A New Zealand mom left her child in a car with a note to contact her if a passerby saw the child in distress. No matter where you're from, this is bad parenting. (Facebook)
New Zealand mom vs. Norway mom: Who leaves a child unattended?
A new mother in Porirua, New Zealand causes global uproar by leaving her baby in a locked car with a note pinned to the blanket telling people to ring her cell if the baby was in need. Meanwhile, parents in Sweden routinely leave children outdoors to nap in strollers without a second thought. Both stories have sparked debate on child endangerment, judgment calls, cultural differences, and parental education.
“After a photo of the baby and the note was published in The New Zealand Herald, people of course got riled up. Leaving a child unattended can lead to severe consequences in any country.”
That statement is almost true, however the definition of “unattended” does vary from nation to nation.
In the United States and, judging from news articles, New Zealand as well, the sight of a baby left unattended results in police being called immediately and the word “abandonment” figuring in headlines. Such is not the case in Sweden where long tradition has babies napping in their prams in the snow from birth to age two, according to BBC News. This occurs in busy shopping areas as well as less trafficked areas.
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The BBC reports that while daytime temperatures in Stockholm have regularly dropped to -5C (23F), “it's still common to see children left outside by their parents for a sleep in the pram. Wander through the snowy city and you'll see buggies lined up outside coffee shops while parents sip on lattes inside.”
A poll in Norway asked parents how many let their babies sleep outdoors/outside a café and 84 percent say yes, they do.
My friend lives Norway, an hour from Oslo, and is one of the best mothers I have ever met and her job is to work with children ages one and two at a kindergarten there. She asks that her name not be mentioned so as not to upset her employer, but she told me just now, via Facebook chat, “Yes, babies sleep outdoors in Norway, privately and in day care and NO they are never ever unattended .”
She explained, “There are 14 babies in my section ages 1-2 and they all nap outside during the daytime for 1-2 hours they wear wool and then another layer on top of that and then they are in a sub zero sleeping bag. The fresh air is very healthy for them and they sleep better.”
“They sleep outside as long as it is not colder than minus 10 C colder than that some parents still request outdoors sleeping but our general rule is that unless really cold winds. There is ALWAYS an adult watching listening for breathing constantly checking that everything is ok. and when people do this privately, as everyone does, they put the stroller by a window so that they can check and it has never ever happened that a baby has been kidnapped here for this. In denmark they do the same. One danish woman was arrested in NY city for doing this outside a café.”
I am fine with the sleeping outside in the cold part after a pediatrician had me bundle fhe first of my first of four sons in his stroller on the front porch of our Medford, N.J. home for naps when he was suffering the croup while snow piled high on the ground. I have done so with every sick baby since and healthy ones as well, taking care to bundle them and myself as I sat on the porch with them or sat by the window and watched like a ninja mom.
I can’t imagine any scenario in which I would ever intentionally leave a baby unattended outside.
However, in the New Zealand incident, a parking-lot witness told the Herald:
"It was written from the baby's perspective, and it said, 'my mum's in doing the shopping, call her if I need anything,’ and it had the cellphone number We waited there for a little bit, wondering if the mum was just going to be two seconds and come back. And my wife said, 'I'm not going in without someone being here with the baby.'"
According to Susan Pollack, curriculum and program director for Children’s Harbor of Virginia the dangers are not only physical but spiritual issues on trust in their care giver. “This is a big deal because think of not only a child possibly choking from vomit but also what if someone hits that car in the lot? What about the baby in the news who almost lost a pinkie because a hair got wrapped around it (in what’s known as a hair tourniquet) and there’s nobody there for who knows how long? Then we have the whole trust issue too.”
“I always tell new parents to imagine themselves as a quadriplegic in a chair with no means of getting words out, totally dependent for everything — that’s a baby,” Pollack said. “A baby’s signals must be read and they’re not asking for a new car here,” she added. “They’re asking for someone they can trust to respond to their needs. Leaving a child alone to cry until someone calls the mother’s cell phone? That is raising a child to know the person who counts the most can’t be trusted to answer their needs. They need that relationship.”
My Norwegian friend agrees that the case of the New Zealand baby being unattended makes it an absolute no-no in her country as well.
“That [a baby unattended or out of sight] never ever happens here,” she said. “Parents constantly watch the sleeping babies though not with thoughts of kidnapping, but more safety like crib death or temperature falling or waking.”
So, despite the fact that cultural and climate differences may result in a baby being put outside, while getting some healthful fresh air is not a crime while under a keenly watchful eye, leaving a baby or child unattended in a public place or locked into a vehicle is never, ever right.
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I have four sons and I have made scads of mistakes along the way over the past 19 years, and from those mistakes comes a certain amount of confidence in telling new parents and non-parents who are interested the following: We do not leave an infant or child in harm’s way, out of our reach or sight in public. In addition, we do not leave babies at home alone while we go out on errands because of the fear of a baby choking of reflux or crib death by other circumstance.
These are things that we, as parents, must pass on to our children so that when it’s their time to be sleep-deprived, they might make the bad judgment call of going to the store in their slippers, but their child will definitely be in that store with them.
A group of Australian teens on sexting — laws seem unfair; inappropriate content — ignore it; parental monitoring — announce it.; a minimum age for social networks — 13. Here, a 19-year-old snaps a photo of her friend's puppy in Texas, Feb. 27. (Andrew D. Brosig,The Daily Sentinel/AP)
Sexting, parental monitoring, laissez-faire content approach: Aussie teens sound off
My visit to Australia for the World Congress on Family Law & Children’s Rights has been rich in hospitality and insight — I’ve had the privilege of talking with people in government, online-safety advocacy, industry, school (students!), primary and secondary education, research, of course many parents and grandparents, and even “Australia’s Dr. Phil,” as Michael Carr-Gregg has sometimes referred to himself (but the latter is still a clinical psychologist as well as media personality). I can’t possibly fit all that I’ve learned into one blog post, so I’ll be breaking it out into several posts). First anecdotal, next published research….
