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While some commentators are arguing that women have no place in the army whatsoever, others are arguing that no soldier deserves special treatment and that women who “shirk their responsibilities make things harder for those who are trying to receive equal treatment.”

This video, which synthesizes coverage of the Alexis Hutchinson story, could help ground the debate and raises some new questions.

A blogger at Momania raises the interesting question of whether military mothers with young children should ever be deployed overseas. She writes, “I personally don’t think mothers with small children should be separated at all from their babies and should be allowed to serve domestically.”

Not coming from a military background myself, I can’t evaluate how feasible this suggestion is, but I agree that this option should at least be considered. However, I would expand “mothers” to include any primary caregiver.

What do you think? Are separations from young children an inescapable part of military life, which all soldiers must accept when they enlist? Or should the military put safeguards in place to avoid these separations?

Photo: mccslejeune.com

The End of Oprah (aside: Will Sarah Palin take her place?)

Baby Chub Airbrushed Away in Some Mags

Soldier Chooses Her Son Over Her Service

Meep Banned at High School

Sebelius Says 40-plus Women Should Get Mammograms

Dad Only Speaks Klingon to Kid For 3 Years

Woman Labors in Hospital Bathroom After Doctors Send Her Home

Dads detained, banned from Wal-Mart for Shopping While Gay

Kansas Teacher Fired Over Florida Joke

Tiny Titans, Mickey Mouse and More - Kids Comics This Week

And a couple from last week:

Hospital Rejects Birth Plans

What the House Health Reform Bill Means For You

Bad Parent Essays We’d Like To See

Halloween Cost Brad Pitt Millions

Heidi Klum Says She’s Still Needs to Lose 20 Pounds…Yeah Right (PHOTOS)

Stinky Diaper Awards Go To Octomom, Bristol Palin and Debbie Rowe

Ryan O’Neal Reacts To Farrah’s Will

Pregnant Reality TV Star Found Shot and Burned In Oklahoma City

Marge Simpson Posing Again - From Centerfold to Calendar

Sunday Cute Shot - Seriously Seraphina

Jon Gosselin’s Staff Has Turned Against Him

Naomi Watts And Liev Schreiber On A Rainy Day (PHOTOS)

Britney Hopes Satan Will Make Her Boys Princes Of The New World Order

Going Rogue with Sarah Palin - Is Trig Too Young To Do Book Tours?

Hulk Hogan Gets Beat Up During Press Conference (PHOTOS)

Jenna Jameson on Oprah Tomorrow

Richie and Ava go New Moon

Sweet! Jolie in Salt!

But what is really going on with a child who repeatedly asks “why?”  If you think they are doing it for the obvious reason - that they really want to know why - congratulations!  You figured out something all by yourself that it took an assistant professor of psychology two whole studies to determine.  

According to Brandy Frazier and her colleagues at the University of Michigan, kids ask “why” and “how” because they are looking for explanations.  To reach this conclusion, they conducted two separate studies.  The first looked at transcripts of conversations between six children ages 2 to 4 and their parents, siblings and other people in their homes. The second looked at the conversations between 42 preschoolers who were prompted to ask questions by being shown toys, books and videos in a laboratory setting.

By examining transcripts of the conversations, the researchers determined that the children were more satisfied when they received explanatory answers to their questions.  When given such an answer, the children tended to agree or ask a follow-up question.  Those who were given answers that weren’t explanations were dissatisfied and either repeated the question or asked it in a different way.

What this means, of course, is that all those “why’s” are actually contributing to the process of your child learning about the world in which he lives.  If they also contribute to your daily headache, at least you now have scientific proof that it is not a deliberate plot to drive you crazy.

Photo: jessicafm/Flickr

As part of its 40th birthday celebration, Sesame Street has just launched its first iPhone app. Grover’s Number Special was developed by Sesame Workshop and IDEO Toy Lab. It features some original video footage of the friendly monster, as well as an easy tilt-based game for little people.

It’s a simple game based on Grover’s old “confused waiter” sketch. Grover takes the order and heads for the kitchen on the next screen, where your preschooler can tilt the device this way and that to catch ingredients that mysteriously fall from the sky.

When your tray is full, you see all your ingredients disappear under a serving dish. The lid is lifted and *viola* they’ve become a meal as if by magic!

The game keeps track of how many of each ingredient you collect, but doesn’t seem to reward you for getting higher numbers. Which I love as a mom, but think would bore me quickly as a player.

Everything about the game would bore me quickly as a player, to be honest. Of course, I’m not the app’s target audience.

I ran it by a roomful of, um, “expert playtesters”: a two-year-old, her five-year-old sister, and two three-year-old friends. The kids figured out how to play much faster than I did. They huddled around the device, coaching each other  and wrestling for a turn to hold it. They all seemed to love it, but only the two-year-old was willing to kill for it. What’s the life of a sibling next to a hot app?

Even the smallest of the crowd (that homicidal toddler) was able to intuit the game mechanics and play along. She didn’t mind at all that she wasn’t very good at it, and the older kids quickly became experts at catching soup ingredients and pieces of flying toast.

