Thread: This burns my bacon! More nanny state bureaucratic nonesense.

Originally Posted by jdto

Quite simply, you can't. No matter how great parents are, your kids need interaction with other people. Teachers, coaches, grandparents, aunts and uncles, family friends, parent of the kids' friends, family doctor, etc. All of these people contribute to raising your child. It's a normal part of living in a society. It's not a problem at all. How could you raise your kids without these people? Keep them in your house 24/7?

Interaction is one thing...having others make your decisions for your kids is another. Yes, these people contribute but in the end it's your job as a parent to make the final decision and give guidance.

Originally Posted by jdto

There are kids with peanut allergies all over the place. If you run a school, is it safer to say: "it's a small percentage" or is it safer to say "no peanuts"? Strictly from a liability standpoint, I'd ban the hell out of any nuts in schools. I've seen someone almost die from getting the smallest taste of sesame. Wasn't her fault, but she still almost died in my car as I rushed her to hospital. Would you rather your kids see their little buddy die in front of them or forego a PB & J sandwich for school lunch?

The story in question in this case is a very cursory description of the situation. We don't know the details in full, the background or the story behind the story. There have been a whole raft of assumptions made and conclusions jumped to without basis. I suppose that is the nature of hyperbole, especially on the internet. Then GIFT takes over, salvos are fired and returned and we end up with 9 pages of mostly rhetoric based on a very shallow foundation.

Unfortunately, people have proven that we need these sorts of regulations. If everyone was a great parent and fed their kids well, then there would be no need. But when the parents fail, and believe me, they do, it is our responsibility as a society to ensure their kids are protected, as best we can. That is part of being in a human community. The collective representative of society is government, as elected by us. So, when there is a need for this sort of thing to be regulated, that's what they do.

That doesn't make what that woman in this particular case did right, but it also doesn't mean the spirit of the regulation is wrong. It also doesn't mean that the government can or should tell someone how to raise their children, in minute detail. As long as the kids are relatively healthy and not being abused, that's where their responsibility stops. I would probably be considered a left-wing or liberal in your eyes (ridiculous labels, as I am probably conservative on some matters and liberal on others, just like most people), but I don't think the government has any right beyond what I've just described, nor do I see them stepping beyond that in this case. An overzealous worker simply went a bit too far on one occasion. All that was needed was some communication between parents and school and this wouldn't be an issue, but instead someone took the drama queen route and here we are.

School is where your kids spend the majority of their time, so it behooves the parents to be in constant communication with the people who are helping raise their children. No one raises their kids in a vacuum. No couples raise their kids on their own. Communities raise kids.

I respect your opinion. I really do. But I have to disagree with this philosophy. I understand thing in Canada may work different and I appreciate that everyone loves their home country. Here in the US the GOV nor my community has ANY business in the raising of my child. That is the parents job period.

If someone is being a bad or abusive parent we have DCS or DFS departments in every community that can take that child out of that home. In serious cases that should be done for the childs safety. But what gets packed in a lunch, even if its may not the perfect balance at any given time, isn't bad parenting. it certainly isn't worthy of government intrusion into a parents decision of how to feed their kids.

My parents ate things as children that would make the FDA curl up and die of utter shock. My dad turns 70 this year and my mom is only a couple years behind him and they are in fine health for their age. My dad tells me stories of packing lard sandwiches in butcher paper and carrying it to school in a waterpail. There were times when he and his granddad that raised him shot robins out of the yard with slingshots and ate those to have a meal. My moms family was just as poor and ate what they could get nutritionally balance or not.

I think a lot of gov agencies make mountains out of molehills on a lot of these issues and push these agendas for a couple reasons. One it is a way for them to justify their mere existence. Secondly, I do beleive they use these little things to nibble away at our freedom so the gov controls every aspect of our lives. I really beleive many in the US gov view us citizens ad mere livestock to be managed.

Just as another 2 cents while I'm here I will point this out. Anytime, community decisions are made for the group the accepted mean eventually settles somewhere very near the lowest common denominator. I saw this back when I was teaching school and the push was on for EVERYONE to pass and no child was allowed to fail. Did the sludge rise up and improve to the level of the best students? NO! The entire system has gradually dumbed down to allow the lowest common denominator to squeak by. That is why I my kids when to private school even though I was a public school teacher. This phenomena tends to happen anytime the Community takes over control of the standards.

Everyone has their philosophy about whether community rights trump individual rights and I understand that. I strongly beleive you have a better and stronger society when you let the individual rule themselves in their private and family decisions. The excellent will excel the slackers will pick up their trash every wed morning. There is a valid place in society for both.

JMHO,

Ray

I also think the government should stay out of people's lives.

