Tag: PARENTING
T.I.’s daughter, Deyjah Harris, unfollows him after ‘hymen check’ outrage
T.I. has lost at least one Instagram follower in the wake of his “hymen check” kerfuffle: his daughter.
Deyjah Harris has unfollowed her dad on Instagram, reports E! News, following comments about annual gynecologist appointments to “check her hymen.” The so-called virginity test has been both debunked and denounced by medical professionals.
Harris, 18, has yet to publicly address the rapper’s shocking interview — although she did “like” several tweets which referred to T.I. as “possessive” and “controlling” after the “Ladies Like Us” podcast aired.
It’s unclear exactly when she unfollowed the 39-year-old rapper, but Harris is also no longer following T.I.’s wife, Tameka “Tiny” Cottle, or her stepsister Zonnique Pullins, as pointed out by Hollywood Unlocked.
During the podcast episode, which has since been deleted, the “Whatever You Like” rapper boasted that he knows his daughter is still a virgin because her hymen is still “intact.”
“We have yearly trips to the gynecologist to check her hymen,” he said. “As of her 18th birthday, her hymen is still intact.”
The backlash from both fans and celebrities was swift, with many calling the rapper out for the outdated practice, which the World Health Organization has called “a violation of the human rights of girls and women” and “has no scientific validity.” WHO also said the so-called “two-finger” test can be “detrimental to women’s and girls’ physical, psychological and social well-being.”
While T.I. has yet to address his comments, “Ladies Like Us” hosts Nazanin Mandi and Nadia Moham have since apologized for laughing at his “uncomfortable” remarks and removed the podcast episode.
via: https://nypost.com/2019/11/11/t-i-s-daughter-unfollows-him-after-hymen-check-outrage/
Photo Credit: nypost.com
Father charged after leaving son in hot SUV for nearly six hours
A 4-year-old Minnesota boy died after his father left him inside a hot SUV for nearly six hours while he worked, authorities said.
Kristopher Alexander Taylor, 26, of Apple Valley, was charged Monday with second-degree manslaughter in the death of his son, who was found “stiff” to the touch when Taylor returned to his SUV on Saturday after working at the Minnesota Monthly 8th Annual Grillfest at CHS Field in St. Paul, according to a criminal complaint obtained by the Star Tribune.
Taylor parked the vehicle in a spot “entirely exposed” to sunlight and told police he cracked just one of its windows roughly one-quarter to one-half inch for the boy. Taylor said he gave his son a handheld video game to pass the time and last checked on him at about 11:30 a.m. Saturday before returning nearly six hours later at 5:15 p.m., the complaint reads.
The boy — identified by a family friend as Riley Taylor — was left in Taylor’s care at about 2:30 a.m. Friday while his mother went to work. He was later pronounced dead at a hospital after Taylor returned to the SUV and found him unresponsive, the Star Tribune reports.
Temperatures during the nearly six-hour span ranged from 64 to 70 degrees, with partly cloudy to mostly cloudy skies, according to National Weather Service data. But reps from a national nonprofit advocacy group told the newspaper that children have died from heatstroke inside cars while temperatures dipped below 60 degrees outside.
“A vehicle acts like a greenhouse, heating up to deadly temperatures within minutes, even on a mild day,” KidsandCars.org told the Star Tribune in a statement. “Contrary to popular belief, cracking the windows does nothing to decrease the maximum temperature reached inside a vehicle. Additionally, a child’s body temperature rises 3 to 5 times faster than an adult’s.”
A preliminary ruling from the medical examiner reported that Riley died of hyperthermia. A total of 52 children died inside cars due to excessive heat last year, making 2018 the deadliest year on record for such deaths. On average, 38 children die in hot cars annually — or one every nine days, according to the group, which has tracked data for more than 20 years.
Taylor, who was arrested at the hospital, told police he couldn’t find anyone to watch his son while he worked and didn’t think it was too hot to leave his son behind, citing prior instances, KSTP reports.
