Sickening

There is a video currently getting a lot of attention here on the internet. It was filmed in 2004 by a 16 year old girl with ataxic cerebral palsy. The video is a seven minute long real life portrayal of abuse masquerading as discipline. It is sickening, and may very well contain images which might be a trigger for people who have gone through similar abuse.

 

The girl being beaten in the video is Hillary Adams, the daughter of Judge William Adams. The instance of abuse shown in the video resulted from Hillary downloading software illegally. The description on the original video is as follows:

2004: Aransas County Court-At-Law Judge William Adams took a belt to his own teenage daughter as punishment for using the internet to acquire music and games that were unavailable for legal purchase at the time. She has had ataxic cerebral palsy from birth that led her to a passion for technology, which was strictly forbidden by her father’s backwards views. The judge’s wife was emotionally abused herself and was severely manipulated into assisting the beating and should not be blamed for any content in this video. The judge’s wife has since left the marriage due to the abuse, which continues to this day, and has sincerely apologized and repented for her part and for allowing such a thing, long before this video was even revealed to exist. Judge William Adams is not fit to be anywhere near the law system if he can’t even exercise fit judgement as a parent himself. Do not allow this man to ever be re-elected again. His "judgement" is a giant farce. Signed, Hillary Adams, his daughter.

I have seen people defending William Adams’ actions in comments across the internet. The beating itself does not sicken me as much as all the people who can watch it and not feel that it is wrong and evil to do that to a person, especially a person who is physically helpless. A couple of the comments I’ve seen mention that the girl did not share this video until her father threatened to cut her off financially and take away her car. I have not yet been able to corroborate that piece of information, but lets just assume for a moment that it is true. How the hell does that make the original beating in any way justifiable? I just do not understand.

Unfortunately, this man cannot be held legally accountable for this because the statute of limitations for assault is 5 years and this happened 7 years ago. He could, however, lose his position as a judge in three years if the people in his county vote him out. And I sincerely hope that people remember this in three years so that they can vote him out, because this kind of person is not qualified to make judgments about much of anything.

Apparently Michael Pearl Thinks Children Are Dogs

I just read an article on the CBS News website about a child who was beaten to death with “religious whips” for mispronouncing a word.

Apparently this couple in California adopted 3 kids from Liberia. One of those kids mispronounced a word and the “parents” decided they needed to “train” the child. By beating her with quarter inch plastic tubing. They got this idea from an evangelist named Michael Pearl, who has written a book called To Train Up A Child.

Now, there are numerous, numerous things wrong with this whole situation. I don’t have the time or the emotional energy to get into them all, but there is one thing that’s I’d like to address. I read the story on CBS’s website, I read the comments, and I read an article that was linked in the comments about Pearl’s reaction to all the criticism this story has brought his way. Nowhere in any of my reading so far have I come across a single person who is bothered by the implication that children should be trained like they are dogs or horses.

Pearl even specifically mentions in his response to his critics that the same techniques he advocates and used on his own children were used to train his dogs not to eat his chickens.

Well, I’d like to go on record here and say this bothers me.

CHILDREN ARE NOT DOGS.

Children are people. And they should be treated with just as much kindness and respect as any adult.

No Screaming Kids

A restaurant in North Carolina has recently been getting a lot of attention due to a policy it enacted about 6 months ago. Simply stated in bold print on normal computer paper and taped up in the restaurant are signs that proclaim, “Screaming Children Will NOT Be Tolerated!”

The owner of the establishment has said that so far this policy has actually been good for business overall, which surprises me. I’ve heard anecdotes about restaurants that have attempted to prohibit children and ended up with picketers outside their doors until they lost so much business they had to close altogether. And I don’t question that anecdotal evidence one bit, because I’ve seen far too many parents in restaurants who do nothing when their children scream or run around and bother other patrons. It’s as though they feel that the fact that they’ve born crotch fruit absolves them of any responsibility to make sure said fruit conducts themselves in a manner that does not infringe upon other people’s right to eat in peace. And it’s these type of entitled people I can easily imagine picketing a restaurant that is just trying to achieve a peaceful atmosphere for its patrons.

At this point I think it’s probably obvious that I support policies such as this in restaurants. They force irresponsible parents to take some responsibility; either by consciously choosing not to take their kids there to eat because they know they are not capable of keeping them from bothering other patrons, or by handling the behavior appropriately when it occurs.

That said, I can see how the argument could be made that a policy like this is discriminatory. There are special needs children who sometimes cannot control outbursts, and it does seem wrong to punish them. But I think that it’s highly likely that the management of the NC restaurant and any other restaurant with a policy such as this would see the need for an exception in cases like these if they’re simply made aware of the child’s condition. Not all rules are enacted by Zero Tolerance nazis who have no ability to think critically and make decisions based on the details of a situation rather than adhering rigidly to the rules.