A panel of smart, candid high school students, moderated by Dr. Carr-Gregg, lasted for a mere 30 minutes. I could’ve listened to them for a couple of hours, so I sought them out afterwards, and they kindly shared more of their thinking. [Here they are, in uniform because most Australian students seem to wear school uniforms and they came right from school, thoughtfully formulating their answers to a question I'm asking. Between us is Dr. Carr-Gregg in yellow tie. The photo was taken and posted by Jeremy Blackman of the Alannah and Madeline Foundation, my gracious hosts.]
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Here are some highlights from the panel (Ethan, Jon, Claire, Filip, Cameron, and Ashley):
- Sexting: For some reason, this topic — and what the minimum age should be for criminal responsibility in their country — was raised with the students first (more soon about it from a brilliant researcher here). Naturally, teens are as confused as are adults and the laws in many countries. “It depends” seemed to be the consensus, sensibly — because neither trust between friends nor a law is being violated in every case of sexting that even gets legal attention. “The law is unfair and needs to be altered,” said one panelist, in sync with what I’ve heard legal scholars say. They seemed to struggle with the age factor — one said that children need to be held accountable for their actions too — but the panelists agreed that children need education about the consequences, and “education is better than prosecution.”
- Inappropriate content: When asked about whether pages depicting violence, hate, misogyny, etc. should be taken down, one student said, “Nobody’s forcing you to look at or like that page. You can block it too, so that you never have to look at it if you don’t want to.” Another said, “Free speech is important,” adding that it’s better to allow people to “express their displeasure” with and on an offensive page than to require a service to delete it. A third panelist said that, if it promotes violence, it should be taken down, “but people say awful things to each other in person, and [online] is just another place where that happens.”
- They’re self-regulating. Bearing out a finding from MediaSmarts in Canada, they’re both aware of the need for balanced use of digital media and working on that in their own lives. One panelist referred to the “Great Friend Deletion of 2010,” so that, ever since, he only has FB friends who he actually knows offline (about 300). Another has her privacy settings set as private/friends only. But one panelist called on parents to help their kids strike a balance between online and offline. He made an important qualification, though (which I hope parents will hear): If parents go overboard and take social media away altogether, “you can become a social outcast and get bullied. That’s a concern.” Another panelist said that digital media are “enmeshed in and important to daily life.”
- Great advice for parents: The students said their generation will “go online whether you say to or not and will do what they want,” so “teaching us why or why not is better than just saying no. You can’t take our technology away without a good reason.” But, hey, said one panelist, “it’s not bad online. We go online to talk about what we had for dinner half the time. Bad stuff happens, but that’s not what social media’s all about. People talk badly about others offline too — this is just another medium, and people should get used to that.” Another panelist agreed: “People are doing things on the Net that they do in offline life — it’s the same thing. People need to be more educated before they pass judgment on social media.” His comment is representative of a finding from Australian research I’ve quoted before, that “rather than sliding into a moral vacuum when they go online, young people draw upon the same moral framework that shapes their offline engagements.”
- Of parental monitoring. There seemed to be acceptance of this, but not of secret monitoring. Panelists seem to agree that they should be notified by their parents if monitoring was going to happen. This was a finding in the Canadian study too.
- Of “digital citizenship”: When I asked them about this afterwards, they didn’t seem enthusiastic about the concept. “You’re not a separate person online,” said one student suggesting that the term suggests something different from “citizenship.” Another simply said that it’s “a weird term,” and a third felt it sounded like someone was “rebranding” Internet safety. It’s the early days for this concept in Australia, it seems.
- Socially very mobile: Like US youth, and bearing out the EU and AU Kids Online research, these teens seem to use social media mostly on their phones and devices of similar size and portability — whether it’s Facebook or Kik Messenger (Australian youth’s No. 1 texting app it appears). Remember how we’d pass notes in class? Texting — and in Australia, Kik, specifically — is the new note-passing, it seems (in elementary school too).
- A minimum age? Yes, the panelists said. The minimum age for Facebook and all social media should be 13, because otherwise kids would grow up too fast, one said, suggesting that 12-year-olds shouldn’t feel pressure to “wear what 18-year-olds wear and go clubbing.” Another agreed, saying U13s “can be really irritating” to have around in social media, and — besides — they shouldn’t be exposed to inappropriate photos (he wasn’t given the chance to define “inappropriate”).
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The $338 million Powerball ticket was sold in New Jersey. Are kids losing out when their parents try to win big? Here, a clerk in Totowa, N.J., hands tickets to customer on March 24. (Tyson Trish/Associated Press)
$338 million ticket: When parents buy and lose, their kids do too
Somebody in New Jersey spent $2 on a Powerball lottery ticket and just won $338 million. As for the rest of the ticket holders, I hope they take home the valuable knowledge that gambling rarely pays a return and is a total loss in the parenting department.
Despite the probability of winning in Powerball being about one in 175 million, according to NBC News, people in 42 states, Washington, D.C., and the US Virgin Islands, bought tickets. We have a better chance of dying from a bee sting, one in 6.1 million, or death via lightning strike, one in 3 million. Indeed, sometimes lightening strikes lottery ticket holders. The Chicago Tribune reports that a 48-year-old “bought three lottery tickets, hoping to win the big jackpot which had grown to more than $600 million. After he bought the tickets, he jokingly said to a friend that he had a better chance of getting struck by lightning than winning. Unfortunately, he was right."
