A few items recently caught my eye:
From the Associated Press:
- Human beings get the best sleep of their lives between the ages of 6 and 12, says one of Canada’s foremost experts on children’s sleeping disorders. It’s never the same after that. "In babies, toddlers and preschoolers, common sleep problems include difficulty separating and settling at night, frequent waking at night," said Shelly Weiss, a neurologist at the Hospital for Sick Children and author of "Better Sleep for your Baby & Child."
"Adolescents, they often have erratic sleep schedules, they’ve hit puberty and their bodies are going through many changes. One of these changes is the tendency to want to stay up later at night and wake up later in the morning."
But school-aged children are in their prime for "perfect sleep."
This sounds legit: My 7 year old sleeps like a log. But someone needs to study why I have to drag my 7 and 3 year old out of bed on school days, but on Saturday and Sunday they bound out of bed like caffinated chipmunks at 7 a.m.
- MCDONOUGH, Ga. — Rhiannon Barnes may be the luckiest 15-month-old ever. Or maybe her baby sitter is the fortunate one.
While playing with a thrift store book bought earlier in the day for 25 cents, Rhiannon uncovered $1,300 in cash stuck between the pages. Her baby sitter Sheila Laughridge said she only bought the book at Rhiannon’s insistence and was surprised when the toddler found a brown paper bag full of $100s, $50s, $20s and $10s.
Whenever I go to a thrift store, all I ever find is Montovanni records and Member’s Only jackets.
- A federal judge (recently) threw out a lawsuit filed by parents who wanted to keep their young children from learning about gay marriage in school.
U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf said federal courts have decided in other cases that parents’ rights to exercise their religious beliefs are not violated when their children are exposed to contrary ideas in school. Schools are "entitled to teach anything that is reasonably related to the goals of preparing students to become engaged and productive citizens," Wolf said in his ruling.
Tonia and David Parker of Lexington sued after their 5-year-old son brought home a book from kindergarten that depicted a gay family. Another Lexington couple joined the suit after a second-grade teacher read the class a fairy tale about two princes falling in love.
I posted an item about the Parkers two years ago. I supported their lawsuit not based on how they feel about gays, but on parental rights. Kindergarten and second grade is too early for teachers to make decisions about how sexuality and family structure is taught. The Parkers clearly belong at a parochial school, but parents must have a say when something as sensitive as homosexuality is taught at such a young age.