In an extreme case of misplaced priorities, an Australian man has been fined for failing to safely secure a five-year-old child in his vehicle. It isn't that he didn't have seat belts in his car, it's just that there weren't any available after all the adults and a 30-can case of beer were buckled in.

Alice Springs constable Wayne Burnett was understandably "shocked and appalled" when he pulled over the unregistered vehicle and discovered the backseat full of safely secured adults and beer and a child perched on the hump of the back seat floor. "I haven't ever seen something like this before," he said. "This is the first time that the beer has taken priority over a child."

Oh, but it isn't. Earlier this year, a woman in Florida was arrested for essentially the same thing. She had a case of beer buckled in the front passenger seat and a sixteen-month-old child unrestrained the the back.

As bad as this is, I suppose it could have been worse. At least these children weren't made to ride in the trunk - where the beer should been in the first place. And what is with all this buckling up of beer? It has never occurred to me to strap in my purchases when driving home. Do normal people do this?

The term 'gateway drug' is used to describe certain lower classed drugs that some believe can lead users to harder, more dangerous drugs. Marijuana, alcohol and cigarettes are all considered by some to be gateway drugs. But lawmakers in Georgia believe there is such a thing as 'gateway candy' and have moved to ban the sale of such confections to minors.

The candies in question are marijuana flavored and lawmakers believe that selling them to underage kids promotes the use of drugs. But this week, Georgia governor Sonny Perdue signed into law a measure that makes it illegal for retailers to sell marijuana flavored candy and other products to anyone under the age of eighteen. The new law takes effect July 1 and anyone found guilty of breaking it will be fined $500.

These candies are sold under names like "Kronic Kandy" and "Pot Suckers" and are usually flavored with hemp essential oil, which is legal. This gives the taste of marijuana without the intoxicating effects.

I had no idea such a candy existed, but according to Senator Doug Stoner (is that his real name?!), that may be because of who I am and where I live. "I don't think that folks are aware this is going on," he says. "It's mainly, from what I can tell, particularly targeted to minority communities."

My first reaction to this story is one of total agreement. Why on earth should a child be eating candy that exists for the sole purpose of imitating the taste of an illegal drug? But then again, why should that candy even exist in the first place?

Last summer, sitting on a beach together, my closest college friend and I watched our four little ones splash in the water together. As we laughed together over old times, we wondered if our kids would ever be able to get anything past us. Looking at them then, building sand castles, all youth and innocence, it was hard to imagine them even trying.

But some day, they'll be tweens, then teens, then (gulp) college students and adults. And at some point, they're likely going to ask us some pretty difficult questions. They say that experience is the best teacher, but is sharing your own life experiences really the best way to teach your child a life lesson? Or does telling your kids that you [fill in your own inappropriate/dangerous/illegal behavior here] just give them license to try it themselves?

Among the experts, advice seems to be absent and what little there is is mixed. But the Washington Post has an excellent article exploring the topic and the pros and cons of sharing this kind of heavy information with your kid. What do you think?

As parents and teachers it is easy in this day and age to feel entirely compelled to answer every 'good' question a child asks. We are all the products of the information age swelling up around us. I can hardly remember turning to the row of leather bouned Encyclopedia Britanica's on my dad's office bookshelf for research projects. Did I ever really do that? Now Google is all I'll ever need. And because information is so readily available, and we're all pretend experts on any one of a dozen topics, when a kid asks a question--we try for an answer.

But there is something remarkable about letting the big questions that kids ask just sit for a little while, unanswered. Wonder fills kids with all kinds of brilliant ideas. Whey they look for their own answers, the world grows large with meaning before them.

Anyone who spends any amount of time around kids knows how frequently they ask questions. (Every ten seconds.) And their constant inquisitiveness sometimes becomes a burden or an annoyance as you feel compelled to find the answers. Why are the leaves green? Why do trees have leaves? Why are there trees? Because of this thing called cholorophyl...because they need them to grow... becausw we need air...because. It's not uncommon when answering the questions children ask to feel like you have slipped into the twilight zone of the metaphysical.

But occasionally instead of answering, ask back. Really. Ask a child to answer one of their own questions. I tried this recently with a group of six and seven year olds who are studying matter.

"What is matter? " They wanted to know, when I told them we;'d be studying it for the next several weeks.

