June 2009 Archives
Check this out!
http://tinyurl.com/ld3s8p
I get some great stuff from the Guttmacher Institute and even though this article doesn’t relate directly to kids, kids grow up to be adults, so maybe we can help them now so they don’t fall prey to some of this later.
Couples in which the male partner has a relatively high education and income are more likely than others to do nothing to protect themselves against STDs, suggesting that couples of higher socioeconomic status perceive their risk of STD infection as lower than their poorer peers.
This quote struck me as really profound, scary and true. And it sounds so much like teenagers’ sense that they are immortal.
Do you know what this is? You probably don’t really want to, but probably should, especially if you have boys.
Weirdly, I’ve known about this since I was a teenager – one of my high school classmates died from it.
Here’s the deal – this is when a person strangles himself or herself, usually by hanging from a shower curtain rod or hanger rod in a closet, because it heightens the sensation of orgasm.
Sadly, it can also kill if the person slips or goes “too far” – being a relative term in this case.
I suspect that because of the Internet, this trick may be making its way around to kids way sooner and faster than it did in my day.
So here’s the hard part – talking to your kids about this. Unfortunately, we’ve got a teachable moment in hand, “Kill Bill” star, David Carradine, probably died because of this on June 5th.
If your kids are 11 and older, you can talk to them about this. Keep it brief and to the point, and you might want to emphasize that orgasms on their own are pretty darned fabulous, doing things to “enhance” them probably isn’t worth the risk.
Governor Gregoire signed into law a new Senate bill requiring state agencies to apply only for sexual health grants that fund programs which are medically accurate, effective and have shown real and calculable impact on participants.
The new law repeals a former state policy that required the Washington Department of Health to apply for Title V abstinence-only-until-marriage funding. Now the Department of Health can apply for funding for comprehensive sex education programs.
It looks like those Abstinence-Only programs are slowly but surely on their way out. After all, our own government determined they have NO impact on kids’ sexual decision making, so it doesn’t really make sense to throw money at something that doesn’t really work, now does it?
