning in the throat, difficulty swallowing, food sticking in middle of the chest or throat, sore throat and cough.”
Click on the link to read my post on 6 Strategies for Promoting Healthy Food to Kids.
Click on the link to read 5 Ways to Get Kids Active
Click on the link to read Food Giants Marketing Unhealthy Kids Foods as Healthy
Click on the link to read Good Heavens! It’s the Lunch Box Police!
I am personally not fond of spanking. I don’t think it works and I personally choose to discipline my daughter by other means. I don’t, however, believe in banning parents from exercising their right to spank.
I was reading a standard article about spanking and couldn’t help but gasp at a new form of spanking:
In an experiment that involved surreptitiously watching parents discipline their kids in public places such as restaurants, researchers found that in 23 percent of cases, mom or dad resorted to “negative touch” to get their child to comply. Negative touch can include anything from restraining and spanking to pinching and hitting.
Restraining? How can you blame a parent for restraining their own child? Just the expression “negative touch” is something I consider repulsive.
It is just completely mind-boggling that it is legal for teachers to inflict corporal punishments in many civilised countries, yet to simply restrain your own child during a tantrum draws the disapproval of so-called child experts.
Click on the link to read Teachers Who Beat Kids Should Be Put Away!
Click on the link to read Corporal Punishment Reveals the Worst School Has to Offer
Click on the link to read Calls To Allow Teachers To Use “Reasonable Force” on Students
At a time when kids are accused of being ungrateful and selfish it is heartening to be reminded of cases where young children sacrifice their own needs to look after a sick parent:
AT an age when most boys are juggling sports with homework, 14-year-old Lachlan Bailey-Yates spends his spare time caring for his sick mum.
Lachlan’s story is one of inspiration.
His mother was diagnosed when he was just 13 and starting his first year of high school.
“I am a single mother,” Ms Bailey-Yates said.
“Lachlan and I are very close. Telling him I had a very serious illness was the hardest thing I have done,” she said.
The 46-year-old was diagnosed last August and had a double mastectomy to remove a large tumour under her breast.
“I would come home from hospital to a beautiful dinner of chicken nuggets and mashed potato,” she laughed.
“I just think, ‘How lucky am I?’ “
She is still recovering from the disease and needs to travel to Newcastle’s Mater Hospital every fortnight.
“I have had to rely on friends and people in the community to help out,” she said.
“At Christmas Lachlan told me he didn’t want any presents. He just wanted to be with me. What a beautiful thing for a child to say.”
Lachlan said caring for his mum comes naturally.
“I help out because I love my mum and I want to make things a bit easier for her,” he said simply.
Click on the link to read The Perfect Example of Courage and Self-Respect
Click on the link to read Woman Re-Mortagages Her House To Feed School Kids
Click on the link to read Insensitive ‘Parent Bashers’ Take Aim at Grieving Colorado Parents
It would be highly unfortunate if women started thinking twice before having children due to the risk of minor weight gain as a result:
MUMS who blame their children for their weight gain now have evidence to back their claims.
UK researchers have found that the more children a woman has, the greater her body mass index (BMI) is likely to be later in life.
I hope mothers are not blaming their children for weight gain, or anything else for that matter.
Never, ever take a kids survey on face value!
According to a recent survey millions of children are complaining that school is too easy.
My students often boast about the lesson content being very easy. Then I assess them. It often turns out it wasn’t as easy as they first thought.
Why on earth would we believe a kids survey that claims school is too easy when it isn’t backed up by assessment results?
Millions of kids simply don’t find school very challenging, a new analysis of federal survey data suggests. The report could spark a debate about whether new academic standards being piloted nationwide might make a difference.
The findings, out today from the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank that champions “progressive ideas,” analyze three years of questionnaires from the Department of Education’s National Assessment of Educational Progress, a national test given each year.
Among the findings:
•37% of fourth-graders say their math work is “often” or “always” too easy;
•57% of eighth-graders say their history work is “often” or “always” too easy;
•39% of 12th-graders say they rarely write about what they read in class.
If I was from the Center of American Progress I would be embarrassed to admit to spending so long on a survey that is clearly misleading. Talk about a waste of three years!
Rule 1: Never ask students whether class work is easy when you can get a better picture by gauging their assessment results (I’m not referring to standardised tests).
Rule 2: Never ask students whether their homework was easy. Instead, ask their parents as they are the ones that do it.
Rule 3: If you are trying to make education more “progressive”, don’t waste three years on a survey.
Click here for a more in-depth analysis of this survey.
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