"What do you think it is? I asked back.

One little girl replied, "Matter is maybe something invented by someone named Matt."

The next day we continued the conversation with the touching off point that matter is 'anything you can touch or feel.' With that definition, brought to the group by a classmember, the children were off.

"We can feel air, is air matter?"

"We can feel our hearts beating, are our hearts matter?"

"If it's anything we can touch or feel, it's EVERYTHING around us."

"If matter is everything, is God matter?"

"If matter is everything, is anything NOT matter?"

I don't even begin to answer their questions. Huge, brilliant, awe inspring questions, filled with the sweet wonder of small children.

Instead I grin widly and write them on chart paper for us to think about over our unit of study. Some questions we'll find answers to. Other's we might not. Answering the question isn't as important as asking it.

Earlier this week, Angie wrote about Japan's crying baby contest. Though that contest may not be something you'd see in America, it's obvious that it's a fun, loving tradition for the families involved and that the babies aren't harmed or traumatized by it.

Today, however, I came across the Indian baby dropping ritual, and I think it falls (no pun intended) in a completely different category. Muslims of Western India practice a 500-year-old ritual of dropping their babies off a 15 meter building, to be caught on a white sheet. They say that the tradition helps their babies to be strong and healthy.

Participants claim that no baby has ever been hurt during the ritual, which is surprising to me. I can't imagine being a mom and watching my child go through this, tradition or not.

In an ancient Muslim ritual that is still practiced today, babies are dropped 50 feet from a temple for good luck. Waiting below is a crowd of men holding a taut white sheet to break their fall and (hopefully) catch them after the first bounce.

Supporters maintain that in the 500-year history of this tradition, there have never been any deaths or injuries. However, from watching the video, one can't help but wonder about the physical or mental effects that may manifest later in development.

I am someone who is both afraid of heights and one of those moms that hates it when dad tosses baby up before a big hug; so I can't imagine how they found even one mother willing to offer up their baby for the 50 foot drop. The video is breathtaking and by the frightened look on the babies' faces, must surely feel like the longest 4 seconds in the life of both the baby and any onlooking mom.

In India, where this ritual can be found among Muslims and Hindus alike, there have been calls for the government to intervene to stop the practice. Is this religious expression that should be protected by the law? Is it better that it remains legal and thus a very public affair?

Perhaps more importantly, if banned, can it really be enforced? Bride burning is also illegal in India, yet claims the lives of thousands of abused women who die by "accident" or "suicide" every year.

There you are, at home in the beautiful Santa Cruz mountains, just South of San Francisco when your son, a straight-A student out for a hike in the woods, calls and tells you that he's broken his leg and isn't really sure where he is. Naturally, you'd call 9-1-1 immediately and get the search and rescue teams moving. Now imagine they find your son, only his leg is fine and the only tripping he's done involves magic mushrooms.

That's the situation Matthew Rosenberg's mother found herself in. When she got the call from her son, she immediately contacted emergency services, just as any of us would have done. The problem is, after spending between $5,000 and $10,000 to do the search, Matthew was found standing -- uninjured -- at the bottom of a ravine.

"He wasn't normal," said Capt. Bill Finch of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and part of the rescue effort. "He was like one of those guys who's been drinking a lot and starts saying, 'I love ya, man.'"

There was an episode of Leave it to Beaver where the Beaver decides to fake being sick so that he can get out of going to school. I remember the doctor (who still made house calls) telling Beaver that he shouldn't pretend to be sick because it means the doctor can's visit people who really are sick. That lesson has always stuck with me. Unfortunately, it seems Matthew missed that episode.

I don't know if it's fair to make Matthew or his parents reimburse the state for the cost of finding him, but it sure seems to me that he ought to think about doing it anyway.

Barbie, the iconic American fashion doll, is destroying the youth and the culture of Iran. So says Ghorban Ali Dori Najafabadi, anyway. Najafabadi is Iran's Prosecutor General and he wants restrictions on the importation of Western toys in order to preserve Iran's Islamic culture. Iran is, according to Najafabadi, the third biggest importer of toys in the world.

It's not just Barbie, of course; Batman, Spiderman, and Harry Potter are subjects of Najafabadi's ire as well. "The irregular importation of such toys, which unfortunately arrive through unofficial sources and smuggling, is destructive culturally and a social danger," he wrote in a letter to Iranian Vice President Parviz Davoudi.

