PETA Fights Cruelty to Pokemon!

Having solved the problems of all real, living animals around the globe, PETA now fights cruelty to entirely made-up animals such as Pokemon.

Pokemon aren't even virtual real animals.  No pretend dog or cat is fighting in Pokemon.  The animals, and the entire world of Pokemon, has nothing whatsoever to do with the real animal kingdom.  Real animals in our world do not evolve into entirely DIFFERENT species of animals after they gain points in a fight, and most of them do not have long nonsensical conversations that only Pokemon trainers can understand.  (The Meow Mix cat might be an exception on that last part because it's telling us to BUY MEOW MIX NOW, but I'm thinking the ad mighta been rigged a little.) 

PETA has now come out with a disturbing "Black and Blue" parody of Pokemon's "Black and White" release.  There are real animals that could use some real help from these people, and this is what they spend their time/money on.

You Are Responsible for Your Parents.

It doesn't matter if your parents have been grown up since well before you were born.  It also doesn't matter if they've never been financially dependent on you.  You will be paying the nursing home bills if your parents are indigent, and if you don't have the wherewithall to fight the home in court.

Now, family does for each other and it bothers me to see some folks in my neighbourhood dumped off at the home at the first sign of trouble.  And somehow then wow, grandkids have "bought" the house at an amazing low price.  (I truly believe God is gonna judge that.)

That's family for ya.  You don't want to give "family" too much power (good or bad) over one another's finances.  But if we can help a family member in a bind, we sure will.  Our little family, though, doesn't have a million bucks in the bank account in case somebody's health goes south next week.  I'd make a crappy caregiver, too, because I can't even lift the groceries any more.  I have to have my older children help me.

I'm sure hoping my parents and my husband's have good insurance because the best I can do is offer moral support and maybe a $50 gift card at Christmas.   Hey, at least I don't do the "nightgown and slippers" gig.

News Roundup!

A deaf preschool child can't use sign language for his name in school because it looks like a gun.  His name is Hunter.  Duhhh.  I have a sign for them myself, but I guess they won't allow that in school, either...

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Obama wants people on the coast to be prepared for Hurricane Isaac.  It's not the time to tempt fate, he warns.

Ok, so when is the proper time to tempt fate? Perhaps the president will issue the following statement next week:

"People of America, now that tropical storm Isaac has passed, scientists have determined that optimal fate-tempting time is NOW."

Yep.  It will be time to plug in all your hairdryers and use 'em while you soak in the tub.  Car surf.  Get a body piercing from some unlicensed dude in the alleyway.  Lick an angry bear's nose.  ALL those things you never wanted to do, time to do 'em.

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A Louisiana school is marking children's right hands with the mark of the beast when they buy their lunches.  Ok, it isn't.  But some extremely paranoid and fearful parents are afraid that scanning a child's hand as a method of identification is somehow the same as "marking" the hand with the 666 of end times prophecy.

This article actually interviews parents who will pull their children out of school if other people even try to use the scanning machine in the cafeteria. Ha ha ha!

I love Jesus, but His little Christian friends?  Maybe not all of them so very much.  Because they make me look stupid for believing in the same God.  Do I really have to hang out with these people in Heaven?  Fer reals, I would just like a condo with the normal people.  A beachfront one.  We can yell phrases like, "Iris scanner!" at the sunbathers in the morning and then have the beach all to ourselves for the day.

Formula is Dangerous

It's just like a drug.  It should be locked up and nurses should not be able to give that fake milk stuff to infants unless they fill out paperwork justifying every bottle.

You have to love New York City.  It's a dirty, grimy, expensive place with lotsa muggings and homeless people.  But the government wants to make sure babies are breastfed and nobody drinks too much soda.  Seriously. 

You do know this will lead to babies going hungry for hours because forms aren't filled out.  It will also lead to too many nurses in the drug cabinets too often and things going missing.  Somehow. 

I got some really nice diaper bags and formula in the hospital when I had Patrick.  He never drank any formula until he ate cereal, when it was mixed in.  Free stuff is good!  Why can't the formula companies get a crack at buying my business?  Let them try.  Peter Rabbit is really cute.

13 Things Your Child's Teacher Won't Tell You

An article from Reader's Digest.  Hm.  These people have over 1,140,000 followers on facebook (!!) so they have to be good, right?  A few items from their list:

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"Kids used to go out and play after school and resolve problems on their own. Now, with computers and TV, they lack the skills to communicate. They don't know how to get past hurt feelings without telling the teacher and having her fix it."  

