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Archive for the ‘Children’ Category

Beall’s Attempt to Support Child Abuse is Defanged

May 7th, 2009 3 comments

(Please see the comments to this article that indicate the California state legislative website contains misleading information that may have resulted in my wrongly concluding the Judiciary Committee voted on the pro-child-abuse version of this bill on April 28 rather than the significantly cleaned up version that is being listed with a revision date of May 5, 2009.)

This is an update to our previous article California Democrat Jim Beall Supports Child Abuse. When we started writing that article, AB 612 pro-child-abuse legislation. Despite minor changes, it was still pro-child-abuse when the Judiciary Committee voted to approve it on April 28. However, somebody in the California Assembly significantly watered it down on May 5 to a version that is no longer pro-child-abuse. These changes weren’t made until after the Judiciary Committee vote approving the bill.

You can find the the revision history of AB 612 complete with text and changes and votes at AB 612 Revision and Voting History.
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California Democrat Jim Beall Supports Child Abuse

May 7th, 2009 1 comment

(Click here for an update to this post.)

A California representative, Democrat Jim Beall, has reintroduced legislation as Assembly Bill 612 (AB 612) to ban the discussion of parental alienation in child custody evaluations. California judges, psychologists, and family law attorneys all oppose this legislation because they know that parental alienation is a real problem that is harming children in many families, especially in high-conflict divorces. So do the many California parents who have been alienated from their children. And so do the grown children who are victims of parental alienation and recognize it for the damage their alienating parent caused in their own lives.

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Child Custody Overview and Strategies

May 6th, 2009 No comments

If you’re about to embark in a child custody battle or in the middle of one, here is an overview of what’s involved and issues that you need to be aware of. These topics are addressed by Steve Carlson, The Custody Coach, in an e-book, How to Win Child Custody.

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Detecting Autism in Infancy, Starting Treatment Early

May 4th, 2009 1 comment

What is Autism?

Autism is a set of child developmental delays and disabilities. It includes impaired social interaction and communications, delayed and impaired verbal and language skills, and focus on repetitive activities. Autism is just one of several related disorders in the Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) classification. Asperger’s Syndrome is the second most common ASD illness after autism and generally differs from autism because language development is not affected as severely.

Early Detection of Autism Provides More Time for Intervention

Early detection of autism can provide parents, doctors, and therapists the time to intervene early in a child’s development, before autism becomes more severe. Although doctors recommend screening for autism starting at age 18 months, it is difficult to screen kids under the age of 2 (sometimes even older) because of typical developmental variations between children that are apparent in the verbal, language, emotional, and motor skills tests used to identify autism.
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Help Kids Avoid Type 2 Diabetes: Eat Less Sugar, More Fiber

May 2nd, 2009 2 comments

Researchers at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California (USC) conducted a 16-week study to see if slightly modifying the diets of Latino teenagers would affect type 2 diabetes risk factors. The findings were reported in the April 2009 issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

Latino Teens Have High Obesity and Diabetes Risks

The research participants were Latino teenagers because previous research showed almost 40 percent of Mexican American children ages 12 to 19 were found to be overweight or at risk of developing diabetes.

“Latino children are more insulin resistant and thus more likely to develop obesity-related chronic diseases than their white counterparts,” the authors write. “To date, only a few studies have examined the effects of a high-fiber, low-sugar diet on metabolic health in overweight youth, and to our knowledge, none have tested the effects of this type of intervention in a mixed-sex group of Latino youth.”

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Book Review: “The Five Love Languages of Children” by Gary Chapman, Ph.D & Ross Campbell, M.D.

May 1st, 2009 No comments

The Five Love Languages of Children truly is a great and important book for every parent to read. It explains the five different approaches of providing love to a child and teaches parents to recognize and speak their child’s love language. By speaking the right love language, Moms and Dads can avoid many parenting issues and pitfalls by effectively connecting with their children and redirect their efforts to building family relationships that are filled with mutual and genuine respect, affection and commitment. Parents who read the book will also learn much about themselves, understand what their own love language is, and thereby improve relationships with their spouse or partner and even their own parents.

Apart from the basic physical needs of food, shelter and clothing, every child needs unconditional love; love that accepts and affirms a child for simply being who they are, not for what they do. Without unconditional love, a child will wither emotionally and can become stunted for life by feelings of inadequacy, fear, anger and resentment.
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Book Review: “A Promise To Ourselves” by Alec Baldwin

April 28th, 2009 1 comment

Until you have personal experience of divorce and child custody litigation, it would be difficult to understand or appreciate what Alec Baldwin (with Mark Tabb) writes about in his book A Promise to Ourselves: A Journey Through Fatherhood and Divorce.

Many, I think, would consider his book as being some far-fetched Hollywood gossip and a way to gain more celebrity status, or even a way to defend his case and blame it on the ex. I suppose it’s hard not to be influenced by the roles actors play in movies and what you read in trashy magazines and newspapers. To me, Alec Baldwin certainly doesn’t have the “nice guy” reputation — if anything, it’s more like the “womanizer”. Then again, Kim Basinger is no angel, either.
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Former Chief Justice Supports Shared Parenting

April 25th, 2009 No comments

This video clip is from video testimony of Sandy Keith, former Chief Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court for 8 years in the 1990s. Judge Keith supports shared parenting. The video was prepared as a statement of support for Colorado legislation providing for a rebuttable presumption that custody of children should be shared between parents.


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Man Falsely Convicted of Child Sexual Abuse Awarded $2 Million from New York State

April 22nd, 2009 1 comment

Amine Baba-Ali was falsely convicted of child sexual abuse against his four year old daughter based upon false accusations from his ex-wife, lies from a doctor, and prosecution fraud by the New York City Queens District Attorney’s Office. Although his conviction was overturned in 1992 and he was released from prison, he continues to be persecuted due to the false conviction. The persecution has continued for two decades, despite the conviction being overturned. It has even extended to Mr. Baba-Ali being turned down for a job with the Census Bureau on account of the false conviction. The $2 million awarded to Mr. Babi-Ali in March 2009 by the New York State Court of Claims just barely begins to make up for what the government wrongfully did to ruin this man’s life and deprive his daughter of a father.

Vindicated, but Still Not Freed From Court’s Injustice
(excerpted from New York Times)

Amine Baba-Ali, a father wrongly convicted of raping and molesting his 4-year-old daughter, is the first person ever held by a state court to have satisfied every facet of the unjust-conviction law that he sued New York State under, according to the court’s decision. His lawyers proved that the Queens district attorney’s office fraudulently prosecuted him for a crime he did not commit. The court awarded him $2,093,428.

But Mr. Baba-Ali, 52, cannot shake the sense that this case will haunt him for a lifetime, not least because his daughter, now 26, was forever removed from him once he was convicted. He has not seen her for two decades, and has no idea where she is living.

“Though I am thankful, the fact of the matter is that I’ve lost my daughter,” Mr. Baba-Ali said in an telephone interview from his Manhattan apartment on Tuesday. “I’ve lost the most important part of my life.”

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Website: Friends of the Family

April 21st, 2009 1 comment

Bay City, Michigan is the home of website author Douglas Richardson. He’s chosen to focus his website on the incompetence, negligence, corruption, and fraud endemic to the child support system in Bay County, Michigan, in the 18th Judicial Circuit Courts. This system forces child support payments by men who are not the fathers of the children and denies them rights of visitation to their biological children as well.

Friends of the Family — Children Need Both Parents

Richardson’s website it particularly interesting in part because he posts a lot of scanned court and child support system documents to prove his points. From looking through the information he’s posted, it appears he makes a good case that the system in Michigan has abused him and his family.
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