R O O M S
| | |||||
| | | ||||
| |
You’ve taken the quiz; now here are the answers.
1. Which of the following can play a role in causing cervical cancer?
All of the above
Almost all cervical cancer tumors contain one of five high-risk types of HPV, which are strongly linked to cervical cancer. But a weakened immune system—as may be caused by HIV—can also lead to the disease. Smoking can prolong periods of HPV infection, during which cervical cells become abnormal and potentially cancerous. Even secondhand smoke can increase the risk of cells becoming cancerous. In women who don’t smoke, cervical cell changes are more likely to go away on their own.
2. True or false: Your teenage daughter must get your permission before her doctor can prescribe the Pill.
False
She has a right to privacy when it comes to her reproductive medical care, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights, even if she is under 18. So if you want to know what birth control decisions your daughter is making, you’ll have to talk to her, not her doctor.
3. The best time for a girl or woman to get the HPV vaccine is:
Before she becomes sexually active
The vaccine works best before there is any chance of a sexually transmitted HPV infection. However, it is also approved for girls as young as 9 and recommended for women up to 26 who did not receive it when they were younger.
4. True or false: By the time they graduate from high school, 61% of teens will have had sex.
True
Whether it seems like no one’s doing it or everyone is, research shows that about half of teens will have sex by the 10th grade. By the time they leave high school, 61% of teens will also leave their virginity behind.
5. True or false: The HPV vaccine can cure HPV infections and treat genital warts and cervical cancer.
False
Girls and women may still receive the vaccine if they have already had genital warts, an HPV infection, or an abnormal Pap test in the past, but it will not treat or cure any of these conditions. The vaccine is meant to prevent infection from the four types of HPV that cause most cases of genital warts and cervical cancer.
6. You can prevent the spread of HPV by using:
Condoms
If put on before any sexual contact, condoms can reduce the risk of spreading HPV. It is possible to have HPV without knowing it, so encourage your daughter to talk with her sexual partners about their chances of having HPV and other STDs.
7. What is the most common vaginal infection?
Bacterial vaginosis
About 75% of women will have at least one yeast infection over the course of their lives, but BV is even more common. Half of women with BV don’t have any symptoms and may never know they have it. Unlike BV and yeast infections, trichomoniasis is an STD and ranks as the third most common vaginal infection. At least 50% of sexually active women (and men) are infected with HPV.
8. Your daughter has had three menstrual cycles with unusually heavy bleeding that lasted longer than seven days. But she hasn’t ever been regular during her tumultuous teen years. Should you call a doctor?
Yes
Teens may have irregular periods, with cycles lasting anywhere from 21 to 45 days, but three or more cycles in a row with abnormally heavy bleeding is something worth calling a doctor about. You should also call a doctor if she bleeds between periods or has any pain in her pelvis that isn’t due to menstruation that lasts for more than a day.
9. Which of the following STDs should your daughter be tested for regularly?
All of the above
Young adults between 15 and 24 years old account for only 25% of sexually active people, but they come down with 50% of all new cases of sexually transmitted diseases each year, according to the CDC. HIV, syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia are the most common STDs for this age group. If your daughter is sexually active, she should be tested for these at least once a year. >>>>
When Jesse Chen was a student a few years ago at Brooklyn College, he helped his parents pay the rent on their Bensonhurst apartment. But he wanted to do more.
When he could, he decided, he'd buy a home for the three of them.
"When I paid rent each month, I thought, the place is not my own," said Chen, 26.
It took five years of saving for a down payment - and a city grant - but he made good on his vow.
Chen, who was born in Guangzhou in southern China and moved to Jersey City at age 12, worked his way through college.
He was able to pay $200 of his parents' $650-a-month rent and put savings into a money-market account.
While studying for a bachelor's degree in business management, he was careful with his money. He took no student loans and paid off his credit cards every month.
After graduating in summer 2007, he switched from a part-time data entry job at health insurer GHI in Manhattan to a full-time position approving insurance claims, which pays about $38,000 a year.
