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A 5-year-old boy slipped out of the Imagination Station child care center unnoticed Tuesday afternoon, crossed two busy streets and wandered to a restaurant on the Interstate 35E service road in 100-degree heat. Employees of Hooters found the child safe about 5:20 p.m. He left the child care center in the 2300 block of San Jacinto Boulevard, crossed the Interstate 35E northbound service road and Dallas Drive, bought a soft drink at a service station and walked to Hooters, where an employee found him in the parking lot and called police.

- In Sweden that is. All the same, if various experts are right, the Nordic countries are not only the richest part of the world, but also global leaders in the domain of QUALITY of life. Therefore, living in this part of Stockholm is probably as good as life gets, or? The article: "The Stockholm suburb of Danderyd is the best municipality in which to live, according to a new ranking by the magazine Fokus. Lund and nearby Lomma in southern Sweden follow closely behind. Ljusnarsberg municipality in the Bergslagen region of central Sweden ended up in last place. The...

Parents 'abdicating responsibility for their children' By Graeme Paton, Education Editor Last Updated: 1:13AM BST 05/05/2008 Parents are “abdicating their responsibility” by leaving children in school for up to 10 hours a day, according to a leading head teacher. Extended schools open to 6pm, providing 'wraparound' childcare to help mothers return to full-time jobs Some mothers and fathers “dump” pupils at breakfast clubs and pick them up late in the evening because of the demands of work, said Mick Brookes, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers. Britain’s so-called “back to work culture” - which has also prompted...

Don't look now, but the Democrats in the California Legislature want to unionize Grandma. Really. A bill pending in the Senate would create a union to organize family members who provide child care for their kin and are paid by the state so that mothers can work outside the home. The measure already has passed in the Assembly. The child care providers – grandparents, aunts, uncles and siblings – would pay dues and be represented collectively in negotiations with the state over pay, benefits and working conditions. Child care providers who did not want to join the union would still...

SPRINGDALE, Ark. -- A Springdale day care teacher raped a 4-year-old girl in an incident caught on tape, police said. Cesar Monarrez, 18, had worked at the Royal Children's Academy part-time for about three or four months, officials said. According to an arrest warrant for Monarrez, the alleged victim described how he inappropriately touched her. She told authorities that her privates were burning because "Bubba" touched her with a knife inside his pocket. Police identified Bubba as Monarrez, and investigators said closed-circuit video shows him pushing his hands beneath the girl's waistband while she was asleep. Monarrez has been charged...

Glennette Scott was horrified when her daughter Brianna, 3 years old, started picking fights, throwing chairs and having emotional meltdowns in preschool. Anxious and upset, Ms. Scott searched the Internet and asked school officials for help with her daughter; she sometimes seemed like "a ticking time bomb," Ms. Scott says, because her outbursts were so sudden and unpredictable. With more individual guidance and one-on-one time from teachers, Brianna is learning to control herself, and she's progressing well now in her Falls Church, Va., kindergarten. But Ms. Scott still worries about her. Behavior problems among preschoolers are emerging as a national...

A pastor accused of raping two girls at a daycare center he ran out of his Ferndale home with his wife years ago faced a judge on Friday. The judge ordered Patrick Conway, 74, now of Granite Falls to stay away from the two girls who claim he molested and raped them on several occasions years ago. "Otherwise you're the one who's very likely to be arrested," the judge told Conway. Conway, a grandfather and pastor, pleaded not guilty to the charges of child rape and child molestation. Investigators said the attacks took place when the girls were 5 and...

Wisconsin Toddler, 1, Left in Day Care Van OvernightSaturday, December 01, 2007 MILWAUKEE, Wis. — Milwaukee police were investigating how a 1-year-old asthmatic was left in a locked-up day care van overnight in the cold, The van was supposed to drop off Zakia Goff at her home at 10:30 p.m. on Thursday, where her mother was waiting to meet her after working second shift at her job. “I was just praying to God, like ‘Please God, bring my baby back,’” the toddler’s mother, Denise Lindsey, said. After waiting outside for the van and then calling relatives, emergency contacts and the...