This is one of those true/not true kinds of statements.  Sure, in the old days, we learnt not to whine to our teachers about every little problem.  That's because we got the "who cares/go deal with it yourself" line from them.  A little bullying never hurt anyone, was the prevailing attitude.  Some of us older folks lived through hell.  For years.  Because of that.

So overall, it's a good thing things have changed.  The flip side of that is that now teachers and principals seem to have to referee every hurt feeling, and parents (knowing now the dangers of bullying, who can blame them?) are often getting into the mess themselves.  But I don't think that children are entirely different than they were 40 years ago.

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"When I hear a loud belch, I remember that a student's manners are a reflection of his parents'." 

And when I hear a bunch of bullcrap, I remember that it's probably coming from some super-liberal childless teacher who just got her first job. Tell you what.  After you raise four or more children to adulthood without any belching incidents whatsoever, I'll believe that your children are just as perfect as you think you are.  Until then, shut up.

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"You do your job, I'll do mine. I have parents who are CEOs of their own companies come in and tell me how to run my classroom. I would never think to go to their office and tell them how to do their jobs." 

Ok, chicky.  You want to go there.  You are no CEO and equating your job with being the CEO of a major corporation is a wee mite big-headed.  So there's that.  Maybe let's go down a few notches to "do you want fries with that?" and pretend you manage a restaurant.  You're not super-powerful, but you're not nobody, either.  You answer to others above you and you also answer to the customer across the register from you. 

It can be complicated, managing people who sometimes have unrealistic expectations.  I appreciate that.  But I think most parents are pretty reasonable in their requests.  You have their child for most of his waking hours during the school year.  They are helping to pay for your salary and you are also asking them to help with homework and to back you up when issues with the student come up.  I know you have certain parameters in which to do your job, but you could at least listen a bit and work WITH the parent.

Aaargh. 

The "sources" of these happy quotes include teachers from several states and um, the American Federation of Teachers.  That's right.  The teachers' union is getting a chance to "create dialogue" with public school parents, and this is the tripe they came up with.  Meh.  :/

The Cyclops Child

Have you read it?  A STILL PRACTICING physician writes of participating in deceiving parents into thinking their infant is dead, kidnapping him, torturing him by secluding him and amputating his finger, and waiting around for him to die after 13 days of life.  He refers to the child as a "monster" and even in his later "clarification" essay (yeah, people got outraged at his original essay, imagine that), explained that he never told the parents about the child or took pictures because really, no parent wants a momento of something so ugly and awful.

Well.

Ok, I have to admit that this was 50 years ago.  Also?  Google-image search "cyclops child" and you'll see some of these deformities - as well as the one described in the article - are not really surviveable.  They are hideous to look at.  It breaks your heart - be warned!  Children with ears in the middle of their faces and no mouths, or deformed mouths.  One giant eye.

Dr. Neuman further describes how it upset him that staff began missing work to avoid hearing the baby cry inconsolably from its hiding spot in a back room.  He goes into great detail about how he could have smothered it, exactly when he had a grand opportunity, but considering that smothering a baby leaves some telltale marks.  Maybe no one would really care, though...

"Over all the years that followed, I found myself thinking from time to time of that picture, my hand over the baby's mouth. I knew then, and I still think now, that the right thing to do would have been to kill that baby. It wasn't really a baby; it just sounded like a baby--that's what I tell myself.  But I would like to stop thinking about it. After all, the whole thing happened over fifty years ago."

I know.  It happened over 50 years ago.  But it's amazing to see even now a good number of people think that it would be the right thing to do just to kill the kid.  And thank God there's abortion on demand today!  Oh, wait.  It's a "secular" website.  Thank The Goddess, then.

These people are our neighbours, and some of them work in hospitals.

A Man's Home is His Garbage Dump

Some hoarder dude left a trash pile around... for decades... that is big enough to show up on Google Maps... and cops and social services have been back and forth with this guy "discussing" the problem and doing a "welfare check" occasionally.

Finally, the county is stepping in and the fellow shows up in court going, "I've been sick.  So lemme have some time to collect evidence and get a lawyer." 

Really. 

But most comments on these sorts of stories sympathize with the hoarder.  He should have rights.  That's his stuff you're touching.  (Sure, it's full of rats, and is a health and fire hazard to everyone within a 5-mile radius, but it's his stuff.)  Bla. Bla. Bla.