By the time he got his degree, Chen, an only child, had stepped up his efforts to prep for homebuying by talking with counselors at Asian Americans For Equality.
His aunt, who took homebuyer classes through the AAFE Community Development Fund, suggested he give them a try.
In 2006, Chen went to the organization’s Chinatown office and signed up for the First Home Club, a savings program for low- to moderate-income first-time homebuyers.
He opened a savings account at HSBC and put $188 in it every month for 10 months. The Federal Home Loan Bank gave him $7,500 by matching nearly every dollar he saved 4-to-1.
He took the community group's 12-hour course for first-time homebuyers, which was taught in Mandarin Chinese.
The course enabled him to qualify for a city Department of Housing Preservation and Development grant equal to 6% of the purchase price.
A counselor at Community Development Fund worked out a budget with Chen, and helped him figure out how much he could afford to pay for a home - $200,000 at most.
Earlier this year, he went apartment hunting. He and his parents scoured the real estate ads in Chinese-language newspapers, and he looked online at Realtor.com's listings.
For eight weekends in a row, they checked out apartments all over Brooklyn.
Some were in sketchy neighborhoods. Some weren't near a subway station, which they considered a deal breaker because his father, Zuofan Chen, commutes to Manhattan to his job at a weekly magazine published by a Chinese-language radio station. His mom, Huixian Zhang, travels all over the city to get to jobs as a home health care attendant.
Then they went to look at a handsome brick building in the Madison section of south Brooklyn down the block from Kings Highway - near a subway station. The apartment for sale was a two-bedroom co-op.
"We felt comfortable when we walked in," said. "It's a good neighborhood with a lot of stores and activity."
The 800-square-foot apartment was spacious and sunny. Through the windows, they saw shade trees lining the sidewalks.
It was a change from the basement apartment they were living in - where the view out their windows was of the feet of passersby.
"Now I can actually see people’s heads," said.
The asking price was $205,000. real estate agent, Tina Han, helped negotiate a deal at $188,000.
When Chen signed a purchase contract, he made a 10% down payment with $18,800 from his money-market account.
He used the $11,280 city grant and about $4,000 from the First Home Club savings program, and covered the closing costs with the rest of money from the savings club.
He remembers the closing and when he was handed the keys vividly.
"I was excited and happy," he said.
Chen has a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage at 5.375% from HSBC, which participates in a program that offers first-time homebuyers loans at discounted interest rates.
His mortgage payment is $672 a month, and the maintenance is $500.
He doesn't want his parents to contribute and, so far, he's footing the bill with no problems.
Before the family moved in to the new apartment in July, spent two weeks sprucing it up.
Rollers, brushes and paint cost about $300. picked baby blue as the color for his bedroom, and soft white for the rest of the apartment.
“I knew it would be perfect if I did it myself,” he said.
LORE CROGHAN
Grandparents play a critical role in their grandchildren's lives, helping boost their development even through simple activities such as reading to them or going shopping together, an Australian study said.
The four-year government-funded study, released on Tuesday, measured children's physical, learning and cognitive development, in addition to social and emotional functioning.
It showed that children aged from 3 to 19 months had higher learning scores if they were cared for by family and friends -- including grandparents -- as well as their parents.
"This new study demonstrates just what a critical role grandparents play in the development of children," Federal Families, Housing and Community Services Minister Jenny Macklin was quoted by Australian media as saying.
"We know from this study how important it is to a child's development to ... spend as much time as possible every day reading and spending time playing with children," she said.
The "Growing up in
A baby's first words are often "mama" and "dada," much to the delight of parents. Now scientists think they know why.
Beyond the obvious - Mommy and Daddy are around a lot and babies are drawn to them - languages in many cultures have apparently made the task easy by creating words for mothers and fathers that feature patterns of repeating sounds, a new study suggests.
