Parents

Regarding Catharine Hamm's "On the Spot" column ["Cancel Over Flu?," May 10], I thought the interesting thing in Cindy Ecay's story was that she was planning on going to Mexico with three children and a boyfriend with medical issues. That means her potential problems are at least four times (and more realistically, about 10 times) greater than if she was on her own. Perhaps she needs to consider planning vacations with more flexibility than a trip to Mexico. My parents had four children, and our vacations consisted of driving to state and national parks.

Re "High school dropout rate climbs to 34.9%," May 13 The news that the Los Angeles County high school dropout rate is over 1 in 3 means that life will be bleak for these dropouts with few skills, and bleak for the other citizens who will have to support most of them, in our prisons or social net. This is not necessarily a school system problem -- though a little more creativity in approaches might be helpful -- but it is a failure of parents in...

Re "The ABC's of LGBT," Editorial, June 19 Your editorial contains some misleading information. The Alameda Unified School District curriculum does not actually focus "solely on gay and lesbian issues" and "sexual identity." In fact, the word "sex" is only used twice in six lessons. You correctly point out that the curriculum will teach second-graders that same-gender parents exist. Children will learn that those parents are part of loving families, along with single parents, adoptive parents and biracial parents.

Re "Four boys charged in rape of an 8-year-old girl," July 24 The worst horror of the story was that the parents of the abused girl reportedly shunned her afterward and said they didn't want her back. The fact that fathers, brothers -- all male relatives -- may throw away a traumatized, abused female child because she was raped is unconscionable. The parents should be deported; they certainly have not appreciated the opportunity shown them in this country. The child, however, should remain here, supported, coddled and educated so she can go on to decry the continuing abuse of women.

Re "College send-off still scary," Column, Aug. 29 As a current college senior, the column made me look back: moving thousands of miles away from home as an 18-year-old straight out of high school was as difficult for me as it was for my parents. I was forced to grow up much faster than I ever imagined possible. But every amazing experience I had and all the wonderful people I met were because of my judgment, with no one telling me what was right or wrong. I'm your typical college student, trying to work my way through school, get an education and start a good career -- but it is all because my parents laid the building blocks.

A Nashville mother was reunited with her newborn son after losing him twice, first to a kidnapper and then to the state after a tip that a family member had tried to sell him. Yair Anthony Carillo and three siblings were no longer in foster care, and authorities don't believe parents Maria Gurrolla and Jose Carillo were involved in the baby's Sept. 29 abduction, the state Department of Children's Services and Nashville police said.

Re "With Columbine, does more really need to be said?" Opinion, Oct. 22 I can never get past the fact that the parents and families of the shooters had no idea that their kids were capable of this. From the time their children entered school until the incident, they never noticed any violent tendencies, firearms obsessions, hateful writings? Nothing, huh? The point here is that if you don't have any idea what your kids are doing or are into, how would you notice that they were suicidal (or homicidal)

This past summer, a couple in Northern California paid two imposing men to come into their home at 4 in the morning, handcuff their 17-year-old daughter and force her into a car headed for the airport. After months of threats, the parents had enrolled her in what's called a therapeutic wilderness program, where she would hike three to five miles a day with a 25-pound pack, learn to make a fire with two sticks and theoretically transform from a manipulative teenager who cursed out her mom and dad and had started failing in school back into a young woman they could live with.