Part of me thought I should do a Top 10,000 Freakouts of 2009 List, but I realized there are really only three Freakouts, and they don't ever change:
- Your kid's gear is dangerous and/or deadly.
- Your kid's world is full of dangerous and/or deadly chemicals and diseases.
- Your work and parenting is screwing up your kid worse than you thought.
So let's see what we have:
- I wondered why a JPMA publicist was "reaching out" to me out of the blue. Then a few days later, when the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety released its annual booster seat test results NOT RECOMMENDING 11 of 60 major models, including 7 models from Dorel, the JPMA's largest member, I had some idea. [iihs.org via dt reader dt]
- I guess Dorel can't reach out to me directly, because I'll ask them why Safety 1st still sells the Babyplus Quack-o-Matic Prenatal Education System.
- News of last Spring's Bugaboo Bee brake recall failed to reach every Yummy Mummy who parks her kid at the top of the downsloping driveway whilst she "momentarily" runs back into the house, and the Daily Mail was not amused. [dailymail.co.uk via dt reader ana]
- Elsewhere in Nanny State Island, the BBC Magazine published its 2nd annual Pink Is A Weak, Evil Color That Damages Children In Ways That Can Only Be Explained By Utterly Random Cultural Anecdotes And Unsupported Assertions story. It has the same 1918 Ladies' Home Journal quote as last year, but no Nazis. [BBC Magazine]
- A random passenger narced out a Dutch bus driver who kicked a crying 3yo off the bus, and now the driver's suspended while they see if the unknown bad mother comes forward to file a complaint. This, in the land where the houses have giant windows on the street and no curtains. [telegraaf.nl via dt reader liz]
- A Dutch study of bilingual kids' neural activity finds that your monolingual kid will never get into MIT. [scientificamerican via dt reader andrew]
- A Brookings Institute study on how badly we're ignoring education found that education accounted for a mere 1.4% of US media coverage. And of that, the New America Foundation pointed out, only 2.2% of stories were about, the highest-impact phase, preschool. I don't suppose I'm helping things by admitting this link has been sitting in my browser tabs since Dec. 2. [ earlyed.newamerica.net via paul "thrive by five" nyhan]
Funny. Especial about the color pink. My daughters love pink, it's going to lead to their ruin, I know, but what can I do?