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Still, we build up hope, and the hope of our children, and continue to buy lottery tickets.
Therefore, rather than risk the proverbial lightning strike from on high, I will admit right up front that in the midst of financial distress, I personally did not resist the temptation to buy a ticket for the monster jackpot that preceded the most recent Powerball lottery.
I can count the number of times I have bought a ticket — twice— and both times at my husband’s urging due to our ongoing financial distress. That does not excuse my lack of judgment in the slightest. I realize that a penny saved is a penny earned and the $2 wasted on the lottery would have been far more effective in my youngest son’s piggy bank. How often as parents do we tell kids, “Do as I say, not as I do?” However, since I made the mistake twice and suffered the consequences, I feel like I have a bit more insight about a practice that has become widely accepted as a means of funding our public projects and even schools.
According to CBS News our dollars are baked into the fiscal pie as follows, “Revenue from that pie is divided in three ways: About 60 percent goes to prize winners; 15 percent to retailers, marketing and operations; and 25 percent, or about $14 billion, goes back to the states for government services.” That’s a huge chunk of change handed over to the country's coffers. It makes me feel as if we are sending the message to kids that government is run largely on a bet.
For my part I think that’s a poison pie. The sickness I felt at the loss of the ticket money and the destruction of my little fantasy that we'd win was magnified by the fact that my son, 9, was with me when I checked the ticket. You’d have thought I was smuggling drugs the way I sneaked over to the little scanner to see if the ticket was a winner while he was picking out a snack.
However, to a child, a sneaking mom is like a flare in the dark. He materialized at my side just as the machine lit up a phrase in blue: “This ticket is not a winner.” I instantly realized the massive, compounded error I’d made.
My son asked me, “So how does this work actually? Do they just give you the ticket for free or something?” No, I told him, you pay for the tickets. Then, at that moment, I felt the utter misery a parent feels after realizing they've done a bad job must find a way to reverse the damage ASAP.
Buying a lottery ticket is a parenting error. Some may disagree, but the reality is that according to the National Center for Responsible Gaming, “[A]nywhere from 2 percent to 7 percent of young people experience a gambling addiction, compared to about 1 percent of adults. An estimated 6 percent to 15 percent of youth have gambling problems that are less severe, while 2 percent to 3 percent of adults fall into that category. Boys are more likely to experience a gambling problem than girls.”
So I came clean with my son about the mistake I’d made, the money I’d wasted, and why gambling was a mistake I didn’t want him to make. He cheerfully replied, “Well derp! Who can’t figure that out if you give money and don’t get anything back?”
Bingo. What a response. I will admit that as a parent I got lucky because there certainly wasn’t any skill involved in the way I’d handled that particular incident. In fact, I can probably credit the sheer, stone cold logic of Asperger’s for his quick reply more than anything he learned by my example that day. In fact, many parents could benefit from more stone cold logic when it comes to kids and fostering gambling habits. For example, an act as a simple as choosing to give a kid money for their birthday instaed of a lottery ticket.
According to the Associated Press, in Dec. 2012 : “New Jersey's Council on Compulsive Gambling and the state lottery are advising people that they shouldn't give lottery tickets as holiday gifts to children. In a joint statement, the two groups say gambling at an early age can increase the risk of becoming a compulsive gambler. New Jersey law requires lottery purchasers to be 18 or over, but does not specifically prohibit giving lottery tickets to kids. A recent Yale University study found that youngsters who received instant tickets as a gift tended to begin gambling earlier in life.”
Perhaps the only good thing about scratch off tickets is they demonstated there is no skill to winning a lottery. There are news shows consistently dedicating air time to how to best pick the winning numbers in a lottery. Gamblers tend to have a system, culling numbers from their wedding anniversaries or children’s birth dates, or parsing through lists of previous numbers to avoid repeating a combination.
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These reports give an illusion that lottery requires skill when it’s really all just random chance. Even when a gambler’s “system” works, it’s just smoke and mirrors. The chaos factor will triumph in the end. Kids need to be told early and often to believe in themselves and their skills instead of luck.
In this economy, with four kids (one in college and another headed there in the fall) I work three freelance writing jobs while my husband works full-time and still our home is in danger of foreclosure, our bills are often paid late and the stress wraps around my hope and strangles it.
In that moment when we stop believing in our skills and all that is left is a Higher Power to pull us through, realize that The Power to survive all this is not in a little white ball. The power is in our faith and our families. That’s a win-win.
Norway, while becoming a better fit, is a long way from home for Saleha Mohsin and her husband. The expatriates help each other's longing for family by role playing the characters they miss the most. The port of Svolvaer in northern Norway, March 4. (Reuters)
4,109 miles from home, expat couple in Norway role plays each other's family members
There are a lot of “love refugees” in Norway.
When I meet other expat couples, particularly trailing spouses like myself, we usually ask each other how we ended up in Norway. It always comes down to one thing: our partners. They are either Norwegian (who are great at falling in love overseas) or our partners aren’t natives but followed their careers here, bringing their families in tow.
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There is an immediate camaraderie among expats. In leaving our comfort zones to see the world, we’ve all done something very brave.
Moving to Norway was a big decision for my husband and I. The opportunity popped up out of nowhere and it took a lot of research before we could make an informed decision to move to a place that we hadn’t even considered as a vacation spot.
Once you’ve landed overseas, the strength of your relationship is put to the test and you find that you have to rely on each other in ways that other couples don’t.
