27-year-old U.S. Army Sergeant Joshua Ryan Tabor has served 15 months in Iraq and apparently he picked up some less than appropriate parenting techniques while he was there:

“We had a report of [Tabor] walking around his neighborhood holding a Kevlar helmet and threatening to bust out windows,” Stancil told ABCNews.com today. “In the process of talking to Tabor’s girlfriend about what was going on, we learned that he had also been abusing his daughter.”

Stancil said that when the cops coaxed the little girl out of the bathroom they saw that she was covered in “multiple bruises pretty much all over her body.”

“She was very open with us,” Stancil said of the young girl, whose name is not being released because she is a minor. “She basically came right out and said, ‘Daddy does this to me. He uses his hands.’”

Both the girl and the father admitted to the torture, even detailing how Tabor would sit the girl on the edge of the bathroom sink and hold her head down until it was nearly submerged in water, dunking her if she refused to recite the alphabet, said Stancil.

Yes, the terrible thing this little girl did that prompted her punishment was refusing to recite the alphabet.

But at least Tabor is being upfront and honest about what he’s done:

Tabor told authorities that “his purpose was to punish her by putting her in the water because he knows she is afraid of it and he wanted her to cooperate.”

“She said her letters after that,” Tabor told the cops, admitting that he had grown frustrated with the girl after practicing the letters for “approximately three hours.”

After three hours of practice I’d refuse to say the fucking alphabet as well.

It seems Tabor felt that his daughter was not mentally up to where she should be for her age. And we all know that the best way to motivate a mentally deficient child is by repeatedly dunking their head into a sink full of hot water. Tabor’s girlfriend may also end up facing charges in the incident. She noted that Tabor has an “anger management problem” to police. Gee, ya think?

Oh, and according to investigators, the 4-year-old girl seemed quite articulate and without any developmental problems. Though after living with this asshole for the past couple of months – he has joint-custody in five months increments – she’ll probably need some therapy in the future.

A Ms. Angela Mejia lost her shit when she woke up in the middle of the night to find her 14-year-old son playing video games hours after she had told him to go to bed. Out of frustration she ended up calling 911 to report her son to police:

Mejia’s son – one of four children the 49-year-old is raising alone – was playing “Grand Theft Auto,” an exceedingly violent video in which the gamer assumes the role of ladder-climbing criminal.

An argument ensued as Mejia unplugged her son’s PlayStation. Then, this mad-as-hell mother dialed 911. Police responded and managed to talk the boy into shutting off the game and going to sleep.

“They (police) were just like, ‘Chill out. Go to bed,’ ” the boy told the Herald.

The details in this news item are brief so it’s probably unfair to judge, but I can remember being 14 and getting into arguments with my parents over stuff and I can tell you this: They never had to call the police in to deal with me.

Were my parents perfect? Far from it and there’s probably plenty of situations they could’ve handled better, but then the same could be said of me. They made it clear, however, that they had rules for a reason and that they were doing their best to look out for my better interests whether I could see the truth of that or not at the time. We had our fair share of screaming arguments and there were times I know they were so frustrated as to want to smack me silly, but call the police?

The closest we ever got to that was the one time I stole some candy and rolls of cap-gun caps from a from a store at the age of 8 or 9 — not sure how old I was or what store it was, but my mother will probably remember — after asking my mom to buy them and being told no. Later that day she caught me with them and marched my ass back into that store where she made me return what I hadn’t already used, offer an apology for stealing, and pay for all of it out of what small savings I had. She asked the man at the store if he wanted to press charges, I can remember my heart stopping as I held my breath at the time, and he said that it wouldn’t be necessary as I had just made amends. I don’t recall a lot of my early childhood, but I can clearly remember her telling me how lucky I was that he didn’t want to press charges as we marched right back on out of there. I don’t know if she really would have called the police if the man had said yes or not, but I wouldn’t bet against it even today. There were some things my mother just didn’t abide by and I’m a better man for it.

Somehow I don’t think Ms. Mejia has that kind of fortitude:

Mejia said she approves of athletic-themed videos, but as for “Grand Theft Auto,” she said, “I would never buy that kind of video. No way. I called (police) because if you don’t respect your mother, what are you going to do in your life?”

