An Ultimate Question: Will God Protect My Kids?

hat tip: Hillary

Labels: Children, Devotional, Family

Al Mohler takes on the topic of contemporary children's literature and how it mirrors and influences the discipline of today's children:

Literary critic Lionel Trilling once referred to “the dark and bloody crossroads where literature and politics meet.” In reality, almost all literature is political in some sense. Oddly enough, the most explicitly subversive literature is often presented to the very youngest among us — our children. Far too many parents seem not to notice.

In “The Defiant Ones,” a recent essay published in the New Yorker, Daniel Zalewski argues that picture books for children now reflect a world turned upside down in terms of the relationship between parent and child. As he explains, in the newest picture books for children, the kids are solidly in charge.

In this sense, the books we read to our children reflect the cultural values of our age. Inescapably, these narratives for children reveal far more than a storyline. Indeed, the books tell us more than we may want to know about the tenor of our times.

Read the rest here:

Parents, Obey Your Children?

Labels: Books, Children

Corporal punishment may be on its last legs in public life, but it's not dead yet:

The wooden paddle on principal David Nixon's desk is two feet long, with a handle wrapped in duct tape that has been worn down by age and use. He found it in a dusty cabinet in his predecessor's office at John C. Calhoun Elementary in Calhoun Hills, S.C., where Nixon has been the principal since 2006. He has no idea if the old principal ever used it, but now it sits in plain view for all visitors to see, including children who have been dismissed to his office. As punishment for a "major offense," such as fighting or stealing, students are told to place both hands on the seat of a leather chair and brace for what Nixon calls "a whippin'." Before he begins, though, he sits the child down for a quiet talk about why he, or she, is in trouble. He tries to determine if a deeper issue, such as a problem at home, might warrant a meeting with a counselor. If the child shows remorse, Nixon will often send him or her back to class without a spanking. Otherwise, he makes sure he is calm, and he makes sure his elbow is still. Then he delivers "three licks" to the child's rear end. If the child is a girl, then a female administrator does it. Some of the kids cry. Some are silent. Some want a hug. And after the child is sent back to class, still stinging, Nixon sits alone in his office and thinks about what the child has done, and what he has done. "If I could burn that paddle in my stove," Nixon says, "I would. This is the worst part of my job."

But whaddaya know, this approach really is yielding lasting results:

They're no longer seeing much of it anymore at John C. According to Nixon, the last time he paddled a student was more than a month ago: March 16, after a fourth-grader swore in the cafeteria. Corporal punishment, it would seem, has worked so well at John C that perhaps the need for it no longer exists. Given Nixon's ambivalence toward the practice—indeed, he would not even allow NEWSWEEK to photograph the paddle—could it be that he's already delivered his last whipping? "I hope so," he says. But he quickly adds that there will always be "new kids who need to learn the limits at school." And one way or another, Nixon will make sure they get the message.

[emphasis mine]

Of course, liberal educators and psychologists are going to claim that this principal (as well as a parent who uses corporal punishment) is only keeping the kids in line out of fear. They ignore the possibility that while any normal child would be afraid of being paddled, he or she is also building good habits and self-discipline during the time he's actively trying to avoid a spanking, proving to himself and others that he is capable of controlling himself. This is one of the reasons that the need for corporal punishment decreases as the certainty of its application increases--children are learning good habits while they are still in fear of punishment, and this self-discipline extends way beyond the time they're afraid of the principal's office. Some kids never find out that they really are capable of self-control because there's never a good reason to be IN control of themselves.

Perhaps some parents will read this and decide to follow the example of a public school principal.

The Principal And The Paddle

hat tip: Joanna

Labels: Children, Social Observation

Human nature is a funny thing. Have you been slightly amused at all the face masks lately? Supposedly, they could help protect you against airborne swine flu, as well as the common cold and the other evils, known and unknown, lurking in your next puff of air. Never mind that your chances of catching H1N1 from the air are miniscule compared to catching it from a public restroom faucet and that frequent handwashing is WAY more effective than wearing a paper mask. When faced with a large scale panic situation, human nature would much rather start doing something it hasn't been doing before (masks) than to just increase the frequency of something it's presumably already been doing (washing hands.)

