Stories like this make me glad I grew up in the 70s. They also infuriate me, and I don't even have children.

It's insane.

It's about training children to live in the universal surveillance state. In the future, your every move will be monitored and you will be corrected instantly whenever you step out of line.

When I'm dictator, I will force every American, at gunpoint, to take remedial classes in probability and statistics. Seriously, a lot of this is because the huge majority of Americans are math-illiterate ("innumerate" is a word I've seen used). We've got a hell of a lot of people who cannot do simple addition and subtraction without a calculator, and they have no feel for what numbers mean in any context. Thus, for them to accurately judge relative risks is impossible, and trying to explain it to them is a fruitless exercise -- they just tune it out. Money grows on trees, stranger danger is everywhere, and if it wsan't for evil chemicals everyone would live forever.

A friend of mine is raising her only son so coddled and so supervised that by the time he leaves for college he will have yet to learn to wipe his own butt.

"When I'm dictator, I will force every American, at gunpoint, to take remedial classes in probability and statistics. "

90 percent of Americans are simply not smart enough to benefit from a class in probability and statistics.

Of the 10 percent that are, many of those will have such an emotional bias on any issue, they will discount the mathematics.

I see a big part of this problem as an outgrowth of the divorce wars for child custody. Too many people are looking for any hook, to call the other biological parent of their kids a bad parent, and gain an advantage in court by doing so.

This is how this constant,supervision thing became the standard for good parenting.

Stories like this get me so mad. I've absolutely left my son in the car for a couple of minutes to run into the store. Am I supposed to wake a sleeping kid and drag him into a 7-11 so I can buy a cup of coffee? It's ridiculous.

In my opinion, the person who took the video and called the cops is a horrible human being.

Hmm...required probability and statistics is also on my dictator list (is that like a bucket list?) but Isab has a point.

Some people are just unbelievably stupid. In this case, whoever reported her to the police, the police officers involved - indeed everyone who involved on the official side of the incident.

For people like this were tar, feathers and public shaming invented.

The pendulum has swung so insanely far into stupid paranoia territory that it is bound to start swinging back soon. When it does, karma is a bitch...

There's so many ways to spin everything.

Leaving the child in the car - Horrible parent, child endangerment!
Bringing the cranky child - Horrible parent imposing their cranky child!
Skipping your errand - Horrible parent allows themself to be ruled by their child!
Waking kid to bring them inside - Horrible parent interrupting sleep cycle for an errand leading to possible brain problems!

I'd forgotten what "helicopter parenting" meant. I was disappointed: I thought this was going to be about the minefield of correcting the horrible manners of strangers' kids (such as when the kids go up to strangers and kick them). But I digress.

I'm with Skenazy all the way. But I don't quite follow what she's saying in the last sentence of this paragraph - would someone please explain it?

"There's some risk no matter what you do. So why is one choice illegal and one is OK? Could it be because the one choice inconveniences you, makes your life a little harder, makes parenting a little harder, gives you a little less time or energy than you would have otherwise had?"

(I can think of three different interpretations, but I still don't get it.)

It's summer. We'll momentarily hear about the women who left her kids in the car for "just a moment", only to have that stretch out for an hour for one reason or another, and have some dead kids as result. Or perhaps a dog or two.

Then there's the one were someone stole the car, and is now charged with kidnapping even if the sole intent was grand theft auto.

And yes, innumeracy is a problem. It leads people to purchase a college education without actually understanding their loans.

I was talking to a friend who's a professor of engineering at a smallish public university. They added to the admittance standards some years ago for the engineering programs. It reduced the number of applicants about half, but the graduation rates remained the same. All they were doing was weeding out the ones that couldn't do the required math before they paid money for courses they wouldn't be able to complete successfully.

And some of them who were bound and determined to get into the field? they went to a community college to gain the math skills they would need to be successful.

All I got from that story is that she needs an editor. Dickens was less windy.

We're all nodding violently in agreement. It's gone way too far.