So not only is the kid disobeying her by staying up late playing video games, but he’s playing games she doesn’t approve of and she doesn’t do anything about it?

I can’t recall at what age I finally allowed Courtney to play Grand Theft Auto III, but I was still working at Ford Motor Company at the time and that was at least four years ago, so she was probably 14 or 15. She was right around the age of the kid in this story at least. Up until that point I hadn’t even allowed her to be in the same room when I was playing the game due to the content. Every now and then she’d ask if she could play it and after much consideration of where she was maturity-wise and the content of the game I eventually said OK. It wasn’t long after that that I got into a rather heated argument with a coworker who suggested that I only had myself to blame if Courtney ended up becoming a prostitute someday because I allowed her to play GTA III, but that’s a whole other story in itself.

The point being that Courtney respected my decision not to allow her to play the game until I felt she was ready for it. She had that respect because I made it clear to her that I had concerns over the content and felt that the time wasn’t right for her to be exposed to it. She wasn’t happy with the decision, but she understood that I wasn’t withholding it just to be a dick. As it turned out, she only wanted to play the game so she could drive around the city crashing cars and doing the stunts. She didn’t care about the actual story at all so she never saw most of the content. She did a few of the missions, but mostly she just took great joy in launching her vehicle off of whatever nearby ramp she could find to watch it smash into traffic and then giggling as though it was the funniest thing in the world.

Again I’m not privy to all the details of Ms. Mejia’s situation so I probably shouldn’t judge, but it seems like she’s doing it wrong.

I always say that before you pass a law you should carefully consider whether or not you understand the full implications it holds. What sounds like a great idea may, in practice, come with some unitended consequences.

Take Nebraska’s Child Safe-Haven law. Like similar laws in many other states it allows parents of children who feel they cannot care for them to drop them off at a local hospital without fear of being prosecuted for abandonment. Unlike the other state’s laws, the Nebraska law allows not just parents, but anyone to drop off a kid and there’s no age limit on the child. It sounds like a good idea. After all if a kid isn’t being cared for properly it’s probably best that he be given up to the state.

The trouble is they didn’t anticipate how many people would take advantage of that law nor did they anticipate that parents would drive from other states to drop off their kids:

A Michigan mother drove roughly 12 hours to Omaha, so she could abandon her 13-year-old son at a hospital under the state’s unique safe-haven law, Nebraska officials said Monday.

The boy from the Detroit area is the second teenager from outside Nebraska and 18th child overall abandoned in the state since the law took effect in July.

[...] Last week, a 14-year-old girl from Iowa was left at an Omaha hospital by her grandparents. The girl has since been returned to her family.

It would seem there are a lot of families out there struggling with parenting issues and the Nebraska law is bringing them out into the open. Needless to say this wasn’t what they had intended:

“I certainly recognize and can commiserate and empathize with families across our state and across the country who are obviously struggling with parenting issues, but this is not the appropriate way of dealing with them, whether you’re in Nebraska or whether you’re in another state,” said Todd Landry, who heads the state’s Department of Health and Human Services’ division of children and family services.

[...] State officials have stressed that the safe-haven law should be used only for children in immediate danger; some worry the broadly written law could make the state a dumping ground for unwanted children.

State officials have said parents and caregivers need to understand there is no guarantee an abandoned child could be returned to them if they change their minds. The have encouraged parents to seek other resources before resorting to abandonment.

Lawmakers have spoken about the need to re-examine the law, but the Legislature doesn’t reconvene until January. Gov. Dave Heineman has been reluctant to call a rare special session.

Landry declined to comment on whether a special session was needed, but he did say Monday that a new law is needed to specifically address infants in danger. Two children coming from out of state is clear evidence changes are needed, he said.

“We need to get back to the intent of the law,” he said. “The intent of the law was always the protection of newborns in immediate danger of being harmed.”

It’s those pesky unintended consequences once again. They’ll come back to bite you in the ass every time.

One would hope this would spur a national conversation on what to do to help all the struggling families out there, but chances are they’ll just change the Nebraska law and go back to ignoring the problem. Kids with behavioral problems will continue to not receive the counseling they need and parents will continue to struggle to deal with their kids and the problems will never be resolved.