Maryland's daycare providers are banning together. Dennis Edwards reports the effort to unionize involves more than 2,000 daycare providers state wide, and they believe what's best for them is what's best for the families they serve. Children play outside a daycare center; their parents watch with pride as they stand in support of daycare providers who are taking the first steps toward forming a union. "Today I am proud to announce that Maryland Family Child Care Providers have voted 75 percent to form our union with SCIU Kids First," said child care provider Maydee Green. In May, hundreds of daycare...

(Shuttering the worst violators takes time) At least five children have died in child-care facilities, four molested and 14 received injuries serious enough to prompt the closing of the facility, according to a Tulsa World review of revocations, emergency orders and license denials. The state Department of Human Services has denied, revoked or issued emergency orders to shut down child-care facilities 146 times between Jan. 1, 2006, and May 30, 2007..... ....... Oklahoma has about 5,100 child-care homes and centers. It takes about four months to shut down a troubled child-care facility through revocation. The time is measured from the...

A 9-year-old boy was accused yesterday of repeatedly beating a toddler in the head at a day care center being run in a private home in Woodbridge, N.J., eventually causing his death, the authorities said. The toddler, Tahir Francis of Carteret, who was 11 months old, suffered multiple skull fractures and died last Thursday while undergoing brain surgery, according to the Middlesex County prosecutor’s office. The cause of death was blunt-force trauma to the head, the medical examiner has ruled. The 9-year-old, whose name was not released because of his age, was charged with the juvenile equivalent of aggravated manslaughter,...

Indy couple finds cool spot for whoopee...near day care center! AUGUST 1--Perhaps the next time Shawn Ayers and Nicholas Declouette decide to get, um, frisky, they will not do it in the middle of the day. In a '88 Oldsmobile. Parked in front of an Indianapolis day care center. Ayers, 31, and Declouette, 43, were arrested on public indecency charges when the day care center's operator called cops after spotting the couple getting busy in public. As noted in the below Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department report, when Officer Eli McAllister responded to the scene, "I stood there for approximately two...

SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. -- Approved plans to build a children's day care center over a historic cemetery in Seminole County has prompted outrage in the community. The Seminole County Planning and Zoning Board approved Bright Horizons' proposal Wednesday night to eventually bulldoze the Paola Historical Cemetery located near Heathrow. The cemetery was part of a Presbyterian church that burned down in the late 1800s. It is believed there are at least a dozen people buried at the site but no one knows exactly how many. Wednesday night, commissioners received "an earful" from neighbors concerned about the prospect of putting a...

TULSA, Okla. — When Robert Minton heard something had happened to his 2-year-old son, Joshua, he thought the boy had been in an accident or had fallen ill.When he arrived at the eastside residence where Joshua, and his 4-year-old sister, Heather, were being cared for, the news was much more devastating. Paramedics had tried to revive Joshua, who was found unresponsive after the in-home daycare center's owner, Vicki Leigh Chiles, bound his mouth and hands with masking tape. Minton said Chiles said nothing to him. "All she said to Heather was, `I love you, baby."' The state medical examiner's office...

As Mother’s Day approaches, I am thinking about an invitation I received recently to view a film called “The Motherhood Manifesto” at a local library. “Bring something yummy and come hear about the policies that make it so hard to be a mom these days!” the invitation read cheerfully. The word “manifesto” in the title sent up red flags for me. But, curious, I went to the host website – www.momsrising.org – to see what the components of the “manifesto” are. Cleverly, the website’s authors have used “MOTHER” as an acronym for their demands: M = (paid) Maternity and paternity...

GRAHAM, N.C. -- An Alamance County daycare is closed after police found guns and marijuana inside while children were present. Police say there were seven children at T's Tot's Daycare when officers knocked on the door last Saturday. Officers called the parents of the children, who picked them up while the police were still at the scene. Graham Police Captain Jeff Pritchard says officers immediately smelled marijuana in the home, and after they asked, owner Teresa Boyd handed them four ounces of marijuana. Officers also found handguns, rifles and rounds of ammunition, along with iguana, rabbits ahd other animals running...

