This familiarity with fake guns, they say, led the little girl to picked up a loaded .380 calibre pistol her stepfather had left on the living room table.

Whether she truly thought it was a toy or was just being curious, what happened next is horrifying:  She shot herself in the stomach. 

Cheyenne was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at Physicians at University Medical centre in Lebanon.

Her parents, Douglas and Tina Ann Cronberger, say the gun is usually kept in a locked cabinet but had been brought out to scare off what they thought was an intruder outside.  No criminal charges have been filed, but the shooting is still under investigation.

Some people may use this tragedy as an example of why kids shouldn’t play shooting games.  That, of course, is ridiculous.  Shooting games didn’t cause this to happen.  A careless parent did.

Still, my heart goes out to the Cronberger family.  The only thing more tragic than the death of a child is the death of a child from something so easily preventable.

Image: edkohler/Flickr

In a week that’s included US Airways forcing a mother to sit nineteen rows from  her two-year-old, and the announcement that a family got kicked off a plane for requesting water for a pregnant passenger, this story out of the Philadelphia Inquirer may just be the kicker.

According to the paper, Ryan Thomas was flying to fantasy central with his parents to celebrate his fourth birthday. It was an extremely special time for the family – after all, their son who had been born sixteen weeks premature and who suffered from developmental delays, including malformed ankles and and legs with low muscle tone was finally learning to walk.

Not surprisingly, that required leg braces. Leg braces which the family was told he would have to remove in order to go through the screener. What’s more, he would have to walk of his own accord through the metal detector – even though his mother explained he physically couldn’t.

You can get the whole story at the Inquirer, including how the family finally got their apology.

But what the story couldn’t address is whether anyone bothers to run a common sense test on these people. It’s true we’ve all had to give up some of our freedoms in exchange for peace of mind on airplanes in the wake of 9/11. But does that mean we had to give up common courtesy too?

Common courtesy that would have allowed a four-year-old in leg braces to be escorted with his parents into a private room for a check on his medical apparatus to ensure no crazy person added something explosive while he was sitting on a bench not looking? Common sense that would have allowed a two-year-old to remain side-by-side with her mother . . . hence serving as common courtesy to the other passengers who didn’t need to hear a child sobbing for mummy through a flight?

The airlines and the TSA have us all over a barrel, afraid to speak up against wrongs lest we – or our kids – be labelled “terrorist” and hauled off to a night in jail. But we’re still human beings. We have the right to demand our children be treated with common decency. And that means not forcing a disabled four-year-old to try walking through a metal scanner without his leg braces on, just because it’s “policy.”

Image:man pikin, flickr

When I first noticed this on my boarding pass, I approached the gate agent with a joke, “Hi! I’m don’t want to sit next to these kids any more than anyone else does, but I’m sure you won’t really let me get away with that.”

The joke became a lot less funny when he said there was nothing he could do to fix it. And even less funny when his supervisor told me the same thing. Get on the plane, they advised me, and maybe some generous passenger will be willing to swap seats with you.

Hot tip, US Airways: Wrong Answer. You assigned my toddler and my kindergartner seats in row 26 and put me in row 5. That is your problem to solve, not your problem to dump on the dude in seat 26D.

The first and third flights were actually easy fixes, but on the second we ran into trouble. We’d all been assigned centre seats, and the flight attendant was Not Helpful. Eventually we were able to sit together, but only after 20 minutes of waiting on the plane with scared kids and no seats.

I was mad. The flight attendant was rude, and clearly had no clue how to deal with what turned out to be a pretty common issue. There were five families on that flight alone who had been separated from their kids.

So  I blogged about it, like you do. Other parents started chiming in with their own horror stories, and within a day or so, US Airways had become avid readers of ChildWild.

They dispatched a very nice person from Customer Relations to talk to me. Cynthia explained that their policy is to let parents ask other passengers to swap seats. That usually works, she said.

Would US Airways really let a two-year-old fly by herself, sandwiched between two strangers on a long flight?

“It’s not a situation that would normally happen because nobody wants to sit next to that child,” Cynthia told me.