Autumn of 2011 was a tumultuous time for us. With each step that brought us closer to a life in Norway – putting our London flat on the rental market or giving notice at work – we wondered if we were making the right choice. If one of us became overwhelmed about what was ahead, the other would toughen up for the leap of faith that was taking us to Oslo.
One could say that it was faith in Norway that brought us here. Before we moved, we had a five-day reconnaissance trip during which we had to learn everything we could about the local lifestyle before the decision was official. We realized that there was no way to know whether it was going to work out unless we gave it a try, so that’s what we did.
That leap of faith was one that my husband and I also took in each other. Although we factored quality of life and cost of living into our decision to leave a comfortable home in Britain, a big part of that decision was whether we, as a couple, could make this expat adventure a success.
When you move abroad with your partner, both of you are stripped of your network of family and friends and the safety of familiar surroundings. Once you’ve landed overseas, the strength of your relationship is put to the test and you find that you have to rely on each other in ways that other couples don’t. Since moving to Norway, my husband is all I’ve got. When I had sinusitis last fall, we couldn’t count on my mom to come by with a big pot of food to help us get through the week. And when my husband was working 80-hour weeks last spring, I couldn’t pass the time by dropping by my brothers’ place to hang out with my nephews and gossip with my sister-in-law. All of those people are 4,109 miles away.
So while I’m in Oslo, my husband fills all of those roles for me. He plays Super Mario Brothers with me when I miss my nephews, and I in turn indulge him by watching the Batman movies for the third time around because he can’t watch them with his brother.
But if we’re all of a sudden getting on each other’s nerves (like all healthy couples should, every so often), there’s really no escape. If one of us tried to get some space, the other would be left in the lurch, so we don’t do this often.
It’s this precise aspect of expathood that people who are still in their comfort zones, surrounded by their usual support network, can’t understand. It’s the reason my husband and I don’t answer the phone when we’re watching a movie or exploring the rest of Europe, or when one of us is just having a bad day.
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Only our fellow expats truly understand what it’s like to live in Norway, far from everything familiar (and warm). From this camaraderie a wonderful little community has emerged. Newcomers seek the wisdom of those who came before them. Those of us who have lived here awhile are finally able to ‘pay it forward’ and help those that are fresh off the boat. And then there are expats who have been here for 10, 15, or even 20 years. These are our north stars.
I’ve been in Oslo 16 months and I feel that I’m at a turning point. Without realizing it I’ve become a part of a community and have even been able to offer guidance to a few new arrivals. The most important advice isn’t anything I tell them, it’s simply that I’m still here and enjoying every day of it.
The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best family and parenting bloggers out there. Our contributing and guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor, and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. Saleha Mohsin blogs at Edge of the Arctic.
Bo Obama was invited to the Portland, Ore., Doggie Dash by a, so far, lovelorn Goldendoodle named Ramona. (Gary Cameron / Reuters)
Bo Obama asked out by lady Goldendoodle to Oregon dog fundraiser
Bo Obama is a catch.
Owned by a presidential family, from the same litter as former-Sen. Ted Kennedy's dog Cappy, and, like The Washington Post's Manuel Roig-Franzia wrote, he's a debonair gentleman: "[He's got tuxedo-black fur, with a white chest, white paws and a rakish white goatee."
So it's easy to see why, considering the spate of celebrities being asked to Prom through rambunctious high schooler-led social media campaigns, Bo would not be left out. Enter a doting Goldendoodle from Oregon, who targeted America's favorite coiffed canine in a YouTube video requesting his escort to the Oregon Humane Society's 26th annual Doggie Dash fundraiser.
Bo would be made the Grand Marshal and lead some 4,000 dogs and their humans on a parade along the Willamette River in Portland, Ore.
The YouTube video shows the Goldendoodle, named Ramona, looking lovesick and lonely. And then Crayola crayon outlined thought bubbles appear above her head, "Oh no!! I don't have a date for Doggie Dash!"
A picture of Bo, framed inside a floating heart, appears above a hopeful name: Mrs. Ramona Obama, First Dog-Lady.
Ramona gets busy. How does one reach the FDOTUS? She tries reaching him through her twitter handle, @ramona_the_dog, but, despite her pinpointed typing skills, she has no luck. Bo doesn't even return her Facebook message. He's unreachable (like his Dad).
On the Doggie Dash's website, Ramona even makes a five point argument for why the pair would hit it off. They're both hypoallergenic, they both love blues music, she'd frolic in the Hawaiian sand with him any day.
In a last-ditch effort, Ramona writes Bo a letter. She begins by appealing to his ego — he's probably really busy and important at the White House, but here he'd be leading 4,000 dogs. Following that, an appeal to his conscience. The Oregon Humane Society doesn't get tax dollars or any other government support and they need this fundraiser so they can match their record set this year of placing 11,000 dogs into homes.
And then Ramona throws caution aside and comes on strong: "Because I love you, and want to marry you, and be the First Dog-Lady of the United States."
Although ABC News reported the humane society hasn't heard back yet, workers did communicate with Oregon's congressional delegation to ensure the letter made it into the right hands (paws).
A petition on Change.org had 699 signatures as of this morning.
Facebook photo raid: This undated photo provided by Shawn Moore shows his son Josh holding a rifle his father gave him for his 11th birthday, at their home. (Shawn Moore/AP)
Facebook photo raid: Parents, show common sense in a time of uncommon anxiety (+video)
When a New Jersey father posted a picture of his young son toting a rifle he’d received for his birthday in order to follow a family hunting tradition, the boy was nearly lost to his family when he was caught in the social media crosshairs. This is not about gun laws, but what we, as parents, are choosing to fire-off to our social media sites that could make our kids and families targets for a very gun-shy society that’s become trigger-happy about reporting kids and parents to authorities.