How many tax-funded studies are needed before parents comprehend that farming their children's education out to strangers in institutional settings may be harmful to their kids' social skills? A new report published March 26, derived from the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, exposes alarming results for parents who use day care and the public school system as babysitting services. Since 1991, researchers with the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development have studied around 1,000 American children kept in "non-maternal child care" from birth through 54 months of age. While this longitudinal multi-million dollar study on...

A new study finds that children who received better quality child care before kindergarten had better vocabulary scores later on than those who received lower quality child care. The study also finds that children who remained in child care longer were more likely to have behavior problems in the sixth grade. Researchers say the effect of child care quality is consistent with other evidence showing that early experiences matter to a child's language development. But, they say, parenting is a much more important predictor of a child's development. The report appears in the current issue of Child Development. It tracked...

A much-anticipated report from the largest and longest-running study of American child care has found that keeping a preschooler in a day care center for a year or more increased the likelihood that the child would become disruptive in class ? and that the effect persisted through the sixth grade. The finding held up regardless of the child's sex or family income, and regardless of the quality of the day care center. With more than 2 million U.S. preschoolers attending day care, the increased disruptiveness very likely contributes to the load on teachers who must manage large classrooms, the authors...

How nurseries 'still breed aggression' By Sarah Womack, Social Affairs Correspondent  Last Updated: 1:15am BST 26/03/2007     Children who spend a lot of time in nursery are more likely to be aggressive and disobedient throughout primary school - no matter how excellent the nursery, according to study published today.Primary school teachers are more likely to say that such children - even at the age of 11 - are still "getting into fights" or "arguing a lot".The findings, from a continuing study of nearly 1,400 children, reignite the debate about whether working women damage their children's health by putting them...

CARMEL, Ind. -- The co-owner of a Carmel day-care center was cited last month with carrying a gun there in violation of state law, the agency that oversees such centers said. The state Family and Social Services Administration said Richard Lyday brought the gun into the Heartland Hall Child Development Center. He told investigators that he did so for personal protection and to protect the children there, the FSSA said. Lyday has a valid gun permit, but state law prohibits the possession of guns at day-care centers, the agency said. State records show Lyday removed the gun from the center...

Ford To Close Seven Daycares In JunePOSTED: 5:42 pm EST January 27, 2007 UPDATED: 5:48 pm EST January 27, 2007 DETROIT -- Financially ailing Ford Motor Co. said it plans to close five daycare facilities in Michigan and two outside the state in its latest effort to cut costs. The Dearborn-based automaker and the United Auto Workers union, its partner in operating the centers, notified the parents of 859 children Friday that the facilities' last day will be June 29. Ford did not divulge how many jobs would be affected or say how much money would be saved through the...

More than 1 million residents of the Washington-Baltimore region already live close to heavily trafficked motorways where dangerous soot pollution is at levels that can trigger asthma attacks, heart attacks and respiratory disease. Building the $2.4 billion (and rising), 18-mile intercounty connector linking Interstate 270 to Interstate 95 through neighborhoods and near schools would worsen these health problems. Maryland Gov.-elect Martin O'Malley (D) reiterated his support for the road following his election last month, but if the public demands protection for our children and the elderly, he still could take steps to prevent these health hazards. The toxic pollution the...

In an age when children appear to be anchored to TV and computer screens and kept indoors against a harsh and threatening world, the youngsters of Farley nursery are being set free. Most of their day is spent outside, even when the rain is falling. The 20 pupils come inside only for breaks and the rest of the time are allowed to roam, to make dens, mud pies and explore. Sue Palmer, the head, believes "outdoor learning" is a better way of teaching very young children than enclosing them in classrooms. She is preparing to enrol babies in the New...