Babies In The Workplace

Over the past few months (since I became unemployed I think, maybe longer but I dunno because I don’t keep track of these things) I’ve been devouring the archives of a professional advice blog called Ask A Manager. I’m actually a little surprised that I like this blog enough to go through the archives, seeing as I’m not all that career focused overall, but I digress. The reason I bring it up is because the other night I ran across an entry that got me thinking about a couple different things. The post is entitled "bringing babies to work" and was written in response to an interview Lisa Belkin conducted for The New York Times back in November of 2008. Ms. Belkin was interviewing the founder of an organization which advocates parents taking their new babies into the office and caring for them while they work for the first few months, until the baby is mobile.

The author of Ask A Manager, Alison Green, did not agree that this was a good idea and many of those who left comments on her post agreed. I myself can definitely sympathize with the objectors on this one, but at the same time I can also sympathize with the parents. I think the idea presented in the comments about businesses providing on site daycare and allowing parents to take their breaks there is probably the best middle ground, but I also know that many, many companies would not be able to afford that. For me, I don’t think I would allow bringing babies to work across the board. I think this is an issue that is far too subjective to give it an overreaching generalized answer. I can see how for some circumstances it could work really, really well. If during the maternity leave the new mother observes that her baby sleeps almost constantly and is happy and quiet when it isn’t sleeping or eating, then I don’t see any reason to say no to that baby being in the office at least for a trial run. And if the employee can get their job done with the baby there and without having to work more hours than normal or get extra help from their colleagues? Definitely no problem there. But there is plenty of potential for this situation not to work out, which is why I would treat something like this on a case by case basis if it were me.

Which brings me to something else this old post got me thinking about. Or rather, the comments on that post got me thinking. Is there really that much resentment and animosity between parents and non-parents in the workplace? Or are those comments just a really, really skewed sample? Maybe I just haven’t had jobs where my work is all that time sensitive, but I can’t ever remember getting genuinely pissed off when a co-worker called in saying they couldn’t come in that day because of something kid related. And when a colleague in one of my previous jobs went on maternity leave, I don’t remember being annoyed at having to pick up her slack, I just remember being ecstatic that I wouldn’t have to hear her talk about being pregnant anymore.

Just Say No To Mutilating Your Baby’s Penis

 
(Picture credit- Louis Moses / zefa / Corbis)

Here in the United States it is common for male children to be circumcised at birth. Circumcision is a surgical procedure in which the foreskin, a hood of skin which covers the glans of the penis, is removed.

(Pictures credit-  KidsHealth)

There are a variety of reasons parents choose to have their baby boys circumcised rather than leaving them intact. For some, it is a religious mandate. Others believe that the little bit of extra skin on an intact penis makes it more difficult to clean and therefore more susceptible to infection. And some choose to circumcise their children because other men in the family are circumcised and they don’t want to deal with pesky questions from the child later on about why he doesn’t look like Daddy.

In my opinion, the first reason is unacceptable. If a child is of an age where he can make decisions for himself about his body and his spiritual beliefs and he decides to become part of a religion where circumcision is required, that’s fine. But pushing your religion on your child in such a painful, physical way is a horrible thing to do. I have respect for all religions, but I do not have respect for people who treat their children like possessions instead of human beings and that’s exactly what is happening when a parent decides to cut their baby for religious purposes. Not to mention the fact that circumcision is not even universal among one of the religious groups most associated with the practice- Jews. According to one website called the Jewish Circumcision Resource Center, "One is Jewish based on parental or conversion status, not whether one is circumcised."

The second reason, the one related to health issues, is just plain misinformed. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics "…there is little evidence to affirm the association between circumcision status and optimal penile hygiene." and "The uncircumcised penis is easy to keep clean. No special care is required!" The AAP also points out that "The foreskin shields the glans; with circumcision this protection is lost. In such cases, the glans and especially the urinary opening (meatus) may become irritated or infected, causing ulcers, meatitis (inflammation of the meatus), and meatal stenosis (a narrowing of the urinary opening). Such problems virtually never occur in uncircumcised penises." So, there are no definitive risks to leaving a baby intact, but there are definitely risks to circumcising him. Also, because the foreskin is originally fused to the glans and only later separates and becomes retractable, it is no more or less difficult to clean. Cleaning an infant’s penis is as simple as running a washcloth over it like you would over the rest of it’s body, no flaps of skin to pull back or clean under.

And that third reason about wanting the child to look like the other men in the family, as far as I’m concerned that’s just lazy parenting. It’s also a little creepy. Catching a glimpse of Dad or Uncle Bill in the shower or at the pool is one thing, but if the kid has a chance to study a family member’s penis to the point that they’re asking questions about why his doesn’t look the same? Something about that seems wrong. And even if the kid is exceptionally observant and it only takes a quick glimpse for him to tell there’s a difference, why is it so difficult to just answer his questions?

