Facebook has done a great deal in highlighting examples of horrible parenting to the rest of the world. Incidents which were once conducted behind closed doors are going public.
Video posted to Facebook is causing outrage in many circles, and Missouri’s Department of Social Services may be investigating it. The images show a fist fight between two small children, with the mother of one of the kids egging them on, even offering instructions to the tiny combatants.
“Got some action! Got some action!” the woman can be heard yelling as she shoots the video. “Y’all better ball up some fists!”
The video was posted to Facebook on Sunday. An acquaintance of the mother in question alerted FOX 2. She asked not be identified, but spoke in an interview Tuesday.
“It’s just sickening and I feel like there should be some kind of criminal action taken,” she told us. “I couldn’t even watch the whole video. I had to stop it and look again. It was sad.”
She says the urging of the mother was as disturbing as the pictures themselves.
“Ball up your fist. It’s like she’s training her before she starts school or something. It’s sad because today’s society in the black community its really sickening that these kids are learning how to fight, get guns and stuff, and it shouldn’t be going on.”
“Wow,” was the initial response of St. Louis child psychologist Russell Hyken after we showed him the images.
“That’s pretty overwhelming. Those are small children that really don’t even understand what is going on. I mean one child is screaming and the other child continues to go after her. I mean what is going on here?”
Firstly, I believe that it is the parents job to educate their children about sex. As a parent, I believe that it would be a blight on my parenting skills if I left such an important conversation topic to my child’s teachers.
Secondly, although in a perfect world, it would be nice to include every cause and every topic of importance into the curriculum, it is simply not realistic. Adding sex education into the curriculuum would come at the expense of time dedicated to english, maths, science and history. I don’t think that is a good result for students:
But a national survey of 15-29 year olds shows that sexual education across Australian schools ranges from no sexual education or minimal classes focusing on the dangers of sexual activity, to comprehensive lessons on the benefits, as well as the risks, of sexual relationships.
Research shows that less than half of sexually active school students report always using a condom during sex. But, the national survey said, condom use was declining and although young people account for 75 per cent of sexually transmitted infections, just 10 per cent of young people thought they were at risk of contracting an STI or AIDs.
AYAC’s deputy director (young people), Maia Giordana, said with the federal government rolling out national curriculum subject areas, the time was right for reform.”In some schools it’s being taught really comprehensively, and in other schools it’s not really happening at all,” Ms Giordana said.
The assertion that children are choosing not to use condoms because of a lack of education is just plain misleading. Could someone show me evidence that proves that a school sex education program leads to less cases of sexually transmitted diseases?
When will they realise that our curriculum is overcrowded as it is?
Just like in life, there are luxuries and necessities. Educators want to make us believe that digital gadgets like smart boards are a vital tool in the modern-day classroom. That is simply not true. Whilst I love my smart board and I was disappointed when it was out-of-order earlier this year, I can teach perfectly well without it.
One of the biggest necessities in education is the need for our students to arrive at school well fed and fully nourished. If that is not the case, it is our duty to do all that we can to provide healthy food for them.
But schools are underfunded? Where will the money come from?
I believe that even if we have to go without smart boards and other useful but non-essential equipment, it is worth it in order to ensure that our students are not going hungry:
Two children in every school class are going hungry because their parents fail to provide proper meals, according to new research.
An estimated one million children in the UK now live in homes without enough to eat, according to the study by the parenting website Netmums and the child welfare charity Kids Company.
The charity has reported a rise of 233 per cent in the last 12 months in children using its services for their only meal of the day. Those children have an average age of just 10.
Camila Batmanghelidjh, the founder of Kids Company, said: “We are seeing a lot more children struggling to get hold of food. We have kids who were so starving they stole frozen meat from a flat they visited and they ate it raw. We’re seeing effectively responsible parents who are just not managing to have food in the house.
This is another consequence of those blasted standardized tests. Schools wouldn’t dare invest in anything that didn’t have an immediate impact on student learning – including breakfast.
This is not good enough. We represent more than just a place of learning. We must also focus our attention on student welfare and ensure that every child that enters a classroom will be looked after properly, no matter what.
I have absolutely no sympathy for child sex offenders and I am happy to strip them of all privileges that can be used to trap children.
Merlyn Horton is wrong to argue that educating children is better than banning sex offenders from social media. All children must be educated on issues related to cybersafety. But education is not nearly enough. We have a duty to do far more than educate our children. We have a duty to do everything in our power to protect impressionable kids:
Educating children is a better way to protect them from online predators than banning sex offenders from social media sites or forcing them to disclose their crimes on social networks, says an online-safety spokeswoman.
Merlyn Horton was commenting after recent moves in the U.S. to use legislation to crack down on Internet sex predators.
For predatory pedophiles, social networks and the Internet are an “open avenue,” expert Merlyn Horton said, adding resources would be better directed to educating youth rather than trying to enforce bans or requiring Internet users to disclose crimes.
