With father’s day coming up, here’s some powerful new research about the importance of dad’s involvement in their kids lives.
Teens whose dads are more involved are less likely to engage in risky sexual behaviors. And while a mom’s influence can help stave off unprotected sex too, a dad’s devotion has twice the effect, according to a new study by researchers at Boston College.
“Maybe there’s something different about the way fathers and adolescents interact,” the study’s lead author Rebekah Levine Coley told MSNBC. “It could be because it’s less expected for fathers to be so involved, so it packs more punch when they are.”
The researchers surveyd 3,206 teens, ages 13 to 18, who all came from two-parent homes. They were asked both about their sexual behaviors and about their relationships with their parents, including how much each parent knows about how they spend their time when they’re not home, and how much time they spent with each parent on activites like eating or playing games.
The impact of family time overall was especially notable. One additional family activity per week predicted a 9 percent drop in sexual activity.
Photo by Mike Baird
We’re usually in favor of parents supporting their kids, but Dawn Morris seems to have crossed the line. Morris, 37, is accused of coaching her 15-year-old daughter how to fight. A cell phone camera captured on video the mom encouraging her daughter and the subsequent rumble between the girl and another 15-year-old in a Champaign, Ill., parking lot.
The video was posted Wednesday on YouTube, and police soon investigated, the News-Gazette reported. The two teens were charged with aggravated battery. Morris was arrested for contributing to the criminal delinquency of a juvenile. No word on what started the fight.
A Florida mother was charged with felony child neglect after she left her 5-year-old son, who has specia needs, locked in her SUV, while she played video games inside an arcade.
According to CBS 12, Evylon Keys Hrusovsky told police that she’d only been in the arcade for a few minutes, but video from a security camera showed that she’d been inside for almost 90 minutes. Witnesses who saw the boy crying and screaming inside the SUV alerted the owner of the arcade.
It’s unlikely, even if your kid is spending time outside, according to a new study. Researchers who looked at 3, 4 and 5-year-olds enrolled in 24 community preschool programs found that the children spent 89 percent of their time in activities that could only be characterized as sedentary.
Maybe the sandbox is just too tempting; even when the children spent time outside 56 percent of their activities were sedentary, too. The study also found that preschool teachers very rarely encouraged kids to be active.
“The low levels of children’s activity and the lack of adult encouragement point to a need for teachers to organize, model, and encourage physical activity,” said William H. Brown, professor in the College of Education at USC and the study’s lead author.
Parents who are looking for a preschool should ask teachers what exactly they do to encourage the kids to run around and get their yah-yahs out.
Photo by Jason Tromm
Few would disagree that sexual confrontations between an adult and a child are a big problem. But how about between two children? When does “playing doctor” go too far?
A Spring Hill, Fla., mother had to ask herself these questions when she saw a 6-year-old boy put his hands down her 6-year-old son’s shorts. The mother suspected this was not a one-time occurance, and wondered if similar incidents might have been responsible for her son’s recent mood swings.
The mother reported her suspicions to the boys’ school, which said it forwarded them on to the sheriff’s department, but she told Tampa Bay Online she didn’t get a satisfactory response.
That’s not surprising, Sharon Araji, chair of the Sociology Department at the University of Colorado Denver and author of Sexually Aggressive Children, told the web site. Very few states are willing to tackle the issue of child-on-child molestation, much less prosecute, she said.
Touching private areas is part of a child’s normal sexual development, but a problem develops if that’s the only way he or she plays, Araji said. More red flags: When an aggressive child threatens or tricks another child to go along with the “play.”
Did Tammy Lee Gibson attempt to pulverize an innocent man with an aluminum baseball bat? Or was she protecting her 10-year-old daughter from a pervert intent on despoiling her?
The law has rendered its verdict: the Puyallup, Wash., resident pleaded guilty to third degree assault and might face as much as eight months in jail when sentenced next month. But Gibson is apparently unrepentant, and many people have applauded her actions.
Here are the facts as laid out by the Seattle Times: Gibson, 40, heard that 24-year-old William Baldwin, a resident of a nearby trailer park, was a registered sex offender. She remembered seeing him speak to her daughter and went over to pay a visit.
Baldwin wasn’t home so Gibson consulted with the neighbors, showing them a flier that indicated Baldwin, who was convicted of two counts of first-degree child molestation for sexually assaulting two girls, was at high risk to re-offend.
“He’s gonna do it again,” she said. “Are you OK with that?” When people didn’t seem panicked, she went to Baldwin’s home, threatened to kill him and hit him seven or eight times with her bat. Baldwin, who is reportedly 7-foot-three, was treated at an area hospital and arrested for failing to notify police of his new location.
