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This valentine was given to a second grade teacher. If it’s real, it is definitely in the running for the best valentine of 2012. Link
A preschooler in Raeford, North Carolina, was given a school cafeteria lunch when a state inspector deemed her sack lunch inadequate by USDA nutritional standards. The 4-year-old girl ate three chicken nuggets from the cafeteria meal.
The girl’s turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the agent who was inspecting all lunch boxes in her More at Four classroom that day.
The Division of Child Development and Early Education at the Department of Health and Human Services requires all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs — including in-home day care centers — to meet USDA guidelines. That means lunches must consist of one serving of meat, one serving of milk, one serving of grain, and two servings of fruit or vegetables, even if the lunches are brought from home.
When home-packed lunches do not include all of the required items, child care providers must supplement them with the missing ones.
The girl’s mother — who said she wishes to remain anonymous to protect her daughter from retaliation — said she received a note from the school stating that students who did not bring a “healthy lunch” would be offered the missing portions, which could result in a fee from the cafeteria, in her case $1.25.
Now, you may think that apple juice, potato chips, and a banana would count as at least two fruits or vegetables, but it appears to be a matter of interpretation. Jani Kozlowski of the state’s Division of Child Development said there was nothing wrong with the bagged lunch, and the parent should not have been charged for the cafeteria meal. She hinted that the school may need more “technical assistance,” meaning training. Link -via reddit
(Image credit: Flickr user Jeffrey Beall)
When Tommy Jordan came across a Facebook post written by his teenage daughter complaining about how she had to do chores, he decided to film his response and upload it to YouTube:
This dramatic situation started when Jordan discovered a Facebook post from Hannah, complaining about her daily life at home. The note, which Jordan read and analyzed in his sit-down chat with the camera, takes issue with the slew of chores she’s forced to do each day. “To my parents: I’m not your damn slave,” the note begins. The teenage angst bleeds from the note, as Hannah proposes that her parents pay her for the chores that she does. This point, in particular, sets off Jordan, an IT worker from Albemarle, N.C., who proceeds to delineate how entitled Hannah sounds in the note. But that wasn’t the only punishment he planned for his daughter’s supposedly “hard” life.
“That right there is your laptop,” he explains, filming the newly-upgraded computer perched vulnerably in the grass. “This right here is my .45.” A quick cock of the gun, and Hannah’s laptop takes a shot through the screen. In the next 30 seconds, he proceeds to empty his gun, and the bullets shatter the computer’s plastic shell.
What do you think Neatoramanauts? A justified or over-the-top reaction? Link | The YouTube video clip
The pianist is Lise Linde Kronenberg, filmed on her first birthday. It’s not clear whether the piano music was overdubbed on a pre-existing melody, or whether the orchestral accompaniment was created specifically to harmonize with her extemporaneous creation, but the result is fascinating. Try playing it for someone who can’t see your monitor, and ask them what they think of this “nouveau” piano style.
And it has an LOL ending.
Sure we all have things we resent our parents for, but it takes a lot to truly be a bad parent, especially to be named as one of the top ten terrible parents. While many of the cases are heart-breaking stories of abuse, some are just sickening displays of poor parental values -like the mother who bought her seven year-old a boob job. It makes you wish for a change in child abuse laws.
Sometimes it’s hard to see what’s going on when you look at an ultrasound image of a baby in utero, but in this case the truth is plain to see-this woman’s baby is clearly the supervillain Venom, and he’s coming back for vengeance against Spider Man!
Giving birth to a supervillain might seem like a scary scenario, but really there are a lot of perks-your kid won’t get picked on at school, they will generally be able to take care of themselves, and every time they knock over a bank you’re in the money.
And at least her baby doesn’t look like Green Goblin, now that would have been terrifying!
Nisheisha lives in Jamaica, but there’s no chance you will find her home. I have learned from experience that you never trust directions given by children or by people who do not drive. I’ve also learned from experience that those are the people who will ask you for a ride. Oh, they may be able to show you where they live, but you’ll be past a turn before they tell you to turn “back there.” Go ahead, ask a child near you for directions to some nearby landmark! -via Cynical-C
So.
Junior is out of college and going into the workforce. What's a helicopter
parent to do?
a) Let the young adult gain independence and navigate his own way through
life
b) Talk to HR to see if he can get a better salary. A little nudge can't
hurt!