To arrive at this finding, brain scans were made of 22 newborns (age 2 days to 3 days) while they listened to recordings of made-up words. They heard words that end in repeating syllables, such as "mubaba" and "penana," as well as words without them, such as "mubage" and "penaku."
Brain activity increased in the babies' temporal and left frontal areas whenever the repetitious words were played. Words with non-adjacent repetitions ("bamuba" or "napena") elicited no distinctive responses from the brain.
This suggests "mommy" and "daddy" are well-chosen words to teach a baby, and it also indicates that the ability to more easily recognize these sorts of repetitive sounds is hard-wired in the human brain.
The research, led by
"It's probably no coincidence that many languages around the world have repetitious syllables in their 'child words,'" Gervain said, citing "papa" in Italian and "tata" (grandpa) in Hungarian as examples.
"The language center of most right-handed adults is located on the left side of the brain," Gervain said. "This is consistent with our finding with newborn babies and supports our belief humans are born with abilities that allow us to perceive and learn our mother tongue systematically and efficiently."
"The brain areas that are responsible for language in an adult do not 'learn' how to process language during development, but rather, they are specialized - at least in part - to process language from the start."
Baby Bats Babble Like Human Infants
A lack of physical control and coordination in childhood may be tied to an increased risk of obesity in later life, a new study says.
The research, published online at BMJ.com Wednesday, adds to previous studies that found poorer cognitive function in childhood may be linked to obesity and type 2 diabetes in adults.
The findings, based on 11,041 individuals in the ongoing National Child Development Study in
Adjusting for factors that may influence the results, such as childhood body mass and family social class, did not change the results. However, the study did not delve into specific biological processes that may explain poorer physical control and coordination in childhood with adult obesity.
"Some early life exposures (such as maternal smoking during pregnancy) or personal characteristics may impair the development of physical control and coordination, as well as increasing the risk of obesity in later life," the authors, from Imperial College London and Orebro University Hospital & Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, wrote.
"Rather than being explained by a single factor, an accumulation throughout life of many associated cultural, personal, and economic exposures is likely to underlie the risks for obesity and some elements of associated neurological function," they concluded. >>>>
When a 13-year-old Minnesota boy was banned from church after parishioners complained about his behavior, it exposed a painful truth so politically incorrect that some people feel guilty just saying it out loud: Some autistic children can be annoying and disruptive in public.
The case of Adam Race and others like him has laid bare conflicted feelings — among both parents of these children and other people — over autistic youngsters in public places. And it has stirred debate over how much consideration one side owes the other.
In the case of Adam Race, a judge agreed with a priest in Bertha,
Carol Race, Adam's mother, said the congregation's claims were exaggerated. But in a letter to the Star Tribune of Minneapolis, JoAnn Brinda of
"I don't understand why families that have a challenged child who becomes loud and abusive remain at a service where all participants are quiet and contemplative most of the time," Brinda wrote.
Susan Duclos of
"I have known a few people over my lifetime who have had to deal with autism with their children," Duclos said. "It's as frustrating for them as it is for the public."
Similar cases involving people with autism have played out in public recently. A
Syndicated radio talk show host Michael Savage added to the furor last month when he charged that doctors and drug companies are overdiagnosing autism, and said, "I'll tell you what autism is: In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out." Several major companies pulled their advertising from Savage's show.
Lisa Jo Rudy, who is the mother of an autistic child and writes and consults on autism, said Savage's words were "truly nasty and hurtful." At the same time, Rudy said the talk show host has raised awareness of some of the frustrations of parents of autistic children and the wider public, too.
Rudy said there are times when parents should not put their children in situations where they may be disruptive. "Some of these stories really are the ones where the general public can absolutely identify with the other side of the story," Rudy said.
Jason Goldtrap of
"I certainly sympathize with all the families who are in this situation," Goldtrap said. "But when we got away from the concept of institutionalization in
Goldtrap added: "If it were up to me, he would be in an institution. My brother doesn't agree, and that's his prerogative." He declined to identify his brother, saying, "I don't want to start another argument."