See, I don't think so.  Weeds overgrowing a place that are consistently over a foot tall, or huuuge bunches of trash piled about the yard, means something needs to be done.  When things are way over the line we all think of as being in the "normal" range, and it's been that way for a while, something needs to be done.

And yet... around here?  The cops will look at the cars IN YOUR DRIVEWAY, and if the license plates are expired, you must have a junker car on your hands.  You get a citation.  Great source of revenue.

Or some other chick gets fined for growing tomatoes in her front lawn.  Sure, it's tacky and I think pretty ugly but hey.  Her land.  Why can't we all just be reasonable?  Huh?

The Computer Just Knows.

Some psychic ability in police software consults the spirits and "knows" when and where the next troublespot will be.  It can pinpoint what's going to go wrong tonight within 500 feet.  The archaic notion that cops need to "walk a beat" and form relationships within a community is rightly derided. 

Let's just use the cops "effectively."  They're really just widgets, replaceable, who cares.  We'll just decrease cop hours.  With this new software, officers just pop out of nowhere when trouble starts.  Neighbourhood watches?  Thing of the past.  The computer will tell you when to worry.  So shut up.  And don't worry.

All this will make for better officers because their paperwork will be virtual as well.

"All they need now," quipped one commenter, "is virtual doughnuts."  I'm thinking they can find those in CafeWorld.  With sprinkles.
 

The Perfect Crime

1.  Find a disabled person in the state of Illinois. 

2.  Beat, starve or otherwise mistreat him until he is ALMOST dead, but not quite.  After the victim goes to the hospital, the state might start investigating you but meh.

3.  If the victim dies, the investigation is off!  Woo-hoo!

4.  Conclusion:  unlike about any other type of murder, nobody cares as long as the victim is handicapped in some way.  

This is the reality that disability advocates have to fight.  This is absolutely sick.

Adultery is Like an Ice Cream Choice.

Old people were all sexxxy before they got dementia.  So now that they have dementia they should be able to go on with their sexxxy lives!  Just, you know, make sure it's consensual and all and then let Gramma go at it!  Go Grams!

Oh.  She's married?  Well, that's ok.  See, decisions about when and how and with whom to have sex are not serious decisions, like deciding whether to have a surgery.  It's more one of those not-so-serious decisions like what kind of ice cream to have after dinner.  So these old people who have dementia should be able to act out their feelings and whatever and have (ahem) fulfilling lives in the nursing home.  Nevermind that Gramma isn't sure what year it is.  She's horny!

One group of siblings just decided not to tell Mom that Dad was carrying on with some other wrinkly chick in the home she was using their life savings to pay for.  So what if Dad has lost most of his faculties and never would have done that before?  And so what about their marriage?  We need to empower senior living and, you know, the patient choosing when and how to engage in the act and all that.  Plus it's a "fundamental human right" to do the nasty.

I'm serious.

Best Childhood: Home or Hospital?

******** I have to conclude that people just don't understand the situation, because otherwise, I'd have to conclude that people are pretty heartless and would like to force families to part with the children they could otherwise care for in their own homes with help. Here's the deal: you're going to pay for these "medically fragile" children anyway. The state will pay once parents have exhausted their resources and institutionalized their kids. But it's cheaper - and more humane - to keep these children with their families and spend some money on home care. I'm thinking that Republicans should go for this because it's all about families staying together and the state not raising kids, and Democrats should be happy about it because it's all about helping people who really cannot do for themselves. I know many of our states are facing budget shortfalls, but we shouldn't be balancing our budgets on the backs of the disabled. For more direct information on the MFTD waiver and how you can help, click here.

Church or Jail?

Want to avoid jail time? In Alabama, you can go to church instead!

I haven't been a big fan of "church" of late, but there are some very positive things about being a part of a faith community. I don't see the harm in the judge, in a misdemeanor case, offering one year's church attendance as an alternative to the jail time/community service route... with some caveats:

1. Is it really voluntary? If the new parolee happens to be Catholic, and is going to go to the church up the street, this is great. But what if he's an atheist? Can he go to an atheist discussion group each week and would it count? And agostics? I'm thinking they are confused enough that they'd have to make the rounds of every faith-based building in town over the course of the following year. Paperwork nightmare, is what that is. But I would disagree with the ACLU that this would violate the establishment clause of the Constitution if it is really voluntary, and if there are alternatives for every faith (or lack of faith).

2. Make sure they're actually going. If you agree to go, you'd better go or else. There had better be some real punishment for NOT keeping this promise and it needs to be followed up on. If the program is entirely voluntary, no fair squealing that the judge threw you in the slammer for not going to church later.

3. Let the person be able to change churches twice during the year. It would really be hard to go to a church you hate for a whole year, but letting people hop around each week is also a paperwork nightmare. Giving the person the option of changing twice during the year is a fair compromise.

4. Umm... how to put this nicely. Are the churches really ready for these people? Has the pastor talked to everyone about what to expect?

Honestly and bluntly, though, this whole idea that church attendance is going to change these people somehow is a bit paternalistic. Gimme a break. I suppose it's about as effective as jail or an expensive "detox" program (like the stars get! only they serve bologna instead of organic veggies!) but there you go.

The church I attended had problems with trespassers and vandals. Once an expensive piece of electronics was stolen and the teen involved tried to resell it... to a Christian school. Ha ha! Ok, that didn't work. The pastor decided not to press charges in exchange for church attendance. He came one whopping time.

Not that church attendance woulda changed him a whole lot. His daddy was a Pentecostal preacher, and I guess he'd rather attend his own church... wouldn't want Dad's flock to wonder why the kid wasn't sitting in the front row each week, eh? Yeah.

Good Story?

An autistic child named Joshua presents difficult behaviours, lack of understanding about danger and frequently runs off. Imagine you're his dad. You have no family and friends and you and your wife need to move out of your home. Need. Foreclosure is hell, and it's gonna BE hell for poor Joshua.

But on to the immediate worry. Furniture doesn't lift itself and guess what? You don't have $50,000 in the bank to hire a mover, sorry. SO, you tether your son in the back yard to keep him safe while you lift the heavy stuff. The last thing you want is that kid running away or tripping you when you are shuffling downstairs and straining your back in the first place. Things are hard enough for you right now.

Ok. Maybe not the best way to handle it. Better than letting him go off into the street, but maybe not the best way to handle it. I wasn't there, so I couldn't tell you. Maybe these folks should have some specially-trained autism specialist or case manager come to their home to HELP them rig it so it's more safe for their son and ohhh, I dunno, maybe get some respite hours so their situation is difficult but not IMPOSSIBLE. Hey, with a two-year-old? Move the furniture out of his room first, leave a few toys in there and pop a safety gate on. You are in and out all the time and kiddo will be ok. What do you do when your child is as big as a small adult, though? Really... besides offering impossible and maddening suggestions like "find someone to help" or (my favourite) "don't have disabled kids," what would you suggest?

The state just took the kid after they found out. Aaand, of course as always happens with these foster kids, they're forced to go to public school. The child is tethered in public school when they change classrooms. For his safety. It isn't abusive when THEY do it, you know, like those awful parents. I mean, the school is GOOD! Here, they let him wander about on the playground freely and -

Hey, wait. Where did he go?

So little Joshua escapes from school and wanders off. They find him off in the wilderness far away... much later. Looks like they drew the poor kid in with... the sound of his father's voice.

Telling you, this story made me want to cry.

I don't know all the particulars of the case, but I sure feel for the parents and for Joshua. All you moms of severely disabled children KNOW THE FEELING. You are just one phone call, one bowel movement or one sickness away from disaster. These children don't understand and they NEED us in a way that other kids never, never do. One moment of inattention and they are outtie. NO FAIR LEAVING ALLCAPS COMMENTS ABOUT 'YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN LOOKING.' You have no idea how much work it is, how it never ends unless something bad happens. Zee-ro.

I love my Woodjie. A lot. And while I don't tether him, I *do* keep him in a gate system like a baby. Go ahead and say I'm infantilizing him, but it keeps order in my house and defines his area for him. I'm going to take a guess and say the tether did the same for this family. Temporarily. So they could get the furniture out.

Now, yes. Maybe there are other ways of dealing with this. Maybe there are not. Seems the school is using some similar system. I just read this story and instead of thinking of what a "miracle" all this is I wanna go, "Doggone it. He needs more support in school and they need help at home. This story never should have happened." Why does stuff like this have to happen?

Why Is This Controversial?

I don't know. Seems anything anyone wants to do is controversial.

Old lady wants to have "a shape," so she gets breast enlargements. She's 75. She says she's not fooling herself that she's all that like she was when she was young, but she doesn't want to look like a stick or an oatmeal box in her old age. I'm thinking that that is between you and your doctor. So long as I am not paying for it, I could care less HOW BIG your boobs are. Though seriously. Things like this raise the bar for the rest of us. Soon we will ALL need fake boobs as well as fake teeth. You watch! Even 20 years ago, no one "needed" a cell phone.