I know I wrote about a little girl in Pennsylvania getting into trouble for pointing a Hello Kitty bubble-blowing toy at another child and saying, “I’m going to shoot you!” When we have people pointing fingers at kids who point finger-guns, it’s really just common sense not to put our families in harm’s way by posting photos and stories that could easily be misunderstood to our social media feeds.
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In just such a posting, according to The Associated Press, Shawn Moore uloaded a photo of his son Josh holding a rifle he gave him for his 11th birthday, at their home in Carneys Point, N.J. The photo shows Josh, a little boy, in cammo, smiling with what looks like a military-style assault rifle, but is actually just a .22-caliber copy. This doesn’t blow bubbles.
The Moore family says this photo, posted on Facebook, led the state’s child welfare agency to the family’s house on March 15 demanding to be let inside to inspect their guns. It’s truly not a leap of logic to see how that picture being posted on Facebook by the father snowballed into a mess.
Mr. Moore is terribly upset about the ensuing raid and I would be as well. In fact I would be angry and terrified that people would misjudge my child and my parenting as the result of a Facebook picture. However, the fact is that no matter how defiant I often feel about the nanny society that has risen as the direct result of numerous children being murdered and wounded by gun-toting classmates, I also take great pains to try to understand and thus not inflame it.
When posting a picture of your child on Facebook can result in child abuse hotlines being called and the child nearly being taken by authorities, it’s time for parents to change our social media habits. We can be angry and shout about not bowing to social pressure, but the bottom line is that this is one more way we must move with the times and not against them in order to protect our families.
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I have spent countless sessions with my nine-year-old son trying to recalibrate the expressions he uses and things he says in, around, or after school. I don’t like having to bow to social pressure either, but frankly when the media blew up the fact that the Sandy Hook shooter had Asperger's, every parent of an autistic child that I know called me to get a consensus on how to handle things socially. We worried that our kids could no longer say, “I’m mad at you!” to another child, raise his voice, or do anything to show emotion that would not have us out of school and in court.
It’s not fair, but as we so often tell our kids, “Life’s not fair. Sometimes we just have to do things we don’t like.”
WWE star saves mom: Here, Chris Masters' mom's house the day after the fire. The WWE star used a tree to break a window and gain entrance to the house during the blaze. (Chris Masters' twitter)
WWE star saves mom from fire using tree, overkill? My kids loved it
There is only one occasion when seeing your son uproot a tree and slam it through your window is cause for celebration and former WWE wrestler Chris “Master Lock” Masters tumbled to it when he saved his mom from a captor who’d set her house on fire with her in it. In doing so, he smashed a favorite bully weapon by giving the term “Mama’s Boy” a fierce makeover. He also has my sons thinking about what they would have done to save Mom.
Mr. Masters, whose real name is Chris Mordetzky, got a call from his uncle saying that a neighbor had locked himself in Masters's mother's Los Angeles home and threatened to burn the place down if anyone tried to come inside, according to the wrestler's Twitter feed. Masters decided not to be dictated to by the home invader and called the police — then the neighbor set the house on fire with Masters’ mom inside.
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While there are those who say pro wrestling in the WWE is all just play acting, Masters was not playing around when he decided against waiting for police and, instead, went rushing to his mother’s aid.
Masters arrived on the scene and, as police struggled to find a way into the burning house, he uprooted a tree and used it to smash in a window and save his mom.
“Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers.... Moms resting comfortably with me at my place,” Masters posted on his Twitter feed, which is filled with photos of his mother’s home. “Heres the aftermath.So thankful my moms alive!!!!!!!!!”
I bet his mom excused the swearfest that ensued in his posts after he very satisfactorily took down the bad guy and rescued her. Profanity aside, the incident has my sons debating how they would save me in that situation and I have the feeling the landscaping’s going to suffer before this day is out. The fact that Masters chose a tree as a tool has Team Geek here at my house in an uproar. Masters is the new social media meme fodder with my boys saying things like, “A bulletproof vest wears Chris Masters for protection” and “When Bruce Banner gets mad he turns into the Hulk. When the Hulk gets mad he turns into Chris Masters. When Chris Masters gets mad, run!”
Of my four sons the eldest, Zoltan, 19, is a criminal justice major at Virginia Commonwealth University with a homeland security a minor; Ian, 17, is a high school senior; Gracie Jiu-Jitsu blue belt (one stripe), Avery, 14, is the stick-thin gaming Star Trek geek; and Quin, 9, is the self-proclaimed “mathmagician.”
So how would my sons handle this crisis?
All the boys agreed that Zoltan would have been the one to “Go Chuck Norris on the situation” and throw himself through the window to get his hands on the bad guy.
Ian could not stop grinning, “A tree? That’s beautiful. Arrive on the scene, assess the situation and the answer we get is tree? Well, it worked so I guess my only thing would be the take-down once I was in.”
“What’s wrong with a rock,” Avery asked. “You can’t go wrong with a rock. Think of the time lost uprooting a tree!”
Quin closed the comments saying, “Seriously? The guy’s huge and can pull out a tree, so why not just kick in the door? Actually, forget that, if I saw a dude ripping out a tree and I was the guy hurting his mom I would just die of being scared.”
This is an incident that’s not going to get old at our house.
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I will tell you that it’s really nice to see a big, tough, scary guy who can perform bone-crushing locks in the ring be such a doting son. Seeing him continue to post love for his mother and her being safely under her son’s wing tells me that as a parent she really did something right.