Those are some of the arguments against circumcision, another good reason is the pain. People tend to think that because it’s done to an infant it doesn’t hurt as much, or if it does they won’t remember it so it’s ok. The truth is, it hurts them a lot. On the website of the Circumcision Resource Center it says, "According to a comprehensive study, newborn responses to pain are "similar to but greater than those observed in adult subjects." Circumcision is extremely painful and traumatic. Some infants do not cry because they go into traumatic shock from the overwhelming pain of the surgery. No experimental anesthetic has been found to be safe and effective in preventing circumcision pain in infants." If you’d like to see pictures illustrating the pain an infant goes through when this procedure is done, you can go here and here.

So please, give some deep thought and consideration and definitely do some research before you decide to do this to your baby.

Not Always Right

Lenore over at Free-Range Kids linked to a pretty entertaining site a few days ago. It’s called (The Customer Is) Not Always Right and it’s just a huge compilation of ridiculous customer service stories. It’s kind of like F My Life, but with stupid customers. As I was reading through them last week I came across a couple of gems.

The first one is a really good example of why people in other countries kind of hate us.

(A mother approaches me, violently dragging her two teenage boys along.)

Mother: “I demand you call the police immediately and have them arrest those ‘flashers’ at once!”

(She motions to the two topless girls on the beach.)

Me: “Actually, here in Ontario, it’s legal for women to go topless. Are you not from around here?”

Mother: “I am from America where we have morals and standards. You people sicken me! They are far too young to be doing that!”

Me: “Sorry, ma’am, but there is technically no age limit on the law. It applies the same as it does to your sons.”

Mother: “Is there not a family section for decent people to enjoy the beach without these sick perverts exposing themselves to everyone?”

Me: “Again, I apologize, but it’s not about the beach. It’s legal for women of any age to go topless anywhere outdoors they please…same as men.”

Mother: “I will sue this whole country for punitive damages! My sons will be scarred for life!”

(Her sons are clearly scarred, as they are staring at the topless girls with huge grins on their faces. All of a sudden, three more topless girls walk past. She attempts to cover both her sons’ eyes with her hands.)

Mother: “Heathens! You will all burn in h***! Sinners and perverts, that’s all you Canadians are!”

And this one just makes me smile.The customer’s heart is in the right place I think. And I could imagine saying something similar, but mostly joking around.

Customer: “I want to adopt this dog. When can I take him home?”

Me: “He’ll have to be neutered before he can go home. You can take him home in the afternoon.”

Customer: “Wait, why does he have to be neutered?”

Me: “Well, this is an animal shelter. All these animals are homeless and we don’t want to add to that with any accidental breeding.”

Customer: “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard! A dog like him could produce some great pups.”

Me: “Well, it’s our policy. He will be neutered before he leaves this building. It’s required.”

Customer: “Will you guys at least put in fake implants? At least then he can keep his dignity.”

Me: “Um…I don’t think we do that sort of thing.”

Book Banning in my Backyard

According to this story in the Washington Post, the Culpeper Country school system has decided to stop using the Definitive Edition of Anne Frank’s Diary in classes.

"Culpeper County public school officials have decided to stop assigning a version of Anne Frank’s diary, one of the most enduring symbols of the atrocities of the Nazi regime, after a parent complained that the book includes sexually explicit material and homosexual themes.

…James Allen, director of instruction for the 7,600-student system…said that the more recent version will remain in the school library and that the earlier version will be used in classes."

Technically, since the book will continue to be available in the school library, I suppose it’s not a book banning. However, I still think it’s unnecessary, stupid and sad in much the same way that I think actual banning of books is unnecessary, stupid and sad.

According to Valerie Strauss, the most cited example of "sexually explicit material" in the book is this:

"There are little folds of skin all over the place, you can hardly find it. The little hole underneath is so terribly small that I simply can’t imagine how a man can get in there, let alone how a whole baby can get out!"

It completely boggles my mind that parents of middle school or high school age kids would find something like this so objectionable that they would go to the school and demand that the book stop being used. Not to mention the fact that it is more than likely a parent who did not even realize there was sexual content in the book until their kid mentioned it, which is to say, their kid has already been exposed to it and lived so what exactly are they trying to accomplish? And do they honestly, truly think that the sentiment expressed above isn’t something the any girl that age hasn’t already either figured out or at least wondered about?

I really just do not understand this idea that so many parents seem to have that withholding all information about the human anatomy and sexual behavior from their kids is a good idea. Are you trying to raise adults or just really big toddlers?