At least if we have to worry about swine flu, can we look forward to lower pork prices? (Said while polishing off a bowl of navy bean and ham soup.)

I am incredibly proud of all the HOPE kids. Our Almost Annual Show and Tell Day on Saturday was our best ever, with contributions of poetry, Latin and Greek recitations; piano, harp, and wind instruments; vocal solos; displays of school work and entrepreneurship; and a costumed, expertly presented rendition of the classic Battle of Wits from Princess Bride, every family's favorite movie. Okay, our family's fave.

Someone has lost my camera. I feel partially blind when I can't capture the fleeting moments and projects in progress. Hmmm....what to do.

I'm in the middle of reading Led by Faith by Immaculee Ilibagiza. This book is the sequel to her first Left to Tell, the account of her "skin of her teeth" survival of the Rwandan genocide. Once you've read the first one, there's no doubt in your mind that you'll read the second, painful as it is....

Ahhhhhh.....Rachmaninoff. Yes.

I have a HUGE bag of Swiss chard that was graciously given to me by a HOPE friend this week. I am convinced that there must be a fabulous way to prepare this beautiful, nutritious vegetable, and I'm determined to find it. This is one of those foods that I associate with pain, namely the pain of having to eat it fresh from my grandmother's garden, boiled in salt water. I grew up thinking that the folks in Switzerland must be very, very warped. But I will not let this gift go to waste...I am GOING to find a great way to cook it!

There's a very busy week ahead, but I simply must buckle down and get next year's school planned. This will be Shelley's senior year, and I think I've been putting it off because I can't bear to think about it being her last. But...it's an important year and I need to do my very best at piecing together the combination of studies that will serve her well as she begins the process of applying to colleges.

Well...that's all, folks. May our Father grant you a productive, meaningful week with your families...

Labels: Books, Children, Food, Health, Homeschooling

Nice reminders from the Desiring God blog:

7 Ideas for Teaching Toddlers God's Word

Labels: Body of Christ, Children

I'm becoming increasingly disturbed about the looming UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. I've tried to stick my head in the sand and avoid learning too much about it, because I instinctively know that it's the next step in removing our ability to raise our children as God says we should. But in truth I haven't wanted, in this age of Obama, to get exercised about one more thing. Unfortunately, though, they go hand in hand and it's high time that Christians stand up, for what could be the last time, in opposition to this dangerous move by our country.

I'm going to post here a list of The Top 10 Things You Need to Know about the CRC, but I urge you to go to ParentalRights.org and read more about it. The younger your children (or grandchildren) are at this moment, the more serious the impact will be on their lives and we can't afford to ignore it any longer.

Ten things you need to know about the substance of the CRC.

1. Parents would no longer be able to administer reasonable spankings to their children.
2. A murderer aged 17 years, 11 months and 29 days at the time of his crime could no longer be sentenced to life in prison.
3. Children would have the ability to choose their own religion while parents would only have the authority to give their children advice about religion.
4. The best interest of the child principle would give the government the ability to override every decision made by every parent if a government worker disagreed with the parent’s decision.
5. A child’s “right to be heard” would allow him (or her) to seek governmental review of every parental decision with which the child disagreed.
6. According to existing interpretation, it would be illegal for a nation to spend more on national defense than it does on children’s welfare.
7. Children would acquire a legally enforceable right to leisure.
8. Christian schools that refuse to teach "alternative worldviews" and teach that Christianity is the only true religion "fly in the face of article 29" of the treaty.
9. Allowing parents to opt their children out of sex education has been held to be out of compliance with the CRC.
10. Children would have the right to reproductive health information and services, including abortions, without parental knowledge or consent.

