Tag: Adolescence
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Value reprogramming our children
So many of us are raising our children mostly the way our parents raised us. It’s unclear why we do this. Perhaps we assume they did a great job, considering how awesome we turned out. Since we’re so awesome, we figure we’ll simply follow their formula and we’ll have awesome children too. Or it could…
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Transitions, Part 3
When it gets a little too comfortable or too familiar, life seems to conspire to kick you in the pants. If you are seventeen going on eighteen, this is the time of year when you are about to graduate high school and are thrust, usually with some trepidation, onto a larger and more chaotic adult…
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Separation anxiety
Our dining room is stacked with purchases and things encased in plastic. Our truck rental reservation is made, although it’s unclear to me whether an actual truck will be available on Monday. With so many college students moving into dorms and apartments, rental trucks are in short supply. We have purchased most of the items…
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Welcoming the Bush Babies
News item: A federal judge ordered the Food and Drug Administration yesterday to reconsider its 2006 decision to deny girls younger than 18 access to the morning-after pill Plan B without a prescription. Another news item: The 4,317,119 births, reported by federal researchers Wednesday, topped a record first set in 1957 at the height of…
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If you love your kids, give them a real sex education
Four years ago, I wrote about the folly of teaching substandard or abstinence-only sex education. Now we have proof, or at least a darn convincing clinical study. Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely…
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Sort of Enfranchised
If my 50th birthday in February was a big deal because the number was a very big and very round then arguably my daughter’s 18th birthday tomorrow is a much bigger deal. My turning 50 included neither new responsibilities nor privileges. Perhaps AARP membership could be construed as a new privilege. However, the AARP no…
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The transition
Some adolescents are eager to sample adult life long before they are physically and emotionally ready to do so. Others prefer to have little to do with growing up and might not grow up at all without firm parental involvement. My daughter is likely in the latter category. After she graduated in June, my wife…
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Review: Dazed and Confused (1993)
American Graffiti (1973) celebrated the teenage years of the first set of baby boomers. Arguably, for those of us born in the middle to late end of the baby boom generation, Dazed and Confused (1993) is our American Graffiti. While not nearly as good as American Graffiti, for those of us born in the late…
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The Graduate
Time sneaks up on you when you are a parent. One day you are changing your daughter’s diaper and the next she is on a stage being handed a diploma. You stand there applauding, tears streaming down your face and hoarsely shouting her name to ten thousand attendees. The principle shakes her hand with his…
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Ready or not, here life comes
I am beginning to understand that the first eighteen years of parenting are the easiest. Those first eighteen years amount to parental spadework. Parents provide the soil, the sunlight, and the seeds that help a child grow and mature. When it comes to our children, most of us are reasonably myopic. How could we not…
Occam's Razor 