Horton noted there have been cases in Canada where individuals have been barred from using the Internet because of their crimes against children. But instead of through legislation, this has been done through conditions on parole or bail release, she said.
Even then, people can find ways to easily circumvent the restrictions.
“I remember a particular case I got called on,” she said. “The guy was accessing and luring children through the public library.”
For some reason people feel they have the right to inundate an expectant mother with parenting tips and strategies. Some appreciate the concern and interest whilst others find it invasive and suffocating (especially since a lot of it is contradictory).
Well done! You have taken another natural, everyday expression of emotion and turned it into a condition. I’m sure the pharmaceutical companies are licking their lips at the prospect of manufacturing another type of cocaine-like pill for our latest condition – “Intermittent Explosive Disorder“:
Around the age of 12 or earlier, many kids — just over 5% of all adolescents between the ages of 13 and 17, according to a new study — report that they have suffered attacks of anger that are destructive, frightening and wildly out of proportion to any provocation.
The abbreviation for Intermittent Explosive Disorder — IED — is particularly apt for these kids:
IED is also seen in adults. But it appears to be more widespread in adolescents, and the current study suggests that early adolescence (age 12) is where it most commonly starts.
Although a precise definition of this disorder has not been established, the authors of the latest study queried a total of 6,483 teens and their parents about the number of disproportionate “anger attacks” the child had had in the past month, the past year, or ever. They also gathered information on what kind of behavior resulted — say, verbal threats, physical menacing or a rampage of throwing and breaking — and whether it resulted in the need for medical attention or the destruction of property worth more than a few dollars.
This makes me so angry! I think I’ve come down with SOSCED (sick of seeing children exploited disorder)!
It’s every child’s nightmare to be abandoned by their parents. This story takes that fear to a whole new appalling level:
Authorities say a man and a woman in Kentucky left 19 children unattended for a week in a sweltering, filthy home.
The children ranged from 8 months to 14 years old and were found Monday night in a small three-bedroom home near Bowling Green.
Warren County Sheriff’s Detective Tim Robinson says the home was littered with dog feces and there was no air conditioning on a day when it reached 101 degrees.
He says Irving “Joe” Smith and Jackie Farah told a neighbor last week that they had a family emergency in Michigan and asked the neighbor to check on the kids.
Deputies said the children behaved as if they were often left alone. The pair told investigators that they plan to return to the area to speak with authorities.
There is so many rewarding aspects of being a parent. There is a myriad of wonderful surprises associated with being a dad – I absolutely recommend it! One such benefit that I never knew about is resistance against getting a cold:
Being a parent reduces your risk of catching a cold—possibly because of unknown “psychological or behavioral differences between parents and nonparents,” according to a study in the July issue of Psychosomatic Medicine, the official journal of the American Psychosomatic Society. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.
The risk of becoming ill after exposure to cold viruses is reduced by about half in parents compared to nonparents, regardless of pre-existing immunity, according to research led by Rodlescia S. Sneed, MPH, and Sheldon Cohen, PhD of Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. The study suggests that other, yet unknown factors related to being a parent may affect susceptibility to illness. The researchers analyzed data on 795 adults from three previous studies of stress and social factors affecting susceptibility to the common cold. In those studies, healthy volunteers were given nose drops containing cold-causing rhinovirus or influenza viruses.
After virus exposure, about one-third of volunteers developed clinical colds—typical symptoms of a cold plus confirmed infection with one of the study viruses. The analysis focused on whether being a parent affected the risk of developing a cold, with adjustment for other factors.
It’s school holidays and there isn’t one G rated (General Classification) movie at the cinemas. I would understand how that could happen during the school year – but during holidays?
Movies like The Brave and Ice Age 4 have violence and course language warnings and are intended for families rather than children. Unfortunately, some adults are so selfish that they would refuse to go to the movies with their children unless the film proved entertaining for them too. I am all for adult in-jokes and films that entertain both myself and my daughter, but not at the expense of a good, wholesome, non-violent movie experience. I would gladly suffer through a children’s film as long as it was appropriate for my daughter.
Yesterday my daughter and I watched Annie together. Annie, although still a hit stage musical, would never have gotten made today. Neither would have other child friendly films like Mary Poppins. These films don’t have enough crude toilet humour, adult themes and violence.
Twelve year-olds can’t even make a bed. Why we would trust them behind the wheel beats me:
The Confederation of Australian Motor Sport has developed a pilot program designed to teach children to drive properly before having potentially damaging lessons with a well-meaning parent.
The two-hour course for students aged 12 to 18 includes classroom instruction on road safety, driver attitude and an off-road driving lesson.
CAMS president Andrew Papadopoulos said the course aimed to reduce Australia’s road toll, especially among young adult males.
Mr Papadopoulos wants the pilot rolled out at schools across the state.
“We do sex education from an early age, we don’t expect them to go out and have sex at that early age,” he said.
“It’s a matter of learning.”
Kids already drive at school – they drive their teachers crazy!
Topical Teaching 