Don't allow yourself to be fooled: no matter how many "good" things the UN CRC purports to do, nothing removes the threat to you and that little one sitting beside you right now. If you read nothing else today on the ParentalRights website, please make time to read this:

The Threat: Attacks on Parental Rights

Labels: Children, Political Action, Social Observation

Sometimes it seems that I get asked a lot of the same questions over and over, and I guess I do...but not by the same people. Maybe it's a feature of getting old that makes me feel as though I'm reworking the same ground a lot. In truth, a lot of (increasingly younger!) families cross my path and they tend to have the same kinds of struggles and questions that I've been hearing for many years now.

Yesterday, after a particularly well-attended and slightly noisy morning in our family-integrated church, I was asked a question that made me think it was time to address children in church once again. I've probably blogged about this before, but for some who may be new readers, I'll spend a little time on this very important topic again...

Because our congregation comprises many large families and lots of young children, we're in a continual process of training even very tiny children to worship. For the most part, things are amazingly orderly, as each family has taken on the important responsibility of teaching their children to participate enthusiastically, to sit quietly when appropriate, and to respect the worship experiences of others.

And then there are days like today, when some families feel as if everything is coming apart at the seams (and today we were bursting at the seams!). The Papa likes to remind our church that the sounds and even the cries and occasional tantrums of little children are the sounds of treasure falling from heaven. It's good to be reminded of that, isn't it? Because most of the time it's the parents of the ones still being trained who get the most "stressed out" by the noise and the need to enforce the boundaries.

But it's true, too, that genuinely unruly children do make it difficult for others around them to worship, and this is just one of the reasons that we work so hard to encourage our kids to learn self-control and reverence for the worship atmosphere. No one, though, ever gives you a manual to learn how to teach such things, and I continue to think that the best way to succeed is to observe families who've gone before you and ask them questions! Remember, too, that some of what you'll need to teach your children is dependent on the surroundings, the furnishings, and the tolerance level of the congregation you're attending. What's acceptable and even desirable in one setting won't always fly in another.

When our kids were much younger, we actually had a list of standards that we would review with them from time to time, and then we'd do a "debrief" once we were home to provide them with feedback on how they were doing. We don't ever want this to overshadow the importance of the actual worship experience, but a child who's causing trouble and disobeying is not likely to be worshiping.

Here are some of the things we trained our kids to do (and again, some of them were specific to the church we were a part of at the time):

• When the congregation stands, the children stand. When asked to be seated, they will follow.

• When we sing, they are to sing if they know the song. Once they're four or five years old, we help them follow the song in the hymnal even if they're pre-readers, so they get a handle on how to go from line to line and verse to verse.

• They are to bring their Bibles to church, and find and follow the Scripture readings once they're old enough. Again, for pre-readers, helping them follow the text with your finger helps train their eyes for the time when they can read on their own.

• No climbing or crawling under the pews/chairs and no standing on them after about two years old. In larger churches it's sometimes helpful for a very tiny child to stand on a chair so she can see what's going on. In our current church this probably wouldn't be necessary.

• Show respect for the church's hymnals, Bibles, visitor cards, etc. No writing on anything you didn't bring. The church's offering envelopes are not meant to be note card stock :-)

• Bulletins will not become airborne in any form, with or without alien insignia.
  

• If the child exceeds the acceptable noise level (and you and those around you will determine the level), he'll be taken out of the service temporarily for discipline or to calm down. But it won't be pleasant--we don't want to take them out of church and have them like the change so much that they act up on purpose in order to go play with the toys or take a walk outside. They may need a spanking, they may need a diaper change, they may need to sit just outside the crowd on Dad's lap where they don't disturb but also don't feel they've "escaped"!

