DragonCon founder arrested at motel with 14yo boy, while awaiting child molestation trial

DragonCon founder Edward Kramer, who has long argued that he is too ill to stand trial for multiple counts of child molestation in Georgia, was caught staying in a motel room in Connecticut with a 14-year-old boy on Tuesday, according to authorities.

Kramer was under house arrest for several years awaiting the child molestation trial, but a judge lifted his travel ban in 2008.

Kramer, who has said he is no longer affiliated with DragonCon, was arrested in Milford, Conn., after police learned he was staying there with a teenager. That is a violation of the conditions of his bond.

Kramer was not accused of molesting the 14-year-old. Milford Police charged him with misdemeanor reckless endangerment of a child, according to his defense attorney Edwin Marger.

More: DragonCon founder Kramer arrested at motel with boy, DA says  | ajc.com.

(via FARK)

Update: Here's the official Dragon*Con statement. Must be a drag to have to issue these every time this guy makes a move, given that he hasn't been involved with Dragon*con for years.

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Teach your child self-discipline without tiger-parenting her to death

[Video Link] The gist of what Sam Wang says here is that the best way to teach young kids self-restraint is through elaborate play that requires a lot of steps, like having a tea party.

According to Princeton neuroscientist (and parent to a four-year-old) Sam Wang, Chua is definitely right about one thing: teaching your kids self-discipline is good parenting. He cites numerous longitudinal studies demonstrating that self-disciplined toddlers are more likely to grow into persistent, positive, healthy, and satisfied adults. Wang and co-author Sandra Aamodt explore this and other developmental issues with humor, scientific rigor, and reassuring pragmatism in their forthcoming book, Welcome to Your Child’s Brain.

Happily, it seems that we can have our cake and eat some of it, too. “An important point here,” says Wang, “is that willpower [i.e. self-discipline] training in children is most effective when the child is having fun.”  Intense stress is a poor learning tool at best, and potentially harmful to the developing brain, especially in sensitive children. Gently guided play, a powerful approach exemplified by the school program “Tools of the Mind”,  can incorporate self-discipline training into the imaginative play that children naturally engage in and enjoy.

Teach your child self-discipline without tiger-parenting her to death

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Catholic officials in Ireland object to child abuse disclosure law

Officials of the Catholic church in Ireland object to a new law that mandates the reporting of child abuse. From the BBC:

The Irish Children's Minister Frances Fitzgerald said that priests who are given admissions of child abuse during the sacrament of confession will not be exempt from new rules on mandatory reporting. During his homily to worshippers at Knock shrine in County Mayo, on Sunday, the archbishop of Armagh and primate of all Ireland said: "Freedom to participate in worship and to enjoy the long-established rites of the church is so fundamental that any intrusion upon it is a challenge to the very basis of a free society."

The discussion seems to center on future abuses revealed during confession, but I wonder if it's really about the ongoing use of the sacrament to hide internal discussions of undisclosed abuses from the possibility of legal scrutiny.

Child protection measures apply regardless of religious rules [BBC]

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Alaska: Mother convicted of child abuse after taping “hot sauce torture video” for Dr. Phil Show

A mother in Alaska has been convicted of abusing her adopted Russian son by "pouring hot sauce into the crying child's mouth and not allowing him to spit it out for more than a minute," then forcing him to stand in a cold shower.

She staged the incident as an audition tape for a segment of the Dr. Phil show titled "Mommy Confessions," and ordered her ten-year-old daughter to record the video on a Flip handheld digital video camcorder.

Her bid for TV fame was successful: "Days later, she was on her way to Los Angeles to be on the show," and the episode aired in November, 2010.

The child is now in therapy for a psychological disorder.

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