EmpoweringParents.com

Last week, the story of 17 teen-age girls in Gloucester, Massachusetts who agreed to a “pregnancy pact” made international headlines. Whether the pact is truth or fiction (some are now saying no such promise was ever made) the fact remains that seventeen teen-agers who are all 16 years of age or less are about to become parents, and that these young girls saw pregnancy as the only answer to the question of what they were going to do with the rest of their lives.

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Could Red Bull and Amp be behind some of your teen’s behavior? A new study from Kathleen Miller at the University of Buffalo links energy drinks to risky behavior, including substance abuse, unprotected sex, and violence. Miller was careful to point out that the drinks don’t cause the bad behavior, but that teens and ‘tweens who consume them are “more likely to take risks with their health and safety.” (The study, by the way, focused on teen athletes, energy drinks, and risky behavior. Her team coined the phrase “Toxic Jock” during the course of their research, which was reported in the Journal of American College Health.)

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This speech, also known as “The Eleven Rules of Life,” has been widely attributed to Bill Gates, but it’s actually part of educator Charles Sykes book, Dumbing Down our Kids. We’re posting it again here during this season of high school and college graduations.

RULE 1
Life is not fair - get used to it.

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From the “Weird New Ways to Bully” file: In the news this past week, there have been stories about kids bullying classmates who are allergic to peanut butter. They’re hiding the offending food in lunch boxes or in the lockers of children who are known to have the dreaded allergy. Now, an eighth grader in Kentucky has been charged with a felony for crumbling up peanut butter cookies and putting the potentially lethal substance into the lunch box of a classmate. (Luckily, the classmate did not suffer a reaction.) Believe it or not, for some people even trace amounts of peanut oil can cause a severe reaction or even death: as in the case of the 13-year-old Australian boy who died last month when he came into contact with peanuts at a school camp.

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A group of third-graders—kids ages 8-10—were caught plotting to attack and kill their elementary school teacher. They even had assigned roles—one child was going to blacken the windows of the classroom, and another was going to clean up afterward. The nine boys and girls in the learning disabilities class (kids in the class have ADHD, ADD and developmental delays) were organized enough to bring knives, a paperweight, handcuffs and duct tape. The plan was to knock her unconscious with the paperweight and then stab her. The reason why they were going to attack her? She’d scolded a girl for standing on a chair in the classroom. The teacher of the class, Miss Belle Carter, said that they were “good kids” and couldn’t believe they were planning to attack her.

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My friends and I all have secret fears about our children. My friend Caroline is deathly afraid her children will get sick. She wakes up at night, heart pounding, wondering if the bruise on her son’s arm is really cancer. My other friend Jaimie worries that her daughter is so socially awkward that she won’t ever make good friends. My secret fear? That my son will be bullied in school, just like I was in 4th grade. (But that’s a topic for another blog post.)

Well, my fears were realized last fall. When I picked Alex up from the playground at pre-school, I saw him playing with some other kids, but as I got closer, I realized that one of the boys was actually throwing rocks at my son. Not only did Alex not say anything, he didn’t even move out of the way. When I ran up to the them, the tears were rolling down my child’s face, and all he said was, “Billy is hurting me.” Ugh. As I hugged him, I felt about 3 inches tall. How could we have raised our son and not taught him how to protect himself? (Never mind how to assert himself!)

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From time to time, kids will say that they’re bored of school. There’s some research that indicates that when some kids are bored, they’re actually mildly angry. And so, I think that kids do get angry with school, it is boring sometimes. They also don’t like the responsibility of all the assignments. As they get older, these assignments don’t appear to prepare them for the adult world and they resent it, and they resent having to do them.

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I have always wondered if people who homeschool should get some kind of teacher training before they start–you know, so they could brush up on school subjects and find out about all the new things being taught out there. I actually briefly considered homeschooling my son, but my lack of math skills has always held me back. You see, I know my son will be more advanced than I am by the time he reaches, oh, 3rd grade. (Seriously. Long division without a calculator sends me into a panic.)

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It’s started already. My son Alex will announce “I hate school!” in the mornings, and then come up with any reason he can think of to stay home. This is often accompanied by crying and screaming. “I don’t feel well. I don’t want to do what the teacher says. School is poopy.” (He’s five—right now, “poopy” is the worst insult he can hurl.) And my favorite, “I can’t go to school because there is a dragon in my belly.” Seriously. When I dropped him off last week, he stood howling at the chain link fence of the playground, screaming my name like Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. “Moommmmmmmy! Moooommmmmmmmmy!” You would have thought I was dropping him off at Sing Sing, and not the pre-school he’s loved for 2 years.

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In the news this week, there have been stories of misconduct by teachers, students and other school authority figures, from the teacher who duct taped his student to a desk, to the Pre-K teacher in Texas who was caught on tape saying “You all are stupid kids. If you’re mean to me, that means I get to be mean to you—got it?” And then there was the school bus driver in Phoenix who got into a shoving match with a 15- year-old student. (The student was suspended, the bus driver is now on paid leave pending further investigation.) In this post, James Lehman talks about what’s going on in our schools, and why teachers need training, too.

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