I think leonona has a good point, though. It's a strong article until it bends around to saying the reason for all this is to make parents' (moms' mainly) lives harder. That's a weak conclusion to an otherwise strong article. Never attribute to malice what can be blamed on stupidity, right?

Cousin Dave I think has a stronger argument for the basic reason (beyond said stupidity). The problem with his is, it doesn't fuel a gender war and get hens flapping.

It's summer. We'll momentarily hear about the women who left her kids in the car for "just a moment", only to have that stretch out for an hour for one reason or another, and have some dead kids as result. Or perhaps a dog or two.

In this case, it was 50 degrees outside.

When it's above 80, though, I don't mess around. I've been living in TX for 4 years. I can't tell you how many times I've called the cops about dogs left in hot cars during the summer, in the sun, in mall/grocery store parking lots (the kinds of places that you don't usually "run into for just a second.") Twice, I've also called the cops about kids left in hot cars during the summer. The cops here don't mess around either. They break your car window.

I probably wouldn't look twice, though, at a kid left in a car on a 50 degree day. In fact, I was that kid once when my mom did grocery shopping.

May I stop "helicopter-paying" for other people's kids, too?

Thanks much!

Once my parents left me and my brother in the car. (This was around 1975.) They didn't come back for an hour. During that time, we had managed to turn on the emergency flashers, but were unable to pull the knob out to turn them off. I looked at the owners' manual to figure out how to turn them off. The manual said that the light would stop flashing if you step on the brake. That acually worked, but I could never hit the brake when the lights were on the "off" cycle. (I figured out later that the brake lights just would have come on.)

So there we are, in a car with the emergency flashers blinking in the downtown area. Not one person came by to see what was up.

I can understand if Mom and Dad left us there thinking it was only going to take about five minutes, but you'd want to believe that after 30 minutes, they would figure out that the errand was NOT going to take five minutes and maybe one of them would come out and check on us.

To this day, I have no idea what was so important that required both of them to be there, that did not allow kids and that once inside, no one was allowed to leave.

"They added to the admittance standards some years ago for the engineering programs. "

I'd be curious to know what specifically they did. When I went to school in the early '80s, one of the prereqs for engineering and math was that you had to at least be ready for calculus. If you weren't, you had to take pre-calc as a no-credit remedial course, And at that school at the time, if you were signed up for a remedial-level course, you were automatically on academic probation for that quarter. That screened a lot of would-be engineering applicants out.

The engineering and math degrees also required non-trivial amounts of liberal arts and social sciences (two quarters of English literature, one quarter of art, two quarters of psychology, two quarters of sociology, and four quarters of foreign language). On the other hand, some of the liberal-arts degrees (notably journalism) required no math or science at all. There was one computer class intended for the non-engineering students, very much an introductory-level course. It was so dumbed down that engineering and math students weren't allowed to take it for credit. It had a drop rate of about 50%.

"The problem with his is, it doesn't fuel a gender war and get hens flapping."

There are plenty of dads who are co-conspirators or at least enablers. The mommy telegraph is a primary enforcement mechanism, but the dads either agree with it (often when the kids are girls) or they don't bother putting their two cents in.

I have personally been a victim of this tendency of other parents to feel some ownership over how I raise my children. My children are grown now and doing quite well.

I've had the police called because my son, he must have been eight or nine at the time, was climbing a tree. This was while I was standing at the base of the tree supervising and suggesting which limb he should step on.

I've had the police called because my three children were playing in the yard barefoot. It was August in Arkansas. It's fucking hot there and kids like to run in the yard barefoot. The accusation was that they must not have been provided shoes.

I've watched a police car actually pull up behind my four year old daughter while she was riding a tricycle without a helmet. They put on the lights and everything and "pulled her over". She couldn't have been going more than 2 miles an hour.

The real problem is that the police actually responded to these calls rather than saying, "Uh, lady, there's nothing illegal about a kid climbing a tree in his own yard."