From NPR's All Things Considered:
Margaret Fiester of the Society for Human Resource Management, or SHRM, says when it comes to parents acting as lobbyists, she's heard it all — from parents calling to negotiate better salaries or vacation time for their kids to complaining when their child isn't hired. "Surely you've overlooked these wonderful qualities that my child has," Fiester says parents often tell her.
Michigan State University surveyed more than 700 employers seeking to hire recent college graduates. Nearly one-third said parents had submitted resumes on their child's behalf, some without even informing the child. One-quarter reported hearing from parents urging the employer to hire their son or daughter for a position. Four percent of respondents reported that a parent actually showed up for the candidate's job interview.
Link (Photo: Shutterstock)
Nine-year-old Jonny Mizzone can play the banjo! On fiddle, you hear his 12-year-old brother Robbie, and 14-year-old Tommy accompanies them on guitar. The song is Ralph Stanley’s “How Mountain Girls Can Love.” You can see more of the brothers at the YouTube channel Sleepy Man Banjo Boys. Link -via reddit
Did your father say that he walked to school when he was your age? In the snow? Uphill? Both ways?
Well, that ain't so hardcore. In the Netherlands, kids have to pedal their school bus:
Built by Tolkamp Metaalspecials, and sold by the De Cafe Racer company, the bicycle school bus (BCO in Dutch) is powered entirely by children and the one adult driver (although there is an electric motor for tough hills). Its simple design has eight sets of pedals for the kids (ages 4 to 12), a driver seat for the adult, and three bench seats for freeloaders. The top speed is about 10 miles per hour, and features a sound system and canvas awning to ward off rainy days.
Read more at Co.Exist: Link
Three-year-old Noah Jeffrey wanted a toy so badly that he climbed into a claw machine in a restaurant in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia. We’ve posted stories of children in vending machines before, but Noah took the adventure to a new level when he started handing toys out to other children who gathered around the machine! Then his mother saw him.
“I ran over to check and he was passing toys out and eating some of the lollies,” she said.
But with electrical wires and little oxygen inside Noah was soon sweating as management and his mum worked to free him.
And the escape proved rather more tricky than getting in for Noah.
The toddler had to be coaxed to climb back down the chute and sit there while his mum pulled him around a guard panel blocking his escape.
“We had to tell him that he had to come out to get a toy,” she said.
Noah managed to get out of the machine before the fire brigade arrived to rescue him. Link -via Arbroath
Forget
Tiger Moms! The
secret to raising great, well-behaved kids is ... being French!
Pamela Druckerman explains why French parents are superior:
Why was it, for example, that in the hundreds of hours I'd clocked at French playgrounds, I'd never seen a child (except my own) throw a temper tantrum? Why didn't my French friends ever need to rush off the phone because their kids were demanding something? Why hadn't their living rooms been taken over by teepees and toy kitchens, the way ours had?
Soon it became clear to me that quietly and en masse, French parents were achieving outcomes that created a whole different atmosphere for family life. When American families visited our home, the parents usually spent much of the visit refereeing their kids' spats, helping their toddlers do laps around the kitchen island, or getting down on the floor to build Lego villages. When French friends visited, by contrast, the grownups had coffee and the children played happily by themselves.
By the end of our ruined beach holiday, I decided to figure out what French parents were doing differently. Why didn't French children throw food? And why weren't their parents shouting? Could I change my wiring and get the same results with my own offspring?
Driven partly by maternal desperation, I have spent the last several years investigating French parenting. And now, with Bean 6 years old and twins who are 3, I can tell you this: The French aren't perfect, but they have some parenting secrets that really do work.
If you've got kids that don't listen to you, this is the one post to read today: Link
Now this is an interesting idea for a photo series-combine recently taken portraits of people with photos from when they were children, but instead of using Photoshop photographer Bobby Lee Adams uses a well placed tear down the middle of the face.
I was amazed at how similar they look when compared to their childhood selves, quite the difference from the other series that have been going around the interwebs lately (soldiers/drug addicts before and after). I guess everyone in this gallery has had a relatively trauma (or addiction) free life!
Check out more of these fused portraits at the link below, I’m gonna go do this with some of my own pics!