Wait a minute! People reserve a seat online, and think that is the seat they will have. But when they get on the plane, they’re confronted with a Bad Choice: give up their cushy aisle/window seat and cram their butt into a centre seat for the ride, or spend the next few hours babysitting a distraught toddler. Leaving aside the needs of the child or parent involved, that’s a crappy way to treat your other customers.

This is not just US Airways problem. The commenters on my original blog post made it clear this kind of thing happens on other airlines all the time. Seriously? You would let a two-year-old fly without a parent? Maybe they should be marketing this as a service to parents. Free babysitting for the duration of your flight with purchase of round-trip airfare. Only, no.

This is just not a banner week to be an airline. Southwest has been nicknamed Southworst after dubbing Kevin Smith too fat to fly. Spirit Airlines kicked a whole family off a plane because a dad insisted on getting a glass of water for his pregnant wife.

Next year, I think we’ll take the scenic route and go by train.

Have you ever been asked to sit apart from your young child on a plane? How did the airline handle it? Would you let your two-year-old fly alone?

Photo: Finding Josephine

The reason?  Flight attendants claimed that doling out water pre-takeoff was an airline no-no and they didn’t have company approval to make an exception.

Mitchell persisted in his quest and was booted off the plane along with his kids and the thirsty mummy-to-be.

Before I go any further, let me make this clear:  I feel for flight attendants.   The glamorous jet-setting profession of the past had evolved into a thankless job with  low pay long before 9/11.  So I feel for them…I really do.  But, come on.  Do you need company approval to exhibit common sense?  And how threatening can I guy pleading for bottled water really be?

Yes, it’s tough being a flight attendant.  But it ain’t easy for pregnant women aloft or parents travelling with small children.  Sometimes rules need to be broken, without corporate permission.

Image: lil’ sugar

Certainly, toy guns that look real should not be allowed, nor should guns that are obviously toys, but are still the approximate size and shape of the real thing, in my opinion.  But should a zero-tolerance policy include a two-inch hunk of plastic designed for use by a LEGO minifig?  According to an elementary school in Staten Island, New York, the answer is a resounding yes.  Nine-year-old Patrick Timoney was playing with his LEGO in the school cafeteria when he was suddenly hauled off to the principal’s office.  The reason?  One of his LEGO minifigs — the little people that inhabit the LEGO world — was a policeman with a rifle.

“You don’t traumatise a child who loved to go to school,” said Patrick’s mother Laura, “who wanted to be early every day to school, you don’t make him cry, you don’t make him fill out statements.  You don’t do it.”  It turns out that Patrick’s father is a retired police officer; he was understandably upset as well, having dealt with people who used toy guns when committing crimes.  This was not such a situation.  In the end, the toy was confiscated by the principal, Patrick and his folks met with her, and that was the end of that.

But is it really the end?  Will a child with a rolled-up poster be on the most-wanted list for carrying a replica of a bludgeon?  I still have a scar on my arm from when my sister stabbed me with a pencil; are those next on the list of proscribed items?  I’m certainly in favour of zero-tolerance towards weapons, even if they are toys, but there has to be some semblance of sanity applied or else we’ll end up clothing our kids in bubble wrap for the first 20 or 30 years of their life.

Photo: BrickArms.com

A U.S. teen did indeed fall down an uncovered manhole while texting. But she’s OK. So what’s the problem?

Her parents have said they’re going to sue! Because that will make their kid less of an idiot?

The Department of Environmental Protection in NYC has stated that workers were about to put cones out when Alexa Longueira came along, her eyes focused on the message she was sending instead of the sidewalk in front of her. Their backs momentarily turned to get the cones, the workers didn’t see her in time to warn her, and the girl fell four or five feet.

She had minor cuts and bruises, but her parents are still talking lawsuit. Who, exactly, are they going to sue? The city I would imagine for daring to have a manhole uncovered. If the DEP story doesn’t hold water and workers had just forgotten to put up some warning, the sad thing is, they might actually win.

But what purpose will it serve? Will their kid learn to watch where she’s going? Will she tear her eyes away from the stupid mobile? One of my colleagues once compared dodging the kids on phones and listening to headphones on a university campus to playing a game of Frogger. But where they can’t hear anything with something clamped over their ears, texting has proven equally if not MORE dangerous because kids are tuning out the world AND not looking around them.