The phone call came on a sticky afternoon, before 4:30 on July 28, as parents picked up babies and children at Kiddie Kollege and headed home. No one suspected - least of all Becky Baughman, the pregnant owner - that this would be the last day at the once-cheery, cartoon-clad day-care center in Franklinville. No one knew that the sleeping bags and blankies the parents were carting home might be saturated with poisonous mercury vapors. The caller was Tom Cozzi, a state Department of Environmental Protection official, and he urged Baughman to shut the day-care center. Immediately. After weeks of...

BOSTON --Gov. Mitt Romney vetoed a bill Friday that would have moved Massachusetts closer to universal pre-kindergarten, saying the program could end up costing taxpayers as much as $1 billion a year. The bill would have created a statewide pre-kindergarten program defined as "voluntary, universally accessible early education and care programs and services for preschool-aged children." Romney said the state should instead wait to see the results of a smaller $4.6 million pre-kindergarten test program before embarking on the more ambitious statewide initiative. "Before we create an expensive new burden on Massachusetts taxpayers, one that could lead to future tax...

A 5-month-old baby died in a minivan Wednesday after the mother apparently forgot to drop the child off at day care. The tragedy was discovered about 5:30 p.m. outside the Wonder Years 2 day care. The baby's mother stopped at the day care after work to pick up the child and was told by staff that the baby had not been dropped off. She realized then that the baby had been in her minivan all day. "The mother had forgotten to drop off the child at day care in the morning," said Curt Kreun, owner of Wonder Years 2. "She...

MALIBU, Calif. (AP) - A paparazzo was arrested Thursday after he was discovered hiding in bushes outside a daycare center attended by Angelina Jolie's adopted son, authorities said. Photographer Clint Brewer, 25, was trying to take pictures of 4-year-old Maddox Jolie-Pitt, according to Cindy Guagenti, a publicist for Jolie's partner, Brad Pitt. Brewer was detained by security shortly before 11 a.m. and the property's owner made a citizen's arrest, said sheriff's Lt. Crystal Miranda. Deputies arrested Brewer on suspicion of trespassing and he was later released on $1,000 bail, officials said. Jolie, Pitt and their children returned to Malibu two...

<p>A teacher at a Chevy Chase day-care center was arrested over the weekend for allegedly fondling a 14-year-old male in a restroom stall at a Rockville bookstore, Montgomery County police said yesterday.</p> <p>John P. Salinas, 37, of Silver Spring was charged with attempted third-degree sex offense and fourth-degree sex offense following an alleged May 20 incident in which he forcibly pulled down the pants and underwear of a teenager who was using the restroom at the Barnes & Noble store on Rockville Pike.</p>

Immigrant children should be allowed to go to the front of the waiting lists for day care spots, and should get free care if their parents are strapped for cash. While failed promises to provide day care for all remains a sensitive political issue, Rita Kumar, government adviser on immigration and integration, adds a new element to the debate, newspaper Dagsavisen reports. Kumar is the head of KIM (The Contact Committee for Immigrants and the Authorities) a government-appointed advisory body made up of representatives from immigrant organizations, political parties and relevant governmental agencies and ministries. Plenty of documentation exists indicating...

05/17/2006 AMARILLO -- Daycare worker 22-year-old Amber Dawn Hawkins was arrested 2 a.m. Wednesday. She is accused of putting a child in a freezer at the First Christian Church Garden School day care. A warrant for Hawkins` arrest was issued earlier this week after she was accused of punishing a 3-year-old girl improperly. The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services closed the daycare Tuesday afternoon. They tell us that from March 27 to April 7, eight children were put in the freezer as a punishment. A church attorney says three caregivers were fired for the incident, including Hawkins. Family...

Women who juggle career and family tend to be thinner and healthier as they approach midlife than long-term stay-at-home moms, a new study suggests. Researchers tracked the health of a group of British women from their mid-20s to their mid-50s and found that full-time homemakers were the most likely to be obese in their sixth decade. Women in long-term relationships who had raised kids while they held jobs outside the home were least likely to be overweight, and they also reported being in better overall health.