• After age three, no snacks in church. Once again, some of this is determined by the setting of your church and whether Cheerios are acceptable in the pews. But in our family, we needed to set an age limit on this or they'd still be bringing their bowl of cereal into the sanctuary ;-)

• No toys, ever. This was our standard and I understand that this isn't a black and white issue, and you may disagree. We did allow drawing, but not until the sermon began. Until then, the child was to participate fully in the service and not sit in the pew with crayons. Once the sermon began we allowed quiet drawing/coloring. When our children were six they weren't allowed to draw unless it had something to do with what they were hearing. Sometimes this was a stretch...David and Goliath might resemble X-men or something. But we wanted their ears to be attuned to the sermon. After age eight or so, depending on the ability of the child, any writing needed to be sermon keywords, outline, etc.

• Intra-sibling squabbles and altercations were not/are not tolerated. It's bad enough at home...but this was (and occasionally still is) dealt with severely and swiftly when it happened in church.

• I've left this one until near the end because it is, admittedly, one of my "things". But after a child is four years old he almost NEVER needs to leave a one to one and a half hour service to go to the restroom. I'm very serious. Once a child is reliably potty-trained I give him about a year and then no more leaving the service for this. Of course, your child will scare you into thinking he's about to make a puddle on the floor but I've never personally seen this happen. Not in 54 years. I'm not saying it didn't happen once in Evanston, IL when a mom dared to say no. But I'm saying it's a good risk. If your child can go an hour at home without going to the bathroom, he can do it at church. If you're in a church where he goes to Sunday school and then church, please take him right before church and then insist he wait until after the closing prayer to go again. Honest, he'll make it if you're consistent enough to tell him no every time. Seeing 26 children leave a service inside an hour is very distracting to the pastor and the congregation, and for the most part totally unnecessary. Recognize that the impulse to ask to go to the bathroom is driven more by your child's felt need to get a change of scenery during a long sermon than it is to relieve a physical need. Obviously, you know your child and you know the look she gives you if she has a stomach virus and is about to prove it. Please allow her to go to the restroom :-) (Oh, and beware of 13 year old girls who mysteriously need to leave the service together. It usually has something to do with mascara or texting.)

• Finally, teach your kids to respect the needs and desires of those around them. If they're being fairly obedient but it appears that their loud turning of the pages in the coloring book is turning heads, then they should take the cue and try to keep it quiet.

I share these guidelines not because I want you to adopt them all "as is." It's important, though, for parents to set guidelines and then work toward the child's progress in meeting them. It doesn't happen all at once, and it's not necessarily a constant moving forward. But consistency and feedback should keep you moving in the right direction most of the time. The time and effort you spend now is a gift to your children, their children, your fellow church members, and of course the God we meet to worship.

I can't count the times that visitors to our church comment on how amazing it is to have a room FULL of children, many under three, and have it be so orderly and quiet. It's not always that way, and I know that some moms begin to feel that it's never that way! But the sound of treasure falling from heaven is a joyous thing to hear. (Well, okay, especially for those of us whose youngest sons and daughters are now 12 and above. I, too, was one of the stressed young moms for several years and didn't fully appreciate the sounds of treasure. Now I do.)

One last encouragement, mainly for you moms of little ones. Maybe you've got three or four little ones, you're pregnant with another, and you feel you'll never again get to worship or hear a whole sermon. But what higher form of worship can there be than to honor God by patiently teaching your children to worship? It won't last forever...and for now God is looking on your service to Him as an act of worship.

The church of tomorrow is counting on your faithfulness today.

Thoughts? What do your standards look like?

Labels: Children, Church

Note especially the last sentence:

House Bill 1393 and Senate Bill 68, both of which are currently moving through the legislature of the State of Texas, contain language that will intensify the regulation and licensing of all sports in the state of Texas.

This move, if allowed to go through unimpeded, would effectively kill private youth sports institutions such as select league hockey, baseball, softball, soccer, gymnastics, cheerleading, swimming, dance, martial arts, and any program that is designed to teach a skill, talent, or athletic development.