If a poll from the folks at What They Play.com is accurate then there are some parents out there with some seriously fucked up priorities. The press release for the survey is up at GamePolitics.com:

Nearly 3,000 respondents in two separate What They Play polls concluded that drinking beer and watching pornography were less objectionable activities for children than playing certain video games. Further, viewing violence was more acceptable than seeing content involving sex and sexuality within games.

[...] According to WTP’s data, here’s what parents found most offensive in video games:

• a man and woman having sex (37%)
• two men kissing (27%)
• a graphically severed head (25%)
• multiple use of the F-word (9%).

Seriously, what the fuck? This is especially confusing seeing as there are very few (and none of them mainstream) video games with graphic sexual content in them and yet they’re more concerned about sex in video games than real sex in porn?

Dr. Cherly Olson, co-author of Grand Theft Childhood, says that unfamiliarity may be part of the reason:

Although these findings seem surprising at first, they hint at fears parents have about video games. To some parents, video games are full of unknowable dangers. While researching for Grand Theft Childhood, parents we spoke with in focus groups often bemoaned the fact that they didn’t know how to use game controls – and felt unequipped to supervise or limit video game play. Of course, parents don’t want their children drinking alcohol, but that’s a more familiar risk.

On the plus side, with more and more people playing video games well into adulthood the next generation of parents should be better equipped to make decisions for their kids on what games are appropriate than today’s parents. I suppose the reason I find this so surprising is because I am one of those parents.

Another fun link from another SEB regular, Bog Brother, leads us to the ChildCare Action Project (CAP) which bills itself as…

The #1 Christian entertainment media analysis service on the Internet!  We give you OBJECTIVE tools NO ONE ELSE CAN to help YOU make an informed moral decision for yourself whether a film is fit!

With a build up like that you just know that there’s fun to be had on every single page, but in this case BB directs us to their review of Beowulf which starts off with the following:

“Beowulf” (2007), PG-13 [HARDCORE R-13*] … quite probably the most heinous culprit for stealing childhood from children ever made.

First we have The Golden Compass being such a huge danger to young Christian’s beliefs that the AFA tells parents to run away from it and now we have CAP Ministries saying that Beowulf will steal your child’s childhood! EVERYBODY PANIC!!!

A quick note on the double rating you see above. It seems the folks at CAP Ministries have their own system of rating movies which involves six Investigation Areas that they assign 100 points each. Then they subtract points for every sinful thing they see on screen and when they’re done that final score will determine what rating they feel the film deserves.  In the case of Beowulf the official rating is PG-13 and the CAP Ministries rating, in the brackets, is R-13. They claim this provides them with an objective rating of the movie…

The CAP Model relies on fact, not speculation—it is as objective as any human evaluation system can be. Either an example of unacceptable activity or behavior was present during the investigation or it was not. The CAP Model makes no attempt to evaluate whether any justification for an unacceptable activity/behavior was present.

However, any evaluation involving human factors must provide allowances for subjectivity. The CAP provides for a certain amount of subjectivity to account for varying degrees of severity of unacceptable activity/behavior. For example, witnessing after-the-fact an act of violence is not as graphically extreme as witnessing the mechanism and/or instrument of violence in action. Each example that is so graphically extreme must be given more weight against compliance with Christian ethics because of the more severe impact on the observer. The Investigator is therefore permitted to account for severity by assigning a point loss from one to three points as described earlier.

… while conveniently ignoring the fact that determining what is and isn’t “unacceptable activity” is largely a subjective process even when trying to use the Bible as a guide. They spend quite a bit of time going over how they devised their scoring system and some of it makes for some amusing reading so I invite you to peruse it at your leisure, but right now I want to get to their review of this child endangering film.

So what’s got these folks all riled up? Primarily it appears to be the amount of nudity in the film:

Nudity is rampant. Full nudity. Male. Female. Frontal. Side. Rear. All angles. Though the male-specific anatomy is always kept in the shadows all other tissues and anatomy associated with it are seen in amazing anatomical detail.