The boy is guilty of shooting his mother eight times in premediated murder, a judge ruled after a court hearing on Friday.
Prosecutors said that after the boy argued with his mother, 34-year-old Sara Madrid, last August, she briefly left the family’s home in southern Arizona, the Associated Press reported. When she returned, the boy was waiting for her — with a .22-caliber pistol that he had gotten from her bedroom closet.
A defense lawyer argued that the boy had not intended to kill his mother. Attorney Sanford Edleman said the child, who is not being publicly identified because he is a juvenile, only wanted to get back at her for yelling and slapping him.
Although prosecutors wanted the boy tried as an adult, a judge kept the case in juvenile court after psychiatric experts said that there was some evidence that the child had been verbally and physically abused and could be rehabilitated in the justice system. As a result, he can only be held until he turns 18.
Robert Dearborn of New Hampshire was caught on tape encouraging his teenage son in a fight with another boy. Police say the 35-year-old father can be heard saying “smash his head against the pavement” and “step on his head.”
Dearborn, who has been charged with reckless endangerment and faces a $2,000 fine and a year behind bars, complained to the Manchester Union Leader that the police are making him “look like a monster.”
Here’s what he says really happened: Cameron, 15, was jumped by three teens who followed him on the bus home from school on Oct. 23. Dearborn said he initially tried to lead Cameron away but that one of the boys pursued him. “I was literally protecting my son,” the father said.
Police opened an investigation recently after the video, made by a spectator and posted on You Tube, was discovered by school counselors. Dearborn was arrested just before Christmas.
For some readers commenting on the newspaper’s Web site, the father has a powerful argument. “Good job Dad! I wish my Dad would have stood up for me when I was in school. Please set up a defense fund, I was just laid off, but will still send you what I can,” wrote one man. But another reader said: “What a nice example the father is showing his son. Is this how he grew up? An eye for an eye!”
The video no longer seems to be on You Tube, but snippets can be seen in a report on a local TV station, WBZ. The teens will be tried in juvenile court.
In an unrelated incident, another New Hampshire dad was booked on similar charges when he drove his son to a neighbor’s house on Nov. 7 to beat up another kid. George Primeau, 46, allegedly told his son to knock the other kid out, police said. Further details were not available on that incident.
The little boy walked out of his uncle’s apartment in Miami while several adults and other children were asleep.
Tavaris Mack, two and a half, walked about a block before a neighbor spotted him and called police, CBS-4 News reported. When the family woke up, they went door-to-door searching for the toddler. The incident happened on Friday, but the child was kept through the weekend by social services officials while authorities investigated the situation. His parents told police that the boy often walks in his sleep.
On Monday, Tavaris was returned to his family. His wandering was classified as an “accident.”
Police didn’t think that another case of a wandering toddler was so accidental. Rachel Matthews, 20, was charged on Monday with felony neglect of a dependent after her little boy was found in a parking lot, two blocks from his home in Indianapolis. The apartment manager told police that Matthews’ two-year-old boy has apparently left home at least twice before without his mother’s knowledge, RTV6 News reported.
Matthews faces up to three years in prison if convicted. Social workers are deciding whether the boy should be placed in the custody of his father.
In these cases, the toddlers were lucky that neighbors spotted them. In November, a two-year-old boy in southern California crawled out of his crib, left his home and walked for nearly a mile before being hit and killed by a car.
The father told the girl and her brother to try to walk 10 miles in the snow to their mother’s house after his truck broke down on Christmas Day. He stayed behind with the truck.
The 11-year-old girl, Sage Aragon, was found about 2.7 miles from where she set out in Idaho, almost buried under a snowdrift. She later died of hypothermia, the Associated Press reported. Her brother, Bear, 12, made it to a rest area off a highway, halfway to his mother’s home. He was found wearing only long underwear. He had taken off the rest of his clothes after becoming delusional from hypothermia.
Their father was charged with second-degree murder. Robert Aragon, 55, appeared in court briefly on Monday and was told he could face life in prison if convicted. He banged his head on the table as the charges were read.
Authorities said the father’s truck got stuck in a snowdrift as he was taking them to visit their mother in another town. Aragon told the kids to get out and walk to their mom’s house. He and another adult stayed behind to free the truck and then drove back to Aragon’s home, the mother, JoLeta Jenks, told police. She called police after she talked to the father and found out what he had done.
On Christmas Day, temperatures in the area ranged from 27 degrees to minus 5.
UPDATE: The girl’s uncle, who had stayed behind with her father and the truck, was arrested on New Year’s Day and charged with second-degree murder.