I see peanut allergies as a different issue though - in my time as a paramedic I saw some really sick kids that were accidentally exposed to peanuts or peanut oil. I don't think my kids' right to eat PB&J at school trumps another kid's right to not have an anaphylactic reaction. It doesn't take much exposure to cause a reaction, and where kids are concerned it's too easy for that exposure to occur.

I think I'm not expressing myself clearly. By no means am I saying that the ultimate decision-making on raising children should be done by anyone other than the parents. But I also think that you can't deny the importance of the community in their contribution to raising your children. Children receive guidance, discipline and many other important learnings from all these people, so they are definitely taking part in the raising of your children. That is why it is important that the parents, who have the final say and responsibility, maintain communication and interaction with these other important contributors to the formation of their children.

A child spends many hours with these people. A teacher teaches them many things, as do these other members of their community. All these things contribute to forming and shaping that child into an adult. The ultimate responsibility is on the parents, but the community network they use certainly helps.

The parents are the captain of the ship, but they have a crew.

And as to government involvement, it should be limited to protecting the kids from harm. There are people who are just not fit to be parents.

Originally Posted by HNSB

I also think the government should stay out of people's lives.

I see peanut allergies as a different issue though - in my time as a paramedic I saw some really sick kids that were accidentally exposed to peanuts or peanut oil. I don't think my kids' right to eat PB&J at school trumps another kid's right to not have an anaphylactic reaction. It doesn't take much exposure to cause a reaction, and where kids are concerned it's too easy for that exposure to occur.

Ya I agree that a safety issue is a safety issue. My wife is severely allergic to shellfish. The only time I get seafood is when we eat out an d then I have to brush and use mouthwash before I can even kiss her. (yes 20 years later I do still kiss my wife)

I don't want some kid to die from an allergy poisoning. But I beleive that can be handled at the local school board level or state level and doesn't need to be a federal mandate. There is no need for that kind of safety issue to rise to the level of the federal government.

As a parent, if I had a child with that kind of allergy I make an appointment, I go to the school board and explain to them the situation. Most folks serving on school boards are decent people and would take the necessary steps if they were not already in place at that school. That's how such things were handled when I was a kid and it worked.

Originally Posted by gugi

That's what happens when you mess with God's intelligently designed plan? Why are we now breeding children who can not handle peanut butter, milk, gluten, polio, smallpox, etc.?
I say when the Apocalypse finally comes it'll be well deserved!

it's the fault of all that modern medicine. I think we should take society back to the 18th century. All these weaklings are surviving and reproducing polluting the human race with substandard genes. It will be the end for all of us.

I seem to recall a fella who had an answer to this kind of thing but his name seems to escape me now.

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

...

I seem to recall a fella who had an answer to this kind of thing but his name seems to escape me now.

There were a few I think. Founder: Sir Francis Galton (also the coiner of the term "regression to the mean"). Early proponents: Charles Darwin's son, Leonard, Winston Churchill, Alexander Graham Bell, Theodore Roosevelt, George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes, Adolf Hilter....

We can all, even the best of us, be lead astray by "good" ideas.

James.

Originally Posted by Jimbo

Adolf Hilter....

I'm sure you meant Barack Hussain Obama

or is that so 2009/2010?

Originally Posted by Jimbo

There were a few I think. Founder: Sir Francis Galton (also the coiner of the term "regression to the mean"). Early proponents: Charles Darwin's son, Leonard, Winston Churchill, Alexander Graham Bell, Theodore Roosevelt, George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes, Adolf Hilter....

We can all, even the best of us, be lead astray by "good" ideas.

James.

And lest we forget, the founder of planned parenthood, Margaret Sanger the Goddess of all things bleeding heart and liberal.

Originally Posted by RayCover

The nanny state bureaucrats have way overstepped their bounds now. To tell a parent what they can and can't pack in their kids lunch goes way too far. I read this article and was just totally disgusted at the arrogance of these people.

To top it off the kid's turkey and cheese sandwich was taken and replaced by deep fried chicken parts nuggets in the name of better nutrition. What short bus did they pull this retard nutritionist off of anyway?

Preschooler's Homemade Lunch Replaced With Nuggets | Fox News

If you read between the lines here you can see one more place where the public education system is undermining the authority of parents in order to indoctrinate kids by making the kids think mom and dad don't know what they are doing. This kind of nonsense is exactly why my two went to private school in their elementary years.

I'll make a guess that this was done in response to something that happened before with school lunches. No one has the imagination to make a scenario up where a healthy turkey sandwich is substituted by less healthy chicken nuggets. Maybe some parents packed a "no no" like drugs or weapons or medicine or moldy food in a kid's lunch that led to a lawsuit or fear of a lawsuit. If it happens on school grounds, you're in trouble. Or perhaps some kids have nothing to eat, or perhaps kids steal food from others. Something bizarre happened to cause someone to do something bizarre like this.