Recently in Parenting Category

Of course it took Harvard to figure this out, but it seems, from a small sample of racially and ethnically diverse parents and kids, that parents are missing the boat when it comes to timing their sex talks with kids. This study is unique in that rather than being a retrospective account of when parents talked to kids, it was concurrent.

The researchers surveyed parents about the timing of dicsussion of different sex related topics with the stage of sexual activity they thought their kids had experienced.The kids did the same thing - except they reported the sexual activity they had engaged in at the time of the conversation.

Guess what? Time and again, the parents underestimated the level of sexual activity their kids had engaged in. For example, a parent talked to their child about wet dreams and said they thought their child had been kissed. The child reported they had experienced genital touching. Whoops!

Bottom line. Start talking about everything before they're sexually active. It will serve them well.

Check out the charts!  http://tinyurl.com/ydnkf95

Thanks much to www.radicalparenting.com for making my books their featured books a couple of weeks ago.

If you don't know who they are, Radical Parenting is run by a 24 year old woman, Vanessa Van Petten, who wrote her first parenting book at age 17! Not to worry, she's not a parent - just a person who's been parented. She and her team of teenage writers help us become better parents by letting us into their world.

Here are their Parenting Prinicples and man, are they right on!

1) There are no ‘perfect parents’, formulas, easy answers or a ‘right’ way to parent.  There is a right way for your family, you have to constantly strive to find it.

2) Live the You-Them-You Perspective. Learning to see how the other side feels is one of the most difficult ideas to master.  Adopting this yourself and teaching your kids to think about their needs and then other’s needs is a wonderful way to teach children gratitude and perspective.  We hope to give you tools to do this.

3) Constantly challenge what we think we know.  ‘Radical’ means to question the status quo and what isn’t working.  This is how we grow as a family and as human beings.  Find your mirror, whether it is our blog, a radical parenting friend, or your spouse to examine patterns and habits that are not working.

4) Stay open-minded. We never know what another person is really thinking.  Parents and kids who remain open-minded and open to suggestions have less fights, resentment and guilt.

5) Guilt is not a tool we use. This is a hard one, but we will always try to help you end guilt cycles and passive aggressiveness—help us too!

6) Communicate the hard stuff. Maintain and push for open and honest communication even if it is difficult to say or hear.

7) Abundance in love. You can never express your love for your family members too much.

8 ) Regular weekly Family Bonding Time.  Spending quality (not necessarily) quantity time with your family is essential to working out issues, forming bonds and getting to know the unique needs of your family.

9) Monthly Family Check-Ins.  Having one family check-in per month and at each family check-in filling out a family sheet for each family member and making new family goals.  This is a way for you to become accountable to each other and help other family members achieve their goals.

10) Asking for help from your community.  Ask for help from friends, family or other Radical Parent Community members when you need it, you do not have to be alone.  Start your own Radical Support Group.

Check it out yourself! www.radicalparenting.com

I was so honored this week to give the keynote speech for the organization Healthy Start. Healthy Start provides parenting support to young parents - under 22 years old. Their youngest client was 14 and their average client is 17.

These young parents are paired with a mentor and a social worker and between the two of them, get so much support and information that they are probably better parents than those of us with "everything."

One of the pieces of support they provide is information about birth control and condom use. These girls are encouraged to wait to have a second baby, and guess, what? It works.

The national average for teen girls having a second baby is nearly 30%. This means that a third of teen mama's have another kid with in a few years of the first.

When a young person goes through the Healthy Start program, her second birth rate is...drum roll please...3%.

Yes, I said 3%.

This program has a big impact on the young people it helps, and in turn, a big impact on our community. These babies are being given the gift of healthy, savvy parenting and while they may not know it in the moment, they'll know it in the long run.

Remember, these kids are going to grow up to take care of us in our old age, to be our doctors and lawyers, our grocery checkers and our grandchildren's teachers. Don't they deserve to have the best start possible?

If you want to help this program continue, please make a donation. www.healthystartfamilies.org

Great news from the Guttmacher Institute – the teen abortion rate has declined a whole bunch since 1974.

It’s dropped from 33% in 1974 to 17% in 2004. It took 30 years, but progress is progress, right?

The reason for the drop? Increased use of birth control and the availability of more effective methods. And for the record, the drop started before we had federally funded Abstinence Only programs, so we were already on the right track.

The only bad news in this good news is Black and Hispanic women obtain abortions at a rate 3 to 5 times higher than that of white women. Throw in a good dose of poverty, and the numbers increase.

Historically, these women are poorer and have less access to healthcare than the majority of white women – even white teenagers.

We need to think about what we can do to help young and poor women gain access to birth control. Voting for a candidate who sees the connections between poverty, access to birth control and abortion, is probably a good placed to start.