“Taylor said he had done it once in the past about a year ago and nothing bad happened to the boy on that occasion, but he admitted he had left the window entirely down that time,” the complaint reads.
Jan Null, a meteorologist at San Jose State University, said Riley is the fifth person nationwide to die inside a hot car this year. The interior of a vehicle in direct sunlight could exceed temperatures of 130 degrees if the outside temp is roughly 71 degrees, Null told the station.
Taylor, who has been released from custody after posting $25,000 bail, is scheduled to return to court on Friday.
via: https://nypost.com/2019/05/07/father-charged-after-leaving-son-in-hot-suv-for-nearly-six-hours/
Photo Credit: Facebook; St. Paul Police Department
2-year-old almost died after popcorn infected his lung
Go ahead and splurge for the extra-large popcorn at your next family movie — but you might want to keep it away from the kids.
That’s what Nicole Johnson Goddard learned after letting her son Nash, 2, snack on the crunchy kernels during a Saturday night viewing of “Mrs. Doubtfire.” His older sisters — ages 7 and 9 — were eating it, and she couldn’t see the harm in letting him have some, too.
But as the flight attendant from Parker, Colo., wrote in a now viral post on Facebook, that decision had near-fatal consequences for her son, resulting in a four-day stay in the hospital.
“At first [Nash] choked on something,” Goddard, 39, tells The Post. “We heard him gasping for air so my husband picked him up to see if he could dislodge it.” Her husband put Nash down (and took away the snack), when the tot said he was fine.
That mid-February night, however, Nash developed “this really funky cough,” Goddard says, which turned into a 104-degree fever a few days later.
With a flu-like virus going around the house, Goddard says she took Nash to the pediatrician, even though she “had been in there with my girls on three separate occasions with them being sick.”
“I kind of felt like a hypochondriac,” she says.
It was her “mom instinct” that convinced her to bring him in anyway, and to mention the weekend’s choking incident to the doctor.
After X-rays and a visit to a pediatric pulmonologist, it was clear that Nash’s left lung was swollen and infected with pneumonia.
The culprit? Multiple microscopic pieces of popcorn that were still lodged in his respiratory tract.
“When he choked on it, he had a mouthful of popcorn that he had chewed up and he aspirated it,” Goddard says. It took two separate procedures, under general anesthesia, to “pick out the six pieces of popcorn: kernels, shells and everything else,” she says.
Now, with Nash healthy and out of the hospital, Goddard wants other parents to know the risks of letting their toddlers eat the movie-theater favorite. (As she learned, the American Academy of Pediatrics classifies popcorn, along with grapes and hot dogs, as a “high-risk food” for toddlers.)
“Honestly, I’m not a big Facebook sharer,” she says of writing up her story, which has been shared over 130,000 times, “but I thought, I might as well post it, because it’s alarming and I would have liked someone to do the same. Maybe it would have prevented this whole thing in the first place.”
via: https://nypost.com/2019/03/06/my-2-year-old-almost-died-after-popcorn-infected-his-lung/
Five-year-olds are now contouring like Kim Kardashian
Kim Kardashian is so used to being criticized for letting her 5-year-old daughter North wear makeup that when she posted a video on Instagram of the little girl wearing red lipstick last month, she preempted the backlash.
“Relax Mom Shamers it’s coming off in a few mins,” the makeup mogul captioned the clip, helpfully identifying the shade as No. 6 in her new Classic Blossom collection. “I needed a bribe to get [her] out of the door . . . you feel me?!?!?!”
Kardashian was called a “horrible mother” for allowing North to walk in a runway show in LA wearing a crop top, sunglasses and lipstick, and her parenting skills were once more called into question when North rocked a bright orange eye look (artfully drawn by one of Kardashian’s makeup pros) to go see her dad, Kanye West, perform on “Saturday Night Live.”
