Author Archive
It’s the news no parent wants to hear: Their teenage daughter has been sending demeaning e-mails to another girl in her grade or that their son has been regularly harassing another boy in the hall at his school.
While it’s painful and confusing if your child is the victim of bullying, it’s also painful and confusing if your child is the one who is dishing it out. If it’s the latter, what do you do?
Let’s face it, to be confronted with the fact that your kid has been a bully is embarrassing. It’s not just a mark against your child, but a mark against you. You can just imagine what the other parents are saying.
“They always seemed like good parents. But it just goes to show you never know.”
You are mad at your kid for their behaviour, but also at how this behaviour reflects on you. To feel this way is very normal, but many kids of nice, loving parents engage in bullying behaviour. Having a kid who’s a bully does not mean that you have been a bad parent. Read the rest of this entry »
Mark Metherell
September 30, 2011
Peer pressure … teens are sending sexual images of themselves in order to fit in.
Photo: Glen McCurtayne
TEENAGERS are feeling pressure to send sexual images of themselves and others by mobile phone in what is becoming a potentially pervasive practice of ”sexting”, according to government-funded research.
Young people are experiencing pressure not only from each other but also from the “insidious” influence of a sexualised media culture that pressured them to be involved in sexting in order to fit in, Melbourne University researcher Shelley Walker says.
Ms Walker told the Australasian Sexual Health Conference in Canberra yesterday young men were made to feel their masculinity was in question if they were not into sexting.
Women also felt pressure to participate when they saw sexted images of their friends.
Ms Walker, of the primary care research unit at Melbourne University, said her study involved interviews with 15 male and 19 female participants, aged 15 to 20. All of those interviewed had “at least one story to share, if not more”. Read the rest of this entry »
By LZ Granderson, CNN Contributor
April 19, 2011 8:52 a.m. EDT
Editor’s note: LZ Granderson writes a weekly column for CNN.com. A senior writer and columnist for ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com, he has contributed to ESPN’s “Sports Center,” “Outside the Lines” and “First Take.” He is a 2011 and 2010 nominee and the 2009 winner of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation award for online journalism and a 2010 and 2008 honoree of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for column writing.
http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/apps/cvp/3.0/swf/cnn_416x234_embed.swf?context=embed&videoId=us/2011/04/20/natpkg.opinion.lz.tramp.clothes.cnn
Grand Rapids, Michigan (CNN) — I saw someone at the airport the other day who really caught my eye.
Her beautiful, long blond hair was braided back a la Bo Derek in the movie “10” (or for the younger set, Christina Aguilera during her “Xtina” phase). Her lips were pink and shiny from the gloss, and her earrings dangled playfully from her lobes.
You can tell she had been vacationing somewhere warm, because you could see her deep tan around her midriff thanks to the halter top and the tight sweatpants that rested just a little low on her waist. The icing on the cake? The word “Juicy” was written on her backside.
Yeah, that 8-year-old girl was something to see all right. … I hope her parents are proud. Their daughter was the sexiest girl in the terminal, and she’s not even in middle school yet.
Abercrombie & Fitch came under fire this spring for introducing the “Ashley,” a push-up bra for girls who normally are too young to have anything to push up. Originally it was marketed for girls as young as 7, but after public outcry, it raised its intended audience to the wise old age of 12. I wonder how do people initiate a conversation in the office about the undeveloped chest of elementary school girls without someone nearby thinking they’re pedophiles?
What kind of PowerPoint presentation was shown to the Abercrombie executives that persuaded them to green light such a product?
That there was a demand to make little girls hot?
I mean, that is the purpose of a push-up bra, right? To enhance sex appeal by lifting up, pushing together and basically showcasing the wearer’s breasts. Now, thanks to AF Kids, girls don’t have to wait until high school to feel self-conscious about their, uhm, girls. They can start almost as soon as they’re potty trained. Maybe this fall the retailer should consider keeping a plastic surgeon on site for free consultations.
We’ve been here with Abercrombie before — if you recall, about 10 years ago they sold thongs for 10-year-olds — but they’re hardly alone in pitching inappropriate clothing to young girls. Four years ago the popular “Bratz” franchise introduced padded bras called “bralettes” for girls as young as six. That was also around the time the good folks at Wal-Mart rolled out a pair of pink panties in its junior department with the phrase “Who Needs Credit Cards” printed on the front.
I guess I’ve been out-of-the-loop and didn’t realize there’s been an ongoing stampede of 10-year-old girls driving to the mall with their tiny fists full of cash demanding sexier apparel.
What’s that you say? Ten-year-olds can’t drive? They don’t have money, either? Well, how else are they getting ahold of these push-up bras and whore-friendly panties?
Their parents?
Noooo, couldn’t be.
