GAINESVILLE, Fla. (CBS) ― A Gainesville mother has been arrested after her daughter missed too many days of school, reports CBS station WFOR-TV in Miami.

The unidentified woman was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor after her ninth-grade daughter had 59 unexcused absences. Alachua County’s school attendance review board then filed a petition.

Alachua County Sheriff’s spokesman Art Forgey says it’s the first case in a while where a parent has been charged. He said the board is also reviewing other cases that could bring charges.

Florida requires attendance after 15 unexcused absences. District officials must then follow a process to work with parents to get their children to attend school.

Charles Hall, the district’s director for dropout prevention, says prosecution is a last resort.

Florida law defines “habitual truant” as a student who has 15 or more unexcused absences within 90 calendar days with or without the knowledge or consent of the student’s parent or guardian and who is subject to compulsory school attendance.

Across the country, prosecutors have tried to fight truancy, threatening jail time and fines for parents of children who chronically skip school. The moves are the latest step in the nation’s march to hold students to higher educational standards and to hold their parents to higher standards of accountability.

Here’s a news story I pulled of the archives at The Onion News.

SCOTTSDALE, AZ—Citing “something vaguely effeminate” about his eight-month-old son Michael, first-time father Joe Oebrick, 32, reported Tuesday that he suspects the infant may be a homosexual.

“I love my son,” Oebrick said. “But, you understand, I’m worried, too.”

Among the many “small signs” that suggest that his son may be gay, Oebrick cited a home video in which the toddler crawls across the living-room carpet of the family’s suburban Scottsdale home, wiggling his hips from side to side.

“I don’t think it’s normal for a baby to move like that,” said Oebrick, wincing as the infant paused and flapped an arm in the air. “Don’t you think that’s a little strange?”

According to Oebrick, Michael has an excessive fondness for bright colors and “things that sparkle.”

“Sequins, glitter, feathers,” said the recent father, listing some of the things that Michael likes. “And he really likes flowers.”

…read the full article.

Our children’s days are crammed full with activities: ballet, judo, tennis, piano, sport, art projects. At home they are entertained by giant screens and computers. In between, they are strapped into cars and made to listen to educational tapes. Ambitious mothers force hours of homework on bewildered 10-year-olds, hanging the abstract fear of “future employers” over their heads.Then they buy them a Nintendo Wii, the absurd, costly gadget that’s supposed to bring some element of physicality to computer games. It’s only a matter of time before children have their own BlackBerrys.

I think of the New Yorker cartoon of two kids in a playground, each staring at a personal organiser and one saying: “I can fit you in for unscheduled play next Thursday at four.” All these activities impose a huge burden of cost and time on the already harried parent. They leave no room for simply mucking about. They have the other unwelcome side effect of making the children incapable of looking after themselves. When they are stimulated by outside agencies, whether that be course leader, computer or television, they lose the ability to create their own games. They forget how to play.

I recall when our eldest child, a victim of chronic over-stimulation by his anxious parents, screamed “I need some entertainment!” during a bored moment. A chilling comment, particularly from a five-year-old. What now? What next? These are the questions our hyper-stimulated kids will ask. What has happened to their own imagination?

There is a way out of this over-zealous parenting trap, a simple solution that will make your life easier and cheaper. It will make your kids’ lives more enjoyable and also will help to produce happy, self-sufficient children, who can create their own lives without depending on a Mummy substitute. I call it idle parenting and our mantra is: “Leave them alone.”

The welcome discovery that a lazy parent is a good parent took root when I read the following passage from a DH Lawrence essay, Education of the People, published in 1918: “How to begin to educate a child. First rule: leave him alone. Second rule: leave him alone. Third rule: leave him alone. That is the whole beginning.”

To the busy modern parent, this idea seems counter-intuitive. Aren’t we always told to do more, not less? All parents have a nagging sense that somehow we are doing it all wrong and that more work needs to be done. But the problem is that we put too much work into parenting, not too little. By interfering a lot, we are not letting children grow up and learn themselves. The child who has been overprotected will not know how to look after himself. We are too much in children’s faces. We need to retreat. Let them live.

You can read the full article here.

This week a 7 year old boy wreaked havoc in an Australian zoo, slipping past security sensors and killing 13 reptiles before feeding them to a crocodile.

The attack happened on Wednesday morning after the boy entered the zoo by jumping over the security fence and evading sensor alarms.

Over the next half hour, he bludgeoned some of the animals to death with stones and hurled others over the two fences surrounding the crocodile enclosure.

At one point, he tried scaling the outer enclosure himself to get to “Terry”, the 11ft (3.3m) saltwater crocodile.

A turtle, four Western blue-tongued lizards, two bearded dragons, two thorny devil lizards and the zoo’s 20-year-old goanna were among those killed.

Zoo director Rex Neindorf said many of the animals were rare or mature and would be difficult to replace.

You can read the full story here.

TARRYTOWN, NY—Although he’s had nearly three months to meet people, local baby Joshua Goldsworthy hasn’t made a single friend, according to those who know him.

People who have met the quiet, stay-at-home misfit say that, while he’s more interesting than he was two months ago, Joshua lacks the warmth, charisma, and empathy of a suitable companion.

“It’s not like I hate him—I just don’t get a lot out of knowing him,” said 32-year-old Gretchen Sperber, a longtime friend of the Goldsworthy family. “He’s hard to read. Sometimes he’ll stare at you for hours, other times he’ll fall asleep right in front of you, like you’re not even there.”

Visitors to the Goldsworthy home often report having negative first impressions of Joshua. Out-of-the-blue crying fits, the tendency to yank at loose hair and earrings, and copious drooling are just a few of the antisocial traits he displays. Neighbor Lena Osterberg said that, two weeks ago, she cut a visit to the Goldsworthy home short after the self-interested infant committed a “gross” indiscretion.

“I still can’t imagine why he didn’t excuse himself and crawl into another room,” Osterberg said. “The stench filled the living room, and he just sat there and grinned.”

…Keep reading the article.

The vast majority of children are not gifted. Only 2 to 5 percent of kids fit the bill, by various estimates. Of those, only one in 100 is considered highly gifted. Prodigies (those wunderkinds who read at 2 and go to college at 10) are rarer still — like one to two in a million. And despite the boom in infant-stimulation techniques, educational DVDs, learning toys, and enrichment classes, those numbers haven’t been increasing. You can’t build giftedness; it’s mostly built in.

The article goes on to state that children just need the basics. “In the first three years of life, all children need to feel a sense of security and attachment. Being held, being loved and having one’s basic needs met are all critical for future learning.” I think sitting in dad’s lap while he watches football qualifies.

The lesson to take away from this is not to feel guilty about your lazy parenting. Even if you were to spend crazy amounts of time doing ‘proper parenting’, it probably won’t affect your child’s development into a genius anyways. Look at some of our previous tips on ways to maximize your neglect!

—Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy