School of Life Monday: The Ultimate Test of Your Social Skills

You’ll know you’ve truly become socially adept when you finally manage to make small talk with that most challenging and unforgiving of characters: a small child you hardly know.

Some interesting and infamous musicians ... when they were children

from our friend Tara McGinley at Dangerous Minds

Nick Cave

This morning, my husband sent me the above baby Nick Cave photos for a chuckle (talk about a “bad seed” wonk wonk). For whatever reason, it became my mission, dear Dangerous Minds readers to find even more photos of rock starts (that was a typo, but I’m leaving it) as children. So, yeah, this what I’ve spent my morning doing. YOU’RE WELCOME.

We were all babies once, you know!



Debbie Harry (who turns 70 on July 1!)

 



David Bowie

 



Dolly Parton

 



Brian Eno

 



Kathleen Hanna

 



John Lennon with his mother

 



Kelley and Kim Deal

 



Lydia Lunch

 



Marc Bolan

 



Joey Ramone with his father.

 



A one year old Diana Ross with her older sister Barbara Jean “Bobbi” in 1945.

 



GG Allin

 



Sid Vicious

 



Brian Jones

 



Boy George

 



Patti Smith

 



Lemmy Kilmister

 



Jimi Hendrix and dad

 



Janis Joplin

 



Freddie Mercury

 



Nina Simone

 



John Lydon

 



Ian Curtis

 



Syd Barrett

 



Genesis P-Orridge, then known as Neil Megson

 



Björk

Little Punk People: Interview with Keith Morris

Elliott Fullam of Little Punk People has a conversation with legendary punk singer and Black Flag & Circle Jerks co-founder Keith Morris in the Asbury Lanes parking lot before the OFF! show.Elliott Fullam of Little Punk People has a conversation with legendary punk singer and Black Flag & Circle Jerks co-founder Keith Morris in the Asbury Lanes parking lot before the OFF! show.

’What Every Child Needs To Know About Punk Rock’ is a real children’s book that actually exists

from Dangerous Minds

The Ramones’ 40th anniversary celebration just happened at Bowery Electric last weekend, and the last living original member of the band died, aged 65, just a couple of months short of being able to attend. Punk rock is OLD, and yet, through generations, it persists. As ways for a kid to rebel go, punk has been extraordinarily durable and flexible. Its most basic and superficial tropes were long ago rendered cartoonish or outright mainstreamed, but the defiant outlook they express is eternal.



Eh, why not? It’d beat them turning Juggalo.

>The very idea of punk as a staid cultural institution, let alone toddler-book fodder, might be met with wounded howls of opposition from some circles—as it should be—but again, 40 years. There are OG punks who are grandparents now. I have an 11-year-old Godson who spent his infancy decked out in Ramones and DK’s onesies. So as weird and implausible as a children’s book frankly explaining punk may sound at first blush, one could make a case that by now, it’s pretty well overdue. What Every Child Needs To Know About Punk Rock was released about a week before the Ramones’ 40th anniversary show, and it’s actually kind of awesome. I’ll let these spreads speak for themselves.





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The book is credited on the cover to “Brad and Marc.” Sounds pretty casual, but both of them are highly credentialed.  Marc is researcher and healthcare analyst Marc Engelsgjerd, and Brad is child behavior expert R. Bradley Snyder. The two have co-authored several books in this series, penning What Every Child Needs To Know About board books on a topics as trivial as pizza and coffee, and as serious as cancer and the economy. I can think of a few adults in pretty dire need of that last one.



Click to enlarge

Spreads reproduced with permission from Need to Know Publishing

The Perils Faced by an Atheist Family in their God-Obsessed Community

"My children are surrounded by other kids' prayers and patriotism, but I'm determined to teach them to ignore it."

By Julie Drizin

from Salon.com via AlterNet

“Goddammit!” “God bless you!” “For God’s sake!” “God forbid!”

My children have heard me take “the Lord’s name in vain.” These expressions slip out as easily as expletives and are part of my vernacular, even though I don’t believe in God.

God is not exactly welcome in our home.

I’m not a hater (at least not anymore). I’m an atheist. My daughters know I’m the tooth fairy; they have no use for Santa Claus; and would consider the Bible a collection of boring, inaccessible stories (at worst) or fables on par with Greek and Roman mythology (at best).

I’m raising good kids. They are good without God. They will not go to hell … because there is no hell. Neither will they go to heaven … because there is no heaven. I have taught my girls that “heaven” and “hell” are what we humans create for ourselves and each other right here on earth.

Atheist. Say it over and over again and it sounds like a meaningless label. I prefer to call myself a humanist, which expresses what I embrace rather than what I reject. Humanism is my religion. I have faith in the higher power of people – our capacity, indeed our yearning, to do good. If you think sustaining faith in an invisible God or his sacrificial dead son is challenging, try being a spiritual humanist. People fuck up all the time: We disappoint, we hurt each other, we fail miserably. To err is human. But to forgive at least feels divine.

So I forgive all of the evangelicals who’ve come knocking on my door to share the “Good News” with my family and save our souls.

I forgive my former next-door neighbors – a Baptist minister and her husband ­– for having a “Veggie Tales” video marathon while baby-sitting for my non-Christian kids. I forgive my mom’s Orthodox Jewish friend for “gifting us” with a mezzuzah when my first daughter, Sophie, was born. A mezzuzah is a little box that houses a teeny-tiny scroll with a Hebrew prayer on it that many Jews hang on the doorposts of their homes as a sign of their faith. I would hang one if it could ward off Jesus’ traveling salesmen, but it doesn’t. And I forgive Kayla’s dad for suggesting that I solve a childcare crisis by sending my 11-year-old daughter Jessie to Bible camp with his children. Thanks, but I would rather her binge-watch reruns of “I Love Lucy.” Finally, I have to forgive myself for many years of ruthlessly judging those who believe in God as gullible, fearful children holding on to the security blanket of an imaginary friend.

Parenting has transformed my perspective on religion. I don’t want my children to face prejudice for their beliefs and I don’t want them to feel prejudice toward anyone else. On some fundamental level, I think world peace begins with me teaching my children respect for freedom and diversity. So how did a nice Jewish bat mitzvah girl become an outspoken believer that Dieu n’exist pas? Feminism made me do it. Sure, let’s blame feminism. Everybody does.

A women’s studies class at Penn introduced me to the religious origins of gender oppression. I concluded that God didn’t create man, rather mencreated God in their own image. Patriarchy strikes again! So, God was yet another male authority figure to reject.

I dabbled with the Goddess ­– Mother Earth – and found the concept of a female divinity empowering. But she didn’t stick.

Still, I had a spiritual awakening. It didn’t happen inside any houses of worship or appear to me in the shadowy curves of a bagel. It happened, actually, during political demonstrations, when I felt a soulful connection to a larger group as we joined together to promote a common vision of justice. And I experienced an epiphany again during pregnancy and after giving birth, when I felt my own power of creation plus a deep connection to all women, across cultures and throughout time, who have grown a human life inside them, pushed a baby out of their bodies, fed that child from their breasts, and felt love of divine proportions.

Many people find God in these moments of mystery and clarity. I found my way to the Washington Ethical Society (WES). [3]What looks like a church, acts like a church but isn’t a church? A congregation of spiritual humanists.

Both of my daughters had baby naming ceremonies at WES. These rituals don’t feature holy water or the drawing of blood. Instead, parents stand before the congregation, promise to love and accept their child’s uniqueness; and the congregation pledges to support our family, to know and care for our children, too.

My daughters have also attended Sunday School at WES and (like most parents there) my partner and I have taught our kids and others in class. The kids engage in social justice work, like campaigning against slave/child labor in the cocoa industry and serving meals at a shelter for homeless women. Instead of Valentine’s Day, we have Pay Attention to Love Day. We hold a humanist seder at Passover and celebrate Spring Festival in place of Easter. “Stone Soup” is our Thanksgiving and Winter Festival is our end of year holiday.