What’s the perfect Mother’s Day gift? A bouquet of tulips? Jewelry? Breakfast in bed? The National Organization for Women (NOW) has something a little more expensive in mind—universal childcare. NOW’s vision sounds simple: “Excellent, affordable childcare and eldercare for everyone who wants and needs it with subsidies from government and employers.” It’s a dream that’s been echoed by many feminist icons, including a certain New York Senator with White House aspirations. In her bestselling book, It Takes a Village, Hillary Clinton wrote admiringly of France’s childcare system. She celebrates that more than 90 percent of French children between ages three...

With the summer on the way, it isn't hard to know what many parents feel as the school year comes to an end. Panic. "Every year it comes to the end of the school year and parents start scrambling,'' says Monica Kortz, recreation director for the city of El Cerrito. "They start coming in our office when we open at 8 in the morning, and it just continues until we close at 5.'' That's nothing new, of course. Parents have been wondering what their kids are going to do for the summer since the days when school recessed so children...

This is your brain. This is your brain on -- day care? While day-care activists insist that children thrive in day care, a new book challenges the notion that kids require formal child care. Raising Babies -- Should Under 3s Go to Nursery? is the latest offering from Australian psychologist Steve Biddulph. He argues that day care is damaging to babies' brain chemistry. Before you discount Biddulph in an attempt to ease your own guilty conscience, it should be noted that his contention is in line with leading academic work gathered in Canada, the U.S. and England. Neurobiological research indicates...

Joseph Renander shook his head as he was convicted Tuesday on 17 charges of sexually assaulting six young girls who attended daycare centers he operated. Renander, 29, embraced his family before the verdict was read in Jefferson County District Court, but left the courtroom without looking at them as he was led away in handcuffs. He faces a minimum sentence of eight years in prison to life when he is sentenced June 9. He also has a second trial in June on charges of child pornography. "He's a monster. I couldn't have asked for anything better," said a woman, whose...

DENVER - State lawmakers are looking to make it a crime for an adult to lie in order to remove a child from a Colorado school or day care. The measure is being introduced after 25-year-old Adan Garcia-Cruz allegedly stated he was the uncle of a Lakewood 14-year-old when he signed her out from her middle school. She had stated he was her uncle as well. Police had located the two in his apartment and while they were able to take her away, they were not able to detain him on any charges. She subsequently ran away again, going to...

The Sunday Times - Britain The Sunday Times February 12, 2006 Child guru says nurseries harm small children Sian Griffiths ONE of the world’s most popular parenting gurus is to warn that placing children younger than three in nurseries risks damaging their development. Steve Biddulph, whose books have sold more than 4m copies worldwide, says that instead of subsidising nurseries, which do a “second-rate” job, the government should put in place policies to enable mothers to stay at home with their babies. The advice signals a reversal of views for Biddulph, an Australian with more than 20 years’ experience as...

MONTREAL -- Quebec's day-care system, held up as the model for a national program promised by the Liberal Party during the recent election campaign, has had a negative impact on the children and parents who use it, suggests a study by the C.D. Howe Institute. The study maintains that children enrolled in the program demonstrate higher levels of anxiety and aggressive behaviour than their counterparts in other provinces. "For almost every measure, we find that the increased use of childcare was associated with a decrease in their well-being relative to other children,'' reads the report by the Toronto-based think-tank. The...

Montgomery County police yesterday charged a Germantown man with knowingly giving a gun to a felon whose 8-year-old son brought it to a day care center Tuesday and, while playing with it, shot a 7-year-old girl in the arm. Clyde Colmes Jr., of the 13200 block of Lake Geneva Way, has been charged with giving a .38-caliber Taurus revolver to the boy's father, John Linwood Hall. Police said Mr. Colmes, 53, knew that Hall had a criminal record when he gave him the gun. Mr. Colmes also was charged with participation in an unlawful transfer or sale of a regulated...

GERMANTOWN, Md. (AP) -- A gun brought to a day care center by an 8-year-old boy accidentally went off Tuesday, wounding a 7-year-old girl in the arm, police said. The boy had the gun in a backpack and was playing with it when it went off at the For Kids We Care center, Montgomery County police spokesman Derek Baliles said. The girl was taken to Children's Hospital in Washington, he said. Her injury was not considered life-threatening. There were six children in the center at the time of the shooting, which happened around 7 a.m. No one else was hurt....