But while the spotlight is shining on North’s famous face, like it or not, little girls across America are troweling on the eye shadow and blush and pouting for the cameras. Aged just 5 to 12, these mini divas are social-media savvy, hip to the latest techniques, obsessed with the coolest cosmetic brands and fans of beauty influencers. With professional makeup brushes clutched in their tiny hands, these darlings are copying sophisticated online makeup looks with grown-up powders and potions at home. And they’re even making money doing it.
Take 7-year-old Molly, who carefully contours her forehead, cheeks and button nose with two shades of concealer and a drop of oil, then blends a shimmery eye statement. She stands to earn $12,000 this year from her makeup tutorials on YouTube (Courtney McCutcheon) and Instagram (@lipgloss_and_crayons).
“My favorite products are lipstick and glittery eye shadow,” Molly tells The Post. “And I really like blush because it makes my cheeks stand out.”
Then there’s Zara (who goes by Yoshidoll online), a second-grader who is sometimes recognized on the street, even outside of her hometown of Atlanta. She has 208,000 Instagram followers (@yoshidoll) and over 132,000 subscribers on her eponymous YouTube channel.
“My daughter has her own Caboodle full of stuff she gets to wear at the house,” says her mom Ellarie Noel, a beauty influencer. She says she restricts her daughter’s cosmetic use to home and doesn’t let her wield a mascara wand herself.
Zara makes sponsored videos featuring hair-care products — and can easily pocket $20,000 a year from those deals, according to her mother — but her most popular videos involve makeup. “Transforming Into My Mom!” which shows Noel tracing winged eyeliner and slicking red lip lacquer on her baby-double has racked up more than 3.4 million views on YouTube.
“I look like Beyoncé!” announces Zara after the ruby gloss is on. “Girl, don’t push it,” responds her mom.While tweens and teens have always played with makeup, experts say that iGen is particularly informed and sophisticated. “With the proliferation of technology, smartphones and access to information at ever-younger ages, you have an incredibly knowledgeable and discerning consumer,” says Natasha Cornstein, CEO of Blushington, a chain of beauty lounges with seven locations across the country. She estimates that 20 percent of her clientele falls in the 12-to-18 age group, with a notable number of under-12 customers.
Cornstein reports that girls as young as 6 years old have birthday parties at Blushington and $150 “Makeup 101” classes are particularly popular with budding face-painters. “Color matching is a top request,” she says, referring to the process of picking complexion-flattering shades.
Several of 11-year-old Pippa Locke’s Manhattan middle-school friends already know their foundation shades and worship teenage beauty influencer James Charles, CoverGirl’s first male spokesmodel and a proponent of full-on red-carpet glam. The classmates enjoy hanging out in small groups, experimenting with colors and looks. “They like the selfie aspects of it and the how-tos,” says Jenny B. Fine, Pippa’s mother and WWD’s executive beauty editor. “Overall, it’s a positive form of self-expression.”
Not everyone agrees.
Molly’s mother, store manager Courtney McCutcheon, has been viciously slammed online. “It was awful, people were calling me a child abuser,” says the Missouri-based amateur makeup artist. “They were saying it’s going to ruin her skin and she’s going to have acne. People were telling me I should be arrested or I’m going to go to hell, or that she should play with Barbie dolls or she should be outside.”
McCutcheon dismisses these charges, saying Molly and her 5-year-old sister June lead perfectly normal, age-appropriate lives and only occasionally are permitted to wear a little glitter and gloss outside of their home. “Molly begs me to do videos and likes creating content. It’s innocent and she’s having fun.”
McCutcheon also notes that her daughter is earning good money and learning about work. “She can make off one video what her dad or I can make in one week.”
But experts warn that modeling adult behavior can come at a price. “The risk is that little girls focus on appearance, buying the right things and looking the right way, instead of developing a broader range of interests and skills,” says Diane E. Levin, professor of applied human development at Boston University’s Wheelock College and author of “So Sexy So Soon.” “Developmentally, they’re objectifying themselves.”