I will not argue the nudity in this film. That the filmmakers used what looked like metallic plating over portions of the nude witch does not excuse the nudity. The viewer can tell only her pubic hair is missing. Does the gold plating on jewelry change its form or features? And that the nudity is in CGI does nothing to lessen its influence because of the graphic attention to detail used. It is grasping for the MPAA to approve this film for younger audiences just because the nudity is CGI animation rather than live actors and actresses. If that were justifiable reasoning I guess photographs of nudity would have to be approved for yournger audiences since a photogprah is no more than a piece of paper with chemicals on it. And what about live character nudity onscoreen? It is no more than visible light photons modulated by a film strip of chemicals.

Damn, this is starting to sound like my kind of film! I’ve not seen the film myself so I’m not sure just how much nudity is actually in it, though I have seen the scene with Angelina Jolie and it is admittedly about as close to nude as you can get. Though hardly any worse than many of the comic book characters you’ll see these days. I suppose I can see where it might be considered risqué for the particularly prudish out there and even Angelina has said she’s a little shy about the nude scene even though it’s not actually her.

The nudity seems to be a big issue for the fellow that wrote this review, though, and I found the following particularly amusing:

Beowulf the movie, based on the epic poem of the same name, is quite probably the most heinous culprit for stealing childhood from children ever made. It does seem rather reaching to say the parent poem (text) presents nudity. I have read lots of poems but never have I seen nudity in a poem. Even the nudity in some Bibles was not there when the inspired pen was put to paper; man put nudity in the Bible, not God. That some church approved nakedness in the Bible does not make it acceptable to God. Indeed God speaks darkly and shamefully of nakedness (the display of nudity) more than 40 times from the Old Testament to the New Testament. His Word even advised preists not to build an altar with steps lest the wind expose their nakedness to the people below [Ex. 20:26].

This guy is so anti-nudity he even argues that the Bible has been corrupted by man. Makes you wonder if he showers fully clothed and with all the mirrors covered up.

From here he decides he’s not going to waste any time bothering with a description of the plot, but opts instead to start referencing scientists he feels supports his viewpoint that this movie is particularly harmful, something he’ll come to do a couple of times in the review. First it’s a couple of psychologists that have said it’s difficult for people up to the age of 16 to fully separate fantasy from reality or to anticipate the consequences of their actions and then says we shouldn’t be showing them movies like Beowulf though he fails to say exactly how it supposedly steals their childhood.

From there he goes on to give brief summaries of how low the film scores in each of the remaining five Investigation Areas—which, when you put the first letters together, spell out WISDOM—and the film fares poorly in each one. He revisits his nudity obsession again then goes on to deplore the amount of drinking in the film, the various offenses to God in the film (a witch, a demon, Odin being a “false” God, etc.), and the general murder and mayhem that comes with any good drama featuring monsters.

Basically it sounds to me like the guy wouldn’t be happy with anything short of the Pretty Princess Ponies Totally Inoffensively Bland Movie as being appropriate for anyone under the age of 30. So what could possibly have earned the best possible CAP score, that is a score of 100 thusly making it a must-see by this Ministries standards? So far there are four films to get that coveted score and I’ve only heard of one of them. They are:

1. Who Gets the House? (1999) – This had a couple of stars in it, but I have no recollection of it ever being in theaters.
2. Baby Miracle Volume 1: The Story of Creation (2004) – An attempt to indoctrinate toddlers in Biblical nonsense before they can even say their own fucking name.
3. Grandpa Friendly’s Workshop: Making Friends (2002) – Another bit of predigested pap aimed at the toddler crowd, though thankfully nothing to do with indoctrination.
4. Mary Poppins (1964) – Which surprises me somewhat as I always considered Mary to be a bit of a witch, but the CAP folks argue that she could have been angelic.

Now as much as I enjoy Mary Poppins on occasion, and I’m pretty sure I could make an argument that it has some very subversive ideas in it, the rest of those films aren’t the sort of fare your average teenager, let alone anyone else, is going to have much interest in. For that matter, the vast majority of films listed in the upper 90’s are either aimed at toddlers or so bland as to make a cardboard box into a more interesting thing to stare at for 2 hours.

