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Strollerderby
The fact that teens have discovered the joy of sexting is not surprising. Clandestine conversation and flirting with the forbidden are the meat and potatoes of adolescence. But unlike notes passed in the classroom, or even obscene phone calls, sexting has the added risk of becoming very, very public.
When this happens, which seems to be disturbingly often, lives are forever changed. And those lives are disproportionately the lives of girls. Young girls’ participation in even mutual revealing exchanges has the power to ruin reputations in a very long term, very old school way, marking them with the record of their indiscretions.
Here’s why girls are so much more vulnerable:
I did a lot of work with teenage girls before I became a mother. I was in my twenties. The reverb of adolescence was still ringing in my ears. Together with friends, I wrote some very honest, and consequently, very controversial, books for teenage girls, some of which really freaked out the parents of teenage girls. Now I’m the mother of a girl myself, and a boy who’s on the edge of tweenhood. They’re still little, but I can see the teenagers inside them, fighting for independence, demanding the right to their own point of view.
I might be particularly inclined to look for teenagery traits in my kids because of my background. But I don’t think it’s just me. I think the idea of the teenager is such a powerful one that it’s been spreading in both directions, creating both early and extended adolescence.
Does social media weaken our connections to real people?
The notion of being “unplugged”, for me, still conjures up images of scrubby rock bands sitting around an MTV stage with acoustic guitars, proving they could play their instruments unplugged.
Today, of course, it’s us who need to take a break from being plugged in all the time. Getting unplugged is a chance to prove to yourself that you can still perform without your iPhone or Blackberry backing you up.
Susan Maushart has written a book about what happened when she pulled the plug on her whole family’s social media use for six months. In an excerpt from the Winter of Our Disconnect on Salon, she says her whole family has thrived since they turned off Facebook and connected with real life.
Last week, The Baby Website released the results of a survey in which parents of grown children were asked to name the age at which their kids were most difficult to parent. Not surprisingly, the teen years beat out the so-called terrible twos when it came to parental challenges. While the survey respondents reported that their formerly sweet boys became moody, sullen and uncommunicative at age 15, girls were said to hit the wall at the age of 14.
Parents of those sulky 15-year-old boys mostly chalked up their bad behavior up to hormones caused by puberty, an admission that these poor guys are just victims of their own bodies and doing the best they can during a difficult time of life. Girls, however, weren’t given such a pass. Parents reported feeling that the main issue with their teen girls was that while they were “turning into women overnight,” their behavior was regressing to that of a toddler, complete with meltdowns and temper tantrums. Continue reading »
As part of his school’s Blankets for Babies project, 16-year-old Darryl Currie knits beautiful blankets for children living at Our Ladies Inn shelter for pregnant women in St. Louis. That a high school boy would spend his free time knitting for others is impressive and commendable, but his philanthropy has an unexpected twist. Continue reading »
Fear of SIDS. Autism. Learning disabilities. Anxiety is a constant throughout every phase of parenting. Worries about sickness and freak accidents dominate parents’ lives when their kiddies are tiny. But come the teen years, your child’s behavior can and will introduce a whole new set of nail biters. Vicki Iovine, author of the Girlfriends’ Guides series, weighs in on what causes her the most angst in her upcoming book Girlfriends’ Guide To Teenagers:
When asked whether they would give credit cards to their teen children, a whopping 71% of parents polled by ABC firmly clenched their wallets tightly and voted, “Hell no!” Fears of rampant American Apparel and Urban Outfitter shopping sprees likely fueled that response, but is it necessarily the right one?
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