This country has officially gone insane

[serai]

.

Parents deliberately exposing their children to chicken pox because they refuse to get them vaccinated.


Not only are these loons abusing their kids by exposing them to potentially deadly diseases, they're actually sending the viruses through the mail.

Read that again. SENDING THE VIRUSES THROUGH THE MAIL.

So not only are they trying to infect their children, they're also potentially exposing any postal workers who handle their diseased envelopes, as well as other letters and packages which could infect completely unrelated citizens.

This is a level of insanity that I never thought I'd see in the U.S. This used to be a country that prided itself on the basic education of its citizens. But with the erosion of public trust in science and the destruction of school curricula, we've gotten to the point where actual adults - people entrusted with the LIVES OF CHILDREN - think it's somehow a good idea to send DEADLY DISEASES THROUGH THE MAIL.

This is beyond headdesk crazy. This gets to the level of actually killing yourself through noggin-bashing. We've reached the stage of apocalypse, kids. Soon we'll be barricading ourselves in our houses to avoid the staggering hordes of drooling know-nothings.

I hope if any of you even HEARS of anyone you know getting up to this crazy shit, you will call the authorities IMMEDIATELY. This is utterly and completely illegal. A person will do serious jail time for this, as WELL THEY SHOULD.


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Comments

[samena.livejournal.com]

This is just... I'm baffled. Every loon can have a kid and do all sorts of crazy stuff to them these days. The other day I heard about some people raising their kid with Klingon as its first language. That's child abuse in my book. Completely insane is the right term. I really despair for the future sometimes.

[serai1.livejournal.com]

The other day I heard about some people raising their kid with Klingon as its first language.

That doesn't even come close to upsetting me as much as this does. How useful is it to raise your kid with, say, Hmong as its first language when you live in Idaho? Kids learn languages quickly, and that Klingon kid will pick up English as soon as he starts school. My nephew has become fluent after only a few months. Honestly, he'll probably be able to wear his fluency as a badge of Qa'plaa!

But this disease shit...utter insanity. This is up there with kids being the ONLY people that can be beaten and tortured with impunity in this country. It's insane what people think they can do to others so long as their victims haven't reached the age of maturity yet.

[honeyandvinegar.livejournal.com]

Kids learn languages quickly, and that Klingon kid will pick up English as soon as he starts school. But it's still a stunting of their language. It'd be one thing if it was a language like Spanish, German, etc.; they can communicate with many that way. Klingon? I'm sorry, I can't condone fandom-inspired parenting like that. The lone, sole, only reason those people are teaching the kid Klingon is because they're obsessed fans, and the skill--I'm sorry if this offends--is useless in the real world. As the parent of a child who is, right at this moment, reciting memorized lessons from Kindergarten ("I am six years old"--he's eight, "My mom works at Gigi's"--wrong even back then, "I go to school at Fort Meadow"--his pre-k school, and he's in third grade) and I may never have an actual conversation with, this kind of thing torks me off.

Sorry for soapboxing. :P

[serai1.livejournal.com]

But it's still a stunting of their language.

No, actually, it isn't. In fact, it's an asset, because that kid will actually be able to form more vocal sounds than he would if he'd learned only English. That's the reason kids learn language so quickly and easily and adults have such a devilish hard time of it - because their vocal cords, mouths and tongues are not yet physically set into a certain number of configurations. The more kinds of sounds they learn to make early, the better off they are. That kid will have a much easier time learning German, Spanish and Japanese (the bases for the Klingon sounds) than the vast majority of American kids who only know one language, English. And he'll start learning English as soon as he starts being around people who speak it. If anything, learning only English would be the thing that would stunt his language skills - as it does for millions of kids in this country.

I didn't know any English at all until I started pre-school. It took me very little time to start speaking it, and not much longer until I was fluent. This was true for my brother as well, who was only a year younger than me. (My sister, who was considerably younger, learned from us at home before starting school.) My nephew, who only knew a few words when he moved here, is now fluent after only a short time. None of us even has the slightest trace of an accent when we speak English, and our Spanish is better than a lot of the Spanish-speakers we know. Yes, Klingon isn't very usable as a language, but it will set him up for a greater phonetic range as well as instilling a consciousness that knowing more than one way to express himself is a good thing. He'll likely be much more willing to learn other tongues as a result of having a "private" language he uses at home. (Plus that - you have any idea how cool it is to be able to say things no one else understands? A secret code you can use without effort? Kids love that kind of shit.)

[honeyandvinegar.livejournal.com]

Don't get me wrong, I agree that Americans have done themselves a grand disservice in having pride in their monolingual-ness. I wish I'd have learned French as a toddler, as a giant chunk of my fam is French. I took it in high school, for 2 1/2 years; gave up when I just couldn't get a grasp on it, at least when it comes to conjugations. So on that point, I most definitely, heartily agree.

But my main point was, as I said, the only reason that kid is getting Klingon 101 is because the parents are obsessed fans. I highly doubt that they're doing it for the reasons you give; if they are, they WOULD have chosen to teach him a more useful language--maybe two--but whatever the case, like samena said, I think it's so totally wrong NOT because "it's not English, we're Americans, damn it!", but that the teaching Klingon is an indoctrination into a fandom the kid knows nothing about. What are they going to tell his school at the first meet-up they have with teachers and the like?

Teacher: *big smile* So, how are your child's speaking skills?
Mom: We speak Klingon in our house!
Teacher: ....

It isn't to say we all have to be automatons, blithely following standards of living in a world without riling it up or having fun, but come. on. When the kid enters the school halls, no one there is going to think, "My, that's so special and wonderful." One has to think of the teachers themselves, already having trouble teaching English-speaking students altogether, never mind a child scaring the other kids in class when he asks "Can I go to the bathroom?"

I suppose I have the same views on any parenting technique, my main one being that a child is his/her own person that should be taught the basics, given the tools in general then makes the choice to do otherwise when they have their own choices to make. This goes for anything: circumcision, religion and following a fandom. This kid is following a fandom before he even knows it exists, and if he gets teased/bullied/singled-out because their parents decided he'd be a fun experiment instead of a person to raise, that could prove to be a major, major mistake.

Then again, the kid might love it, be accepted and get through life just fine. But it's a gamble there, to me at least.

Ranty-rant, go me, lol.

[claudia603.livejournal.com]

Seriously????

Even though serai's original thing is way more distressful, this just. . . I've never heard of fandom being taken to such a level! That's just batshit.