But hey, at least they can earn Mum and Dad some fast cash for acting like a moron.

Image/Source: MSNBC

The principal goes on at some length rationalising the rule. Mostly he’s scared of traffic and stranger abductions.

‘If anything happened, it would weigh on me for the rest of my life,” he said.

It’s easy to fume about the stupidity of this rule—how the cars are what make traffic dangerous and so are the ones that are constrained, and how the whole “stranger danger” thing is overblown (not non-existent, overblown), and in any case, how getting people out of cars and onto bikes and their feet in greater numbers is a (partial) answer to both.

But I keep coming back to that quote of the principal’s and thinking about how it’s a symptom of something larger, not a freakish anomaly. Everywhere I turn, I seem to find choices that are bad in the long term being made—and even worse, being foisted upon others who would have chosen differently—in the name of avoiding ever feeling responsible for having taken a risk.

In this mindset, the ultimate goal is not actually the best outcome possible or even the most reduced risk—it is the absolute avoidance of those risks that can’t be passed off on someone else or accepted by society at large as “something that just happens.”

This mindset is at work every time anything fun and active and educational is canceled for “liability” reasons: swimming outside the ropes in a lake; playing on a school field after school is closed; doing real chemistry experiments. It’s the reason we can drive on the highway with an infant in a car seat (car accidents just happen, you know, like tornadoes), but not let a 10-year-old bike to school. That “if anything happened…” phrase comes up in arguments against home birth and co-sleeping all the time, with nary an indication that the possible negative effects of the opposite choices might weigh on anyone equally.

Does that principal stay up at night worrying about the children who are getting asthma from unnecessary exposure to school-bus exhaust? The ones getting what used to be called “adult-onset” diabetes as children because they sit on their rumps all day? The ones with a stunted sense of independence because they’ve never ever gone anywhere under their own steam? The one in 50 children who experience major depression? The ones injured by cars on their way to school (one of the most common ways for children to get hurt is dashing across the street after a parent drops them off at school)?

He should, because he has a policy that increases those dangers.

Would he be directly and solely responsible for each individual instance of those problems? Of course not. Just like he wouldn’t be directly responsible for the purported accidents or abductions he fears for students on bikes or feet.

Thing is, his job is not to make risk go away. It’s to make policies that generate the best results for his students over a wide range of scenarios, and leave things that are not his business to parents or the students themselves to weigh. (Though I cringe at the idea, he could even get them to sign a waiver if his faint heart can’t take it.)

I understand it. Risk is scary, and living with yourself when a risk went wrong is very hard. Many people make different choices about what risks are acceptable to them and which ones aren’t, which is fine—if they’re not making those choices for other people.

But trying to insulate ourselves and our children from all responsibility for judicious risk-taking makes our world more dangerous, less healthy, and significantly less free.

Photo CC richardmasoner.

Well, we now know that the U.S. Governer of South Carolina wasn’t hiking when he disappeared for a week. What we do know is that he has admitted going to Argentina to visit his mistress, a woman named Maria who is reportedly a member of the Argentinean government who lives in the apartment pictured above in a posh area of Buenos Aires known as Barrio Palermo. We also know that she’s separated and the mother of two children. Oh, and we also know that he loves the erotic curve of her hips, since the following emails between the two lovebirds have been leaked:

From Gov. Sanford,

Date: Thursday, July 10, 2008, 12:24 a.m.

One, tomorrow leave at 5 a.m. for New York and meetings. Will think about you on its streets and wish I was going to be there later in the month when you are there. Tomorrow night back to Philadelphia for the start of the National Governor’s Conference through the weekend. Back to Columbia for Tuesday and then on Wednesday, as I think I had told you, taking the family to China, Tibet, Nepal, India, Thailand and then back through Hong Kong on world wind tour. Few days home then to Bahamas for 5 days on a friend’s boat for the last break of the summer. The following weekend have been asked to spend it out in Aspen, Colorado with McCain – which has kicked up the whole VP talk all over again in the press back home …

Two, mutual feelings …. You have a particular grace and calm that I adore. You have a level of sophistication that so fitting with your beauty. I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificent gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curve of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of the night’s light – but hey, that would be going into sexual details …

