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Showing posts with the label Children

Thought for the Day--May 18, 2011: What the Hey? Homeless Woman Arrested for Sending Child to School

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I'd go to, like, six different schools in one year. We were on welfare, and my mom never ever worked . --Eminem You can spend the money on new housing for poor people and the homeless, or you can spend it on a football stadium or a golf course . --Jello Biafra I thought I had heard everything, but this story shocks me. As if it's not bad enough to find yourself and your kid without a place to live, now you're being arrested for enrolling your kid in the "wrong" school. According to News of the Weird (this specific snippet published in the May 17, 2011, issue of the York Daily Record ), Tonya McDowell, a homeless parent, was arrested for "felony theft" for "stealing" $15,686 in educational services from the Norwalk, Connecticut, school district. Read more in HuffPost Education McDowell, no fixed address, has apparently lived, off and on, in Norwalk, but at the time of registering her son at Brookside Elementary School, she was living with a fri

Thought for the Day--May 4, 2011: STOP Stigmatizing Overweight Children

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The above image has been manipulated from an April 21, 2011, ad, from the website www.stopchildhoodobesity.com (see original ad below). ________________________________________ The original ad : According to Katu.com , "This advertisement, part of a 'Stop Child Obesity' campaign in Georgia, won some enthusiastic praise for their attention-grabbing tactics. But they also have outraged parents, activists and academics who feel the result is more stigma for an already beleaguered group of children." ________________________________ Stigma is not an effective motivator. --Rebecca Puhl, psychologist and a leading expert on weight discrimination (Yale University) "Shaming" and bullying a child into losing weight rarely works. I know this from personal experience; as a chubby child (I wasn't quite "fat," whatever that means), my well-meaning grandmother (who raised me) would often embarrass me in front of relatives, including children, in the hope tha

Thought for the Day--April 25, 2011: Children and Exercise

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Webmaster, 8, on her bike. During Spring, Summer, and Fall, she lived on that bicycle _______________________ Exercise to stimulate, not to annihilate. The world wasn't formed in a day, and neither were we. Set small goals and build upon them. --Lee Haney Back in the late 1950's, during the long, hot Sioux City, Iowa, summers, it seems that kids were always outside: exploring, playing whiffle or softball, jumping rope, cycling, roller skating, and hula hooping. Play was organic, not organized by parents as "play dates." As a kid, you scoured the neighborhood until you found some kids to play with, and that was it. You just went home to eat and sleep, both of which interfered with the important work of playing with your friends. It was too hot to stay home and park yourself in front of the TV--no one I knew had air-conditioning. Only department stores and movie theaters had that luxury. On the unbearably hot days of July and August, you hung out at the local swimming p

Memoir Madness: Driven to Involuntary Commitment