Link –via DesignTAXI
Lydia’s three-year-old daughter names her toys by herself. Some of the names are rude, crude, and socially unacceptable. But they make for a funny video, if you aren’t offended by adult terms in text. See it at NeatoBambino. Link
Science
asks and answers the question in every parent's mind, why are teenagers
reckless? It's due to how the teen brain interprets risks and rewards:
Recent studies in the neuroscientist B.J. Casey's lab at Cornell University suggest that adolescents aren't reckless because they underestimate risks, but because they overestimate rewards—or, rather, find rewards more rewarding than adults do. The reward centers of the adolescent brain are much more active than those of either children or adults. Think about the incomparable intensity of first love, the never-to-be-recaptured glory of the high-school basketball championship.
What teenagers want most of all are social rewards, especially the respect of their peers. In a recent study by the developmental psychologist Laurence Steinberg at Temple University, teenagers did a simulated high-risk driving task while they were lying in an fMRI brain-imaging machine. The reward system of their brains lighted up much more when they thought another teenager was watching what they did—and they took more risks.
Link (Image: Harry Campbell)
Something tells me that this baby will grow up to love the Bacon Store over at the NeatoShop!
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via Arbroath
When a five-year-old girl recognizes your brand logo, you’ve done it right. Of course, when your dad is in the logo design business, you might have a leg up. Adam Ladd’s daughter knows her logos, but as far as big cats go. she just likes cheetahs. -via Laughing Squid
We are fascinated with child prodigies, yet we still don’t know what causes one talented youngster to go on to a happy, productive life and what causes others to burn out, like William James Sidis.
Sidis is considered to be the smartest man who ever lived, by some, with an estimated IQ of 250-300.
Before his own experience with the terrible twos, Sidis had taught himself to read and shortly thereafter, became fluent in eight different languages and wrote four original works of his own by the age of seven.
After an incredible childhood – or lack of it – adulthood was a struggle for Sidis and newspapers at the time reported that his “genius had burned out” due to the numerous obscure blue collared jobs he obtained throughout his life.
Read about 16 famous prodigies, some from history, some who are adults now, and some who are just starting out. Link -via the Presurfer
There are some really talented kids out there, and thanks to YouTube they can show the world their skills, hopefully without all the praise going straight to their head.
8 year old Zoe Thomson plays guitar like a champ, and I think she should team up with 8 year old hardcore singer Juliet and form their own kiddie metal outfit, seriously, who wouldn’t want to see that?!
–via BuzzFeed
Meet
Rita Lawlor, a seven-year-old girl from Sarasota, Florida, who recently
became the youngest person to receive an award from her local fire department
for saving her mom's life:
When seven-year-old Rita Lawlor couldn't wake her mother up, she did what many have probably never thought of doing.
She slapped her with a slice of pizza. [...]
When this didn't work Rita realised her mother may be in serious trouble and rang for help.
What's better than child slavery? Child slavery for art!
Just kidding. While designer Lucas Maassen employs child labor to create his furniture/artwork, it's completely legal. The best part? Selling the furniture pieces for up to $3,500. Who knew that employing your kids could be so profitable?
Dutch child labor laws let the boys work up to 3 hours a week. So, each Tuesday, instead of watching TV or playing with their toys like all those lazy kids, they schlep into Maassen & Sons and get to work painting dad’s furniture (assorted wooden chairs and cabinets and mirrors) in cheery colors for 1 Euro a pop.
It might sound like a gimmick--a devilishly cute way to sell a few chairs in a crap economy--except that for the Maassen family, the project has served a deeper purpose: It has helped the boys develop an enviable work ethic. “They take the work very seriously,” Maassen tells Co.Design. They even signed employee contracts, which stipulate things like when the work day starts (3 p.m.), how long of a break they’re allowed (15 minutes), and how many vacation days they’re entitled to (12, depending on how long they’ve been employed).
“They love doing it,” Maassen says. “They think it’s great to work in the family business.”
$3,500?! Where are my paint buckets and my kids? Link
Baby Charlotte had the *exact* same expression as I did when her dad made the infernal motorboat sound by flapping his lips. Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] - via Fatherhood Is
When
Beck Laxton and Kieran Cooper had an offspring, they decided that their
Baby Sasha should not be influenced by society's prejudices and preconceptions
when it comes to gender:
They referred to their child as "The Infant" and only allowed him to play with "gender-neutral toys" in their television-free home.
