Free Republic

Barack Obama's mother was secretly in contact with his estranged father during his entire childhood without the future president's knowledge, a new book claims. Ann Dunham gave Barack Obama Sr regular updates about his life during the 1960s and 70s and even sent him school reports. It was not until the 1980s that Mr Obama became aware of the contact between the two - but he still did not forgive his father for being an absent dad. The claims are made in a new book by Mr Obama's half sister Auma in which she reveals that their father was routinely...

A Texas family has created a 'bucket list' for their infant daughter after learning she suffers from a fatal genetic disorder, myFOXhouston reported. Mike and Laura Canahuati, from Bellaire, Tex, are on a mission to teach the world about their daughter Avery's fatal genetic disease. You've likely never heard of Spinal Muscular Atrophy, but 7.5 million Americans carry the gene that causes it.

I was just pondering why Obama acts so differently with different countries and was wondering if he was a Shia Muslim in Indonesia. He attacked Lybia at the drop of a hat and killed Osama without a tear, but won't act on Syria or Iran, both Shia countries. If Indonesia is mainly Shia, that would explain alot. If he was raised Suni, well, back to the drawing board. Does anybody know?

New Playgrounds Are Safe—and That's Why Nobody Uses Them The problem with safety guidelines is that they make most playgrounds so uninteresting as to contribute to reduced physical activity. Playgrounds don't look like they used to. Steep metal slides and wooden towers have given way to slow, plastic slides and carefully penned-in climbing contraptions. And forget about seesaws -- they're a thing of the past. When kids are bored by unimaginative (read: safe) playground equipment, they're less active as a result, and with childhood obesity at epidemic proportions, that's a danger, too. An interesting new investigation looks into this phenomenon....

Christmas had come and gone, and the toy aisles were emptied of Lego Star Wars sets, and Lego Harry Potter sets, and Lego superhero sets. This is when Lego decided to roll out its newest line: Lego Friends, aimed squarely at girls. Lego Friends figures are strikingly different. They don’t look anything like the traditional Lego minifigure. Lego Friends have big eyes, button noses and pink lips. They wear skirts. They have names like Mia, Andrea and Olivia. They come with pink and purple bricks, in sets that can be built into a pet hospital, or a bakery, or...

Bobby Montoya is a 7-year-old boy from Denver. Unlike a lot of young boys, Bobby has no desire to join the Boy Scouts. Instead, he wants to be a Girl Scout. We first saw Montoya's story over at 9news.com. The NBC affiliate reports that when the boy's mother, Felisha Archuleta, tried to sign her son up for Girl Scouts, a troop leader told her no. -SNIP-

Last week TLC's "Toddlers and Tiaras" reality show enraged the world with a shocking performance by a 4-year-old sporting fake C-cup boobs and acting like a 20-something. . . . 3-year-old Paisley struts across the stage dressed as Julia Roberts in the opening scene of the movie "Pretty Woman." In thigh-high black patent leather boots and a tight blue mini skirt,

They've lived together for 42 years and share a bedroom, but the people who produce "Sesame Street" made it clear on Thursday: Bert and Ernie are not gay. Nor are they heterosexual. They just are. "Bert and Ernie are best friends. They were created to teach preschoolers that people can be good friends with those who are very different from themselves. "Even though they are identified as male characters and possess many human traits and characteristics, they remain puppets, and do not have a sexual orientation," Sesame Workshop said in a statement posted on Facebook. ...

Just two months ago, she accused her mother of horrific abuse in an emotional outpouring on American TV. Her late mother, Susan Barrantes, regularly beat her, the Duchess of York alleged during her reality show Finding Sarah. 'When she used to hit me because I didn't sit on my potty or wouldn't eat, a little vein would come up on the centre of my head near my red hair,' she said, adding that her mother called it the 'sign of the devil' and would shout, 'I'm going to beat that devil out!'

Seesaws: A Vanishing Part of America By Bob Dorigo Jones Can you remember the last time you saw a seesaw? I’m talking about an old fashioned teeter-totter – the kind without springs. If you are under the age of thirty, it’s very possible that you’ve never seen one. Although they were once a staple of playgrounds around the country, the lawsuit explosion in America prompted school officials and park superintendents to start removing them in the 1970s and 1980s. Philip Howard, a prominent attorney and the author of the bestselling book, The Death of Common Sense, wrote this about...

20-year-old Jessica Mokdad is dead. Her stepfather Rahim Alfetlawi shot Jessica in the head while she was at her grandmother's Michigan home. Alfetlawi was upset that Jessica was not living by strict Muslim customs, according to a report in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and so he killed her this past Saturday. Meanwhile, in an upcoming Vanity Fair article, singer Katy Perry complains of not having a "childhood" because she was raised in a Christian home. Perry is riding the top of the music charts and making tons of money singing songs like "Teenage Dream" and "Hot N Cold," having escaped...

THE desperate parents of a NINE STONE three-year-old have told how they can't make the giant toddler diet because they are scared of him. Lu Hao, from China, is dangerously overweight, and at 9st 6lb is FIVE TIMES as heavy as other boys his age. He is getting so big his family are frightened of him — and have given up trying to stop the youngster from gorging on huge plates of ribs and rice. His parents claim he throws vicious tantrums if he doesn't get third or fourth helpings of dinner.

I was ensconced upon the commode awaiting developments, while idly looking around the bathroom. We had an old-style freestanding steel bathtub, then, its porcelain badly cracked. Two water lines, together with the heavier drainpipe, ran down from it and into cutouts in the floorboards. The hole for the hot water pipe was covered with a cheap, pot-metal dress ring about the thickness of a soap bubble, meant to hide the ragged edges of the linoleum. It failed sadly. The whereabouts of the other dress ring was never properly explained, but we always held out that it was communists what done...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A Valley couple took a childhood memory and turned it into a retirement project. Now, they have a Radio Flyer car to drive around town in. http://www.ktuu.com/news/ktuu-radio-flyer-car-092910,0,1784245.story?wpisrc=nl_wonk

In his most formative years, the boy who became President of the United States was, in other words, subjected to humiliating, demeaning membership in a lower caste and cognizant both of the seemingly undeserved privileges of children born to high-caste expatriates and the grinding poverty of ordinary Indonesians among whom his family lived. That a deep anger and sense of unfairness would develop in such a situation seems more than likely, laying the groundwork for resentment of American power and wealth, and an embrace of anti-colonialist ideologies which undergirded a quest for political revenge, later in life. It was not...

They were the best of fads, they were the worst of fads—all at the same time. The faddish objects or our childhood were sometimes loved and sometimes hated but they were hard to ignore. Here are a list of the 50 best/worst from the 1960s to today: 1. Beanie Babies What made it the best: You and your friends loved collecting them. What made it the worst: Old ladies loved collecting them too. 2. Bratz Dolls What made it the best: 559 different dolls to choose from. What made it the worst: They all looked like strippers. 3. Cabbage Patch...

Oprah Winfrey embellished her poor upbringing and made up stories about sexual abuse to boost her ratings, her relatives say in Kitty Kelley’s new biography. Although Winfrey claims she never had any new dresses or dolls, and had to adopt two cockroaches as pets growing up in rural Mississippi, her cousin contends she was actually relatively “spoiled” as a little girl. “Where Oprah got that nonsense about growing up in filth and roaches I have no idea,” Katherine Carr Esters said. “I’ve confronted her and asked, ‘why do you tell such lies?’ Oprah told me ‘that’s what people want to...

On February 9th, 2010, I received the following email from "Northeast Elizabeth": On your site's "Education" page, you post a photograph identified as "Barry, 3rd Grade, 1969" which is identical to this one appearing in the Honolulu Star Bulletin in December, 2009 (in an article revealing that Obama spent at least part of third grade in Hawaii and not solely Jakarta as widely reported). Did you add it to your site after that date, or was it there before? I ask because in the article, Obama's former classmate Scott Inoue indicates that he didn't receive the photo back from Obama...

"The Eastern Sports & Outdoor Show is a sportsman's paradise, but one where trouble is brewing. There were lots of kids here with their families, walking the nearly 300,000 square feet of the State Farm Show Complex. They were checking out the newest fishing lures, gun blinds and camouflage clothing. But many of the outfitters who set up booths at the show and sell mountain-lion stalks in New Mexico, bear hunts in Maine and African safaris are worried that they're in a dying business. Eastern Sports & Outdoor Show State Farm Show Complex Through Feb. 14 "Most kids wouldn't know...

No matter what our kids and the new generation think about us, WE ARE AWESOME !!! OUR LIFE IS LIVING PROOF !!!     To Those of    Us Born   1925 - 1970  :   At the end of this email is a quote of the month by Jay Leno.. If you don't read anything else, please     read what he said.   Very well stated, Mr.. Leno. ~~~~~~~~~ TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED THE 1930s, '40s, '50s, '60s and '70s!!   First, we survived being born to mothers who may have smoked and/or drank while they were...

I wrote this in 1997. While the world in which many of us spent our early years has been largely turned upside down and the aches and pains of growing older become more frequent and noticeable with each passing year, the root message of the birth we arbitrarily celebrate each December 25th is timeless. It is even more vital for fallen sinners who call themselves “Christians” -- especially THIS one -- to embrace that message. Please pray with me that – with God’s help – we can return America to her roots so that our grandchildren will have the peace...

The insanity crept up on us slowly; we just wanted what was best for our kids. We bought macrobiotic cupcakes and hypoallergenic socks, hired tutors to correct a 5-year-old's "pencil-holding deficiency," hooked up broadband connections in the treehouse but took down the swing set after the second skinned knee. We hovered over every school, playground and practice field — "helicopter parents," teachers christened us, a phenomenon that spread to parents of all ages, races and regions. Stores began marketing stove-knob covers and "Kinderkords" (also known as leashes; they allow "three full feet of freedom for both you and your child")...

Parent alert: the Walt Disney Company is now offering refunds for all those ”Baby Einstein” videos that did not make children into geniuses. They may have been a great electronic baby sitter, but the unusual refunds appear to be a tacit admission that they did not increase infant intellect. “We see it as an acknowledgment by the leading baby video company that baby videos are not educational, and we hope other baby media companies will follow suit by offering refunds,” said Susan Linn, director of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, which has been pushing the issue for years. Baby Einstein,...

Saturday, October 17, 2009 Presented by The teenage-ification of manhood Robert Fulford,  National Post  Parents often complain that kids grow up too fast these days. But many adults, it seems, aren't growing up at all. In an ongoing series, the National Post comment pages have been probing this annoying phenomenon. In today's final instalment, Robert Fulford explains the social construct we now call "the teenager."---The word "teenagers" appeared in the late 1940s, signalling the arrival of a new tribe of young people, the replacements for what were once called adolescents. These self-important newcomers were not just adults-in-training, as young people...

San Antonio, TX - San Antonio Living Show - Entertainment Stories -- Homeless 'American Girl' doll part of new collection

September 13, 2009 Why Can’t She Walk to School? By JAN HOFFMAN TO get to school, the child leaves home by herself, proudly walking down the boulevard in a suburb of a small city in upstate New York. The crossing guard helps her at the intersection. She lives only a block and a half from school. Yet she walks by older children waiting with parents for buses to the same school. She is 7, a second-grader, and her mother, Katie, hears the raised-eyebrow remarks: ‘Are you sure you want to be doing this?’ Katie said friends ask. ‘She’s just so...

a study conducted by the Violent Crimes Institute reports that between 1999 and 2006, there were nearly 1,000,000 sex crimes committed in the United States by illegal aliens. So why does the crime of child molestation seem to be so prevalent among illegal aliens from Mexico?…The answer may lie within the age-old Mexican culture of "machismo," as well as within the actual laws of that country. The crime of rape or child molestation is incredibly under-reported in Mexico, because there is so much shame placed upon the victim as well as the difficulty in proving the case. The crime of...

I finally had to sit down with my 11-year-old daughter for “the talk.” Despite my best efforts to preserve her innocence and protect her from growing up too quickly, I simply had to tell her some important facts of life. No, we didn’t have a talk about how babies are born. This talk was about America’s assault on girlhood. The time finally came for me to explain to my daughter the relationship between media and marketing and money, and why some people think nothing of exploiting girls if it increases their ratings, sells advertising and beefs up the bottom line....

It’s a spectacular day at Harmony Playground in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, with children swinging and running through sprinklers. An “icy man” with his pushcart of fruit ices stands near the jungle gym, as parents look toward the gated entrance. A second ices vendor enters, also setting up shop inside the playground’s cast-iron fence. Vicki Sell, mother of 3-year-old Katherine, tenses when the vendor starts ringing his little bell, over and over, hoping her daughter doesn’t have the typical Pavlovian response. Ever since Katherine had an inconsolable meltdown about not being able to have a treat, Ms. Sell has been trying...

The house was as big as a large barn, although in shape it in no way resembled a barn, being of some plain unadorned vague architectural style that has no name. It had been built in 1910, by the local banker, and had obviously been designed more for social entertaining, and not for the usual domestic sort of life. This was my childhood home alongside the Platte River of Nebraska, from the time I was a year old, until we moved away into the heart of Nebraska, the Sandhills, when I was ten years old. The house was perhaps the...

Bike helmets? SPF? Veggie meals? No way, if you grew up in '50s, '60s, '70s When Phyllis Murphy's mother was pregnant, back in the 1950s, her doctor advised her to take up smoking for relaxation. A few years later, that same mom smeared her toddler's skin with a concoction of baby oil and iodine for a deep, rich tan. Now, safely in adulthood in Vancouver, B.C., Murphy fondly recalls childhood as a time of leaping from rooftops and accumulating “more scars than Joan Rivers.” And Tim Palla, a 46-year-old pastor, spent his childhood just north of Pittsburgh where he got...

Free, imaginative play is crucial for normal social, emotional and cognitive development. It makes us better adjusted, smarter and less stressed. Childhood play is crucial for social, emotional and cognitive ­development. Imaginative and rambunctious “free play,� as opposed to games or structured activities, is the most essential type. Kids and animals that do not play when they are young may grow into anxious, socially maladjusted adults. On August 1, 1966, the day psychiatrist Stuart Brown started his assistant professorship at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, 25-year-old Charles Whitman climbed to the top of the University of Texas Tower...

excerpt: Social scientists have long questioned the origin of President Obama’s most deeply-held economic philosophy. Is it, they wondered, rooted in the mixed up mélange of cultures in which he was raised? Did it spring, as others suggested, from some genetic link to his father’s exotic homeland? Or does it arise, as some have proposed, from the spiritual awakening of his college years? Now the truth can been discovered and can finally be revealed.

Dr Justin Barrett, a senior researcher at the University of Oxford's Centre for Anthropology and Mind, claims that young people have a predisposition to believe in a supreme being because they assume that everything in the world was created with a purpose. He says that young children have faith even when they have not been taught about it by family or at school, and argues that even those raised alone on a desert island would come to believe in God. "The preponderance of scientific evidence for the past 10 years or so has shown that a lot more seems to...

Sliding down memory lane (This classic Dave Barry column was originally published April 13, 2003.) Recently, my little brother Phil (he's only 50) gave me a box that wound up with him some years ago, when our mom died and a bunch of family flotsam drifted down one generation. The box contains slides. For you young digital readers, I should explain that slides are transparencies made from photographs. They used to be very popular. When you wanted to look at big, bright images of your vacation, you'd get out your slides, spend a few seconds thinking about what a pain...

Imagine if liberal principals were applied to sports, so that the best team is shamed and punished for oppressing the others, and the team that manages to lose the most games is awarded the championship to encourage self-esteem. In Little League, it's already happening: Nine-year-old Jericho Scott is a good baseball player — too good, it turns out. The right-hander has a fastball that tops out at about 40 mph. He throws so hard that the Youth Baseball League of New Haven told his coach that the boy could not pitch any more. When Jericho took the mound anyway last...

A noted child and family psychologist says spanking a child can be an effective form of discipline, despite a recent study that states otherwise. A new report titled "A Violent Education: Corporal Punishment of Children in U.S. Public Schools" shows that more than 200,000 children received corporal punishment in U.S. schools. Texas accounted for the majority of the cases, although 21 U.S. states allow the use of corporal punishment. The study was conducted by Humans Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union. According to a Reuters article on the study, "liberal groups regard corporal punishment as a barbaric relic...

Oh, to be in England. Theodore Dalrymple: Childhood’s End - Britain, land of bleak houses and low expectations Growing up in today's England is far from the idyll depicted in this nineteenth-century lithograph. kate greenaway/Victoria & Albert Museum, London/Art Resource, NY Growing up in today’s England is far from the idyll depicted in this nineteenth-century lithograph. Britain is the worst country in the Western world in which to be a child, according to a recent UNICEF report. Ordinarily, I would not set much store by such a report; but in this case, I think it must be right—not because I...

MELBOURNE: It is possible that cricket, a game venerated all over the Commonwealth, is older than currently thought. In fact, Jesus may have played the game (or a similar bat-and-ball combination) as a child, according to an ancient Armenian manuscript. Long before the English launched cricket some 300 years ago, similar games were being played as early as the 8th century in the Punjab region, Derek Birley writes in his Social History of English Cricket. But an Armenian scholar says there is good reason to believe that similar games were played in the Middle East long before that time. Dr...

ScienceDaily (Aug. 5, 2008) — A growing number of the world's children are mildly to severely nearsighted (myopic), with rates especially high among urbanized East Asians. In addition to coping with poor distance vision, children with severe myopia are more prone to visual impairment and blindness later in life. Although genetic inheritance plays a role, the rapid rise of myopia suggests that environmental factors are driving the trend. Myopia usually begins and progresses during children's school years, but research on the role of intensive reading or other "near work" has determined that this is a minor factor. A new study...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Injuries are the leading cause of death among children after the first year of life, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In a new study, a University of Missouri professor found that children living in households with unrelated adults are six times more likely to die of maltreatment-related unintentional injuries, compared to children living with two biological parents. The risk of maltreatment death is double for children living with foster or step-parents, or other related adults. However, the risk is not higher for children living in households with a single biological parent and no...

An eight-year-old boy has sparked an unlikely outcry in Sweden after failing to invite two of his classmates to his birthday party. The boy's school says he has violated the children's rights and has complained to the Swedish Parliament. The school, in Lund, southern Sweden, argues that if invitations are handed out on school premises then it must ensure there is no discrimination. The boy's father has lodged a complaint with the parliamentary ombudsman. He says the two children were left out because one did not invite his son to his own party and he had fallen out with the...

Center feels singling out players can hurt youthful self confidence. Thursday, June 26, 2008 (Beachwood) - Beachwood has cancelled its annual 4th of July Rec League All-Star Game for 9 to 12 year olds. In a letter to coaches, Assistant Recreation Supervisor Frank Vicchiarelli announced that the decades old tradition would end because certain kids were being singled out as better players than others.

BEACHWOOD, Ohio -- A local community has canceled an all-star game for youth baseball players because it doesn't want to exclude anyone. People in Beachwood are upset, and it's not just parents and children. The issue is when is a child just learning a game and when are they old enough to compete in it? The city of Beachwood and its recreation department drew the line at age 12. The phone lines lit up on WTAM on Thursday morning as parents and sports fans called to voice their opinion on the city canceling its all-star game for 9- to 12-year-olds....

Several years ago my husband borrowed a Shania Twain CD from the library. When my then 5-year-old daughter saw me roll my eyes at the barely dressed singer's provocative poses on the liner notes, she was smitten. She played the CD over and over, tossing her hair and wiggling her hips in imitation of those photos, oblivious to the innuendo but aware that she was doing something daring and rebellious. What, I thought, am I going to do when she's 13? Reading The Lolita Effect five years later, I wonder why that episode even stands out in my memory. To...

A playground pastime is getting a timeout this spring at a McLean elementary school. Robyn Hooker, principal of Kent Gardens Elementary School, has told students they may no longer play tag during recess after determining that the game of chasing, dodging and yelling "You're it!" had gotten out of hand. Hooker explained to parents in a letter this month that tag had become a game "of intense aggression." The principal said that her goal is to keep students safe and that she hopes to restore tag (as well as touch football, also now on hold) after teachers and administrators review...

Why Don't Kids Walk To School Anymore?No sidewalk and no green buffer makes walking feel unsafe. A wide treed buffer between a sidewalk and the street encourages walking. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Michigan) ScienceDaily (Mar. 28, 2008) — Maybe when we were their age, we walked five miles to school, rain or shine. So why don't most children today walk or bike to school? It's not necessarily because they're spoiled, lazy or over scheduled. According to a University of Michigan researcher, concerns about safety are the main reason that less than 13 percent of U.S. children walked or...

Extra Vitamin D In Early Childhood Cuts Adult Diabetes Risk ScienceDaily (Mar. 13, 2008) — Vitamin D supplements in early childhood may ward off the development of type 1 diabetes in later life, reveals a research review published ahead of print in the Archives of Disease in Childhood. Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disorder, in which insulin producing beta cells in the pancreas are destroyed by the body's own immune system, starting in early infancy. The disease is most common among people of European descent, with around 2 million Europeans and North Americans affected. Its incidence is rising at...

LONDON: Childhood is the golden era in one's life. But, a new study has found that it now effectively ends at the age of 11 with parents increasingly succumbing to "pester pressure" from their kids. Researchers in Britain have found that children are forcing their parents to authorise freedoms that belie their years in contrast with the traditional upbringings experienced by their moms and dads. According to the study, more and more teenagers are being allowed to drink alcohol, stay out late, sleep over at their boyfriend's or girlfriend's house and have sex, The Daily Telegraph reported on Monday. Little...

More than half of parents believe that childhood is now over by the age of 11, according to a survey. The poll shows that children, desperate to keep up with their peers, are forcing parents to authorise freedoms that belie their years, in contrast with the traditional upbringings experienced by their mothers and fathers. Teenagers are increasingly being allowed to drink alcohol, stay out late and sleep over at their boyfriend or girlfriend's house, according to the survey for Random House Children's Books. But many adults feel that parents are wrong to succumb and that youngsters grow up alarmingly quickly,...