Iran requires women to be very conservative in their dress and Barbie, of course, does not meet that expectation. There have been attempts to create alternatives that do conform to Islamic law, but they have not been successful. "We need to find substitutes to ward off this onslaught, which aims at children and young people whose personality is in the process of being formed," Mr Najafabadi said.

I'm not sure if it is possible to prevent the influx of Western culture or even if they should even try, but I suspect ultimately it will be the children that will decide what sort of toys they really want to play with.

A couple of years ago, a woman got a picture from her ultrasound and was very surprised to see the face of Jesus hovering over her baby. Now a woman in Ohio has apparently witnessed the second coming. Well, the second appearance of Jesus in an ultrasound, anyway. Instead of seeing her daughter in the ultrasound, Monet Sledge spotted what appeared to be the Jesus on the cross.

What Sledge is actually seeing in the picture is her daughter's outstretched leg bones with the still-developing knees forming Jesus' head. Still, Sledge sees the illusion as a good omen. "People say maybe my baby is gonna be blessed and maybe it is a good sign," said Sledge. "I don't know, I've done wrong in my life, maybe he's forgiven me early."

I dunno... I never saw anything in an ultrasound but bits and pieces of my various rugrats. Maybe I'm just not as blessed. Anyone else ever see something other than a baby in their ultrasound?

A few weeks ago, Christopher Ratte took his 7-year-old son Leo to see a ballgame in Detroit. Upon arriving at Comerica Park, they bought some refreshments - a beer for dad, a lemonade for Leo - and settled into their seats to watch the Tigers. But what should have been a fun day of father-son bonding turned into an unbelievable nightmare when a security guard spotted Leo and his lemonade. Turns out that what dad purchased wasn't regular lemonade, but hard lemonade. If you don't know about hard lemonade, you are not alone. Christopher Ratte had no idea that the beverage his son had been sipping on for nine innings contained 5% alcohol.

Ratte explained his mistake to the security guard who promptly confiscated the lemonade and called the cops. Leo was taken to a hospital where he was examined and found to have no alcohol in his blood.

"Obviously, I made a mistake in buying this lemonade, which I didn't realize was alcoholic," Ratte said. "I probably should have read the label carefully, so I'm not critical of the police who were concerned. I just thought they overreacted terribly."

Just how much did they overreact? Instead of releasing Leo to his parents, he was taken into custody by Wayne County Children's Protective Services and spent the weekend in foster care. When he was finally released to his mother, his father was ordered to move out of the house. Christopher Ratte spent spent two weeks in a hotel before the case was dropped and he was allowed back home with his family.

CPS may have dropped the case, but Christopher Ratte has not. He and his wife have filed a formal complaint with the CPS ombudsman's office claiming the treatment they received was excessive.

This story makes me angry, sad and a little scared for families living within the reach of Wayne County Child Protective Services.

Remember the case of the high school history teacher and part-time Baptist youth pastor who used his classtime to preach to his students? Remember the high schooler who taped him doing so and ended up getting a death threat for his trouble? Well, Matthew LaClair is in the news again, this time with an article in the Los Angeles Times.

After the run-in with his bible-thumping history teacher, Matthew began to notice that his American Government textbook wasn't being very non-partisan either. "The text contains a statement, repeated three times, that students may not pray in public schools." A picture of students praying outside a school bears the caption "The Supreme Court will not let this happen inside a public school."

This, of course, is patently untrue -- students are perfectly welcome to pray in school if they so desire. In fact, as the old joke goes, so long as there are tests, there will be school prayer. What is not allowed is school-led prayer where students are encouraged or required to pray. LaClair's interpretation is that "the purpose of the discussion in the textbook was to indoctrinate, not to educate."

LaClair's point is that textbooks should present facts, not opinions. Hopefully, schools are teaching students to think so that they can form their own conclusions based on the facts given them. After all, I would think we want future generations to think for themselves, not to blindly follow whatever spin is handed to them on the nightly news.

There is plenty of info out there about talking to your kids about drugs -- if you're completely opposed to recreational drug use. A lot of people, however, understand that marijuana is not the same as heroin or methamphetamines. In fact, one could easily argue that smoking pot is far less destructive and dangerous than either smoking tobacco cigarettes or drinking alcohol.