The war on Christmas continues. Today my wife came home with the news that the director of the daycare stated that there wont be a Christmas party for the kids this year or ever again. No decorations, no singing songs and they wont even allow a "Holliday Tree" More of the same, don't want to offend those of other faiths. SINCE WHEN IS SANTA A RELIGIOUS FIGURE ANYWAY ??? My daughters have had 5 Years of Santa, gifts, songs and candy and now the daycare is caving in to a few that are complaining. The best part is, all of...

Dec 3, 1:54 AM EST Philly Toddler Brings Crack to Daycare PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- A 2-year-old boy was removed from his family and his mother could face charges after the child handed his daycare teacher two packets of crack cocaine, and a search of his jacket pocket turned up nine more, police said.

Kids these days. They're getting more disrespectful, abusive, defiant and prone to tantrums. A few are even getting kicked out of school, getting pulled from the classroom by frustrated parents or being asked to cut back on their classroom hours until they shape up. And they're only 4. "In the past five years, I've seen it become more difficult to deal with children," said Judy Sharkey, director of Sheridan Day Care Center in the Town of Tonawanda. She's far from alone. Administrators at many of the area's preschools agree the number of children they see with serious behavioral problems is...

Sabine Bieber should spend time behind bars for causing the death of a child and putting other children at risk by giving them doses of an allergy medicine to make them sleepy, a District Court judge said Friday. After hearing several family members tearfully describe the painful loss of life and trust caused by the former Laurel day care owner, Judge Gregory Todd told Bieber she would spend at least one year in prison. Bieber was convicted of negligent homicide in an 11-day trial in August. The charge was filed for the death of 1-year-old Dane Heggem on Jan. 31,...

Parents in the neighborhood say it was an affordable day care where children were well-cared-for and even potty-trained. But early Monday morning, shocking news filtered down the Southwest Side blocks -- a 2-year-old boy inside the home in the 2200 block of South Drake had accidentally shot a 3-year-old boy in the hip and thigh. The 3-year-old was stable at University of Chicago Comer Children's Hospital, and his injuries were not life-threatening, a Chicago Police spokesman said. The news was especially hard on Alma Villegas, whose two young children are at the house every day while Villegas attends school. Villegas,...

Opening statements and testimony are expected today in Yellowstone County District Court, where a Laurel day-care owner is on trial for negligent homicide. After a day of jury questioning, Judge Gregory Todd ended the first day of Sabine Bieber's trial at 4:30 p.m. He asked prospective jurors to return this morning for a final round of questioning from attorneys before a panel is chosen. Todd said he hopes to have 12 jurors and two alternates in place by mid-morning. Bieber is on trial for the Jan. 31, 2003, death of 1-year-old Dane Heggem. Prosecutors say Bieber gave the boy and...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Medicare insurance program for the elderly and disabled soon will try out a possibly cheaper way to help people recover from health problems outside of the hospital -- adult day care. ADVERTISEMENT Some experts say extra services at most day-care centers -- activities, socializing and on-site nurses -- could also help patients recover faster and prevent costly complications that Medicare would have to pay for later. "We're able to pick up on the subtle changes" in patients, said Patty McCabe, a registered nurse who has worked at Holy Cross Hospital's adult day-care center near Washington for...

Posted on Sun, Jul. 31, 2005 On paid maternity leave, U.S. on par with Swaziland FOCUS ON EMPLOYERS HAS BEEN BIG BARRIER By Peter Svensson Associated Press In Santa Fe, N.M., Linda Strauss McIlroy, a first-time mother, is trying to get used to the thought of soon putting her 2-month-old boy in day care so she can get back to work. ``It's hard for me to imagine leaving him,'' she says. ``Just not being with him all day, leaving him with a virtual stranger. And then that's it till, you know, I retire. It's kind of crazy to think about...