Autism is a disorder that inhibits a person's ability to communicate and can include a host of complications. It varies widely in its severity. Some people are well-behaved; others are prone to outbursts or self-abusive behavior such as biting or head-banging.
A recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that one out of every 150
Many parents say that their autistic children are largely misunderstood, that they can't help it when they act up, and that they need interaction with the public.
Barbara Coppo, whose 30-year-old son, Kenny, was banned from a
"Autism may frighten people because so little is known about the disorder," said Coppo, who wrote a book about her son. "The cause has not been scientifically proven and the victims often act in ways society doesn't understand."
However, some parents wonder how much understanding can be gained in grocery stores, churches or other public places.
Nikki Wilmoth-Williams of
"I'm an advocate for my child, but we all have to play on the same playground," she said. "It's not about clearing the playground so my child can be on it."
Wilmoth-Williams recalled one day after Sunday school class, when Zach licked several trays full of Oreo cookies set out for students. He was asked to find a different class.
"We're talking 50 to 60 Oreos. He didn't understand the effect it had on the entire class," Wilmoth-Williams said. "I had to make amends. I had to volunteer."
Rudy advises parents of autistic children to arrange forays out in public with care, which may mean five minutes in the grocery store instead of 45 minutes.
"Certainly there are cranky people in this world. If a mother glares at your child for something that's really pretty harmless, quite honestly that's her problem," Rudy said. "But if your child is going to have a meltdown, I don't think it's in anybody's best interest to bring the child along."
Joe Schmitt, a
"They usually really do care, but they have to weigh the considerations of others," Schmitt said.
Schmitt said church officials in
"I'm not saying they were right," Schmitt said of the church. "But I would disagree with anybody who thinks they did that casually or it wasn't important to them."
Sandy Boyles, whose 18-year-old son, Walter, is autistic, said that when she began attending First Reformed Church in
"She was afraid of being ostracized. I told her, `So what? Bring him anyway,'" the Rev. Susan Kramer-Mills said.
Eventually, the small congregation revised its services to Walter's liking. Worship used to start softly and build to a crescendo. Now, it starts with more noise.
"I have to be careful because sometimes he'll do a fast movement or run," Boyles said. "But the other members aren't as scared as I am."
Middle school is a minefield for many children, a volatile mix of sexuality and social cliques that can be overwhelming for kids who sailed serenely through grade school. That's particularly true for the 25 percent of girls who go through puberty early and are at greater risk for problems like delinquency, eating disorders, and depression. While these girls may look grown up, the bottom line is, they still need involved parents.
"There is a lot of pressure on this age group from media and peers to look older, act older, dress older," says Sylvie Mrug, a psychologist at the
Parents can help pave the way to teenagerhood by maintaining communications with their children, being warm and nurturing, and knowing where their kids are and who their friends are, Mrug has found. She and her colleagues interviewed 330 fifth-grade girls and their parents to find out what helps them make for a smoother passage through middle school. Her conclusions:
• Girls who have a warm, nurturing mom were less likely to have problems, perhaps because by providing support and encouragement, the mothers helped their daughters develop coping skills.
• Having parents who are good communicators and know where their children were was particularly helpful in reducing social aggression, such as excluding others, that so often mars girls' interactions. That may be because discussing difficult situations and possible responses may give the girls more options.
• Knowing where kids are and who they're hanging out with is critical, because the "wrong crowd" can really lead vulnerable preteens astray. Girls who mature early are more likely to attract older boys, despite the fact that the girls don't have the social skills or maturity to deal with them.
I found the fact that parents' influence is still hugely important to be fascinating, because middle school is a time when children often withdraw from parents and become obsessed with their friends. (Cue eye-rolling and pained sighs here.) Mrug's study, which is published in the August Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, makes clear that just because kids think parents are obsolete, it doesn't mean those guardians aren't useful. It may also encourage parents to hang in there through the pain of being rejected and dissed, with the knowledge that they're still doing vital work—and things will get better.