So what do you do if you, as a parent, have smoked marijuana in the past -- or even do so currently? Do you 'fess up and hope kids can understand that different drugs are, well different? Or do you fail to mention your use and just say no? Whichever way you go, traditional thinking would be that you portray your own drug use as a gross mistake and hope your children see the error of your ways.

That's not the only answer, however. What if people treated pot the way they do alcohol? What if parents explained that pot is for grown-ups only and that once they reach adulthood, they can decide whether or not to try it? Well, if that sounds like the healthy, logical way to go, there is help out there for you.

Just a Plant is a children's book that introduces children to marijuana. It tells the story of a young girl who stumbles upon her parents smoking a joint one evening after bedtime. The next day, the mother takes the daughter out for the day to teach her about the drug. They visit a farmer, doctor, and various other characters on their journey of discovery.

Now, before you worry that this is going to encourage children to rush right out and score some ganja, the book explicitly teaches that marijuana is for adults only, "Like driving a car or drinking a glass of wine. You can make a choice to try it or not when you are an adult."

Personally, I've never tried marijuana (or other recreational drugs) and have never had any interest in doing so, but I also don't think it's such a bad thing. I've certainly seen first hand that other, more acceptable drugs -- alcohol, especially -- are more destructive. If you are a parent who feels similarly, this book might be worth checking into.

The American Heart Association has issued a new recommendation that children get a complete heart exam before beginning a regimen of drugs such as Ritalin, Adderall, and Concerta. These medicines carry warnings about risks for those with heart defects or other cardiac issues, added after the FDA realized that there had been nineteen reports of sudden death.

The recommendation includes getting an EKG and exploring the child's family history. It's not meant to prevent kids from getting help for their ADHD, however. "We don't want to keep children who have this from being treated. We want to do it as safely as possible." noted Dr. Victoria Vetter who led the committee making the recommendation.

The advocacy group Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD) recommends that parents monitor their children when starting a new medicine and agree that EKG screenings "will bring an even further measure of safety to what is already a safe clinical treatment approach."

It seems to me that it certainly can't hurt to be a little extra careful -- or even a lot extra careful, where kids are concerned. I'd have to say that the heart association's recommendation is probably a good one.

The other day, I wrote about one parent's discussion about smoking with her son. Smoking's not an easy subject to broach, especially if you're a smoker yourself. There are other topics that are just as difficult, if not more so, than smoking, however, that parents need to discuss with their kids. Because you know that if you don't, someone else will -- like the kids on the playground.

You're not alone, though -- there is help out there. The Talking With Kids website offers advice on how to talk to your kids about several topics including sex, drugs, and violence. They have a printable brochure you can download and offer support for groups such as the PTA or church groups. The important point is that parents need to talk to their kids and they need start early and do it often.

If these subjects make you uncomfortable, the tips on this site may help you get past that discomfort. It's certainly worth a look.

When I was a teenager, tobacco companies used to hand out free sample packs of cigarettes on the sidewalk downtown. I took one once, snuck it home, and squirreled it away until I had a chance to try them. When the time came, I simply couldn't get the thing lit. So I gave up. That was my one and only personal experience with smoking and, now, I'm very glad it turned out the way it did.

I plan to do my best to make sure my kids don't smoke and I imagine most parents would just as soon not have their kids take it up. Aside from the whole dying-of-cancer thing, cigarettes cost a whole lot of money, they smell bad, and they can destroy electronic equipment.

Jacki Donaldson, over at That's Fit relates an interesting story of talking with her son about smoking. I admire her honesty in pointing out that smoking does not always lead to cancer and that one can get cancer without ever having smoked. Overall, rather than taking a cigarettes-are-a-tool-of-the-devil stance, she weaves it into an overall let's-try-to-be-healthy strategy for life. I like that.

She also links to some tips for talking to kids about smoking. These suggestions include the obvious -- be a good role model and don't smoke -- as well as the less obvious -- talking to kids about tobacco advertising. The latter is especially important as the tobacco companies spend an amazing amount of money on advertising and making their product look as appealing as possible

Feel free to share any advice you have for preventing kids from trying cigarettes in the comments.