Mock Turtle

At first glance this makes a good deal of sense:

Bill would protect kids from drug endangerment

The bill would make it a separate offence to “drug endanger” a child. It would establish drug-endangered children as a category in need of protection. It would also add drug endangerment as a form of child abuse under the Child and Family Services Act, Dunlop said Wednesday.

Endangerment would include exposing a child to the manufacturing or production of an illegal drug, as well as any substance that is used to make illegal drugs, he said.

Obviously, having little kids living in houses that are meth labs or grow ops is a poor idea.

It’s the “any substance that is used to make illegal drugs” clause that worries me here. Lots of perfectly normal household substances go into drug manufacture — alcohol, acetone, paint thinner, camp-stove fuel, gasoline, some kinds of cold/allergy pills, and so on. It seems to me that many a fishing expedition could be carried out under such a law: “Your Honour, we found no less than SIX such substances in the house! Think of the chiiiiiiildren!”

Surely social services and the law already have sufficient other tools to cope with the Crack-House Kid problem?

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A proud parent of a four-year-old, from a nauseating story about parents who tweet as their preschoolers:

“Roan’s all about superheroes and Scooby Doo and running around in his jammies. He’s still maintaining his child-like innocence so it’s fun to portray that sometimes.”

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A good new kids’ album for those interested who haven’t run across it - Snacktime by Barenaked Ladies.  Tested on a recent long car trip with success.  Worth getting just for the alphabet song, which starts with “A is for Aisle” and goes downhill from there.  The kids may not get it but they’ll want to know why you’re laughing.

http://www.bnlmusic.com/snacktime/

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Courtesy of UNESCO:

Since Monday 4 August, visitors can find, every week, the latest instalment of an adventure featuring Rattus Holmes and Felis Watson, detective heroes of a comic strip against doping in sport, published by UNESCO in partnership with EDGE G3 Ltd.

Entitled “The Case of the Spoilsports”, this comic strip (in English, Spanish and French) dramatizes UNESCO’s role in the fight against doping and explores the importance of the International Convention against Doping in Sport, adopted by UNESCO’s member states in 2005.

This week, read Chapter 2: On the Case [PDF]: The Baker Street Kids learned that their hero was using performance enhancing drugs when he won an important bicycle race. They were so disappointed. Then a mysterious visitor came to see the famous detectives Rattus Holmes and Felis Watson…

I’m not sure what’s more pathetic here: that UNESCO is bothering to market to small children, or that it has to rip off Sherlock Holmes to do it. Can’t they come up with an original concept at least? Talk about performance enhancements…

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This *almost* makes you wonder whether it was planted by a disgruntled soon-to-be-ex-employee…

Spotted on the title page of an (otherwise perfectly good) kids’ book in the Corgi Pups series:

“Series Reading Consultant: Prue Goodwin, Lecturer in Literacy and Children’s Books, Univeristy of Reading”

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More at link:

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Any guesses about this facility in rural Warwickshire?

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You’re literally smothering your children to death:

Of 30 infant deaths in 2006 and the first months of 2007, Cairns said that 20 were caused by “co-sleeping” with adults or other unsafe sleeping environments.

Just last Friday, a review of 10 autopsy reports from the Hospital for Sick Children showed that eight were the result of unsafe sleeping accommodations.

(I realize I’m preaching to the converted here. But you never know who may stumble across the site.)

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…it’s their parents we should be worried about:

The young man had been wheeled into Najma Ahmed’s emergency room with a bloody, penetrating wound to the chest. Whatever was inside had pierced his left lung dangerously close to the heart. His sternum was also fractured.

“It looked like a bullet wound,” said Dr. Ahmed, assistant trauma director at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto. But it wasn’t a bullet. It was a nail. It turns out that the man and a buddy had been playing around with a nail gun, and a 2½-inch stud had been fired accidentally into his torso.

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Toppling televisions are a hazard for tots: Halifax researchers

March 28, 2007 – 14:12

Call me Milton, but does public money really need to be spent to figure this one out?

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