Three and finally, while all the things above are all too true – at the same time we are in a hopelessly – or as you put it impossible – or how about combine and simply say hopelessly impossible situation of love. How in the world this lightening strike snuck up on us I am still not quite sure. As I have said to you before I certainly had a special feeling about you from the first time we met, but these feelings were contained and I genuinely enjoyed our special friendship and the comparing of all too many personal notes …

Lastly I also suspect I feel a little vulnerable because this is ground I have never certainly never covered before – so if you have pearls of wisdom on how we figure all this out please let me know… In the meantime please sleep soundly knowing that despite the best efforts of my head my heart cries out for you, your voice, your body, the touch of your lips, the touch of your finger tips and an even deeper connection to your soul.”

——————–

From Maria,

Wednesday, July 9, 2008 8:14 p.m.

As I told you I shouldn’t have done this trip but I would have felt worst if I wouldn’t have come because it was too over the date, he is a very nice guy, great heart … but unfortunately I am not in love with him … You are my love … something hard to believe even for myself as it’s also a kind of impossible love, not only because of distance but situation. Sometimes you don’t choose things, they just happen… I can’t redirect my feelings and I am very happy with mine towards you.

——————–

From Gov. Sanford,

Tuesday, July 8, 1:42 a.m.

Got back an hour ago to civilization and am now in Columbia after what was for me a glorious break from reality down at the farm. No phones ringing and tangible evidence of a day’s labors. Though I have started every day by 6 this morning woke at 4:30, I guess since my body knew it was the last day, and I went out and ran the excavator with lights until the sun came up. To me, and I suspect no one else on earth, there is something wonderful about listening to country music playing in the cab, air conditioner running, the hum of a huge diesel engine in the back ground, the tranquillity that comes with being in a virtual wilderness of trees and marsh, the day breaking and vibrant pink coming alive in the morning clouds – and getting to build something with each scoop of dirt.

——————–

Oh, something else we know: Mark Sanford left his wife and four sons over U.S Father’s Day weekend to go visit Maria, which might just give him a special place in the Bad Father’s Hall of Fame.

Source

The Senate in the U.S. state of Wisconsin has voted to lower the hunting age, the firearms hunting age, to 10. Yes, one decade old. As in, let’s give a ten-year-old a large lethal weapon and send him out into the woods.

I’ve gone through a bit of an evolution in my attitude towards hunting: I don’t do it and think it’s a pretty lame way to spend time, but I have friends who are hunters and understand the argument that if they didn’t hunt, deer would overbreed to the point of starvation. Also, I eat meat and certainly think killing an animal who’s lived its life out in the woods where it belongs is a whole lot more humane than cramming them into feedlots so I can have a cheap burger.

But the idea of saying, “Here, fifth grader, take this ginormous gun and shoot something with it” doesn’t seem all that smart. The bill requires only that a “mentor” be within “arm’s reach.” Which, if it’s a concerned father or uncle proudly passing on the family tradition of hunting to his child, okay…but I have heard enough deer camp stories to worry about that particular wording.

I understand that people who hunt love to do it and probably look forward to the day they can bring their kids out with them…but much like driving or drinking, I think this particular rite of passage can wait a little longer than a kid’s tenth birthday.

In the interest of fairness, here’s an opposing view.

The black panther lurking near a playground that set a father on edge, prompting him to make an anxious call to 911 turned out to be the work of a prankster. But cops didn’t know until AFTER they’d shot the big fluffy toy with a stun gun (give them all the benefit of the doubt – it was dark, and there were kids around, which makes parents and police alike more nervous about dangers).

The response cost the city around $US1,000, and they’re searching for the prankster to charge him for making a public nuisance (and hopefully recoup the money). The question I’m begging to ask?

Who buys their kid a life-like panther? We’re not talking your warm and fuzzy critter over here. Meat-eaters, they have been known to attack humans (although they try to avoid us), and with few predators they tend to reign supreme out in the wild. And, hello, they like to rip their prey limb from limb?

And this you want your kid cuddling with at night? Eeek!

Give me a nice stuffed puppy any day.

Image: NBC