For the first five years of his life Sasha alternated between girls' and boys' outfits, leaving friends, playmates and relatives guessing.
But the couple have finally revealed his sex after it became harder to conceal when Sasha started primary school.
Yesterday Miss Laxton, a web editor, said that she thought gender stereotyping was "fundamentally stupid".
"I wanted to avoid all that stereotyping," she said.
"Stereotypes seem fundamentally stupid. Why would you want to slot people into boxes?
The gender of Sasha was finally revealed (he's a boy) when he started school: Link - via Arbroath
This 8 year old girl is about to change the world of heavy metal forever, by bringing some refreshingly new subject matter to the scene-household pets.
Watch as Juliet gets hardcore singing about how much she loves her goldfish, and her dog, don’t even think about messing with her dog, or she’ll jump off the trampoline and stomp you out! Warning- this video is seriously cute!
–via Geekologie
If you wrote a song about your life, you’d include your favorite things. Australian 8-year-old Juliet made a song about how she loves her dog, Robert. The music video is charming. See it at NeatoBambino. Link
Did you know today is Winnie the Pooh Day in honor of his creator, A.A. Milne’s birthday? If Mr. Milne were still alive today, he’d be turning 130 and he would no doubt be honored to see that his creation is still bringing joy to children to this day. In honor of Milne and his beloved Pooh Bear, here are a few things you might not know about Winnie and the rest of his pals.
Image Via CorneelW [Flickr]
His name has changed over the years, but not much. When the first A.A. Milne books came out, he was originally called Winnie-the-Pooh, but when Disney acquired the rights to animate the characters, they dropped the hyphen and the hyphenless title became much more popular.
The Pooh stories have broken many book records –even in foreign languages. It has been published in dozens of languages and the 1958 Latin translation even became the first non-English book to be featured on the New York Times Best Seller List and it remains the only Latin book to ever be seen on the list.
Winnie the Pooh may seem like a silly name for a bear, but it was the name of Christopher Robin Milne’s real teddy bear, so it became the name of the bear in the books as well. As it turns out, Christopher Robin named his bear after Winnie, a Canadian black bear that lived at the London Zoo (pictured above in his youth), and a swan named “Pooh” that the family met on vacation. Before the toy was given its famous name, it was originally sold at Harrods with the name “Edward Bear.” As for Pooh the swan, he was actually featured as a character in the same poetry book where Milne first introduced Winnie The Pooh to the world, although he still wasn’t named in one of Milne’s works until a 1925 Christmas story he wrote for The Evening News.
Contrary to many rumors, Winnie’s last name is not Sanders. This story was spread because Pooh’s house says “Sanders” over the door, but it is generally accepted that the name was put above the door by the home’s previous resident and that Pooh just never bothered to take it down.
Most of the other characters were named after Christopher Robin’s toys as well. That is, except for Owl, Rabbit and Gopher. Owl and Rabbit were created by Milne and illustrator Ernest Shepard solely to add a little more variety to the character list. Gopher wasn’t added until 1977, when the Disney company added the character to their animated feature, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.
You can see all of the real plushies that inspired the characters at the New York Public Library. With one exception –Christopher Robin lost his Roo plush in the thirties, so it is sadly missing from the collection.
You can also visit most of the locations from the stories. The Hundred Acre Wood, Roo’s Sandpit, Poohsticks Bridget and the rest are all fictionalized names of real places in the Ashdown Forrest in Sussex, England where Milne bought a country home in 1925. For example, the Hundred Acre Wood is really the Five Hundred Acre Wood and Galleon’s Leap is really Gill’s Lap.
Christopher Robin was less than thrilled about the success of his father’s stories. Apparently his grudge started when kids in school picked on him by citing passages from the stories. As he grew older, he accused his father of achieving success by “climbing on my infant shoulders, that he had filched from me my good name and left me nothing but empty fame.” I don’t know about you guys, but if my dad wrote awesome books about me and my toys, I’d be touched, especially as I got older and realized that if the kids making fun of me used verses from the stories –that they must have been fans of the stories themselves.
