This isn’t a rant but it’s a bit too gruesome for MPSIMS. How much of a retard do you have to be to even consider something like this?
Dad faces charge for trying to shape son’s head
11/02/01
Mike Tobin
Plain Dealer Reporter
"A Cleveland man has been charged with felonious assault for trying to shape his 5-month-old son’s head to make it look more like his own.
Joshua Brissett, 19, of E. 124th St. is in Cuyahoga County Jail awaiting trial. He has pleaded not guilty.
Roosevelt Worsham’s mother, Shiara Worsham, has been charged with child endangering. She was charged because she had seen Brissett using his hands to try to shape the infant’s head and waited three days to take him to the hospital after he had become sick, said Kim Kowalski, a spokeswoman for the Cuyahoga County prosecutor’s office. Doctors at Marymount Hospital discovered that Roosevelt’s skull had been fractured and called the county Department of Children and Family Services. Worsham took her son to the hospital because he was vomiting and refused to eat.
Roosevelt was born about two months premature and weighed just over 2 pounds at birth, Kowalski said. “His head was extremely small,” she said.
Dr. Alan Cohen, chief of pediatric neurosurgery at Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital, said it is natural for a baby’s head to appear misshapen at birth because the skull is not yet developed.
“A lot of babies are born looking funny,” Cohen said. “Infants’ skulls are very thin and their brain is immature. Trying to shape the skull could injure the infant, cause fractures or innercranial bleeding.”
Roosevelt is recovering and is being cared for by relatives, Kowalski said. "
The doctor tried to do this to my Aunt’s head when she was born (In 1950). It was my Grandmother’s first baby, and she thought all doctors did this. I wonder if this was ever a common practice, or if that doctor was just incredibly inept.
I only have an anecdote to contribute. An older co-worker of mine was confused when the pediatrician didn’t recommend shaping her granddaughter’s head, and was dubious when I told her it wasn’t neccesary. She seemed to think it was a common practice, although I had never heard of it and was somewhat taken aback when she mentioned it. This was nearly ten years ago, and her daughter was almost thirty when the baby was born.
What’s really interesting to me, Bossk, is that if this story had been about a cat, like the bonzai kitty thing, then I’m sure this thread would be five pages long and filled with utter contempt and outrage from fellow posters.
Who knows, the thread title probably would have been changed too.
As far as this kid is concerned- let’s hope they throw away this parent and hide the key. And let’s also hope the kid isn’t seriously screwed up because of his fucked up father.
Even if a parent thought a kid needed some contouring of the cranial area, why the HELL would he attmpt to do it himself? What sort of plastic surgery community college did he attend? Did he plan to cure any medical maladies the child suffered on his own? Did he take him home and perform a circumcision on the kitchen cutting board, too?
Thank God he wasn’t born with an extra digit or a cleft palate…
What a fucking moron. Let’s hope he doesn’t make any more.
The link in the OP doesn’t take me to the story. What exactly did the man do to his son, and how badly was the boy hurt?
I know that cranial reshaping is sometimes necessary. I once knew a woman who was a special kind of physical therapist who did just this sort of thing. She designed special caps that babies would wear to normalize the shape of the head.
I heard a piece about this assfuck on the radio this morning. It said the baby is now hospitalized and recovering from a FRACTURED SKULL! I was nearly sick–I hope daddy dearest likes it when his new cellmate attempts to shape his anus to make it more like his own…
I haven’t responded because I am not at all shocked any more by what people do to their children. We have a couple of sick fucks in our family and we’re attempting to get the kids taken away from them. The only thing missing from our story is head shaping, now that I think about it. So, I read the thread, and it makes me sad, but I’m just not shocked.
Well, there are indiginous people who used to practice head shaping. But they did it gradually. I’ve known kids who have had to wear helmets to reshape their skulls. And a lot of babies get a real flat spot on the backs of their skulls now that they have the “back to sleep” campaign (they outgrow it, and it’s no big deal). Of course, none of this translates to it being a good idea to start pressing on your little baby’s soft head with your hands or anything else.
My kid’s head was and is pretty funny shaped. Think “The Brain” from Pinky & The Brain. Little face, bulging alien-shaped skull behind. My precious little lightbulb. Also 100% normal.
It makes me so fucking mad sometimes that anyone who can get pregnant (or get someone pregnant) is qualified for parenthood. Get a fucking education about infant & child health and development before you start procreating, goddamn it.
yeah, it was actually a common thing amongst the maya (or was it aztec? I can never remember).
whichever culture it was, they considered beauty to be a nose that ran straight to the forehead in a steady slope, sorta like the high priest in “The road to El Dorado”. so they would induce this by putting the kid between two boards that were attached at one end. this would flatten and smooth the head, setting the nose in a flat run to the forehead.
in some cases, they also set in additional wedges to give the kids coneheads. these kids would be special avatars of the corn god, the (whichever society it was) head god. they would live perfect labor-free lives until it was time to be sacrificed which, depending on the culture, would either be the beginning of the growing season and other major holy days, or just next thursday.
I saw a family at a restaurant once with a son who had big ears that stuck out (I guess). They had taped his ears back against his skull and he was missing patches of hair behind his ears where they had obviously changed the tape repeatedly.
This restaurant was in Manhattan where we probably have the highest per capita number of plastic surgeons outside of L.A.
It was/is a fairly common practice among people in my community to use a warm, wet washcloth to gently reshape the infant’s head. Using light, caressing strokes from the base of the neck to the top of the head to counteract the flatness from putting the baby on its back or any other weird shapes.
I haven’t heard of anyone doing this recently, but that may be because I haven’t been around any infants and their parents. I must confess that I did this with my daughter for the first 2 months. (She had a pointy little head. ) It was very soothing to both of us.
I’m sure that felt really good, mornea, but I don’t understand why that would reshape a head any more than, say, washing one’s face by the same means would (which doesn’t).
) It was very soothing to both of us.