Latest news with #FairyTales
IOL News
16-07-2025
- IOL News
An Epidemic of Mal-Parenting
The alarming rise in juvenile delinquency highlights a pressing issue: mal-parenting. This article explores the tragic case of Ethan Crumbly and argues that effective parenting is crucial in preventing crime among youth. Image: IOL The nation is afflicted with an epidemic of mal-parenting. How do we know? The persistence of shocking levels of juvenile delinquency and crime. The poster child case is Ethan Crumbly guilty of murdering four students at Oxford High School in southeastern Michigan in 2021 and sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. You do not need to be a criminologist to understand the nexus between parental mal-parenting and crime. It is as obvious as the force of gravity. If there is a father in the household to impart discipline and provide a role model of righteous behavior and a mother to provide tender loving care in times of child adversity, the probability of juvenile waywardness approaches zero. The greatest influence on children are parents. Second is not even within shouting distance. Parents should spend hours daily with their children reading and discussing books that impart moral lessons like parables. Here is a partial list: Aesop's Fables; Grimm's Fairy Tales; Edith Hamilton's Greek Mythology; Charles and Mary Lamb's A Child's Version of Shakespeare; Louisa May Alcott's Little Men and Little Women; Hariet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin; Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. If you don't want to make the effort and sacrifice, then don't be a parent. It is a status freely chosen. Parents should also regularly take their children to museums. For starters, the National Museum of African American History and Culture; the National Museum of the American Indian; the Holocaust Museum; the Smithsonian Museum of American History; and the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. Parents should take their children on outings to Lexington Green, Mount Vernon, Monticello, Montpelier, Yorktown, the Gettysburg Battlefield, Ford's Theater, the Battle of the Little BigHorn, the Alamo, Tuskegee University, and Wounded Knee Battlefield. They should take them to performances of Dickens' A Christmas Carol, Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite, and Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ If parents do all these things, children will be so excited by learning and inspired to righteousness that crime or delinquency will never enter their minds. And the out-of-pocket costs for parents are de minimis. Every bride and groom should be required to master these lessons before marriage. They should be preached in the pulpit and taught in the home. Federal, state, and local governments should issue Parents of the Year awards superior to the kudos showered on beauty queens or football heroes. Hollywood should glamorize irreproachable parents, making them de rigueur. It's well worth the investment. As Frederick Douglass admonished, 'It's easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.' Mountains of criminological literature tell us the root causes of crime are poverty, discrimination, failing schools, lack of jobs, or the vestiges of centuries-old oppression. But crime trended down during the Great Depression and spiraled during the boom years of the 1960s. It all comes back to the family. It's easy to blame kids rather than parents. Kids have no votes. Parents do. Kids have no financial resources. Parents do. Kids are inaudible. The voices of parents are heard. It requires maturity and intellectual honesty to acknowledge we have a parent problem, not a delinquency problem. I understand that excellent parenting is arduous, demanding, and time-consuming. It requires forgoing a tempting menu of hormonal gratifications. It is not for everyone. In his first public address as Vice President, J.D. Vance declared, 'I want more babies in the United States of America.' The declaration is unobjectionable as far as it goes. But more babies without more enlightened, selfless parents are a problem. The chief victims of mal-parenting are the children whose lives are stunted and ruined. Parents everywhere, the ball is in your court. * Armstrong Williams is an American political commentator, entrepreneur, author, and talk show host. Williams writes a nationally syndicated newspaper column, has hosted a daily radio show, and hosts a nationally syndicated television program called The Armstrong Williams Show. ** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Wichita Falls Ballet Theatre presents twist on Hansel & Gretel
WICHITA FALLS (KFDX/KJTL) — A new, fun spin on a classic fairy tale is coming to Wichita Falls. The Wichita Falls Ballet Theatre will perform Hansel and Gretel in two performances at MSU's Fain Fine Arts Auditorium, on Friday, May 16, at 7 p.m. and Saturday, May 17, at 1 p.m. Tickets for the show are $25 and can be bought online. 'Hansel and Gretel' is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm. It was published in 1812 as part of Grimms' Fairy Tales. Hansel and Gretel are siblings who are abandoned in a forest and fall into the hands of a witch who lives in a house made of bread, cake and sugar. The witch intends to fatten Hansel before eating him. Although Gretel saves her brother by pushing the witch into her oven, she escapes with the witch's treasure. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Telegraph
26-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
A heartbreaking story to help teach children about grief
Be it in Grimm's Fairy Tales or The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, death has always played a role in children's literature. But in recent years authors have started confronting the subject more frankly. Michael Rosen 's Sad Book (2004), in which he chronicles his grief at the death of his teenage son, is now widely recommended by grief counsellors, and this highly affecting debut novel by Welsh author Olivia Wakeford is likely to win similar approval. My Dog is narrated by 10-year-old Rhys, and in the opening chapter we meet him in a hospital room, paying what will be a final visit to his dying mother. 'She looks small and not Mam-like. White sheets come to her chin, and her hair, which is usually bright red and spiky like mine, is flat and stuck to her forehead.' Later that day, Rhys's estranged father tells him that his mother has died. 'I screw my eyes flat, press my head against my knees and swallow the ball of fire in my throat. I can't cry in front of Dad. He'll try to make me feel better, but he never makes me feel better about anything.' The novel is aimed at readers as young as nine, for some of whom this might feel quite weighty. But Wakeford skilfully develops this story of loss into a lyrical adventure involving Rhys and Worthington, 'a black Labrador with conker eyes and ears like triangles of velvet.' No one else can see Worthington – but to Rhys, who first spotted him hiding under his mother's hospital bed, there's no doubt that he is real. 'Apart from being picky about food, Worthington is perfect. He's a good listener and, because I've told him about what happened, it's a lot easier to talk to him about Mam. I think it's because he knows what it's like to miss someone since he's probably missing his owner.' When Rhys moves to London to live with his father, Worthington follows. Rhys knows that his father does not like dogs, so initially he keeps his pet a secret. But when he later talks about Worthington to children at his new school, he's called a liar. And when Worthington subsequently vanishes, Rhys himself starts to have doubts: 'I remember the warmth I felt in my chest at the sight of him. The kisses he gave me. The way he spun in a circle when he was excited. He was real, wasn't he?' Grief is a difficult theme for children's novelists, who need to help readers explore the subject of bereavement without putting off those who have never experienced it. Wakeford strikes a fine balance, pulling off a magical adventure while observing Rhys's circumstances with poignant acuity. But at its heart this is not so much a book about grief as a testament to the perennial power of a child's imagination – a subject that will find wide appeal. My Dog is published by HarperCollins at £7.99. To order your copy, call 0330 173 0523 or visit Telegraph Books