Nothing came of any of these things other than my children being terrified every time they saw a police officer. They lived in constant fear of being "taken away" simply because they were doing what kids do.

Oh yeah, one more. My youngest, two years old at the time, used to love to strip off her clothes and run around around the neighborhood park. Obviously, she was supervised and the whole family would be at the park. My wife and I would laugh and eventually get her to put her clothes back on. You guessed it, someone called the police. What kind of sick mother fucker sees a two year old running around naked and thinks there's something indecent about that? She's two for God's sake!

Meanwhile, all the other parents in the neighborhood had their own kids glued to fucking video games and tucked safely away in the house. It's amazing to me how you never see kids out playing anymore. No wonder they're all a bunch of fat fucks.

Two aspects to this phenomenon:

1. Technology. Many years ago, someone asked a knowledgeable Israeli military officer why a particular Lebanese warlord had done something that was quite perverse and injurious to his clientele. The answer was, "because he had the ammunition". They call the cops on you and your nekkid 2-year old because they have a cell phone in their hand. Twenty-five years ago, they'd have had to wander around that park looking for a public pay phone, and that would have inhibited them.

2. Poor comparative risk assessment is a problem, but it's one which has long been with us; most people respond to story more readily than statistics. What you're looking at is socially sanctioned aggression.

What kind of sick mother fucker sees a two year old running around naked and thinks there's something indecent about that? She's two for God's sake!

No, it's not that the kid is indecent, but that she may have been viewed by a pedophile. The idea that all of us should view a naked two year old through the eyes of the dregs of society in the name of safety is one of the worst results of this nannyist bullshit.

I was talking to a friend who's a professor of engineering at a smallish public university. They added to the admittance standards some years ago for the engineering programs. It reduced the number of applicants about half, but the graduation rates remained the same.

They didn't have to do that at my alma mater (UT Austin). That's what the business school was for.

I was talking to a friend who's a professor of engineering at a smallish public university. They added to the admittance standards some years ago for the engineering programs. It reduced the number of applicants about half, but the graduation rates remained the same.

They didn't have to do that at my alma mater (UT Austin). That's what the business school was for.

Posted by: Astra at June 6, 2014 11:00 AM

A lot of schools have gone to not admitting students to a specific degree program until they have passed all the basic required courses.

Usually what this means, is you are not assigned an advisor in the department of engineering until your sophomore or junior year.

You can still take classes in the engineering curriculum, just no one is going to do any kind of official degree check, or advising until you have a decent grade average in the subject.

This makes sense. Any advisor can advise a freshman in college what to take. No point tying up an engineering professor, until the student has proved they can handle the course work.

Could schadenfreude be part of it? I'm inclined to believe it's a characteristic of a high percentage of people attracted to law enforcement and other government occupations, and facilitated by "law makers" and bureaucrats who seem to think the measure of their effectiveness is the number of laws and regulations they can generate for every little problem their desperate minds can imagine.

Instead of a compulsory class on probability and statistics, which most people would probably not benefit from, I would implement a much simpler required course for every kid entering junior high school called "None of My Business".

"You can still take classes in the engineering curriculum, just no one is going to do any kind of official degree check, or advising until you have a decent grade average in the subject."

Interesting. At my alma mater, due to the number of required courses and the fact that a lot of the higher-level ones were only taught once per year, if you didn't get on the right sequence at the start, you would not be able to graduate in four years. No freshman was allowed to register without an advisor signing off on their schedule.

Interesting. At my alma mater, due to the number of required courses and the fact that a lot of the higher-level ones were only taught once per year, if you didn't get on the right sequence at the start, you would not be able to graduate in four years. No freshman was allowed to register without an advisor signing off on their schedule.
Posted by: Cousin Dave at June 6, 2014 11:36 AM

Yes, this insidious plot serves a duel purpose. Keeps most engineering majors in school for longer than four years, unless that come to school with credit for AP calculus, and they are running up that student loan debt and filling the coffers of the University,with the extra semesters of tuition paid.