I guess the story itself isn't controversial (or shouldn't be), but I could not see myself talking about something like this in the news. Do you really want the little ones reading about Grandma's breast enlargement?

Adoption Nightmare.

Three YEARS after adopting, you could lose your children. No, not because of some ruling in another state... because of some international organization called INTERPOL.

I'm *serious.* See, here I thought INTERPOL was some bogus warning that was always posted on the old VHS tapes to discourage copying. Apparently it's a real organization and they do take children away.

A nearby family has two months to say goodbye to the child they adopted. The story is that the birth parents in Guatemala let their two-year-old play outside in the front yard, and she got stolen. And not to locate the kid for several years? Suspicious. Several comments allude to the idea that the parents just sold her and then changed their minds.

I dunno. But I guess the courts in Guatemala seem to buy this story. I'm afraid to think about it. Maybe it is true and the commenters are just poo-poohing the story because it's too horrid to contemplate. Things must be awful if the cops can't find your kid for years on end and you have no idea whether your child is alive and what is happening to her.

I can understand that as a parent, you'd want your kid back. NOW. But honestly. Should adoptive parents have to worry throughout their kids' childhoods that they have a "stolen" kid they may have to return? Is there never a point at which the child is "theirs" and can't be taken away?

I don't know. It just seems wrong to send her back. And it also just seems wrong to keep her here.

News Roundup!

Half of the people "euthanized" in Belgium are really murdered. That's what I'd call killing someone or allowing them to die without their consent. It's ok, though: those people have realllly good organs. Why wait around for some young kid to die in a car accident and bother with consent and all that blah blah blah. What a pain. Easier to just have a team of organ transplant people standing by while you kill somebody.

Just think of all the advantages! You know the blood type, size, weight, age and ethnicity of the deceased... before they're even deceased! That means you can line up your transplantees ahead of time. They don't have to wait for that phone call in the middle of the night; they can be allll ready at the hospital, waiting for their special moment. They're paying, so it's their organ, you know. It's all about the money.

Please ignore my opinion - and the opinion of many people in the world - that organ donation is supposed to be a last gift to the people of the world who are still living. Part of a sweet and selfless good-bye. No. That's old-fashioned and unscientific. Just wheel 'em in, chop 'em up piecemeal, and dump the remains somewhere factory-style. You watch and see if more science about how best to harvest organs for transplant and related science stories don't come right out of Belgium. These people are so advanced and civilized. Seriously, you watch.

On a lighter note, I figured out that it is NOT incorrect for me to say "learnt" and similar words. They are called "variants" on this website about how to conjugate about any verb you could imagine. And dude, this isn't on the website, but "whilst" isn't formal English. It's just English. I'm not playing Queen of England if I say it.

I can be the president if I want to be in this game. I thought I'd share it with you as it seems to be for children upper elementary and beyond. It teaches what the president does and which department carries out which sorts of laws. I know the president doesn't really ferry the legislation over himself, but the point is to teach the children which department does what. It isn't very nuanced politically (understatement) but it's a cute starting point for discussion, I think. Let me know if you try it what you think about it.

And finally, a story about some guy spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on equipment is trying to go fishing - for bin Laden's body. I had no idea that having doubts about bin Laden's death made one a "scary conservative," but apparently so. Or that some anonymous dude who has a Russian girlfriend would know all about what people "in intelligence circles" in Russia really think about anything. I have a husband who is a computer programmer, but I can't tell you what the latest gadget from Apple is gonna be. Bad journalism. But an interesting thought: if the sea in which the body were dumped is public information, and bin Laden is buried in a 200-pound weight sealed bag, it stands to reason that the body is not only recoverable but largely undamaged. I'm left wondering, "Is this a real story? Or some guy with a boat who wanted to be on the news?"

Post edited because I SPELT "euthanized" incorrectly. Wow, "spelt" is the only correct form, but it is never used here. Almost never... everyone says "spelled." :)

How Young is TOO Young for facebook?

I was intrigued by this article, of course posted by a friend on facebook, asking how young is "too" young. I'm thinking that if the rules say you have to be 14, then you're too young if you're 13 years, 11 months and 29 days old. Sorry, you just are.