The TLCCA (Texas Licensed Child Care Association) is currently lobbying to protect the Day Care industry. The political position they are taking is to have all sports comply with the same standards they must comply with. The effort is designed to provide a level economic playing field.

See how the motive isn't even children's safety, misguided as that would be? It's TO GIVE DAYCARES A LEVEL ECONOMIC PLAYING FIELD! They don't want your children in sports, they want them in daycare. And they figure that if they can call the state's bluff on the regulations on sports programs, they'll either put them out of business or get the regulations on THEM removed! Because it's only fair!

(You've read about this before as the "Equalization of Opportunity Act" in Atlas Shrugged.)

Texans, PLEASE contact your representatives and pass this information on. The linked website has a plea for you to also contact Gov. Perry. We have seen that he does not tend to be moved (a la Gardasil) by issues involving the rights of parents to direct their children's educational and medical decisions, so it's especially important that he feel the weight of insulting the state's parents with ridiculous bills like this.

Youth Sports Under Attack by Day Care Industry and
The State of Texas Department of Family Protective Services

Hat tip: Dina W.

Who is my Texas State Representative?

Labels: Children, Political Action, Political Observation

Would I be the only one wondering how there was even the possibility of a mistake like this in a facility supposedly existing for the protection of children? Isn't it called day CARE?

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (March 13) - Ten children drank windshield wiper fluid after a staffer at an Arkansas day care mistakenly put the liquid in a refrigerator and served it, hospital officials said Friday.

Doctors estimate the children, ages 2 to 7, drank about an ounce of the blue fluid late Thursday afternoon before realizing it tasted wrong, said Laura James, a pediatric pharmacologist and toxicologist at Arkansas Children's Hospital in Little Rock.

Labels: Children, Theater of the Absurd

Feb. 27th, 93 degrees. March 1, waking up to 30 degrees. Yep, that's south Texas for ya.

I'm amused to see the movement toward a Boston-style "tea party" in protest of Obama's stimulus plan and budget (and I guess we will now have to re-define "budget," huh?). As good as it is to see a grassroots movement rising against the Theater of the Absurd, I'm not encouraged that the results will be as positive as those in Boston in 1773. After all, the colonials only had to throw off the yoke of a tyrannical king who sat across a vast expanse of ocean, the crossing of which could take months. We are faced with a president who was fairly elected by a majority of Americans and who view him as the One who will lead us to the promised land. How does a grassroots movement fight that?

How nice to look up this morning and see our blogger friend Grafted Branch and her sweet family in our midst at church!

This is the saddest story I've heard in a very long time and a good illustration of how sin leaves us with no good options. Those who decry the making of choices they label the "lesser of evils" should tackle this one.

It's March! That means it's time to get down to the brass tacks of planning our family vacation this year in Red River, New Mexico. This time vacation will be with lots of our extended family, in a place where we've stayed many times before, so there are fewer unknowns (and less planning) than with our vacation in the Smokies last year. Sometime during the week, we're all going to take the ski lift to the top of the mountain where John's brother Jack and his wife Beverly are going to renew wedding vows after 30 years of marriage. What a setting!

Sad to see the passing of Paul Harvey yesterday. The word "icon" doesn't even do this man justice. His inimitable voice is one that takes me back to my early childhood...

The clothing industry must be getting better at some things. Yesterday Beth asked me to sew a button on for her (at 18, such things are still a little tough) and I realized that it's been a couple of years since someone asked me to sew on a button! Maybe not that long, but long enough that it's not common any more. And believe me, that's not because they're doing it themselves! Have you noticed less trouble with missing buttons?

This week we'll replace our trampoline. After five years, the elements have finally done it in (helped out by Blair and Tiffany ;-) ) and we miss it! It serves multiple functions around Granny's House...it's used for jumping, wrestling, sunbathing, picture-taking and, occasionally, group lunches. The place just doesn't seem the same without it. Soon we'll be bounding again!

Just try to schedule dental and eye appointments for your kids during spring break week! I practically had to offer what's left of our retirement account!


