Michigan Blueberries

This morning I took my four children to our annual July extravaganza: Blueberry picking! The five of us picked nearly 31 pounds of blueberries, with most of those now resting comfortably in my freezer. My children think blueberry picking is fun; I enjoy it also.

Someone who lives in Florida questioned why I would go out into the heat to pick my own blueberries. That's a good question, and I have several good answers.

1. The weather is beautiful. It is July in Michigan—a far cry from the oppressive humidity of a July day in Florida—and this morning was a particularly beautiful day even by normal standards. Fresh air in the open fields is good for us, no?

2. It's a great activity for the kids. They enjoy it, and it gives them a pleasant taste of the work world. It is good for children to learn how to accomplish tasks and to enjoy the reward of their labor; if they can learn this in an enjoyable environment, so much the better.

3. It's a great activity with the kids. Parents, especially fathers, should spend time with their children. This is a super way to do it.

4. Fresh blueberries are, quite simply, awesome.

5. I'm supporting the local economy, and in Michigan, how can that not be a good thing?

How Bad Is It? 29-year-old has 21 children by 11 women

Alas, tis so. Examiner.com tells us:

As if Octomom wasn't bad enough, a Tennessee man, 29 year old Desmond Hatchett has now fathered at least 21 children he can't support. Hatchett was in child support court again last week. His name appeared on the dockett 11 times in one day, representing 15 of his children.

Hatchett says he wasn't out to set a record. He says he never intended to have this many children, "It just happened." He fathered the children by at least 11 different women and he claims all of the mothers knew about his large family. The children range in age from newborn to 11 years old.

This is a sad story at all levels. The children cannot be supported by their father, and likely have no good male role model (since their daddy isn't filling that position). The women are reaping the consequences of their sin by, among other things, having to support these children without a father. Since Desmond only has a minimum wage job, and since only 50% of his income can be taken (by law) for child support, and since it has to be split so many ways, some of the women get just a few dollars a month. The taxpayers, of course, will be saddled with massive costs related to the upkeep of these children (and probably their mothers, too).

Desmond should be put in jail if he ever fathers another child out of wedlock.

Bad Math Strikes Again!

We all probably know by now that a woman in California just had octuplets...and we all probably have our opinions on just how foolish her life choices have been. I'd like to strike a few blows, however, at the ignorant statements made in this foxnews.com story by Dr. Charles Sophy, whose title is "medical director of Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services," according to the article.

Dr. Sophy was quoted as saying the following:

Sophy said the expense of raising 14 children will likely be prohibitive, citing studies that estimate it costs roughly $2.5 million to raise a child to adulthood. Using that math, raising 14 children would cost roughly $35 million.

"And that's basic stuff," he said. "That doesn't include swimming lessons and things like that. It's very costly and hopefully the planning that needs to be done was done upfront."

Sophy continued, "14 is a large number of children, so yes, it'll be 14 times the stress."

Let us examine his math.

• First of all, it is true that $2.5 million times 14 = $35 million.
• $2.5 million per child to adulthood? Let's assume that this spans 22 years (graduate from H.S. at 18 and then 4 years of college). We then have an average cost of $113,636 per child per year. This works out to a cost of $2185 per child per week, or $312 per day. Are you really telling me that it costs an average of $312 every day to feed, clothe, and care for my child?
• I have four children. Do I really need $454,545 every year to care for them? If so, I'm in big trouble!
• And if my kids need swimming lessons, piano lessons, and the perfunctory trip to Disney, should I budget $500,000 annually?
• Why did they not tell us, in this article, what "studies" Dr. Sophy cited? I'd like to know.
  
• Do all kids produce equal quantities of stress? Dr. Sophy implies that they do, and that, furthermore, stress increases incrementally and consistently. Is the difference between the stress of 2 children and the stress of 3 children equal to the difference between the stress of 12 childen and the stress of 13? How would he know? How would anyone?
  
• How many children does this gentleman have? How did he get to be a "director," and do his responsibilities include budgeting and/or accounting? [OK, those aren't really math questions...]
  

The moral of the story, as always, is to be cautious with the numbers that are thrown about in the media, as if they were serious, accurate statistics. They often are not. For example, consider the numbers Congress is throwing around right now...they have NO idea what they are talking about!