Although this study looked at girls specifically, the advice should also prove useful for parents of preteen boys, and for parents of girls who are in no rush to act like a 16-year-old. Mrug suggests five way to apply the principles of positive parenting. >>>>
Learning how to put on a condom at work can make it easier to talk with your kids about sex.
I read that startling bit of news in the latest British Medical Journal and made a call lickety-split to Mark Schuster. He's the brains behind "Talking Parents, Healthy Teens," a worksite-based parenting program that includes the condom lesson. Schuster also happens to be the chief of general pediatrics at Children's Hospital Boston and coauthor of Everything You Never Wanted Your Kids to Know About Sex, but Were Afraid They'd Ask. Once I got Schuster on the phone, I asked a tough, probing journalist question: What the heck? Here's his explanation:
Why on Earth did you decide to try teaching parents about sex ed in the workplace?
Everyone told me it was a stretch. But the parents in my practice were coming to me and saying, "I need help." And with sex ed in the schools, people were really up in arms. The one thing that everyone agreed on is that the parents have to play a bigger role. That's the common ground.
Why not just offer a parenting class in the evenings?
You set up a program on the weekend or the evenings, no one's going to show up. Most parents of adolescents are employed, they're busy helping with homework in the evenings or they're wiped out. We thought, well, parents are in the workplace, maybe we can go to them. I just started contacting major employers in
So you ran eight weeks of lunchtime classes at 13 worksites, and 569 parents participated in the study. What did you find out?
The employers really liked it and the employees really liked it. They would keep coming back. They really felt like they got something out of it. Nine months after the classes ended, the parents and the kids both report a significant increase in communication. They have discussed a lot of new topics for the first time, and they have discussed a lot of topics again. In addition, parents rate the ability to communicate with their kids as much higher. [Topics included how to make decisions on whether or not to have sex, the importance of not pressuring other people to have sex, and how to know if one is in love.]
I'd be worried that my coworkers wouldn't share my values on things like premarital sex or contraceptive use. How do you handle that?
That was a big concern. We knew we could easily have some parents who do not believe in sex before marriage and do not believe in the use of contraceptives, and other parents who think it's fine to have sex in high school but just want to have their kids use contraceptives. So we did research, including focus groups. That confirmed what we thought from the start: We had to come up with a program that was open to everybody. The way to do that was to provide the facts and put the focus on teaching communication skills. Any parent can use those skills in interacting with his or her adolescent.
What communications skills worked best?
First, parents need to think through what they believe about sex and their adolescent. How would I feel if she had sex in college and she'd been dating the guy for six months? How would I feel if my son had sex with this woman he's engaged to and who I think is great? There's some work to be done to think about what they want to communicate.
You want to have a dialogue with your kid. You're not going to be there when they're out on a date, so you need to teach them how to make decisions. You can react and say, "That sounds good, but let me tell you a different perspective, and let me tell you why I think this." He will not always make the same decision as you, but he will learn from you.
And what's with the condom-on-the-finger lesson?
Parents should at least know how a condom works, so they can answer questions if their children ask them. We taught them all the steps, starting from how to open the package. We did that on the same day that we taught parents how to teach their kids how to say no to sex if they don't' want to do it. Right after the program, 18 percent of the parents said they taught their kids how to use a condom, compared to 3 percent of the control group. By nine months, it had gone up to 29 percent for the program families, and only 5 percent for the control families. A lot of parents said, this is really scary, but I am going to teach this eventually. In reality, they did.
You don't have funding yet to expand these classes to workplaces around the country. What can parents do now?
Parents should start talking with their kids about sex early and often. If they know you don't want to talk about it, they'll go to their friends, and when they're older, they'll go to the Internet. Much better to give simple answers when they're young, so they know you're the person to go to with those questions. When they hit puberty, then you can start talking about issues of love and sexual attraction and dating. Do it in little bits as it comes up. You're watching a TV show together, or you're talking to a neighbor and you mention that your friend got pregnant and it's an accident. What does that mean? You can talk with your kids about that.
