Who can resist the chubby cheeks of a toddler? Not those cheeks, but the bare ones flashed in the bathtub as part of the evening routine. Well, to all you parents innocently photographing your nakkid kiddos—it's got to stop.
After a popular blogger posted a pic on Instagram of her birthday-suited three-year-old eating ice cream in the tub, mass chaos ensued. Cute as it no doubt was, according to an article in Today Moms, some things are simply not suitable "for the viewing pleasure of her 25,000-plus followers."
Guilty as charged. When my son was around two, I posted pictures of him in nothing but his Crocs in our backyard kiddy pool. Then again, I only posted them to my private Facebook page. But really, after thinking about it, among my circle of 'friends' were ex-colleagues, distant cousins and in-laws, acquaintances from high school and university I was no longer in touch with.
Truthfully, we don't know where these personal pictures may end up. As this mom found out, once on the ether of the world wide web, anything uploaded becomes fair game. I'm not paranoid enough to believe that pedophiles are just waiting to get their pervy paws on my prints, yet I'm also not naive enough to know that my FB images are mine alone.
In the end, after being pressured, the blogger took down her ice cream bathtub pic. And I stopped posting pictures on Facebook. Best to keep for those embarrassing photos in albums to show your child in 15 years' time—preferably when their first girlfriend or boyfriend comes home...
Are nudie tot pictures innocent or nefarious?
A mom from Harrisonburg, Virginia took to Facebook to share her son's spelling test. Overshare? It seems that Cate Nelson's motives for spilling Lucian's results across the social media network had little to do with shaming her 7-year-old son. Instead, she wanted to point out the teacher's mistake.
The results speak for themselves. First, we can all agree that educating young minds is one of the toughest jobs there is, and second, we all live in a ridiculously time-starved age. Still, you kind of expect a teacher to be able to spell at that level before correcting the work of a second grader.
While Nelson admit that her son's handwriting is a sore spot overall, she remained pretty good-humoured about the incident.
Rather than confront and admonish the teacher (for admonishing her son), Nelson seized a teaching opportunity of her own. When Lucian caught his teacher's mistake, his mom sat him down and talked about "how even teachers are wrong sometimes." Fair play to her.
How would you have handled this situation? Ever had to call a teacher up on their mistakes?
So the dreadful hostage situation in Alabama has finally ended, with the suspect who kept a 5-year-old boy captive in a bunker confirmed dead.
According to an article in the Huffington Post, 65-year-old Jimmy Lee Dykes was armed and found dead following an explosion on his property.
Fortunately the child named Ethan was rescued and appeared physically unharmed after negotiations with the FBI broke down.
The kidnapping is the latest in a spate of gun-related crime involving children in the States. On 29 January Dykes stepped onto a school bus, demanding two boys between six and eight years old. Thanks to the heroic actions of bus Charles Albert Poland, Jr. many of the children were saved as the driver tried to stop Dykes. Poland was shot several times, and then Dykes fled with little Ethan.
Dykes, known as a 'prepper,' apparently had electricity and weeks' worth of supplies in the underground bunker—not an uncommon feature in an area subjected to hurricanes.
Throughout the hostage negotiations, authorities managed to communicate with Dykes via a vent pipe, sending through medication and snacks for Ethan.
Prior to the abduction, Vietnam War vet Dykes was scheduled for a court appearance for threatening a neighbour with a gun. He had a previous conviction, which was later dropped, for "improper exhibition of a weapon." He had also been witnessed threatening children near his property and beating a dog to death with a lead pipe. Clearly he was just a firecracker waiting to blow.
Should authorities and neighbours have done more to monitor him prior to the kidnapping? Would tighter gun control help protect children or at least ward off such acts of men like Dykes?
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