That's all for the Snippets...hope you all have a lovely week!

Labels: Children, Fun, Homemaking, ObamaNation, People, Political Observation, Sanctity of Life, Sundays, Weather

We're passing on a evangelo-culture to our children that is going to result in an extinguishing of the "evangel" part of the Christian church. And from the nursing home we'll sit and wonder why the gospel didn't change their lives. Answer: no Gospel.

You May Not Be a Church IF...

hat tip: Jen C.

Labels: Children, Church

There's a special place in my heart for Psalm 23, as my grandmother used to put me up on her bed and read it to me when I was a little girl. When I was all (or mostly) grown up, Philip Keller's A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23 became one of my favorite books and one of the few I've read over and over, most notably during the third trimester of each of my pregnancies.

Now comes a book for children on the 23rd Psalm that I think may be destined for the same "classic" status. Susan Hunt has woven a sweet story through a verse-by-verse explanation of the most beloved Psalm, one that will give children an understanding of the roles and the value of the Great Shepherd. Several of us have this on our wish list to give to our ten-and-under crowd...check it out:

Sammy and His Shepherd

Labels: Books, Children

Laura H. sends these ideas for making snowflakes with the kids. If you're still looking for a "together" activity for your family, this will be fun, memorable, and will make your windows look wonderful!

Basic stars--

http://www.craftideas.info/html/translucent_star_2.html

Just a bit more involved--

http://www.realizeandthrive.com/lw/starinstructions.pdf

American five point star--

http://www.planetpals.com/star_pattern.html


Snowflakes--

http://highhopes.com/snowflakes.html

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/crafts/christmas/snowflake/

Thanks, Laura, for sharing the ideas AND the lovely pictures of your handiwork!

Labels: Children, Fun, Holidays

Aubrey alerted me this weekend to a valuable and beautifully written article on literature for children. I am a lover of children's books old and new (yes, there are some good new ones) and I love reading reviews and opinions of the genre and of individual works. So I'm delighted to recommend this rather lengthy survey of the elements which make good children's literature.

Sometimes a book is in the canon of children’s literature just because the writing is so good. Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows, for instance, stands as the perfection of its kind: a prose of greeny gold, of summer recollected in autumn’s light. Rudyard Kipling, too, has the perfect sort of prose for what he does. From Kim to The Just So Stories to The Jungle Book, he paints the strange new world of India in strange new Indian words—none of them quite defined, but all of them given exactly enough context that the child reader can feel the satisfaction of puzzling them out.

Then, too, certain books are remembered simply because they have an ideal premise. When William Golding won the Nobel Prize in 1983, it was mostly for the power of his 1954 novel Lord of the Flies. And there’s a reason that he based the book on (and made a horror story out of) R.M. Ballantyne’s 1857 feel-good children’s classic, The Coral Island. Ballantyne couldn’t write his way out of a paper bag, but The Coral Island reaches up to the platonic forms of childhood’s daydreams for its setting of boys alone on a desert island.

For that matter, think of Frances Hodgson Burnett—an author with a sensibility so delicate (and a father-fixation so indelicate) that any rational child would smash a window after reading her, desperate for air. But Burnett’s 1905 A Little Princess nonetheless succeeds as a story, because it provides a room where its natural readers’ fantasies can dwell, as the heroine—a little girl, bookish and mistreated—turns out to be the long-lost heir of a large fortune and the ward of an older man who pampers and, ah, yes, understands her.

Meanwhile, sheer liveliness of invention can make a book a classic, one set-piece tripping so rapidly on the heels of another that you don’t bother noticing how good or bad the story actually is: Around the World in 80 Days, for instance, and The Peterkin Papers; Black Beauty and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, too, different as they are. Good illustrations, as well, sometimes push a book into the canon. I’ve always thought Babar the Elephant was raised above its station by Jean de Brunhoff’s drawings, but the ­ Little Bear books may be the prime example: Else Minarik’s discardable words are not much more than place­holders for the young Maurice Sendak’s art.