NOBODY really follows the rules, though, and people sign up all over the place with crazy names like Happy-Elf Homeschool and stuff. There's no real way of knowing if the person you're playing YoVille with is really a 84-year-old or just turned 10. The internet is the internet, and it really shouldn't matter. Let the parents decide whether their kids get online...

So. I don't get why the facebook people make it theoretically impossible for children under 14 to get an account. I would care less so long as the parents give permission. How to verify that, I have no clue. I don't know how cars work, either, but I do have an opinion on the use of safety belts. :)

This is interesting, though. Could you imagine how embarrassed this child will be by "her" old postings? "Look! My first pooooop!" in the photo archive? At least when my parents FILMED me at age three peeing in the doctor's office in a cup, it was on film. As in, the reels? Probably gone to the dustbin of history by now and thank God for that.

Anybody else out there old like me, and also grateful that our teenage mistakes and embarrassing moments are NOT posted online? Yeah.

Disabled Parent Rights.

Hey, parental rights isn't just for homeschoolers. Did you know you could lose your children in Missouri *just* because you're disabled? It's true.

Now there is a new law, going into effect in August, that would change that. The state can no longer take away your children *just* because you are disabled. Umm, but note that nowhere in this blog posting did it say that it could not be a major, major factor in a judge's decision? Thought I'd mention it. According to the post, between 40 and 60 percent of children of disabled parents are removed from their homes in Missouri!

A Post in Which I Whine a Little.

Let's face it. One of the really hard things about having a special needs child is this thought that he will never have a normal life.

Oh, we have great kids. Yeahh, we would never trade them in for the whole world and blah blah blah. Think parents of standard issue children would look at our "giftings" and go, wish I coulda had some of THAT in my life and I would sure trade my kid in? HELLO, the "I wouldn't trade my kid for anything" issue only comes up when we have a problem going on. No one else has to even feel the need to justify that they love their children as they are.

These parents can drop their children off at a friend's house and LEAVE. Oh, nevermind that. Their children HAVE friends who invite them over, how about we start there?

Not trying to grouse here. Just being real with you: it's not fun. "Love my children/ cherish them as they are" does not equal "fun and glad things are the way they are." My kids are missing out on a lot of things.

Woodjie pooped maybe twice in the toilet. He's nearly five. Don't think I'm doing the happy hoedown every time I have to wipe up crap and celebrating how "awe-tism is awe-some." And he's climbing the walls and throwing toys around before I can even bag up his poop, put the laundry in and wash my hands. Ok? And sometime soon the other kids are going to start making his life miserable when he poops in class. Barring a miracle, he'll never go to regular school. Never sit in a waiting-type restaurant. Never have a best friend who personally invites him over. Never play in the school band.

It's not fair! It really isn't. Yes, I'm in the neurodiversity bandwagon club thing, but that doesn't mean I'm all happy about how great my kid has it. I wish he could do all those fun things. So when I read stories like this, I understand where the mom is coming from.

Sure, band auditions cull out those kids who aren't talented/don't bother to practice. Go do something else if you're no good at it.

But I feel sometimes kids like mine get culled out of everything. Even the autism therapy groups often specify Asperger's only. Yeah, thanks for that...

Osama in the Mosh Pit

"The hottest band out of Saudi Arabia, featuring wahabi and hip-hop influences, Bin Laden and the Jihadis features extensive vamping and sitar solos, in addition to the occasional suicide vest crowd surf." (comment after article)

There are questions popping up on twitter about Bin Laden and his band, why is he famous, that kind of thing. And yahoo is reporting that 2/3 of people searching for "who is Osama Bin Laden?" are teens. I don't know how they know they're teens, but if true, a large number of children were kept ignorant of current events when they were five or six years old.

And I mean entirely ignorant. I don't know that I agree with the commenters that we should entirely "blame" the previous generation. But I should imagine by the late teen years that children will be surfing the web and picking up the news as they go along.

During the elementary school years, I know that often parents are very overprotective about letting their children hear about the news. I know that at my sons' school at the time, they kept the children entirely ignorant of what was happening on September 11th. Patrick had an inkling, but they never stopped school or chatted about anything. In fact, once the school was on lockdown because a child nearby was shot and killed... and no explanation was given to the students.

I don't know that I agree with that. But thankfully I am not in charge of 592 students who might freak out during the day and I think I can let the school decide that and fill in the blanks on my own later. As a parent of an individual child, I'd want my kid informed about why the building is locked up and recess is called off. Sometimes I am not sure what to think about anything.