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Toddler Calls 911 Sixty Times in a Week

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 21:00:00 GMT

The emergency responders in a small Ohio town are at their wit’s end with a toddler who has called 911 repeatedly this week, giggling into the phone and then hanging up.

The calls are coming from a deactivated cell phone, implying that parents gave the child an old phone as a plaything. So far, officials in Middletown, Ohio have been loath to donate the time and resources to seeking out the miscreant caller (or, more accurately, the caller’s miscreant parents), but if the calls continue, they will have no choice but to track the calls and perhaps charge the parents with telecommunication harassment.

As long as there is any battery power left at all in an old cell phone, the phone can still call 911. While this is certainly of no use to a two-year-old, old phones are in great demand at domestic violence shelters, senior centers, and amongst soldiers. A quick Google search can tell you where to donate phones in your area.

It's rather disconcerting that the parents of this phone-happy tot not only did not think to remove the battery from the phone, but also have failed to notice that their child has been tying up the town's emergency resources for an entire week.

Photo: Tech Buzz

4 Year Old Calls 911, Saves Mom

Brad and Angelina Open Children's Clinic in Ethiopia

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 19:30:00 GMT

If only all fame and fortune were channeled into the common good....

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have donated $2 million to start a center in Ethiopia for children with AIDS and tuberculosis. About 900,000 children in Ethiopia have been orphaned because of AIDS, and the country has the seventh highest rate of tuberculosis in the world. Though curable, tuberculosis continues to ravage the population in large part due to inadequate treatment.

The center will be named after Brad and Anelina’s adopted daughter, Zahara. “It is our hope that when Zahara is older, she will take responsibility for the clinic and continue its mission,” Pitt said.

This statement gave me pause. While raising one’s children to be activists and humanitarians is certainly laudable, Zahara is three years-old. This is sort of a hefty weight to place on her shoulders. If I heard a father of a three-year-old saying it was his hope that his daughter would grow up to be, say, a leading litigator at a big law firm, I would inwardly groan. On the other hand, I wish all rich parents encouraged their children to use their inheritance to be philanthropists.

What do you think? Is it okay to pigeonhole one's children into a certain line of work if that work is widely beneficial?

Photo: pursepage.com

My Mother Was an Egg Donor

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 18:00:00 GMT

How would you feel if, out of the blue, you learned that those triplets you grew up playing with were technically your half-siblings?

This was the subject of a recent question posed to Slate’s Dear Prudence column. The writer, a college student, recently learned that his mother had her eggs harvested and donated to an infertile couple who are close friends of the writer’s family. This knowledge turned his world upside down. He feels hatred toward the triplets who were conceived with his mother’s egg, and is worried that his mother loves them more than she loves him. The writer seems surprised—as I was—by his intense feelings of jealousy and bitterness. He has tried to focus on his mother’s generosity, but he keeps focusing instead on the fact that he has three half-siblings he really doesn’t want.

Good ole Prudie points out that, while his mother simply donated a “microscopic bit of herself,” the mother to whom she gave her eggs carried triplets for nine months, gave birth to them, and raised them. In other words, being an egg donor is not even close to being a parent. While the writer’s mother helped these triplets come into the world, she is not their mother.

Would others feel similarly devastated if they discovered one of their parents had helped an infertile couple conceive? Would you be less likely to donate your eggs or sperm if you already had kids of your own?

Photo: worldrumour.blogspot.com

Help for the Hardest Parenting Nightmare Imaginable

Mike Adamick (Cry It Out!) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 21:33:00 GMT

We're usually pretty big on the bad news around here, what with the news wires crammed with one tragedy or another on a daily basis. But this one, while tragic, thankfully has a silver lining -- and there's something you can do to make it even better.

Whit from Famecrawler wrote up an elegant tribute to Joseph Salmon, a 3-year-old who died of a form of pneumonia. (Gloomy start, I know. It gets better. Trust me.) It turns out his parents and friends are now organizing a charity hike and have formed a charitable organization to help other families pay for funeral expenses after the loss of a child.

As the charitable trust says, the loss of a child is hard enough -- "to have to worry about financial matters is an added burden."

Please check it out. As Whit says, times are tough. But this one is worthwhile.