Post Punk Kitchen Forum

Lenore Skenazy has a show now!
I can't remember what it's called, but in the commercial they're talking about bubble wrapping kids... then refer to her as the "world's worst mom".
I'm excited.

Go, Lenore.

She is terrific

Your daycare sounds great!

I'm a preschool teacher (though right now I'm working with twos), and I work for an accredited center. One of the accreditation requirements is a written, posted schedule, so I have one posted. But, the children make the schedule--I just observe them for a while, and make the schedule according to their needs. It changes as the children change, and the activities are never rigid. If no one wants to make art, we follow their interest. Forcing kids to do stuff is no fun for anyone. I want to teach, not herd cats :p
I always make sure parents know that the schedule is more of a guideline for the day. It makes me sad that there are people who follow their schedule so rigidly because it really robs the children of opportunities to explore.

ETA: Wow, I responded to a REALLY old post. Sorry, didn't catch the date.

Today's free range-related outrage:

Mother charged with risk of injury to a minor for letting her 11-year-old and 7-year-old walk by themselves to the pizza place a half-mile away.

So wait, an 11 year old can't escort a 7 year old a few blocks? Jesus, one of my brother and I's favorite days of the week was when my dad would get drunk enough on Friday to give us $5 and send us down to the corner store to gorge on candy. That was a whole five blocks away, and we had to turn a corner and walk down a semi-busy street.

On the other hand, a 14 year old girl just went missing from a local park here and apparently the average age of entry into prostitution in the US is between 12 and 14.

Yeah, but I would bet most teens entering the sex trade have a pretty solid history of trauma and parents who are either entirely neglectful or actively abusive, and getting out--even if into a pretty shitty situation--feels safer than staying.

And, as ever, we are much, much, much more likely to experience violence from people we know than from strangers. We are much more likely to be sexually assaulted, kidnapped and murdered by a family member, friend or acquaintance than a bad man waiting in the bushes.

Why you should never play hide and seek:
http://www.momtastic.com/parenting/tips ... ignite.com

Bwahahahahahahahaha! This is especially funny because my kids are, like, the worst hiders in the world. Playing hide and seek with them is hilarious.

while i had a lunch meeting last week, i sent my kid on a free-range adventure (gave her $50 and a list of things to buy in the big municipal market my meeting was in- kind of like a mall for food ingredients) and almost all of my peers were horrified. The place, like any mall, is crawling with security guys, and my kid's 12, not 4, and she's not an idiot. She had a brilliant time, ate herself almost-sick on expensive Japanese junk food she found in an import booth, and accomplished her mission.

That sounds so fun for her, torque! Shae absolutely loves getting to do stuff like this and it's so good for kids their age.

When I was 12 I took public transit all over the city by myself to hang out with my friends. I can't even imagine it not being seen as normal for 12-year olds to do things on their own!

This article is ridiculous. However, when I worked at an after-school program I banned my second graders from playing hide and seek on the playground. When you've got a playground full of kids from your program and just from the neighborhood, and you've got 12 to keep track of, and some of them are prone to running off or "forgetting" where the boundaries are, you're going to be doing headcounts every few minutes, and they are difficult when all the kids are running around. It's also really scary when you're supposed to be counting 12 and you've come up with 11 a few times in a row! And when a relief when you realize the 12th kid is hiding behind a bench or something, but I decided to avoid that situation.

I am all for free-range parenting but sometimes stuff makes sense in big group settings that doesn't make sense when you're with a few kids or your family, and I think people who haven't worked in big childcare settings might not always understand why. For example, a while ago there was a big discussion about a no touching policy, before I worked in that after-school program, and I remember thinking that policy was ridiculous...guess who totally instated a no touching policy with my kids at that job eventually? This teacher who was sick of arguing with second graders over whether mauling your friend and knocking her over counts as a hug.

Yes, we also have a strict no touching policy except when you're holding your buddy's hand during a field trip or something. It would be great if we could let kids hug each other, but it becomes a huge PITA to police violent "hugging."

A pre-schooler in Grand Island (don't know where that is) is told to change his name.

Because his name is Hunter.

And he is deaf.

And the sign for his name is a violation of the school's no-weapon policy.

Come on, apocalypse! What are you waiting for?

Grand Island is in Nebraska.

And the rest of that is ridiculous.

OK, since the letters in hunter fingerspelled don't have anything resembling a gun, I'm guessing the parents are doing something like this for the kid's name?
http://www.signingsavvy.com/sign/HUNT/1518/1

In which case, how did they NOT anticipate that this was going to cause problems with a young kid? I mean, REALLY. It is stupid to name your kid "the action of pretending to shoot people with your fingers." Just...stupid, sorry. I'm with the daycare on this - they should give the kid a name that does not look like he's pretending to decapitate whoever he's talking to.

I don't get it... the linked video shows the sign is not heinous or anything. What problems would this cause? Why would a kid change his name over a daycare policy?

ETA: I guess they just want him to change the *sign* for his name? But... that's the ASL sign, right? ETAA: SEE sign....

maybe he should change it to a bow and arrow. (just kidding, kind of)

The video shows that the sign is the sign for hunt, with fingers in R shape. The kid is still too little to get the R shape reliably, though, so his fingers are kind of spread out when he signs it.

And, it's his NAME. It's the only way he knows of people addressing him. Having him suddenly have to respond to and identify with a new name is ridiculous.

I tried googling for some more recent articles about Hunter, to see how this worked out. The articles are all really confused and confusing. It seems like Hunter's parents are also having issues with the school district because they want him to use SEE (Signing Exact English) and the school district uses ASL (American Sign Language), and those issues and this issue are getting all confused. The school wanting him to use the ASL sign doesn't make much sense, though, since the ASL sign for "hunt" looks even more like a gun than the one that they're using. (SEE uses English grammar, and tries to have one sign for each English word, so that things can be translated back and forth exactly. ASL has its own grammatical structure, and doesn't match signs to English words exactly.)

Maybe they picked his name before knowing what the sign was?

Or before they knew he was deaf? This article says that the father had wanted to name him Shooter, after Waylon Jennings' son, and the mother suggested Hunter as a compromise. http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/08 ... d-him?lite

This is not making me think any more highly of these parents, actually.