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Smoking pot can cause a lot of trouble for parents
Caution to New York parents: being caught with a joint might not be a crime in New York these days, but it could still cost you custody of your kids.
The New York Times has a scary story out today about the pattern of neglect charges being brought against parents who are busted with small amounts of marijuana.
The story opens with the sad tale of Penelope Harris, a mom who temporarily lost custody of her son and niece after police found just 10 grams of marijuana in her apartment. That was a small enough amount that no charges were filed. But the state swooped in and took her kids anyway.
![millennials 300x199 The Entitlement of Millennials: Woman Says Shes Too Educated To Be Kicked Off Train For Loudtalking On Her Cell [Awesome Video]](http://cdn.babble.com/strollerderby/files/2011/06/millennials.jpg "millennials")
Are Millennials entitled or just self-assured?
If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s a loud talker. Particularly someone who is yelling into their cell phone as if we’re all super impressed by their fascinating conversation.
I notice this a lot among the very old and the younger crowd. This is the part where I age myself, because I wasn’t raised on cell phones. Millennials, however, have likely owned cells since they hit junior high. Some even younger.
I can excuse the old folks for loud talking because, well, God bless ‘em for even jumping on the cell phone bandwagon in the first place. If yelling helps them acclimate, so be it. And when’s the last time you heard an oldster OMG-ing and LIKE, NO WAY-ing into a cell? Continue reading »
![button commentbox The Entitlement of Millennials: Woman Says Shes Too Educated To Be Kicked Off Train For Loudtalking On Her Cell [Awesome Video]](http://cdn.babble.com/strollerderby/wp-content/plugins/babble-share/images/button-commentbox.jpg "The Entitlement of Millennials: Woman Says Shes Too Educated To Be Kicked Off Train For Loudtalking On Her Cell [Awesome Video]")
Is there any question more fraught than what age kids should start kindergarten? Yes, probably. But not this time of year. Parents of children born between June and January have to face it at least once in their lives — is this the year we send Junior off to kindergarten or should we red-shirt and pack him off when he’s older?
I never thought I’d get caught up in this discussion — my two daughters were born in the safe and unambiguous month of March — but then I had my son. Early December. What to do, what to do.
We live in California, which has some of the youngest kindergarteners in the nation, thanks to its age of entrance cut-off date of Dec. 2. Nearly one quarter of California kindergartners start school at 4. A bill in the Legislature could change the cut-off date to Sept. 1, and bring California in line with most of the rest of the country.
And make my decision for me. Continue reading »
Sometimes being a nanny is a sweet gig. I spent my summers during grad school hanging out on a posh resort island with a couple of adorable kids and their sweet mom, writing my thesis in the evenings and playing with the girls while Mama got in some tennis time with her sisters.
Sometimes, being a nanny isn’t so great. Employers have been known to seize immigrant nannies passports to prevent them from leaving, to require 24/7 on-call status, to pay as little as $2 an hour for what I can assure you is grueling work, and to provide living quarters most of us wouldn’t expect our pets to put up with.
And for the most part, they can get away with it. A proposed New York law would change that. Continue reading »
Good samaritans were in short supply last week when Nora Hsu, 32 weeks pregnant, stepped on a 1 train to Penn Station in the middle of an early spring heat wave.
So Hsu headed to the next car to look for a seat, but the minute she stepped between the cars, an officer removed the mother — rushing home to pick her 7-year-old up from school — from the train. “I told the cop, ‘Cut me some slack. I’m 32 weeks pregnant, and I’m just trying to get home,’ ” Hsu told New York Post. “I was out of breath.”
The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: you DO NOT talk about Fight Club!
Actually, the first rule of Fight Club should be that you don’t ask two fourth graders to fight each other for your own viewing pleasure. Especially if you’re their teacher.
Some high school students are clearly destined for greatness. You just know that they’ll end up making it big in Hollywood or that they’ll design wonderful buildings or that they’ll make some big scientific discovery. And some high school students don’t bother waiting for graduation; they get started right away. Such is the case with 17-year-old Brenda Tan and 18-year-old Matt Cost of New York. As part of a science project, the two students have uncovered what may turn out to be a new species of cockroach.
Joslyn Gray 
Amber Doty 
Julianna Miner 
Monica Bielanko 
Sierra Black 
Meredith Carroll 
Carolyn Castiglia 
Sunny Chanel 
Madeline Holler 
Wendy Michaels 
Rebecca Odes 
Danielle Smith 
Danielle Sullivan 
Katherine Stone 
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