But God wormed his way into my children’s lives anyway. (He works in mysterious ways.) Where? At public school, of course, where my kids have been required to recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag every day, a ritual I find nauseating both for its nationalism and its invocation of God.

I decided that perhaps my children should have more religious literacy than I do. I purchased a series of books called “This Is My Faith,” which are first-person journals of children explaining the symbols, rituals, tenets of Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism and how their family practices their religion. One summer, I tried to get Jessie interested in creating her own “This Is My Faith” book about humanism/ethical culture, but like many projects launched with great enthusiasm, we never finished.

My older daughter hasn’t really asked about God. But I’ve asked her plenty. Most recently:

“Sophie, do you believe in God?”

“I don’t know!”

“You don’t know if there’s a God or you don’t know if you believe in God?”

“I don’t know! Now, leave me alone!” (She is 15, after all, and has better things to do, usually involving earbuds and a palm-size screen.)

Jessie, at 11, is surprisingly clearer on her beliefs. While rehearsing at home for a school chorus concert, she admitted to me that instead of singing “God shed his grace on thee” during “America, the Beautiful,” she silently mouths the words, just as she’s been doing for years, ­she confessed, during the pledge of Allegiance.

This summer, Jessie went to a week of overnight camp, where they sang songs before meals and bedtime. At the end of the week, Leslie, the camp director, asked the girls for feedback on what they liked most and what they would change. My daughter pulled Leslie aside and explained that she is an atheist and wished that they didn’t sing songs that mentioned God. Leslie thanked her and said that she usually tells kids they can substitute “Earth” for “God” but just forgot this year.

This past year, Sophie participated in the Coming of Age program at WES, a year-long rite of passage that educates parents about adolescent development. It includes spiritual experiences, like camping alone on a mountain. The program concluded with a moving graduation ceremony in which the teens gave speeches about how they had grown over the year and we parents tearfully sang songs to our children.

It’s been a challenging year. Sophie and Jessie are the only two of their vast brood of cousins who aren’t having bar or bat mitzvahs. We’ve been to so many of them, I wondered if Sophie felt like she was missing something, a special event that focused just on her transition from childhood to young womanhood. So, I offered to throw her an alternative quinceañera. “We’re not Latino, Mom,” she reminded me.

No, we’re not. We’re Jewish(ish). We’re liberals. We’re a two-mom family. We’re vegetarians. We’re not “nones,” that growing population of Americans who are disconnected from religious affiliation. We aren’t going it alone. But still, somehow, the thing that seems to push our family over the edge of mainstream America is our atheism.

[3] http://www.ethicalsociety.org
[4] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on The Perils Faced by My Atheist Family in Our God-Obsessed Community
[5] http://www.alternet.org/tags/religion-0
[6] http://www.alternet.org/tags/atheism
[7] http://www.alternet.org/tags/children-0
[8] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B

Incredible interview with Tom Araya of Slayer by 7th graders

from "Kids Interview Bands"

Here's the epic interview Olivia and Connie did with Tom Araya, singer/bassist of thrash legends Slayer at The LC in Columbus, Ohio on November 17, 2013.

V Is for Vegan: The ABCs of Being Kind New Children's Book from Ruby Roth

Great new vegan alphabet book for children.



check out author Ruby Roth on CNN when she was promoting her last book



and get this new book here on Amazon or get it signed from the author here.

Nice work Ruby!

Luiz Antonio - Hero Sunday Sermon

This little person speaks the truth from the heart, and it can break yours.

What a wonderful sweet kid.

Love him.

Can a kid be a psychopath?

from BoingBoing:

The New York Times has a fascinating (and, FYI, kind of disturbing) story about young kids who exhibit psychological symptoms similar to what you see in adult psychopaths. It's a complex subject because, while everybody involved agrees these kids could use some kind of intervention, nobody knows exactly what that intervention should be and definitely don't want to stick the kids with a terrifying label that will follow them for their whole lives. More importantly, what we do know is that half of these kids will grow into normal adults—though we don't know exactly why.