The point being that there’s nothing really objective in the ratings the CAP Ministries folks are handing out and they’re no substitute for being a good parent and finding out about a film on your own prior to making decisions on what’s appropriate for your kids. Not all thirteen year-olds are the same and maybe yours isn’t ready for a film like Beowulf, but that may not be true for someone else’s thirteen year old. If you’re really worried about it then go see the movie ahead of time and judge for yourself.

We’ve known for years that advertising plays a big role in consumer choices, a fact that makes Madison Avenue ad people a lot of money, but is it tantamount to brainwashing? I’ve never really thought so, but some recent studies seem to suggest otherwise.

Take for example the study cited in this New York Times article. Researchers took a bunch of kids and served them food from McDonald’s. Some of the food came in traditional McDonald’s wrappers and some came in plain white wrappers, but the important thing to remember here was that it was all McDonald’s food products:

Hamburgers, french fries, chicken nuggets, and even milk and carrots all taste better to children if they think they came from McDonald’s, a small study suggests.

In taste tests with 63 children ages 3 to 5, there was only a slight preference for the McDonald’s-branded hamburger over one wrapped in plain paper, not enough to be statistically significant. But for all the other foods, the McDonald’s brand made all the difference.

Almost 77 percent, for example, thought that McDonald’s french fries served in a McDonald’s bag tasted better, compared with 13 percent who liked the fries in a plain white bag. Apparently carrots, too, taste better if they are served on paper with the McDonald’s name on it. More than 54 percent preferred them, compared with 23 percent each for those who liked the unbranded carrots and those who thought they tasted the same.

That’s pretty significant and says a lot about how much brand image impacts children’s preferences. Here’s a bit more on how the results broke down:

Researchers ran taste tests on all five food items. First they served one-quarter of a McDonald’s hamburger wrapped in a McDonald’s wrapper, and another quarter in plain paper. Then they tried chicken nuggets in a McDonald’s bag with the red arches logo, and identical nuggets in a white bag. The third course was three french fries in a McDonald’s bag marked with the arches and the phrase “We love to see you smile,” and three fries in a matched white bag with no design.

Then the children tasted milk in a McDonald’s cup with a straw, and milk in a plain cup with an identical straw. Finally, they were served two baby carrots placed on a McDonald’s french fries bag and two carrots on a plain white bag. For each test they were asked if one tasted better, or if there was no difference. The study appears in the August issue of The Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

Fifty-nine percent of the children preferred McDonald’s chicken nuggets compared with 18 percent who preferred the plain product and 23 percent who saw no difference.

Even milk tasted better in a McDonald’s cup, with more than 61 percent preferring it compared with 21 percent who liked the unbranded milk and 18 percent who thought they tasted the same.

Think about that for a moment. The only difference in the foods was that one came in a McDonald’s wrapper and one didn’t and at the time of the study McDonald’s didn’t even offer carrots and yet the wrapper still influenced children’s preferences. I personally know of three-year-old kids who can’t even say the word “McDonald’s” that can sing the “I’m lovin’ it” na-na-na-na-na jingle and do so, often, to let their parents know they want to go to McDonald’s. That’s a pretty powerful grip on a very young mind.

This will only feed into the ongoing debate about commercial television aimed at children because it’s not just McDonald’s that has a heavy ad campaign aimed at the youngin’s. Turn on the Disney Channel or Nickelodeon and the ads are wall-to-wall toys and junk food. Not to mention the fact that a lot of the shows on Disney are just half-hour advertisements for Disney products to begin with. You can bet this will lead to more calls for regulations.

I’m not entirely sure that regulations are the answer as much as parent education and involvement. There is a tendency to claim that parents are overwhelmed by the pressure created by all this advertising — even the NYT article above includes a quote to that effect — but the simple truth remains that parents still have the ability to say “no” and to turn off the TV. They just need to be willing to do it. It probably wouldn’t hurt to teach your kids a little critical thinking skills along the way so they can recognize when they’re being manipulated by advertisers. Sure your five year old isn’t going to pick up on that right away, but start early and by the time they’re an adult they may have a pretty formidable arsenal for assessing claims that are thrown at them not just by Madison Avenue, but everyone.