Let's Talk to Our Kids

"http://www.4parents.gov/" is part of the US national public education campaign to provide parents with the information, tools and skills they need to help their teens make healthy choices. They have recently launched the Talking to Your Pre-Teen or Teen About Waiting campaign on their website. The following statistics are provided:

• Do you know that 53% of high school students have not had sexual intercourse?1
• Do you know that, according to one survey, two-thirds of teens who have had sexual intercourse wish they had waited?2
• Do you know that when parents tell their teenager they want them to wait, their son or daughter is more likely to wait?3

Waiting until marriage to have sex is a very healthy decision for teens. You can help your pre-teen or teen decide to wait. You don’t have to know everything about teens and sex. What you really need to know is how to talk to your child, pre-teen or teen about what you believe. You should talk early and often. It's never too early to start the conversation. And it's never too late.

Simultaneously, The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) unveils on June 21st 'Parents Speak Up' National Campaign. It was developed based on research that indicates youth look to their parents for guidance when it come to making decisions about sex. When families encourage open communication, and teens live in an environment where values are clearly expressed, they are more likely to follow those values.

As parents, we really have to take heed of our kids up-bringing and their psycho-somatic needs as they are growing up. If we fail to keep them properly informed and guided, other activists in and around our society would pursue their "lobbying" and take over our "parental roles" instead. So, let's be prepared and be concerned about our kids' well-being against the backdrop of the de-moralization trends in our society.

Howard

Reflection of Parents' Roles

According to the New York Times, each night in the United States, more than 50 million children eat dinner without their fathers. Given this grim statistic, it seems appropriate to wonder what difference a father makes anyway. Does dining with Dad matter, or is a father at the dinner table like a kidney or a lung — nice to have but not essential for living?

We might start by looking at the scientific studies that measure a child’s well-being by his parents’ presence at the dinner table. The most famous — the one cited repeatedly by newspaper columnists and talk-show hosts in the States— is a report by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University that concludes that “the more often teens have dinner with their families, the less likely they are to smoke, drink or use drugs.”

Other studies, for example the 2000 CASA NATIONAL SURVEY OF AMERICAN ATTITUDES ON SUBSTANCE ABUSE VI: TEENS mentions that CASA correlated each teen's risk of substance abuse with a series of 12 possible actions the teen attributed to his or her parents. They then categorized parents in three categories-"hands-on," "half-hearted" or "hands-off." Teens living in "hands-on" households have parents who consistently take ten or more of these 12 actions: monitor what their teens watch on TV; monitor what they do on the Internet; put restrictions on the music CD's they buy, etc...; and have an adult present when the teen returns from school. The survey found:

• Only one in four teens (27 percent) lives with "hands-on" parents.
• Teens with "hands-on" parents are at one-fourth the risk of teens living with "hands-off" parents.
• Nearly one in five teens (18 percent) lives with "hands-off" parents-parents who fail to consistently set down rules and expectations-and are at four times the risk of substance abuse of teens with "hands-on" parents.

Furthermore, despite the conventional wisdom that many teens don't want their parents to establish rules and expectations, the survey found that teens with "hands-on" parents are much more likely to have an excellent relationship with their parents than teens with "hands-off" parents. So, parents, it is time for us to closely look at what we are doing with our children especailly in terms of both their and our own expectations for their betterment as well as the betterment of our families.

Howard

家長正常教導子女竟會導至精神病？？

從今天成報中看到題為「情色都市﹕哪裏有權力，哪裏有反抗」的文章，其作者李偉儀相信是早前力撐中大學生報情色版中的淫穢文章純是甚麼「學術探索」，並對社會中的批評聲音打成不尊重大學生言論自由的論者。當然，香港是個言論自由的地方，但現時有一個很壞的趨勢，就是有一群有心人對反對他們的所謂「性解放」言論和主張的社會人士打成甚麼性潔癖集團，幕後黑手，又詛咒人家會被對抗強權的子女氣得要見精神科！

這是甚麼年代，你說你的，人說人的，不同意見，大可各自表述，以文會友，並讓公眾來個公平判斷，以證誰是誰非，但今天的李博士生，竟然說出詛咒別人的說話，他日她真成了博士，那真是不得了，恐怕到時連稱呼稍有「政治不正確」便給她罵個狗血淋頭！甚至如外國某些同運份子般，要把不妥協的『保守派』送上法院。

敬愛的博士生，請你還是好好做好你的博士論文，認真研究一下思覺失調的主要和真正成因是甚麼，切勿人云亦云，貽害他人，特別是香港的青少年──社會未來的棟樑！

Howard