All of them had a blast trying to guess what tasty meals the ingredients they were catching would add up to. Saying the names of each food aloud as it began to fall from the ceiling also seemed to be a big hit.

After they’d played, I interviewed the sage elder among my focus group. At five, she knows from good video games. Plus, she can talk in full sentences. Here’s what she had to say:

Me: Did you like the Sesame Street game?

Kid: Yes!

Me: What did you like about it?

Kid: You tip the phone and make food. I just liked it.

Me: Would you recommend it to other kids?

Kid: NO! I would not reco…um…rec…um…no.

Me: Why not?

Kid: Because they would not share.

So, there you have it, straight from a real kid: rush out and buy this game. But only for my five-year-old. Because those other kids have a sharing problem.

Photo: screenshot taken from app by Sesame Workshop

Two-year-old Jeremiah Favazza literally helped mom Bobbye push brother Kamron into the world.

According to WBLT, Favazza had C-sections with her first three children, including Jeremiah, and she’d schedule a Cesarean for Kamron. But the baby boy had other ideas. He decided to come two weeks early, when she was home alone with Jeremiah on the couch.

The two-year-old told his mom she needed a towel, ran to get it, then stayed by her side while she pushed. His grandmother remained on the phone during the process, although someone called 911. Paramedics arrived just in time to cut the cord.

That’s one way to experience your first VBAC and home birth all in one.

Another surprise? Kamron was supposed to be a girl.

Image: fabrisalvetti via flickr

More by this author:

• Overweight Parents Lose Kids For Being Fat

• City Makes Kids Tear Down Treehouse

• Baby Wiimote the New Shaken Baby Toy?

This sweet little video probably would have been lost in virtual oblivion had it gone as planned.  Only it doesn’t.

No one said getting famous was easy, but one easy way to boost your Internet star power is to fail painfully.  Poor Channing.  What do you want to bet her older brother is the one responsible for posting this?

Then they untied the family’s teenage son so he could feed the baby.

The two men strong-armed their way into the Indianapolis home with a shotgun in the middle of the day, immediately tying up the two adults and teenage boy. One man in the house was pistol-whipped and knocked out cold. But when the infant started crying, WishTV reports dad Ronnell Griffie pleaded with the robbers to feed her child.

So they popped a bottle in the microwave and let Griffie’s eldest do the deed.

Then they left - and Griffie,  his two sons and friend Morgan Adams are no worse for the wear. But they’re completely confused.

Wish reporters are calling it surprising tenderness. Call me a cynic, but maybe they were just worried someone would call the cops if the baby was left to scream for hours?

Image: lunchbox photography via flickr

More by this author:

• Mom Allows Cops to Use Taser on 10-Year-Old

• Cops Jail Kid for Possession of Stolen Chocolate

• Mom Plans Live Birth on the Internet

At least, that’s the position of Cracked writer Cezary Jan Strusiewicz. And before you dismiss Ceazry’s work as some comedian’s hack job, notice he backed every assertion with actuall scientific research. So sit back and discover why praising your kids, teaching them to be themselves and warning them about strangers is only preparing your kids for a life as an anti-social super villain.

Staring their Education Early

According to Cezary:

“We hope you didn’t have any plans to remodel your basement, because your kid will be living there for a very long time. A study by the National Foundation for Educational Research in the UK has concluded that children who start schooling before the age of six are more likely to drop out from higher education facilities, smoke weed and play guitar badly.

Researchers say sending kids to school before they’ve developed even the basic little-kid skills of a six-year-old can cause them to suffer from anxiety attacks and develop low self-esteem issues, giving them a bad attitude about the whole “going to school” thing that follows them throughout their education.”

Teaching Them to Avoid Peer Pressure

According to Cezary:

“Remember that smelly kid in school, who never washed his hair, had no friends and once pissed in the sink at that party he wasn’t invited to? That’s your kid, without peer pressure. A study conducted at the University of Virginia showed that kids who were exposed to peer pressure around the ages of 12 and 13 turned out to be way more well-adjusted than the ones who weren’t. They better understood the need to accommodate and make compromises when confronted with social pressure, rather than the “I’ll just take my ball and go home” attitude they adopt otherwise.

The kids who were taught to be themselves no matter what didn’t become walking clones of James Dean. They actually turned out less engaged, socially challenged and statistically less intelligent, their GPAs dropping almost an entire letter grade.”

Warning Them About Strangers

According to Cezary:

“As it turns out, an overblown emphasis on “Stranger Danger” can apparently transform your children into xenophobic bigots, at least that’s what professor Sue Scott from the University of Durham is saying. According to Scott, children should certainly be taught to be cautious of strangers, but what most parents are teaching their kids today causes children worldwide to freak out at the mere sight of anything out of the ordinary.”

Check out the rest of the article here.

Links:

2-Year-Old Can’t Cry, It Would Kill Her

Who’s Smarter: Kids or Dogs?