In fact he just posted a retro black and white snapshot of his mom and wished her a happy birthday on Twitter today. Even though her son already gave her the best gift any mom could have by loving her so much he’d smash through fire for her, I bet he still gives her flowers. If there was a belt you could win for being a good son I’d award it to Masters.
Pink saw a young fan crying in the crowd at a recent show and stopped her performance to offer them a Rice Krispies treat. Here, Pink performs in the rain on NBC's 'Today' show on Sept. 18, in New York. (Charles Sykes/Associated Press)
Pink stops concert to be a mom: Comforts crying child, scolds unruly crowd [+video]
Rebel Rocker, iconic bad girl, Pink, is usually a show-stopper, but this week she took it literally when she spotted a little girl crying in the audience and shut-down her set to give comfort and, in a watershed moment, parented the crowd. That moment can serve to remind us that taking kids with us to events can be stressful, yet also have surprising benefits for everyone.
Last week I wrote about Jada Pinkett-Smith being a tiger-mom on Facebook and parenting the media over what she termed “cyber bullying” attacks on young stars. Today we have another mom rocker, Alecia Beth “Pink” Moore who took her Philadelphia concert audience to task for fighting in the presence of a child. It’s starting to feel like if you want to be a mom who rocks you need to get “pink” into your name somewhere.
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It’s safe to say I was a timid mom at the start, 19 years and four sons ago. When my kids were younger I dreaded taking them out in public fearing the social spotlight of being the mom with the wailing kid. I remember leaving carts full of groceries behind to snatch up a crying son and get out of the store in Olympic-time to avoid the embarrassment. A concert of any kind would have been unthinkable, but after seeing Pink in action I realize maybe I missed a step on the parenting path that could have taken us someplace great.
Pink can be seen in a YouTube video (scroll down to view!), shot by a fan at her Philadelphia performance Sunday night.
In a very mommy moment the singer’s gaze sweeps the massive crowd, zeroes-in on a distraught little girl in the sea of noisy humanity, and asks in a no-nonsense voice: "Hold on. One second. Time out. Is everything OK right here? Is this little girl all right?"
Mind you, this is a packed house and the entire audience is singing with her during the set, and yet she picks up on a child crying. She’s the mom of a little girl, age 2, and her thought is now rewired, tuned, like most moms’ ears are, to screen out everything and hear the child crying. Who’s got the mom super power? Oh yeah, Pink’s got it big time.
Then, she very pointedly asks why the child’s upset. She’s not letting go, this is one big pink tiger mom sorting things out and in so doing, parenting the huge audience. This is not the kind of audience you find at a church choir sing-along, this is Philly and the woman who, while having voiced a part in the children’s film "Happy Feet 2," also has washboard abs and was a powerhouse in the video for her new song “Try” where she does an Apache dance with a guy who looks like an mixed martial arts fighter, while covered in neon chalk and not much else.
Much like any mom at home, she then learns a fight in the crowd had frightened the girl and that’s when it gets interesting. "Y'all are fighting around a little girl?" Pink demands in what the world now can reference as the mom voice multiplied by the wow-factor of coming over a state of the art sound system and the Pink pipes.
The crowd instantly responded to this by booing the offending parties. Pink, realizing that she’s just thrown the weight of a heavy crowd onto the pile, backpedals and parents the other half of the crowd. She makes a joke about all of them having been there, done that, and the crowd laughs and things reboot to a happy event.
You might think the star was done and would just move on, but she can’t let it go until she’s sure the child is calm and happy again, offering her a stuffed animal someone had tossed on stage and a Rice Krispie treat. The child is now frozen in the spotlight, and Pink does the classic mom coax in a goofy voice saying, “Come aaawwwwnnn! You know you want a Rice Krispie treat.”
When the child doesn’t move Pink hands the prizes through the sea of humanity which obediently crowd surfs the stuffed frog and tasty treat to the child.
Pink ends the episode by telling the audience, “ ’Cause Rice Krispie treats make everything better don’t they?”
She tells the girl, “Don’t cry. Cry when you’re older.”
Then, before taking her seat she turns to the crowd and sternly adds, “Cut it out y’all. Y’all are grown-ass women. Seriously.” And the crowd went wild with support of parenting in Pink style.
What I took away from the video was that the little girl and her parents all survived the spotlight and in fact have the baby book entry of a lifetime, and that more celebrities should be as brave as Pink was in that situation. She didn’t give a moment’s thought to losing fans or how it would play, because her life is unscripted.
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If I had it all to do over again, I would still rush the kids from the public places when they had a melt-down because it’s polite and keeps you from doing something out of desperation that might be even worse – like melting down yourself. However, I would also take my young children to more cultural events, performances, and social gatherings because they might have encountered someone like Pink along the way to free our minds of our fears.
While the lyrics for the song "Try" are intended to reference relationships, I think they work perfectly in this context as well:
Where there is desire
There is gonna be a flame
Where there is a flame
Someone's bound to get burned
But just because it burns
Doesn't mean you're gonna die
You've gotta get up and try, and try, and try
Oh, and of course, I want to thank Pink for permanently removing the “soccer mom” stigma from those of us who still make Rice Krispie treats. Sure, making a dessert out of a cereal and Marshmallow Fluff with your child will not solve everything, but as parents we still have to “Try, try try.”
