These people essentially push their kids outside and then ignores them the rest of day (kids ages 3 to 12).

Sure outside is a good thing but I live in the city on a busy street. I've seen the 3 year old just roaming around the street screaming her lungs out and ignored by the parents.

They also come over to play with my next door neighbors kid (who are actually pretty well behaved). I wouldn't mind except these roaming kids just yell and scream. They use my porch like their personal playground. Yesterday I had to yell at one of them to stop climbing on the metal lattice pole that holds up my awnings.

That is super sad. The window of opportunity to raise them right closes so quickly. It's over before you know it.

And then you see it was the most precious time of your life.

apples very rarely fall far from the tree.

I just get paranoid because when those unruly kids are playing on the porch with the kids that live next door to me, well they have no sense of boundries. They assume that my porch is also part of the play area and they climb on the wall and play with the pole that holds up the awning. My worry is if these kids trip and fall it will be my home owners insurance paying the bill.

A double bind. Damned if you do. Damned if you don't.

You have to protect your interests without being that "Hey you kids get offa my porch, person.

But I have told my next door neighbor whose kids are pretty well behaved that when I do my "Hey you kids get offa my porch" routine it's more for the other unruly kids down the street.

I feel bad for my next door neighbor. Those unruly kids really are the only other kids around the age of her own kids that are on the block. She won't let her kids play at the other kid's house because she knows that the house is totally unsupervised and when we do see the parents they tend to be drunk and/or wasted. What's worrisome is there have been times that my nextdoor neighbors are all gone yet the unruly kids will STILL play on their porch. I have chased them off saying that they should only be on the porch when they are playing with the other kids who do live there.

It takes one family to ruin how it is for everyone else on the block.

They are either , silly, staged, or things that just happened.

Yep, I'm guilty of holding my kids by the ankles to retrieve something they've dropped.

And if you've ever had babes and toddlers who are the sort that run away, then you know they end up in all sorts of awkward positions. Our youngest, being the sort who ran away, wore a toddler leash for a few years when visiting places like Disneyland or the Grand Canyon.

One of my younger siblings escaped when he was a kid and got lost in the forest. He was picked up a few hours later by the sheriff. They found him standing by the side of the road holding his thumb out, trying to hitch a ride. He was four. Nothing bad happened to him, he was just checking out the world on his own. My parents probably wished they'd had him leashed.

I never had that kind of experience with my own kids, but I did lose one in a department store once. They locked the place down instantly. Kid was found on a shelf behind a big-screen television. Same kid I once found on top of our refrigerator.

The stripper/pole dancing stuff is a little odd, but I grew up in a house full of art, some of it nude, and if anyone didn't have a swimsuit it was no big deal -- just take off your clothes so they don't get wet.

My sister is tall, and injured her back when her younger child was 2. She could not carry nib and holding her hand made nib purely miserable -- zie had to st--rr--ee---tch to reach, so zir arm would go to sleep, and that's a tough position in which to walk.

With the leash, nib had so much more freedom to walk, run, skip, investigate things with both hands, hold zir own stuff. Nib loved it because zie always knew where Mom was.

I don't consider them problematic at all. They allow age appropriate autonomy.

My sister still got dirty looks, despite the fact that her kid was happy.


(And seriously, dance is dance. 200 years ago, ballet was scandalous and heavily sexual in context. Now it's high art.)

My second daughter was on my back nearly every waking moment when she was a baby. She loved it. Sometimes she fell asleep. I wasn't going to disturb her sleep by taking her out of the baby carrier (she would've totally woken up), nor was I going to stay standing up for 3 hours, so I would sit on a chair and surf the internet. I didn't lean back, though. I sat on the very edge of the chair and leaned forward. So I don't see #29 as being harmful, since it doesn't really look like the parent is sitting back on the baby.

Sometimes people have weird ideas of what is 'bad parenting'. My mom thought it was ridiculous that I kept my first daughter in a rear facing seat until she was nearly 2, because her legs were long and were bent against the back of the seat. Yet, studies show it's far safer, especially for smaller children (my daughter was in the 5th percentile so very small) and that the 'bent legs' don't hurt them nor do the legs get hurt in a crash. Still, even though I told my mom this, she was convinced it was 'bad' for my daughter because she must be uncomfortable. Well, better uncomfortable (which she wasn't, BTW) than a broken neck because her small stature couldn't support her head in a crash. Geez.

That said, some of those pictures - ugh. Poor kids. The one with guns.

Dead kids are unacceptable. Seems as if somebody's family is destroyed on a daily basis.

This is certainly more benign.

The bong and the 'costume' were double takes for me.

Most of us can say at least we weren't that bad!

And the obese girl in the stroller ... So sad.