What adult who wants a daughter to grow up with high self-esteem would even consider purchasing such items? What parent is looking at their sweet, little girl thinking, “She would be perfect if she just had a little bit more up top.”
And then I remember the little girl at the airport. And the girls we’ve all seen at the mall. And the kiddie beauty pageants.
And then I realize as creepy as it is to think a store like Abercrombie is offering something like the “Ashley”, the fact remains that sex only sells because people are buying it. No successful retailer would consider introducing an item like a padded bikini top for kindergartners if they didn’t think people would buy it.
If they didn’t think parents would buy it, which raises the question: What in the hell is wrong with us?
It’s easy to blast companies for introducing the sexy wear, but our ire really should be directed at the parents who think low rise jeans for a second grader is cute. They are the ones who are spending the money to fuel this budding trend. They are the ones who are suppose to decide what’s appropriate for their young children to wear, not executives looking to brew up controversy or turn a profit.
I get it, Rihanna’s really popular. But that’s a pretty weak reason for someone to dress their little girl like her.
I don’t care how popular Lil’ Wayne is, my son knows I would break both of his legs long before I would allow him to walk out of the house with his pants falling off his butt. Such a stance doesn’t always makes me popular — and the house does get tense from time to time — but I’m his father, not his friend.
Friends bow to peer pressure. Parents say, “No, and that’s the end of it.”
The way I see it, my son can go to therapy later if my strict rules have scarred him. But I have peace knowing he’ll be able to afford therapy as an adult because I didn’t allow him to wear or do whatever he wanted as a kid.
Maybe I’m a Tiger Dad.
Maybe I should mind my own business.
Or maybe I’m just a concerned parent worried about little girls like the one I saw at the airport.
In 2007, the American Psychological Association’s Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls issued a report linking early sexualization with three of the most common mental-health problems of girls and women: eating disorders, low self-esteem and depression. There’s nothing inherently wrong with parents wanting to appease their daughters by buying them the latest fashions. But is getting cool points today worth the harm dressing little girls like prostitutes could cause tomorrow?
A line needs to be drawn, but not by Abercrombie. Not by Britney Spears. And not by these little girls who don’t know better and desperately need their parents to be parents and not 40-year-old BFFs.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of LZ Granderson.
The Associated Press recently reported on a new and developing type of cyber-crime that involves children and teens, but can be prevented. Labeled as “sextortion,” this new phenomena enabled by the age of digital media is one that we must talk about with our kids from a very young age. Here’s how it works – a child or teen – let’s say a young girl – takes a sexually suggestive or compromising photo of herself and posts it somewhere online. She assumes that she’s posting the photo in a place where privacy settings will keep most people from ever seeing it. But somebody copies the photo and it gets distributed widely. The photo winds up in the hands of a person who contacts the girl to tell her that he has a copy of the photo, and unless she sends him more photos of herself in compromising poses, he will send the photo to her parents or the entire world. Parents, now is the time to say and do what you must to prevent your kids from ever hitting the shutter button in the first place.
From Remy Melina, LiveScience Staff Writer
Few parents of teens who drink or smoke pot are aware of it, suggests a new study that also finds that most parents are concerned about substance use by teenagers and believe that more than half of 10th-graders drink alcohol (just not their own 10th-grader).
Only 10 percent of parents think their own teens drank alcohol within the last year, and 5 percent believe their teens smoked marijuana in the last year, according to the latest poll by the University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital.
These low numbers severely clash with the university’s 2010 Monitoring the Future survey, in which 52 percent of surveyed 10th-graders reported drinking alcohol in the last year and 28 percent reported using marijuana within the last year. Those numbers were based on an annual survey of about 420 public and private high schools and middle schools that are selected to provide an accurate representation of U.S. students at each grade level.
“There’s a clear mismatch between what parents are reporting in terms of their children’s possible use of substances and what teenagers report themselves,” said study researcher Bernard Biermann of the department of psychiatry at the University of Michigan. He is also a medical director of the university’s Child/Adolescent Inpatient Unit.
The C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health was administered in May to a group of 667 parents with a child between the ages of 13 and 17.
While most parents seem to assume their own kids aren’t trying alcohol or drugs, they certainly don’t think their child’s peers are as innocent. In the poll, researchers found that many parents of teens are very likely to believe that within the last year at least 60 percent of 10th-graders drank alcohol and 40 percent of 10th-graders used marijuana.
That parents are more likely to expect drug and alcohol use by other teenagers than by their own indicates a need for awareness about teenage substance use, the researchers said. They suggest parents broach the subject with their teens in a nonthreatening way and speak to them about the importance of resisting peer pressure.