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History Channel's 'The Bible' series has a Satan, shown here, that Glenn Beck said looks like President Barack Obama. Mr. Beck's description spread fast through the Internet. (History Channel)
'The Bible': Why the History Channel is smacked with 'Obama-Satan' accusation
First it was that the blood and gore were too graphic for young children, now The Bible, the History Channel series, is losing the scriptural education message to the perception that the actor playing Satan looks, to some, like President Obama. The real problem here isn’t that History has given birth to “Obama-Satan,” but that it suffers from the same parenting issue we do here at home, that too often the messenger’s demeanor distracts from and derails the message.
What parent hasn’t telegraphed, through a facial expression or gesture, the exact opposite of what we are trying to get across without realizing it? We make a child fear thunderstorms by racing to comfort and saying, “Don’t be afraid!” before the kid has made a whimper.
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So, too, the History channel series that tries to parent viewers into biblical education is suffering to get its message heard above the faces it’s making in each episode. We saw angels in armor delivering a coup de grâce on the wicked as blood spurts onto the face of the holy. This week, African-American kids are seeing that the faces of all the bad guys look like theirs in hue, while the pious and Christ himself are the opposite.
“Why’s Jesus and the good guys always white and the devil’s looking like Obama,” a little girl, hands on hips, asked an older girl at the recreation center yesterday afternoon. The center has large TV sets in the game and workout rooms, plus a computer room where kids often scan headlines that pop us during searches. The older girl, who had her back to me, shrugged and replied, “White people make everything white.”
Both girls are in my after-school chess program, and when I cleared my throat, the younger child giggled and the older one whirled around and without missing a beat said quite frankly, “Right Ms. Suhay?”
Being about as light-skinned as it gets, I was at a total loss; and rather than step into this bear trap I just said, “I’ll have to look into that and get back to you.”
People are fond of saying, “I don’t see color.” Well of course they literally see it but are saying that their mind’s eyes are “color blind.” My son, Quin, 9, heard that phrase once in this same racial context and said, “Yeah, but if you’re color blind all you see is black and white, right? So how does that sentence work in real life?”
What I have learned from the past five years of working with any and all kids and parents who live in predominantly African-American neighborhoods here in Norfolk, Va. is that color is an issue right down to which side of the chess board you choose to play. I stopped bringing black-and-white chess pieces to first-time chess sessions and substituted green versus gold and red versus blue because I could not get kids or adults to play white if they were a variant of brown themselves.
In chess, if you never play white you never take the initiative, because white goes first and has the advantage of setting the pace and having a plan in motion, or start out controlling the game and so if racial lines can sink that deep into the culture then it’s not so surprising that in the northeasternmost notch of the Bible Belt, kids go to church on Sunday, do Bible study, are hearing about this series and asking the questions the girls asked. Even those not watching the series get a big enough dose of previews and commercials to know what’s what with the characters.
So I looked into it, via Google search, and there was “Obama-Satan” all over the place.
The actor chosen to portray Satan in History's "The Bible" mini-series, Mohamen Mehdi Ouazani, was given the nasty moniker by TV pundit Glenn Beck, sparking a social media smack-down over the weekend. Thanks Mr. Beck, just what the world really needs right now, someone stealing the light from the Bible and shining it on hate, intolerance, and political agendas.
According to The Christian Post, both History channel as well as "The Bible" mini-series producers, Mark Burnett and Roma Downey, have called the suggestions "utter nonsense."
The problem with “utter nonsense” is that people just can’t seem to stop uttering it all over the Twitterverse and other social media sites.
To find answers I turned to the book I’m currently slogging through on my Kindle, “The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail – but Some Don't,” by Nate Silver. Mr. Silver is a statistician, writer, and founder of The New York Times political blog FiveThirtyEight.com. Silver also developed PECOTA, a system for forecasting baseball performance that was bought by Baseball Prospectus. I’m reading it to try to understand why my kids and adults follow trends – i.e. The Harlem Shake. The first time I saw the video I dismissed it and then it was well, bigger than "The Bible" in popularity.
Silver talks about finding the signal or message in all the noise we tend to find generated around it and the chaos and unpredictability of audiences. I really feel for Ms. Downey and Mr. Burnett because on some level they must have believed that you can’t go wrong with a series on “The Greatest Story Every Told.” But they didn’t take into account the noise of people like Beck and, at some level, me. They gave us too much noise to work with in high volume and what they’re getting is feedback instead of people hearing the vital messages of the Bible’s stories themselves.
The Obama-Satan attack really kills me because Downey once performed in the TV series "Touched by an Angel," which I watched religiously. It produced of the most effective noise-free moments of racial introspection I have ever seen on television. In that episode Downey is transformed into an African-American woman in the South during the height of the Ku Klux Klan and finds herself being hunted down by the Klan across a wooded area.
The angel, running for her life as an African-American woman, falls to her knees just as the killers are about to discover her and begs God, “Please, Father, make me white again. Please make me white.” Just as the white hand of her would-be attacker falls on her shoulder she is suddenly white again and thus safe.
The angel is disgraced, bereft, and horrified by her choice and words, but is comforted by another angel, played by actress Della Reese, for the fact that she learned, and now her compassion, understanding, and vision would be true for all eternity.
That was a noise-free signal that was powerful and, while controversial, it was effective for me and I believe many others as well.
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I want "The Bible" series to succeed, but there is just too much chaos in the audience and too much noise generated by the choices the producers made. In defense of the producers, there was no way the series' makers, who filmed prior to the election, could have known Obama would be president now. OK. I do see the resemblance between Obama and the actor playing Satan, but only after Beck framed them in that context and I really don’t think it was purposeful. The biggest note here is that only chaos theory can account that we’re even talking about this instead of Jesus being tested by Satan in the desert (Matthew 4:1-11).
