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Happy Mother's Day

"School officials in Marissa, Ill., called in the cops to expel Susan Jones
from campus, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. Jones, whose five-year-old son, Wesley, attends Marissa Grade School, joined her son for breakfast at the school and allowed the boy to sit on her lap. Superintendent Larry Hana said in a statement that, as the Sun-Times put it, 'the physical contact between Jones and her child was 'inappropriate for the school setting.'

"'The principal ordered Jones not to allow Wesley on her lap; when she refused, she was told she was unwelcome at the school. When she showed up the next day anyway, school officials called in the police. ... The Sun-Times quotes Chicago child psychologist Bennett Leventhal, who defends the no-lap policy: 'In a setting where children have breakfast by
themselves, a mother infantilizing her child may be inappropriate,' he says.
Is having the cops haul the mom off appropriate?"

- Best of the Web, 5/11/01