“Awareness is a means of opening the door to communication. If parents acknowledge the possibility — and in fact, the likelihood — that their child may have experimented with or used alcohol or marijuana, they can begin to talk to them more about it, provide some guidance, and allow their kids to ask questions,” Biermann said in a statement.
The researchers also suggest that parents carefully monitor their kids and look for signs of substance use. They warn parents not to overreact over a single instance of substance use, and to instead use the experience as an opportunity to talk to their teen in a nonjudgmental way.
Here is a humorous parody on MTV’s hit show “16 and Pregnant”
What’s it like when you’re the only girl in school who’s NOT pregnant?
http://o.aolcdn.com/videoplayer/AOL_PlayerLoader.swf
When Brooke goes out this weekend, she might have a great night, even meet a guy, and make memories with friends that last a long, long time.
But, if new research is true, what she drinks could be what stays with her the longest.
A Wasted Wizard…and Others
Recently, several high profile stories about young people and their abuse of alcohol have captured the attention of parents around the country.
Daniel Radcliffe, the spectacle-wearing and wand-waving face of the history-making Harry Potter franchise recently reflected on his fame and how he used alcohol to deal with it. (Yeah, I know he’s British…but his final Harry Potter flick just snagged 169.1 million of our dollars on this side of the pond…in the opening weekend alone!) Evidently, a “few” American kids are paying attention to the English actor….
Unbeknownst to most, alcohol played a massive role in his life for several years. In an interview with The Telegraph, the young wizard admitted, “I became reliant on [alcohol] to enjoy stuff…. There were a few years there when I was just so enamored with the idea of living some sort of famous person’s lifestyle that really isn’t suited to me.”
But, Radcliffe’s bout with booze isn’t the only “young-person-wrestles-with-alcohol” story buzzing right now. There’s another one, and sadly, it didn’t end in sobriety. The grievous death of 14-year-old Takeimi Rao in the wine country of Santa Rosa, California has turned heads, as well. In mid July, Rao invited some friends over for a slumber party, and at some point during the night, the girls began mixing soda and vodka. While three of the girls were found vomiting at 2:00 a.m. by Takeimi’s mom, it wasn’t until the next morning that Takeimi’s body was discovered lifeless in the bathroom.
Stories like these continue to cause many American parents to worry about their teenagers’ interactions with alcohol. Rao’s death has left many parents searching for answers in the midst of the tragedy…and wondering if their attempts to avoid a similar family pain will work.
But it may be parents of girls who have the most reason to worry. Read the rest of this entry »
| In a post from Jonathon McKee, he list four truths that came from the 2011 Video Music Awards shown on MTV.
Parent’s, we’re not going to stop our children from listening to music that is misguiding, so we should learn about it and instead of ignoring it, embrace it and learn to talk to our children about it.
Read on…
For the most part – and we stress “for the most part” – this was one of the tamer VMAs in recent history. (We’ll elaborate on the few exceptions later.) Also setting this awards show apart from the past were the coolest live performances in recent memory. Lady Gaga opened the show with a strong performance of her hit song, You and I (No question, Gaga is a very talented performer). Taking the stage throughout the remainder of the night would be Pit Bull, Adele, Kanye West and Jay Z, Beyoncé, and Young the Giant. Chris Brown also did a cool dance medley, and Bruno Mars sang a tribute to the recently deceased Amy Winehouse. Finally, Lil Wayne performed at the show’s end. (Umm…he’s one of the exceptions we just mentioned.)
All in all, MTV seemed to place the emphasis on – wait for it – music. Yeah, we were surprised, too. As we watched this year’s music awards show that actually centered on music, we observed four inescapable realities about youth culture. Here they are: Read the rest of this entry » |
By Martin E. Klimek, for USA TODAY
Isabella Sweet, 9, with her Webkinz stuffed animals on the floor in her Davis, Calif., home.
Perhaps it’s because she’s a techie.
The fourth-grader from Davis, Calif., spends almost an hour a day on the Webkinz website. The site charms kids by linking Webkinz plush animals — of which she owns 18 — with online games that encourage kids to earn and spend virtual money so they can create elaborate rooms for virtual versions of their Webkinz pets.
The site does one more thing: It posts ads that reward kids with virtual currency when they click. Every time a kid clicks on an ad, there’s a virtual ka-ching at the other end for Ganz, which owns Webkinz.
At issue: With the use of new, kid-enchanting technologies, are savvy marketers gaining the upper hand on parents? Are toy marketers such as Ganz, food marketers such as McDonald’s and kid-coddling apparel retailers such as 77kids by American Eagle too eager to target kids?
At stake: $1.12 trillion. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s the news no parent wants to hear: Their teenage daughter has been sending demeaning e-mails to another girl in her grade or that their son has been regularly harassing another boy in the hall at his school.
Greggornation 