Disappointing News

From this foxnews.com article we learn that

"Between 2005 and 2006, the number of teenage girls between the ages 15 to 17 having babies rose by more than 5,700 to 138,920, from a record low of 133,138, according to an annual report on the health and well-being of children and teens published by the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics."

In addition to this sad bit of news, we got the following cluster of facts:

"— The number of babies born to unwed mothers continues to increase. In 2006, 38 percent of all births were to unmarried women, up from 37 percent in 2005. The percentage of children under age 18 living with two married parents fell from 77 percent in 1980 to 68 percent in 2007. The percentage of unmarried births to women in their 20s tripled, from 19 to 58 percent for women ages 20 to 24 and from 9 to 31 percent for women ages 25 to 29. The percentage of births to unmarried women in their 30s more than doubled from 8 to 18 percent"

Immorality, as it has been since the Creation, is still a sin. And the "fruit" of immorality must live with its consequences, which are highlighted by the fact that 32% of children under age 18 are living with fewer than two parents. That's nearly one in three. This is very sad...and it does not bode well for the future of our country. [I wonder when the presidential candidates will address this? It's a whole lot more important than whether we drill offshore for oil, isn't it?]

America needs a revival, followed by a turning from sin. Then these statistics will approach the 0% level—where they should be.

Yet Another Reason Not To Vote For Obama

In this townhall.com article, we learn a number of facts about both what Barack Obama wants to do with everyone's preschool children, and also some other interesting (and troubling) statistics about what's going on with preschool children in America. But here are the beginning and ending of the article...which I think sum up the key points:

One of the most dramatic changes in American life in the years since World War II involves the way we raise our children.

We used to do it ourselves. Now, convinced we have better things to do, many of us leave the job to others.

Encouraging this flight from parenthood, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has proposed what he calls his "Zero to Five" plan. It is a collection of programs aimed at getting the government involved in the raising of your children from the moment they are born.

"The first part of my plan focuses on providing quality affordable early childhood education to every child in America," Obama said in a November speech. "As president, I will launch a Children's First Agenda that provides care, learning and support to families with children ages zero to five."

"We'll create Early Learning Grants to help states create a system of high-quality early care and education for all young children and their families," he said. "And we'll help more working parents find a safe, affordable place to leave their children during the day by improving the educational quality of our childcare programs and increasing the childcare tax credit."

This week, Obama upped his ante by vowing to "double funding for after-school programs that help children learn and give parents relief."

Obama, of course, will also continue to defend your "right" to hire a physician to kill your child in utero so you won't have to raise the child at all.

....

Through his plans to increase government funding and control of the rearing of children ages "zero to five," Barack Obama would increase, rather than decrease, the force that drives mothers of infants to leave them in someone else's care. He would also cause a wholly unjust transfer of wealth.

Old-fashioned moms and dads who insist on caring for their own pre-school children will pay for -- but gain no benefit from -- programs that put the government in the business of caring for children whose moms and dads would both rather work outside the home than work raising a child.

News That Should Concern You

This story comes from Brian Dickerson of the Detroit Free Press (link here). While I admit the ignorance of the dad to the product in question is hard to believe, it is believable. Not everyone keeps up with everything. But the outrageous response to his ignorance should scare any of us who happen to make a mistake in the parenting of our children.

If you watch much television, you've probably heard of a product called Mike's Hard Lemonade.

And if you ask Christopher Ratte and his wife how they lost custody of their 7-year-old son, the short version is that nobody in the Ratte family watches much television.

The way police and child protection workers figure it, Ratte should have known that what a Comerica Park vendor handed over when Ratte ordered a lemonade for his boy three Saturdays ago contained alcohol, and Ratte's ignorance justified placing young Leo in foster care until his dad got up to speed on the commercial beverage industry.

Even if, in hindsight, that decision seems a bit, um, idiotic.

Ratte is a tenured professor of classical archaeology at the University of Michigan, which means that, on a given day, he's more likely to be excavating ancient burial sites in Turkey than watching "Dancing with the Stars" -- or even the History Channel, for that matter.

The 47-year-old academic says he wasn't even aware alcoholic lemonade existed when he and Leo stopped at a concession stand on the way to their seats in Section 114.

