Bookworm Room

In Marin County, spanking a child is a very dangerous activity.  Although spanking is not illegal, it’s enough to entangle you with Child Protective Services and, from that moment on, parenting life as you know it is over.  Despite the danger, when my kids were little, I spanked them.  With two unguided missiles, sometimes the [...]

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Back in November 2007, I wrote a long post talking about the fact that I see a lot of children who are labeled as having Asperger’s (a subset of autism) but who seem instead (or also) to be the victims of profoundly bad parenting.  I noted that I have known over the years children who [...]

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All of us have noted a trend, one that is especially prevalent in public schools, to insulate kids from losing.  I know that my kids’ public school, as part of its master plan, has instituted a policy by which the kids don’t do any competitive sports on campus in order to protect them from dealing [...]

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I never thought about it, but I was running my house like a commune.  The kids had chores to do, of course, but the incentive was the greater good, my approbation, and an allowance that, in their minds, had no relationship to the tasks demanded.  The kids did not find these incentives inspiring, and the [...]

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I would like your opinion. Mr. Bookworm thinks I’m taking “holier than thou-ness” to a nauseating (and hypocritical) extreme. I think he is on the verge of a parenting error. Here’s the deal:
Mr. Bookworm came across an opportunity to obtain some stuff for the kids without actually going through the shopping process. [...]

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Do you recall that, a couple of months ago, I wrote a lengthy post about the fact that the apparently benign sounding Child Protective Services has become a vicious scourge assaulting good parents because they’re easy targets? If you don’t recall that post, I recommend that you read it either before or after you [...]

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My daughter is a tween and is just starting to think that she is smart and I am stupid.  We therefore had a little talk this morning.  Or, rather, I gave her a short lecture.  I explained that, when I was young and my mother, like me, was in her late 40s, we used to [...]

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A few months ago, I did a post about out-of-control children who seemed to be the product, not of biological pathology, but of boundary-free parenting.  A couple of weeks ago, I did a post about parents who were afraid to exert control over their children because of their fear of Child Protective Services.  And last [...]

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Its official name is Child Protective Services (and most parents recognize its acronym, “CPS”), but I have to think that my post title more accurately describes it, especially when it’s aided by busy-bodies — people who don’t really want to help a situation, but who do want to cause a little excitement in their lives. [...]

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We just discovered that one of my daughter’s “best” friends has been lying about her computer use to her parents. She tells them that she’s going to an approved kid website, such as Club Penguin, and then, when they’re not looking, goes surfing for sex sites. (Did I mention that she’s ten?)  My [...]

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For those of you who worry that pop culture, and not the parent, serves as the role model for children, think again.  This bizarre story shows that at least one Mom is helping her daughter achieve the mom’s goals:
A Petaluma woman and her 16-year-old daughter were arrested on suspicion of shoplifting clothes together at a [...]

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One of Hitler’s most evilly inspired ideas was to go after the young people, and turn them into spies in their own parents’ homes.  It’s so much easier to grab children’s minds, and parents never assume that, not only are their children watching them, they can be co-opted, innocently, into ratting them out to people [...]

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I’m still irked about the middle school in Portland, Maine that had the bright idea to bypass parents and give birth control pills to little girls. My irritation goes beyond the fact that the school district is using a very small number of pregnancies and bad situations to usurp parents’ control over and relationship [...]

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I’m about to write something provocative, so feel free to beat me up on it, provided that you do so politely. It’s about the increasing prevalence of Asbergers diagnoses amongst children. Asbergers is a rather amorphous condition, although it’s considered to be part of the Autism spectrum. Here’s the definition from one [...]

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Not only is this Anita Renfroe video both funny and clever, wait ’til you see the spontaneous audience reaction at its conclusion:
Hat tip: Lulu

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When the Progressive state is done, parents will have become obsolete, with children being created in test tubes and raised by the Government.  How else to explain this, which again uses a fringe group of examples to legislate away the average person’s (and, in this case, the average parent’s) rights.
Hat tip:  Drudge

Sphere: Related Content

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I used to have the worst children in the world. Truly, I did. And I knew that they were the worst children in the world because the evidence came out of my own mouth. I had to criticize them constantly because of the way they ignored instructions, the way they broke rules, [...]

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To toot my own horn, I am a very competent person.  I’m not overwhelmingly good at any one thing, but I can do most things fairly well.  My kids get to see this competence in action.  I do a lot of my legal work from home, so they see me in professional mode.  I also [...]

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My mother was very happy as a young bride in Israel. She and my Dad had a wide circle of friends and were making a relatively good living. My Dad, who was a bit of a malcontent, was less happy and kept thinking that America would be a greener pasture. He nagged [...]

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