Staffers at Williston’s Mercy Medical Center in North Dakota are scratching their heads trying to figure out how they sent a new mom home with the wrong baby, according to the Associated Press. The mistake happened last weekend, was discovered within an hour, and the mother was quickly reunited with her own child.
The Mercy mix-up is hardly the only recent incident of its kind. In March of this year, Shatiesha Brown, 32, was dismayed to learn that another mother had been given her baby to breast feed at Brookdale Hospital. After the incident, her daughter, Anya, rejected breast milk.
Teens are notoriously bad drivers, but maybe worried parents should take a look in the mirror. Many moms and dads are setting bad examples when they’re behind the wheel.
Sixty-percent of 500 parents of teens questioned in an online survey admitted to talking on the cell phone while driving, according to Reuters. Forty-two percent coped to speeding, while 17 percent said that they had sent emails or texts while driving.
No one is a bigger influence on a teen’s driving habits, according to Dave Melton, a driving safety expert with Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety. ”And if they grow up watching their Mom or Dad speed, talk on their cell phone, text and email, or pay more attention to what’s on the radio than their driving, they are going to think it’s okay to do the same thing.”
Hey, Mom and Dad: Hang up and drive!
Get ready for your kids to start begging you for the swine flu — the swine flu stuffed animal that is. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gift shop in Atlanta is actually selling the stuffed toy pictured above, according to the Examiner.
The doll is nominally a teaching tool to help educate kids about the swine flu, but how representing the flu with a stuffed toy that’s pink and plush that you can hug does that, you’ve got us.
In other swine flu news, Kesley Young, a 20-year-old mother of a week-old newborn, died of swine flu last Thursday in Columbus, Ohio, according to the Columbus Post Dispatch. Something tells us that no one will want to buy a swine flu doll for that little girl, who has mercifully survived.
Pop quiz: When you encounter a crying toddler in Wal-Mart do you: (a) Thank goodness it’s not your own? (b) Move discreetly to another aisle to get away from the squawking? (c) Inform the mom that if she doesn’t shut that baby up, you will, and then proceed to slap the tot four or five times in the face?
Incredibly, Roger Stephens, 61, allegedly chose option number three at a Wal-Mart in Gwinnett County, Georgia on Monday, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Stephens was arrested and charged with felony cruelty to a child. He’s being held without bond. The two-year-old victim sustained “slight redness to the face.”
More than half of all children engage in some sexual behavior before age 13, according to one study. But what’s normal exploration, and what’s a problem?
A new report by two physicians published Monday in the journal Pediatrics tries to resolve this sticky question. The conclusion: Many childhood sexual behaviors are within the realm of normal. Kids often behave sexually out of curiosity or as a way of testing interpersonal boundaries.
However, any behavior that is “persistently intrusive, coercive … or abusive” is a red flag that something may be wrong, according to Dr. Nancy Kellogg of the University of Texas Health Science Center, who is one of the co-authors of the study. Sexual abuse, domestic violence or exposure to lewd content in the media can all be linked to problematic sexual behaviors.
There are many sexual behaviors in children that many parents may not be comfortable with, which aren’t actually a sign that anything is really wrong, a Chicago Tribune story on the study pointed out. For instance, when your three-year-old son sticks his hands down his pants in the grocery store, don’t freak out. Just redirect him to a more socially acceptable activity, like begging for sugary cereal.
It’s a phone call that most parents of teens wouldn’t even think to dread. Rosemary Lumpkin got an anonymous tip on Friday night that her 15-year-old daughter was performing at Playmates, strip club in Cocoa, Fla.
Lumpkin notified the police, who raided the club. The mother, who went with the officers on the bust, saw her topless daughter chatting with an adult man. A 17-year-old girl was also found working in the club on the raid. The teens told the cops that they thought dancing was a good way to make money.
“The only thing that makes me so mad is the club is still open,” Lumpkin told WFTV News. Apparently, authorities are working to have Playmates closed down.
How could Lumpkin not know her daughter was a stripper? “Easy, because I’m not a security guard. She could be sneaking out of the window. You’ve got to sleep sometime,” she told WFTV.
Photo by Amber Rhea
This fall and winter, when health officials anticipate a surge in swine flu (H1N1) cases, there likely won’t be enough vaccines to go around. Wednesday, health officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended which Americans should have access to the H1N1 vaccine first, according to the New York Times.
Pregnant women, caregivers for infants under age six months old, children and young adults ages six months up to 24 years old were all among the group of 150 million Americans who should be given top priority, according to the CDC. The federal government expects about 120 million doses of the vaccine available by the end of October.
In the United States, pregnant women have been particularly hard hit by swine flu. Expectant moms make up about six percent of verified swine flu deaths in the country, while pregnant mothers only account for one percent of the U.S. population.
The CDC, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Academy of Family Physicians and the World Health Organization all recommend that pregnant women get seasonal flu shots, too, in order to protect themselves and their babies-on-the-way.
For more information on flu shots and pregnancy from the CDC, click here.
A federal judge has sentenced Aaron Bruns, a former Fox News producer, to 10 years in prison for possessing child porn, according to the Associated Press.
As Minor Troubles readers will recall, Bruns, 29, had previously been convicted for child porn. In February, federal agents found photos and videos on Bruns computer depicting “children under the age of 10 being sexually abused by adult men and women.” In May, Bruns plead guilty to possession of child porn.
When Bruns was just a 19-year-old college student, he also pleaded guilty to distributing child pornography online, a crime for which he received three years probation. When police raided his University of Michigan dorm room, they found approximately 6,000 pornographic images of children.
A former NPR editor who pleaded guilty to watching videos of children being raped will not have to spend any time in prison for the crime.
David Malakoff will have to register as a sex offender for 25 years, pay a fine of $500 and do 600 hours of community service. But he will not be required to do the six to eight years of prison time recommended by federal sentencing guidelines, according to the Washington Examiner.
In deciding against a prison sentence, the judge cited Malakoff’s abuse as a child. He’d been raped as a 9-year-old boy, and had looked at videos of child rape and sexual abuse for a period of five hours as a way to relive his own rape.
Before the judge’s decision, Malakoff, 46, apologized to the court: “I am ashamed. I am horrified. Most of all because I know their story. I have made their lives worse. I am so sorry,” Malakoff said. He said he will be haunted forever by the images of the children being raped, “their distant eyes, their blank faces.”
As Minor Troubles readers will recall, Malakoff worked as an editor and on-air correspondant for National Public Radio until June of 2008.
Another day, another daycare scandal. This one was in Texas, where two daycare operators are now behind bars for locking children in a shed, which contained gasoline, lawn equipment and insecticides.
Freddie Patek and his wife Marietta Patek, both 65, ran the facility in their home in Sealy in Austin County, where they were authorized to care for only three children at a time, according to the Houston Chronicle.
Acting on a tip, state child welfare inspectors visited the home on Wednesday and found 14 children, ranging in age from infants to preteens. Six of them were in a shed, although it was unclear if they were commonly warehoused there, or if the Pateks were just trying to hide the kids there from the inspectors.
Freddie was charged with tampering with physical evidence for trying to hide the extra little ones, and Marietta was charged with six counts of endangering a child. Fortunately, no one was injured. The center has been shutdown pending the investigation.
Josh Romo, the father of a two-year-old who was found in the shed, said that he had wondered why his daughter sometimes dreaded going to the daycare: “Now we know.”