"I'd never drunk it, never purchased it, never heard of it," Ratte of Ann Arbor told me sheepishly last week. "And it's certainly not what I expected when I ordered a lemonade for my 7-year-old."

But it wasn't until the top of the ninth inning that a Comerica Park security guard noticed the bottle in young Leo's hand.

"You know this is an alcoholic beverage?" the guard asked the professor.

"You've got to be kidding," Ratte replied. He asked for the bottle, but the security guard snatched it before Ratte could examine the label.

Mistake or child neglect?

An hour later, Ratte was being interviewed by a Detroit police officer at Children's Hospital, where a physician at the Comerica Park clinic had dispatched Leo -- by ambulance! -- after a cursory exam.

Leo betrayed no symptoms of inebriation. But the physician and a police officer from the Comerica substation suggested the ER visit after the boy admitted he was feeling a little nauseated.

The Comerica cop estimated that Leo had drunk about 12 ounces of the hard lemonade, which is 5% alcohol. But an ER resident who drew Leo's blood less than 90 minutes after he and his father were escorted from their seats detected no trace of alcohol.

"Completely normal appearing," the resident wrote in his report, "... he is cleared to go home."

But it would be two days before the state of Michigan allowed Ratte's wife, U-M architecture professor Claire Zimmerman, to take their son home, and nearly a week before Ratte was permitted to move back into his own house.

And if you think nothing so ludicrous could happen to your family, maybe you should pay a little less attention to who's getting booted from "Dancing with the Stars" and a little more to how the state agency responsible for protecting Michigan's children is going about its work.

Doing their duty

Almost everyone Chris Ratte met the night they took Leo away conceded the state was probably overreacting.

The sympathetic cop who interviewed Ratte and his son at the hospital said she was convinced what happened had been an accident, but that her supervisor was insisting the matter be referred to Child Protective Services.

And Ratte thought the two child protection workers who came to take Leo away seemed more annoyed with the police than with him. "This is so unnecessary," one told Ratte before driving away with his son.

But there was really nothing any of them could do, they all said. They were just adhering to protocol, following orders.

And so what had begun as an outing to the ballpark ended with Leo crying himself to sleep in front of a television inside the Child Protective Services building, and Ratte and his wife standing on the sidewalk outside, wondering when they'd see their little boy again.

A vain rescue mission

Child Protective Services is the unit of the Michigan Department of Human Services responsible for intervening when someone suspects a child is being abused, neglected or endangered. Its powers include the authority to remove children from their homes and transfer them to foster parents who answer only to the state.

By law, CPS officials are forbidden to discuss the particulars of any investigation.

But Mike Patterson, Child and Family Services director for the Wayne County district that includes Comerica Park, said that in general his agency's discretion is limited once police obtain a court order to remove a child from the parental home -- usually authorized, as in Leo's case, by a juvenile court referee responding to a police officer's recommendation.

"Once the court has authorized a child's removal," Patterson told me, "we cannot return the child to the parental custody" until the court has OK'd it.

But that doesn't explain why CPS refused to release Leo to the custody of two aunts -- one a social worker and licensed foster parent -- who drove all night from New England to take custody of their nephew.

Chris Ratte's sisters, Catherine Miller and Felicity Ratte, left Massachusetts at 10:30 the night of the fateful lemonade purchase after the police officer who'd reluctantly requested a removal order told Ratte the state would likely jump at the chance to place Leo with responsible relatives. But when the two women arrived at the CPS office early Sunday, a caseworker explained they would not be allowed to see Leo until they had secured a hotel room.

The sisters quickly complied. But by the time they returned to CPS around 10:30 a.m., their nephew had been taken to an undisclosed foster home, where he would remain until a preliminary court hearing the following afternoon.

By that Monday, April 7, when Ratte and his wife returned for a meeting with Latricia Jones, the CPS caseworker assigned to their case, no one in the family had been able to talk to Leo for a day and a half.

More investigation needed

At a hearing later that day, Jones recommended that Leo remain in foster care until she had completed her investigation, a process she estimated would take several days. It was only after the assistant attorney general who represented CPS admitted that the state was not interested in pursuing the case aggressively that juvenile referee Leslie Graves agreed to release Leo to his mother -- on the condition that Ratte himself relocate to a hotel.