It's an awkward situation where the science hasn't yet caught up to the personal need. In a perfect world, you might not want to mess around too much with this until we can learn more. But on the other hand, you're left with families that clearly need help now—like the family profiled in the story that must navigate how to deal with a nine-year-old who oscillates between violent tantrums and creepy, logical chill.

When I first met Michael, he seemed shy but remarkably well behaved. While his brother Allan ran through the house with a plastic bag held overhead like a parachute, Michael entered the room aloofly, then curled up on the living room sofa, hiding his face in the cushions. “Can you come say hello?” Anne asked him. He glanced at me, then sprang cheerfully to his feet. “Sure!” he said, running to hug her. Reprimanded for bouncing a ball in the kitchen, he rolled his eyes like any 9-year-old, then docilely went outside. A few minutes later, he was back in the house, capering antically in front of Jake, who was bobbing up and down on his sit-and-ride scooter. When the scooter tipped over, Michael gasped theatrically and ran to his brother’s side. “Jake, are you O.K.?” he asked, wide-eyed with concern. Earnestly ruffling his youngest brother’s hair, he flashed me a winning smile.

If the display of brotherly affection felt forced, it was difficult to see it as fundamentally disturbed. Gradually, though, Michael’s behavior began to morph. While queuing up a Pokémon video on the family’s computer upstairs, Michael turned to me and remarked crisply, “As you can see, I don’t really like Allan.” When I asked if that was really true, he said: “Yes. It’s true,” then added tonelessly, “I hate him.”

Glancing down a second later, he noticed my digital tape recorder on the table. “Did you record that?” he asked. I said that I had. He stared at me briefly before turning back to the video. When a sudden noise from the other room caused me to glance away, Michael seized the opportunity to grab the recorder and press the erase button. (Waschbusch later noted that such a calculated reprisal was unusual in a 9-year-old, who would normally go for the recorder immediately or simply whine and sulk.)

Read the full story at the New York Times

NYPD shred kids' paper hearts commemorating Occupy arrestees before their very eyes

Parents for Occupy Wall St. March against police brutality. Children created 5,000 paper hearts one for every peaceful protester arrested on behalf of the Occupy Wall Street movement in the three month period leading up to the march. The children delivered them to New York City Hall for Mayor Bloomberg only for the NYPD to aggressively tear them down and apart in front of the children. Children cried and the NYPD did yet another action against peaceful protesters. We as a country should not stand for this, get involved, speak up, do something for our children's futures.

from Cory Doctrow at BoingBoing

It's predictable but weird how many of the YouTube commenter's criticize the parents for involving their kids with a protest. I grew up on protest marches and demonstrations with my parents, and I take my daughter to them, because I think that parenting is (partly) about imparting values to your children. Growing up amid a critical discourse about issues of social justice and freedom helped make me who I was, and my parents were always available to debate these subjects with me, encouraging me to listen to arguments on either side without hiding which side they were on.

I whole heartily agree with Cory on this. In fact I took my son down to the first "Parents for Occupy Wall St." event down in the early days of this revolution at Zuccotti park, it was a beautiful thing. Shame on the pigs who took down the hearts off the City Hall fence.

My son and I - 21 October 2011

CNN report from back on October 21st:

First Day of School Special: Parents Only as Happy as Least Happy Child

from Futurity

The emotional well-being of parents remains linked to the successes and struggles of their grown children, a new study finds.

Researchers expected parents would suffer if their grown children incurred crises such as divorce or unemployment, but that having children who were successful would bring parents’ joy and improved emotional well-being. In fact, they assumed having other successful children would completely mitigate the effects of problem children.

However, researchers were surprised to find mothers and fathers were only as happy as their least happy child, says study leader Karen Fingerman, a professor in human development and family sciences at University of Texas at Austin. The findings are published in the Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences.

“We had expected that a successful child might mitigate the negative impact of having a child who suffers problems. The successful child might give the parent something positive to focus on. But parents still seem to suffer even when one of their grown children does,” adds Fingerman.