Posting such content online amplifies her concerns: “One of the dangers is interacting on the internet with trolls and escalating problematic sexualized behaviors,” Levin says.
Other critics worry that girls are being exposed to toxic chemicals, such as phthalates and parabens. Danielle Maguire, a mother of three in Haddonfield, NJ, and a Rodan + Fields consultant, solved that potential problem last Christmas by investing $100 in organic makeup from Anthropologie for daughters Estella, 12, and Wynnie, 10.
“I want to teach them early that they need to be aware of what they’re putting on their skin,” she says.
Eftiola Fundo’s niece Jenny Ana Sofia may be the most precocious primper of all. When the tot was 1, she picked up a makeup brush and started waving it around in front of her face.
Last year, Fundo, a South Florida-based dental hygienist posted an Instagram beauty tutorial (@facebyeftii) with the then-3-year-old moppet that went viral. “It was so much fun for the both of us,” says Fundo. “She loves it. She’s like, ‘Can I watch it again?’ ”
The proud aunt didn’t bother responding to the inevitable flurry of fault-finders.
“If you don’t have trolls,” says Fundo, “there’s something wrong.”
via: https://nypost.com/2018/10/12/little-kids-are-wearing-grown-up-makeup-is-it-ok/
photo credit: Ellarie Noel
Dad arrested for driving teen couple to park to ‘do their thang’
A Florida man faces charges after he allegedly drove his 15-year-old son to a park with his teen girlfriend so they could have sex — or, in the dad’s words, “do their thang,” according to police.
Laurence Mitchell, 53, was arrested earlier this month after an officer spotted him after-hours in his car at McChesney Park in Port St. Lucie, according to The Smoking Gun.
The dad reportedly told the officer that his son requested he take him and his girlfriend to the local park “so they can do what kids do.”
“Well, they aren’t out there stealing, they are just having sex,” Mitchell allegedly said to the cop, adding that “they could be out there doing worse.”
Mitchell, however, allegedly admitted that he didn’t know if the girl’s parents consented to her being out.
The police officer then interviewed the teen couple after they returned from the soccer field, the TCPalm reported.
Mitchell’s son reportedly told the officer that he and his girlfriend were “just smokin’ and f–kin’.”
Police arrested the dad and booked him at St. Lucie County Jail on a charge of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He was released on $750 bond and scheduled to appear Sept. 25 in court.
via: https://nypost.com/2018/09/18/dad-arrested-for-driving-teen-couple-to-park-to-do-their-thang-cops/
Drunk dad passes out on lawn while tot drowns blocks away
A Pennsylvania dad faces charges after his toddler son drowned while the man was allegedly passed out drunk on his lawn.
David Gammon, 35, was charged Tuesday with involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment in the death of 2-year-old Anakin Gammon, news station WFMJ reported.
Gammon told police that he had been “sipping” on a Four Loko when he took the tot and his 5-year-old brother outside in September.
A neighbor found Gammon asleep on the lawn after another one of his children came over saying that he couldn’t wake his dad or find the siblings.
he neighbor told police that Gammon reeked of alcohol and had difficulty understanding that his sons had disappeared, news station WKBN reported.
The two boys were reported missing and police found the 5-year-old, who has special needs, a few blocks from Gammon’s home.
But Anakin was discovered unresponsive in a backyard swimming pool about nine blocks away in Masury, Ohio.
Emergency responders attempted to revive the 2-year-old, but he was pronounced dead at the hospital.
The boy’s death was ruled a drowning.
Authorities filed charges against Gammon after investigating the death.
“There is probable cause that David Gammon was reckless in consuming enough alcohol, while caring for his children, that he lost consciousness allowing them to wander from the property” police said in the complaint.
via: http://nypost.com/2017/11/07/drunk-dad-passes-out-on-lawn-while-tot-drowns-blocks-away-cops/