That’s more background story noise than the Easter Bunny makes laying eggs in the yard as I try to explain the Biblical underpinnings of a time of rebirth and hope to my sons.
It’s a beautiful effort to try to bring the history of the Bible to those who have no experience with it, but unfortunately they don’t make noise-cancelling headphones for this production. Perhaps the best thing we can do is to ask people like Beck to stop making use of the spiritual as a loud, untuned instrument of political destruction. Perhaps he could pipe-down and let the message through.
Steubenville rape trial: Defense attorney Walter Madison, right, holds his client, 16-year-old Ma'lik Richmond, second from right, while defense attorney Adam Nemann, left, sits with his client Trent Mays, foreground, 17, as Judge Thomas Lipps pronounces them both delinquent on rape and other charges after their trial in juvenile court March 17. (Keith Srakocic/Associated Press)
Steubenville rape trial: How can I raise my boy not to rape, nor be a bystander?
In the Steubenville, Ohio, rape trial, the social and digital media trail proved that many boys were complicit in the rapes of Jane Doe — not just the two who were found guilty. Chillingly, these boys seem like they could be anyone’s son. As a result, today, many parents are asking: How can I raise my boy the right way — to become a young man who will neither rape nor be a casual bystander to rape?
It’s an important question to ask, but a difficult one to answer. The Steubenville boys’ families likely thought they were doing a great job raising their sons. But something is wrong with our society: girls are so sexualized and dehumanized by our culture that unless it is directly and regularly addressed at home, boys can easily internalize the attitude that girls are sub-human; Sex objects, rather than respectable subjects. And as the Steubenville case shows, once this attitude is internalized, boys think raping girls is not the problem, but rather getting caught. Consider even the judge’s words, which according to an AP report betrayed this kind of perspective:
"In sentencing the boys, Lipps urged parents and others 'to have discussions about how you talk to your friends, how you record things on the social media so prevalent today and how you conduct yourself when drinking is put upon you by your friends.'"
Talk about being tone-deaf! As the mother of two sons, this is not my takeaway from the case. The issue is not how the Steubenville rapists and their peers recorded their criminal actions on social media and therefore were caught, found guilty, and sentenced for their crimes. It’s that they raped in the first place.
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Even CNN committed a major gaffe in their reporting on the sentencing, focusing not on the victim’s vindication and the possible outcomes for her, but rather on how difficult it was to watch the young rapists’ lives falling apart. According to The Huffington Post’s report on CNN’s coverage:
"[T]he effects of the rape on the victim seemed to be an afterthought: 'It was incredibly emotional, it was difficult for anyone in there to watch those boys break down,' Harlow said. '[It was] also difficult, of course, for the victim’s family.'”
The victim shouldn’t be an afterthought in the media coverage. Her vindication despite our broken culture of rape, her prognosis for a recovery from her trauma, and the possible consequences she and her family may face in their small town as they move forward should be central to the coverage.
—–
With a culture that has such a messed up attitude towards rape that even the judge and CNN are making major missteps, how do we answer the question posed earlier? How do we raise our boys into young men who will neither rape nor be casual bystanders to rape — who understand both that “no means no” and, more importantly, that consent requires an enthusiastic “yes”?
The answer is to begin teaching boys about two concepts — consent and respect — from an early age, in age-appropriate ways.
For example, my four-year-old son loves to hug and kiss his friends. He is sweet and affectionate, and when he first sees a friend or when it’s time to say goodbye, he wants nothing more but to wrap his arms around that friend and give him or her a big kiss.
Sometimes, his friends reciprocate, but sometimes, they clearly don’t want the physical contact. So, since about the time when he turned four-years-old, and he seemed old enough to understand, we’ve told him that he needs to ask his friends for permission first. We taught him to ask, “Can I give you a hug and a kiss?” We’ve also told him he needs to respect their answers, even if it’s disappointing, and I’m glad to see that this is now his usual approach. He gets their consent.
Then, there’s the matter of respect. When my son was three-and-a-half, he became interested in wearing nail polish on his toenails and fingernails after seeing me get a summertime mani-pedi. I agreed to paint his nails, but before sending him off to preschool, I prepared him for the possibility of pushback from his friends or even his teachers. “Some people at school might not like your nails,” I warned him. “But you like them, right?”
Admiring his shiny blue nail polish, he told me, “I really do!”
“So,” I coached him, “if anybody says they don’t like your fingernails, you tell them: ‘It’s MY body!’ Because it’s your body, and you get to decide what happens to it. No one else does. Can we practice? I will pretend to be another kid who doesn’t like your nails, and you can tell me, ‘It’s MY body!’ Okay?”
“Okay!”
A few practice scenarios later, and he was great at saying, “It’s MY body!” as a confident response to comments that disrespected his right to make decisions about his own body.
This was a great lesson for him to learn, because a few months later, when we set the rule that he needs to ask his friends for permission before hugging and kissing them, this helped us to foster an empathetic perspective. We were able to explain: “It’s HIS [or HER] body, and he [or she] doesn’t want you to hug and kiss right now. So you have to respect his [or her] wishes.”
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All this is helpful in the present. I’m glad my preschooler has a basic, age-appropriate understanding of respect and consent, even if he doesn’t know those words yet. Everything we do now paves the way for future conversations, and I know that as he approaches adolescence, it will be easier for us to discuss consent and respect with him.
Since the broader culture gives such terribly mixed messages to our boys, I want to make it clear: consent and respect are not options. They’re necessities.
The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best family and parenting bloggers out there. Our contributing and guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor, and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. Rebecca Hains blogs at rebeccahains.wordpress.com.
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