“It could be the case that parents empathize with their children’s distress, they are embarrassed that their relationships with these grown children suffer, or that grown children who have problems may place excessive demands on the parents,” she said. “Any one or all of these factors may contribute to parental worry and depression.”

This is the first research to examine the positive effects of having successful grown children and the aggregate effects of multiple children. Most American parents have more than one child. This study was unique because it looked at how multiple grown children’s accomplishments and failures affect the parents’ psychological health.

Fingerman and her colleagues collected data from interviews of 633 middle-aged adults regarding each of their grown children (1,251 total children). The study assessed the children’s problems, successes, the quality of parents’ relationships with each child, and the parents’ psychological well-being.

Having many children who were successful increased well-being for parents. However, when it came to children’s problems, it only took one child suffering one major life problem to drag down parents’ mental health, which manifested as depressive symptoms or increased worry. The more children who suffered problems, the more parents suffered.

Conversely, children who experienced successes in education, marriages, and careers were more likely to maintain positive relationships with their parents. Relationship quality was directly tied to parental well-being.

Fingerman speculates that parents are sensitive to positive and negative events in their children’s lives because it reflects on their own achievements in parenting.

“Parents have a distinct investment in grown children reflecting decades of child-rearing,” she says.

Co-authors include researchers at the University of Michigan and Pennsylvania State University.

Got A Kid?

Kids Would Prefer if You Do Not Destroy the Earth

from DangerousMinds:

New ad spot from Moms Against Climate Change pits child protesters against riot cops in the cuddliest demonstration ever.

Osocio (social advertising and non-profit campaigns from around the globe) says:

In December, at the United Nations Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen, world leaders will come together to discuss this issue, and Canadians want results. zig joined with Environmental Defence, ForestEthics and hundreds of volunteers to produce this film, and the web site that goes with it, to inspire grassroots action from Canadian parents.

The effects of climate change are going to be very real within the lifetime of the current generation of children, and if our kids knew the facts, they would act. On the web site, people can upload their kids photos to be included in a projection that will appear on Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper¹s route to work leading up to the conference to remind him who he¹s representing in Copenhagen.

[Asshole at] AdFreak is more skeptical:

Zig’s cinematic spot for Moms Against Climate Change pits child protesters (shouldn’t they be in school?) against cops (don’t they have parking tickets to write?) to illustrate that if kids knew what was at stake, they’d take action. There’s no denying it packs a punch. That said, something feels off. I think I was expecting a boffo climax to really drive the point home. Why not have the sides embrace, each kid finding one of his or her parents among the riot squad, to symbolize that we’re all in this together? Conversely, acid rain pouring from above and “frying” every last person? That would make a strong statement! Sure, it’s easy for me to second-guess—that’s why I enjoy it so much. Still, using children is a form of hot-button emotional manipulation. And to stretch a metaphor, failing to turn up that flame delivers a lukewarm message on a globally incendiary issue.

(Moms Against Climate Change: Take Action)

Help get decent healthy food options in schools!

The Healthy School Lunch Campaign, sponsored by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), is dedicated to improving the food served to children in schools by educating government and school officials, food service workers, parents, and others about the food choices best able to promote children’s current and long-term health.

The campaign’s key message: Foods served in schools should promote the health of all children.

Menus in most school lunch programs are too high in saturated fat and cholesterol and too low in fiber- and nutrient-rich fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes (see PCRM’s 2008 School Lunch Report Card). Major changes are needed to encourage the health of the nation’s youth and to reverse the growing trends of obesity, early-onset diabetes, and hypertension, among other chronic diseases, in children and teens.

The Healthy School Lunch Campaign encourages schools to offer more healthy low-fat, cholesterol-free options, including reimbursable meals and beverages, a la carte items, and vending machine items. The PCRM Healthy School Lunch Team works with school districts across the country and organizes meetings and presentations for school boards, PTAs, and student groups. We can provide marketing materials, meal planning and recipes ideas, and other resources upon request.

If you are interested in having The PCRM Healthy School Lunch Team work with your school district, start by taking these easy steps.

SIGN THE PETITION TO CONGRESS