Finally, at a second hearing three days later, Graves dismissed the complaint and permitted Ratte to move home.

Don Duquette, a U-M law professor who directs the university's Child Advocacy Law Clinic, represented Ratte and his wife. He notes sardonically that the most remarkable thing about the couple's case may be the relative speed with which they were reunited with Leo.

Duquette says the emergency removal powers of CPS, though "well-intentioned" are "out of control and partly responsible for the large numbers of kids in the foster care system," which is almost universally acknowledged to be badly overburdened.

Ratte and his wife have filed a formal complaint with the CPS ombudsman's office.

"I have apologized to Leo from the bottom of my heart for the silly mistake that got him into this mess," Ratte wrote in the complaint. "But I have also told him that what happened afterward was an even bigger error, and I would like to be able to say to him that institutions, like people, can learn from their mistakes."

Polygamists, Child Custody, and You

Much has been made in the media about the dozens of kids taken from the polygamists' compound in Texas the other day. And now, much is being made about the subsequent custody battle. Should their mothers be entrusted with the kids, or should the kids be placed in foster homes?

In recent years, the trend in custody-related cases has been to put kids with their own biological parents as much as possible, on the belief that this was best for the kids. Of course, in many cases, it wasn't; so there were some decisions that, in retrospect, would be changed.

The main issue regarding the children from the Texas compound was not that there was "physical abuse" by the mothers, but that the children were pressured to marry at illegally young ages. I can certainly see where the state legal system would not want to put the children back with the men, but I do not see why the mothers, in general, could not retain the children if they did not return to the compound.

The "other" issue is this: IF the mothers are eventually denied custody of their children for the primary reason that polygamy and young marriage is promoted among them, then is it not logical that in the near future, Christians could be denied custody of their children because "politically incorrect" ideas are promoted? Could we see our children taken away because we believe that homosexuality is evil, wives should obey their husbands, or corporal punishment (properly applied) is appropriate?

Observations from 1 Kings, #1

1 Now the days of David drew nigh that he should die; and he charged Solomon his son, saying,
2 I go the way of all the earth: be thou strong therefore, and shew thyself a man;
3 And keep the charge of the LORD thy God, to walk in his ways, to keep his statutes, and his commandments, and his judgments, and his testimonies, as it is written in the law of Moses, that thou mayest prosper in all that thou doest, and whithersoever thou turnest thyself: (1 Kings 2:1-3)

It is my hope, that if I die before my children, and especially before my son; and if I have an opportunity to express my last wishes to them regarding their lives before God, that I will use that opportunity to exhort them as David did.

David certainly gives "practical" advice to his son, King Solomon (continuing reading 1 Kings 2—some of it may seem a bit morbid by today's standards!). All fathers should give wise advice to their children. But the main focus, I think, is that Solomon do what God wants him to do. That is what really matters. Whether or not my children spend their lives doing what I want them to do is insignificant, compared to whether or not my children spend their lives doing what God wants them to do.

A Grandmother at age 29?

In this article from the Quad City Times, we are introduced to Celia, age 15, and her 1-day-old little boy, Russell. Celia's mother, Leticia, gave birth at the even-younger age of 13, while in the 7th grade.

The happier side of this story is that there exists an entity in Davenport, IA, called the Brighter Futures Maternity Home. Celia spent the last six months of her pregnancy there (in part because of her mother's anger) and developed beneficial relationships with the staff. Thankfully, she did not choose to abort her son.

The harsh reality is that she is a 15-year-old single mother, and Leticia is a grandmother at 29—with three younger children below the age of ten. Neither is married to the father of her child, and statistically, it is highly unlikely that this will ever occur. Leticia stays home with the younger children. Celia has returned to high school and wants to play basketball.

There are so many family issues here that I will not even try to list or analyze them, but one fact stood out to me in this article....Leticia "always urged Celia to tell her if she was having sex so she could arrange birth control for her." [Celia didn't tell her until she became pregnant.] This is the wrong approach. Leticia's responsibility can be summed up in two things:

1. Model sexual purity to her daughter.
2. Teach the inestimable value of sexual purity to her daughter.

She clearly did neither. Her husband (if there ever was a husband) is not mentioned in the article, and yet her youngest child is a year older than her grandson.

