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Did you know that one out of every four girls in middle school today will be date-raped by the time she's 22? That predators try to abduct about 100,000 teenage girls each year, with the risk peaking at age 15? As I consider my 16 year old and her friends, these statistics are shocking, unbearable. READ POST
"Are you part of the problem, or part of the solution?"
We all feel the urge to blame someone when things go wrong. We seem to
think that fixing blame prevents a recurrence of the problem, or
absolves us of responsibility. In reality, blaming makes everyone
defensive, more inclined to watch their back -- and to attack -- than to
make amends. READ POST
"The road has been long, hard, and pressure-packed. They made their grades throughout high school....went way beyond normal requirements for community service and extra curriculars...were at computers writing essays long past their parents’ bedtime... left home for the first time to live in dorms as first-year college students....Many — perhaps more than half of them — are anxious, depressed, or simply overwhelmed. Separation anxiety accounts for some of it... they’re now flying solo, without a net...Making new connections and friendships and fitting into the fast-paced social and academic life of college can be challenging. Some first-years quickly become marginalized and lonely. Others are burned out on arrival from the journey that brought them here. The thought of continuing to burn the candle at both ends for more grades becomes more than they can bear. The loneliness, anxiety, and depression call out for self-soothing. Restlessness, dark emotions, and new freedoms, combined with an abundant supply of alcohol and drugs, lead to high levels of binge drinking...Today, too many kids are succeeding academically and failing psychologically and emotionally." -- Stuart S. Light READ POST
When BlogHer and LG asked me to interview teens I know about sexting, I was game but blasé. I regard my kids, their friends, and my nieces and nephews as a thoughtful, responsible bunch, and I was pretty sure I knew what they would say. I was wrong. READ POST
Last week I posted on BlogHer about helping your child responsibly navigate life with a cell phone. BlogHer is working with LG to create a blog round-up of moms writing about Mobile Meanness, aiming to arm parents with the info they
need to help kids use their cell phones responsibly.
READ POST
BlogHer and LG (one of the largest cell phone manufacturers in the world)
asked me to post about Mobile Meanness on BlogHer.com. Their
“LG TextEd Ambassador” program hopes to arm parents with the info they
need to help kids use their cell phones responsibly. My post, which includes Rules to Help Your Child Handle a Cell Phone Responsibly, is here on BlogHer.
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"Try to see your child as a seed that came in a packet without a label. Your job is to provide the right environment and nutrients. You can’t decide what kind of flower you’ll get or in which season it will bloom."
-- Anonymous
Are there things about your child that drive you crazy? Often we think we our job is to "stamp out" those traits and mold the perfect child. But humans can't pare away our weaknesses, because they're the flip side of our strengths. That's who we ARE.
If she has trouble controlling her anger when her brother disrespects her, is she an equally passionate fighter against other injustices? Is his dawdling a sign of immense imagination -- like Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes, is he secretly Spaceman Spiff? Will her emphasis on socializing shape the perfect talk-show host? Will his stubbornness help him succeed at a difficult task against all odds?
We can't sculpt our kids. All we can really do is give them nurturing conditions in which to grow into who they are, and teach them to manage their weaknesses so their strengths can blossom. READ POST
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Comments
my close friends. Any awareness and confidence we can bring to our girls at a young age, will go a long way. Thanks!
*greatly*. Have you read Free Range Kids? She did a nice piece pointing to the number crunched well - which means sorting out which "missing" kids turn up, how many were taken by a relative, and how many actually get abducted by strangers. Which, as it turns
out, is fewer than 100 kids a year. So the world is safer than we might think. There's a big difference between teaching kids - girls *and* boys - how to prevent date rape (which is as important for the boys to know as the girls) and scaring the bejesus out
of them with misinformation about predators around every corner. Here's a link: http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/2011/08/10/the-fbi-says-be-afraid-be-very-afraid-for-your-kids/ Regards, Ann Burlingham
from two places: Just Yell Fire (which is the source of the statistic in my post, since that stat is how they begin their video) and Gavin de Becker. He is certainly not a fear monger, if you read his books. He says that teenage girls are the most targeted
population for abduction. I did ask the Just Yell Fire folks for the citation on that statistic, and will share it here when they get back to me.