There's a taste. If you love this genre as we do, go read the whole thing. Aubrey and I both have some disagreements with the author (and not necessarily the same ones) but we loved the way it made us think about our own loves and dislikes.

Are there "classics" that you don't like at all? Or children's books that you think should be classics?

Children’s Books, Lost and Found

hat tip: Aubrey R.

Labels: Books, Children, Learning

Alan E. Kazdin is a frustrated man, and it's America's parents who are frustrating him. These parents are, of all things, prone to use an occasional spanking in disciplining their children. Dr. Kazdin's great frustration is that these parents insist on doing what seems right to them, and thus they are ignoring or rejecting the fact that "science" shows that spankings don't work.

I can't speak for other parents, but I didn't spank my children insisting "on doing what seems right" to me. I did it because the Bible taught me that this was God's prescribed method of dealing with and disciplining a rebellious child. And by the time they were five years old, most of them would see a child having a tantrum and say something like, "Mom, that boy needs a spanking!"

No, contrary to doing what seemed right to me, I believed God when He said,

There is a way which seems right to a man,
But its end is the way of death. (Prov. 14:12)

I'm sure that at some point my children would have appreciated it if I'd stopped to read "the science" before administering corporal punishment, but something tells me that most of them are now glad I wasn't subscribing to whatever medical and psychological journals were regarding themselves as the receptacles of all knowledge at the time. No, I naively believed that

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom;
all those who practice it have a good understanding. (Psalm 111:10)

The three of my children who now have their own children have chosen "the fear of the Lord" as the beginning of wisdom and have chosen to discipline their children according to God's instruction. I'm sure "the science" would interpret this as proof that the cycle of violence is being perpetuated because of my refusal to "get it."

Oh well.

Read Al Mohler's take: Spare the Rod? America's Parents Just Won't Get With the Science

And don't miss Kadzin's follies:

Spare the Rod: Why you shouldn't hit your kids

Labels: Children, Theater of the Absurd

Welcome, and weep:

If you thought the soft-porn image of Disney teen queen Miley Cyrus—wearing nothing but ruby-stained lips and a bedsheet—in Vanity Fair magazine was disturbing, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Pop diva Beyoncé Knowles, 27, and her fashion designer mother have launched a girls clothing line that makes Miley’s bare-backed glam session look like a Shirley Temple photo shoot.

The Knowles’ family business, “House of Dereon,” recently published advertisements for its “Dereon Girls Collection” with young models who look no older than my second-grade daughter. They are seductively posed and tarted up, JonBenet Ramsey-style, with bright lipstick, blush and face powder. Draped in bling, several of the girls sport leather jackets and studded accessories.

If you need more, complete with very sad pictures, Michelle Malkin has it here:

Beyoncé's new brand of pedophilia chic

Labels: Children, Theater of the Absurd

Beware, all of you who are daring to have a huge, ostentatious family of three kids. People are watching.

Three Kids? You Showoffs.


hat tip: Trish

Labels: Children, Social Observation, Theater of the Absurd

Just thought I'd cut through a dull Wednesday afternoon by injecting some controversy. I'm not espousing ANY particular theory, just observing what's "out there."

Your mileage may vary.

Women with high testosterone may be more likely to have boys

hat tip (and taking any incoming blows): Trish

Labels: Babies, Children, News, Social Observation

I'm torn about posting this story.

On the one hand, I think it's something worth being aware of and warning against.

On the other hand, knowing the propensities of some of my own sons and grandsons, I also realize that that just giving the warning might make it even more likely to become a danger, if you know what I mean.

I will leave it to my readers to decide about passing it on :-)

Please don't bake the non-stick spray.

Labels: Children

Woohoo!!!

THE CHRISTMAS TRILOGY


hat tip: Dina

Labels: Books, Children, Holidays