The alert Christian recognizes that a mother's teaching responsibility extends further than those two points, and includes prayer for her children.

A Tragic Ignorance About God's Order

In this article from the London Daily Mail, we are told of two women who refuse to have babies—because babies are not "eco friendly," and increase the carbon footprint of the human race on our planet. The first woman, Toni, got pregnant by her boyfriend at age 25 and, after an abortion, subsequently had herself sterilized. She is now 35. The second woman, Sarah, felt the same way; but her husband got a vasectomy instead.

Both women (and their husbands) claim to enjoy children but are adamantly against having their own. They believe that procreation makes our planet a worse place to live [Toni is quoted as saying, "...a woman like me, who is not having children in order to save the planet, is considered barking mad."]. They also seem to believe the "usual environmentalist views."

Toni also struck me as seeming the more hypocritical of the two; in the article she is quoted more concerning her lifestyle (they "have a much nicer lifestyle" without children; they just came back from a long trip to South Africa—how much fossil fuel was spent doing that?). Sarah and her husband are portrayed as more serious about their "carbon footprints." But both of them are missing the main point that God would want them to focus on....

God wants husbands and wives to procreate. Except for that small percentage who are not biologically able to do so, it is selfish disobedience to the commands of Genesis 1:28 and 9:1 to not have children. Furthermore, an array of verses points to the conception of children as a blessing to the parents (e.g., Psalm 127:3-5).

Furthermore, God's view about our responsibility concerning the planet can be summed up in Genesis 1:28 and in the various passages about stewardship: We humans are to have dominion over the earth and all the living things therein; and we are to procreate. But we are also to use the earth's resources wisely, prudently, and without waste. We are to teach our children to do likewise.

Were it not for Jesus Christ, sin would overtake and conquer this earth long before pollution ever could. And let us not forget: Someday, He will make new heavens and a new earth!

On the Topic of "Kid's Times" in Church

The Sharper Iron website (see link at right) recently featured an article by Pastor Aaron Blumer on Why Churches Should Have "Kid Times" (read his article here), to which a rebuttal was composed by Pastor Greg Stiekes (read his article here). Blumer's article focuses on some good, practical reasons for the practice, while Stiekes's article primarily focuses on the fact that (a) the Bible is rather silent about the practice, and (b) the Bible emphasizes, as did society in Bible times, a family-centered, family-oriented teaching environment. Stiekes also emphasizes that Blumer's views are primarily practical and experience-based and not Bible-based.

I am my wife and our friend discussed these two articles, and found ourselves of one mind on the topic. Both men make good points, but they may be setting a fine example of "How the pendulum can swing too far in either direction." We believe that Blumer's points are not only practical but wise. There are times for, and benefits in, taking the younger children and teaching them in a separate environment more suited to their learning level. Should they always be in a separate "service" while their parents are in the "main service?" Of course not. We agree with Stiekes that the parents do, in fact, have the most primary responsibility for the upbringing and teaching of the children, and that it is good for the children to be in the "main service" with their parents. Do they always need to be there? No.

I am exceedingly thankful that at my church, there are both times of teaching for my children apart from the adult service, and that there are times when they are expected to be in the auditorium with their parents, learning from our pastor. My children benefit in a variety of ways from both. I am grateful for the godly ministry and examples of the various people who serve the Lord by serving and teaching my children. This augments and reinforces what they are taught at home. If I thought that these people would somehow stunt or harm my children's spiritual growth, I would promptly remove the kids from their influence.

It is of primary benefit for children to see, model, and learn from godly parents, but it of additional benefit for children to see, model, and learn from other godly people, too. Those other godly people help my wife and me to fulfill our God-given responsibilities as parents.

In closing, our friend (ever the practical mother) also pointed out this practical nugget, overlooked by both pastors and me:

"...then when you invite a totally unchurched family to your church, you better be prepared to help that family know how to keep their children quiet in church. I don't know many unchurched children who have been trained to sit for an hour or more without some distractions to the parents. That can be frustrating to the parent and cause them to not want to come back if it's going to be so much trouble. And then what about the bus ministries. You mean, you're going to bring in a bus full of (usually) unruly children (without their parents....usually) and make them sit unattended in a church service?"