You have to repeat one required course, you are in for an extra semester at best, or an extra year or two at worst.

Engineering at many schools in now considered a five year degree.

About the surveillance State:
One of the first casualties of the debut of AI will be the little "gimmes" you get when driving your car.
All at once, every rolling stop, every failure to use or cancel a turn signal, all transgressions above the speed limit will be subject to immediate fine. You could find yourself fined thousands of dollars and/or having your license suspended in just one day.
And some people want to be nannied enough to make this happen.

I spanked my 4-year-old in the commissary parking lot last week. My husband and I agree that we probably shouldn't do that off base.

This same child was also sulky about having to leave a tourist attraction this past weekend, so as we were walking (on the sidewalk in the middle of the parking lot) back to the car, she took tiny, tiny steps and ended up far behind. This was a battle I decided not to fight, but my husband was afraid she would get "snatched."

I would think that, as we are both engineers, stranger abduction would be the least of his worries, as it is mine. In the car with my kids around these Honolulu drivers is when I really get edgy.

We recently had the cops called on us because our 3 and almost 2-year-old were running around in our street and playing on their bikes not in the driveway. Mind you, it's a dead end street that turns off at the dead end of another street so the only traffic is the people that live on that block (yep, literally a one block street). We were outside chatting with our neighbor and watching our kids plus his kid playing. A cop showed up saying there was a report of unsupervised toddlers playing in traffic. The neighbor we were visiting with is a detective and across the street lives another cop (who also came out to visit). They talked to the cop that showed up and then he left without any report or anything being done. Our neighbors then said so much of their time is wasted on investigating stupid calls and reports of child abuse/neglect that aren't real problems. It turns out some busybody a few blocks away saw the kids riding their bikes in the street while she was walking her dog and freaked out, said children need to be kept in their fenced yards for safety reasons. I wonder if she calls the cops when she sees the middle school aged kids playing basketball in the street too.

I don't worry so much that something is going to happen to my kids when I make choices as I do as to whether or not someone is going to report me for those choices because they don't approve of them. I've already been reported to CPS by someone for "inappropriate carseat use" because my just turned 3-year-old is not in a rear facing carseat, which I'm breaking the law in any way in my state. The law here says rear facing up to 1 year and 20 pounds and then another child seat up until 4'9" or 8 years old. A lady confronted me in a parking lot upon seeing my kid being buckled into a booster seat (which he just got) saying I was endangering his life by not keeping him rear facing and reported me. My son is 41 inches tall (about the size of a 5-year-old) and 32-ish pounds. Booster seats are made for kids starting at 30 pounds and 37 inches. I don't get what the problem was other than she said I didn't put him in the safest possible option and that made me an unfit mother. Even if I wanted to keep him in a rear facing seat he's physically too tall.

I had an experience a few weeks ago that I'm just glad didn't lead to a police visit. At the same time, I'm angry that I feel relieved, if that makes sense.

I stopped at the wine store to buy a few bottles for a party we were having at the house. I left my 15-month-old daughter in the car, in her car seat, on a 41 F day. The car was parked directly in front of the glass doors to the store. I knew exactly what I wanted, so she was out of my sight for about 90 seconds.

As I was paying for my wine, a woman behind me asked me if that was my baby. I said yes, and she informed me that kids were being snatched "all the time like that." I informed her that no, that wasn't actually happening. Kids were not being snatched all the time from cars. In fact, I'm not aware of a single kid in my city being kidnapped out of a car in full view of her mother (or out of a car at all). The guy next to her said she was just trying to help.

I wanted to argue, but I thought it best to just leave before it escalated, and I had to deal with the cops. As it was, I spent the rest of the week afraid they were going to end up on my doorstep.

I think it was a detective who said, years ago, that the stranger-danger "statistics" from the 1980s were absurd, because if they were true, everyone would know a family whose child had been kidnapped.

(And I think it's safe to say that even when you include kidnappings by non-custodial parents and other relatives, you STILL are not that likely to know such a family.)