While Disney maintained Pooh’s classic red shirt look, first introduced in 1932, critics complain that the company has changed the personality and stories too drastically. Strangely, if you prefer your Pooh Bear to be closer to the original, you’ll have to sacrifice the character’s look as his most accurate animation portrayal has been performed by his Russian version. While Russian Winnei’s stories closely follow those depicted in the original trilogy of Pooh stories, he certainly looks drastically different from the illustrations created by artist Ernest Shepard. That’s him in the cartoon above, if you couldn’t tell.
As for Disney, they’re doing just fine with their own take on the bear and his friends. It turns out the company makes just as much money from Pooh movies and merchandise as they do from the same creations bearing Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy and Pluto.
Image Via parodyerror [Flickr]
Of course, Disney hasn’t manipulated the stories nearly as much as a few others have. The character has been used by Benjamin Hoff to explain the tenants of Taoism, by Frederick Crews to satirize philosophical approaches used by academics and by John T. Williams to illustrate the works of popular philosophers including Descartes, Pluto and Nietzsche. Apparently the little stuffed bear might just be one of the best philosophers of our time. As if that weren’t enough, Kenny Loggins even wrote a song based on the cuddly character.
He has also left his mark on the real world as well. There are streets in Warsaw and Budapest named after him. And the imaginary sport of Poohsticks, where contestants drop their stick in a stream to see whose will cross the finish line first, is now played worldwide and even has a World Championship match in Oxfordshire.
Are you a Pooh fan? Is there anything I left out here? Also, who is your favorite character in the Hundred Acre Wood? Personally, I love Eeyore, but that’s partially because he reminds me of my lazy, mopey dog.
Sources: Wikipedia #1, #2, Mental Floss
Rick Smith of the blog Noah's Dad, noticed something unusual in a Target circular. Like his son Noah, the model wearing the orange shirt has Down Syndrome.
That's very inclusive and all, but what really got Rick feeling good is that Target didn't make a big deal about it at all. He wrote:
This wasn’t a “Special Clothing For Special People” catalog. There wasn’t a call out somewhere on the page proudly proclaiming that “Target’s proud to feature a model with Down syndrome in this week’s ad!” And they didn’t even ask him to model a shirt with the phrase, “We Aren’t All Angels” printed on the front.
In other words, they didn’t make a big deal out of it. I like that.
Rick's post went viral and the model, Ryan Langston, got quite a bit of attention:
On the Internet, parents of other special needs children are praising the ads -- and Ryan -- an outpouring that's surprised and overwhelmed his parents, Amanda and Jim Langston. [...]
"The fact that they are not making a big deal - it's ironic," Ryan's father Jim said. "It's a big deal because they are not making a big deal about it."
The Langstons' decision to involve Ryan in modeling was never about the money, Amanda said. "This has just become his own thing," she said. And it's also turned into a confidence booster.
Read more about Ryan Langston over at The Daily Nightly: Link
A couple of decades of boosting children’s self-esteem turns out to not have much effect on a student’s grades. Oh, praise is still seen as effective, but educators are beginning to reward students for more than just showing up.
A growing body of research over three decades shows that easy, unearned praise does not help students but instead interferes with significant learning opportunities. As schools ratchet up academic standards for all students, new buzzwords are “persistence,” “risk-taking” and “resilience” — each implying more sweat and strain than fuzzy, warm feelings.
“We used to think we could hand children self-esteem on a platter,” Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck said. “That has backfired.”
Dweck’s studies, embraced in Montgomery schools and elsewhere, have found that praising children for intelligence — “You’re so clever!” — also backfires. In study after study, children rewarded for being smart become more likely to shy away from hard assignments that might tarnish their star reputations.
But children praised for trying hard or taking risks tend to enjoy challenges and find greater success. Children also perform better in the long term when they believe that their intellect is not a birthright but something that grows and develops as they learn new things.
(Image credit: Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
The broadcasting squad at Liberty Middle School in Madison, Alabama produced this video. It was entirely shot on iPads and mixed with music by Sigur Rós.
“As people were walking out of the school, it was clear that it was the best vibe in the school that had been there all year,” said broadcasting teacher Daniel Whitt. “Everyone was high fiving. People were smiling at each other. People were saying, ‘Hey man loved your sign.’”
Link -via Metafilter
Uh oh! Don't tell Harry Potter but He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has been reincarnated! Via Nerd Approved
Previously on Neatorama: 10 Strangest Names EVAR!
