November 27, 2008
Two burglars from Dordrecht have to pay a child 93 euro in damages, a local court decided. After the burglars broke into the child’s home, the child was afraid to sleep in its own bed for fear of the criminals returning, Algemeen Dagblad reports. After the two men were arrested, the parents asked for the symbolic amount in damages.
(Link: Z24 (Dutch))
November 14, 2008
According to a survey carried out by research institute TNS Nipo for the Volkskrant and broadcaster NCRV, a few eyebrow-raising conclusions were drawn about raising children in the Netherlands:
“Parents spoil their children too much and do not teach them to take others into consideration. The survey also says that 75% of older generations are not happy with the way children are raised. Child-centred upbringing has been the trend in the Netherlands since the 1970s as a result of smaller families and growing prosperity and this had led to a generation which is demanding and self-centred.”
My Dutch friends refer to annoying kids or parents who let their kids walk all over them by pointing to them in disgust and saying “ikke ikke ikke”, which means “me me me”. A recent case in point was a little boy of about two who kept hitting other smaller children at a children’s party and the parents stopping him, but not reprimanding him in order to stop the behaviour. This went on the whole time I was there. What I’ve heard is reprimanding your kids is bad for them (?) and so getting them to stop bad behaviour has to involve not making them feel bad.
How does that work? It doesn’t. I saw a man hit a five-year-old on the head (!) in an organic supermarket populated by the middle class because he kept poking the man and the mother let it happen. The mother actually had no problem with the swat, as she got to avoid the ‘confrontation’ of trying to punish her own son. Guess what? The kid stopped his bad behaviour.
“However, Dutch children are also the happiest in the western world, according to a World Health Organisation survey in 2008. The report found they are the most pleased with life, get on well with their parents, have a large social network and like their schools. A UNICEF report a year earlier also found that Dutch teenagers are the happiest in the developed world.”
Hell, I’d be happy too if you let me do what I wanted all the time!
Is being all “ikke ikke ikke” a really good universal value to teach your children?
(Link: dutchnews.nl, Photo: Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
Tags: children, Dutch upbringing
November 9, 2008
Stolen credit card data for sale in user-friendly web shop
Zembla, the news show of Labour broadcaster VARA, bought stolen credit card data from a Russian website and used those data to purchase goods. Director Ton van der Ham told Webwereld: “The site is hidden behind a login. You can search credit cards by country and card type, and then you select a data package which you can pay for online. It’s almost unreal.”
The program got permission from the credit card holders before making the what Webwereld calls “fraudulent” purchases. Either Webwereld knows something about fraud that I don’t, or it’s trying hard to become the Telegraaf of Dutch tech news sites.
In 2006 investigative news show Zembla took claims of 9/11 conspiracy theorists serious by testing them. It concluded most of the claims were unfounded. The show is also famous for “exposing” (the news was not news to a limited circle) that politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali had lied in her asylum claim, which led to her resignation from parliament.
Serious satire
Perik is a copywriter who, when he noticed that he could write 2000 words about anything, decided to quit and become a bartender. The writing bug has never left him though, and now he is blogging satirical pieces at Sargasso. And darn it, he is good! Today he caught me unawares with his (fake) report about a banned ad in which fathers are encouraged to spend more quality time with their children. The ad is titled: “Who is this whiny broad anyway?” and in Perik’s world raised a storm of protest from the child protection board, which, as everybody knows, “has been campaigning for a radical feminization of the child rearing domain for almost a century.”
Disclaimer: the entire 24 Oranges editorial team has shared alcoholic beverages with Perik, so our conclusion that he’s a good egg might be somewhat clouded by the aforementioned beverages.
What Dutch space travel would look like
(From a 1983 ad for pot plants.)
Via Trendbeheer. Disclaimer: we’ve also shared alcoholic beverages with Trendbeheer contributor Jaap Verhoeven. At the same parties! What can I say? We like our drinks, and we go to the right parties.
Tags: ads, alcohol, children, credit cards, crime, finances, money, news, parents, parties, Perik, satire, space, space travel, Trendbeheer, Zembla
August 29, 2008
The prejudice that comics are for people who don’t like to read books gained a new dimension this week with the launch of Donald Duck Junior magazine. NRC quotes Sanoma publisher Suzanne Schouten (Dutch): “The age at which children start with Donald Duck [magazine] went from 6 to 8 years old in the last few years. The magazine turns out to be too difficult for many 6 and 7 year olds. Children read less these days. That’s why we wanted to develop a magazine that is much simpler and with which children learn to read while having fun.”
As daily NRC puts it, Junior has “less text, bigger balloons, and simpler puzzles.” I took a quick look at the magazine in the super market today, and noticed that numbers were spelled with digits, and were emphasized. Also, the text mostly used short words, single or double syllable.
Image: SanomaCrossing.
Tags: children, Donald Duck, reading
August 25, 2008
Canal houses in Amsterdam and in many other Dutch cities have a very big “aaaaw” factor. Marie-Louise Groot Kormelink, owner of Kast van een Huis, combines this with “fun and hip things for your kids that don’t come from that Swedish furniture store”.
It is designer children furniture that can be custom-ordered, mixed and matched, and is very Dutch.
(Link and photo: kastvaneenhuis.nl)
April 8, 2008
I don’t care about the story, it’s the picture that basically cancels out the story for me. The story is about “experiments to increase health with young people,” which sounds fine, but the picture shows a teenager eating ontbijtkoek, which for the foreign crowd is gingerbread for breakfast. And it’s chocked full of sugar and fat. The background shows a vending machine with Balistos, a muesli (granola) based candy bar, with chocolate and tons of sugar. The captions read “Eating healthy in the cantina of the Werkplaats Kindergemeenschap.”
Did the photographer just do their job or is the author of this article stupid, unaware, fat or something else? With this kind of well-intended advice, no wonder Dutch kids are getting fatter. The road to obesity is paved with junk food.
(Link: ad.nl)
Tags: candy bars, children, junk food