What if my kids are already teenagers and I've been avoiding the issue for too long?
What you don't want to do is, your daughter's about to go out on a date and you sit her down and start talking about sex and contraception. That's the worst time. You want the conversation to be dispassionate. You at least have to let her know that you wish you'd started earlier, and you're not referring to anything in particular, but you read this article online and it's right, you should be talking about this. You can say, "I want to get started because it's my responsibility as a parent." Parents are afraid that they'll make a mistake. You can even say, "I've put this off because it embarrasses me and I'm afraid I'll make a mistake. But if I do make a mistake, I'll come back and correct it. We can start by looking things up on the Internet together."
You can also just wait for your kids to ask questions up to a certain point. Certainly when your kid is entering puberty, he or she should know about sex. They should know about responsibility. They should know about contraception. Even if you don't believe in it, they should know about this stuff. And they should know your views on it. >>>>
6-year-old asks at dinner, "What's a blow job?" Four-year-old girls mimic Britney Spears's pelvis-grinding gyrations. Eight-year-old girls plot how to manipulate their parents to buy them "sexy" midriff-baring tops. And fifth-grade boys tell their teacher they know you don't have to like a person to have sex with them because they've seen pornography on the Internet.
After I read these real-life examples of the sexualization of childhood in So Sexy So Soon, the new book by Diane Levin and Jean Kilbourne, I felt nauseated. I have a rising kindergartner whose idea of being a big girl means going without sippy cups, and I'm nowhere near prepared for dealing with the blow job question at the dinner table. So I called up Levin, a professor of education at
The examples you give in your book are so distressing. Is life really like that for young children?
Yes, unfortunately. I don't want to terrify you about what's going to come but, on the other hand, it will help you be prepared.
What has happened? This is so different from our childhoods, when we didn't start thinking about this stuff until middle school. I just saw an ad for high heels for 6-month-olds. Puh-lease.
Deregulation of television in the 1980s led to much more violent programming for young boys, and girls being channeled more to what's pretty and sweet. Since then, we've seen increasing escalation of gender divisions, of boys being told they have to be macho and ready to fight, and girls not just being pretty and sweet but being sexy and sexualized. Even Barbie now has bigger, sexier lips to compete with the Bratz dolls.
When I look at a toy that upset me 10 years ago, I think, "Oh boy, I wish we had that now." There is a female professional wrestling toy that comes to mind. Back then, she had on a very skimpy dress and she was holding a cigarette. It was marketed to children. Her breasts got bigger every year after that, the neckline got lower. Seven years later, I got a figure of a professional wrestler in a black leather bra and shorts. The bra was unzipped; she carried a whip. It was an image out of S&M pornography. I say give me back the earlier toy.
But you say that just saying no, banning Bratz dolls and violent superheroes, isn't going to work. Why not?
Industry always says it's the parents' job to say what's appropriate, that if they didn't let their kids watch it, they wouldn't see it. But no matter how much parents say no, there are things that are going to get in that they don't want—at another person's house, on the playground, or through older kids.
Secondly, if you just say no, your kids are not going to know how to deal with these things. They begin to see you as the enemy. The single most important thing is to stay connected. If a child says, "I really, really, really need to have this," say: "Tell me why you think so, and let me tell you why I think that's a bad idea. Let's think about a way how you can have it that will deal with what worries me."
You're talking about letting kids see stuff you don't think is appropriate.
Let me give you an example with my own son, who's now in his middle 20s. We did not go see the violent cartoon movies, and he was in first or second grade when the Ninja Turtle movie was coming out. Everyone in the class had seen the movie except for two girls and my son. We agreed that we would go to see the movie together. Afterwards, a friend of mine asked Eli how the movie was. He said, "My Mom came out and had a stomachache and couldn't eat dinner, but I loved it."
What was so important about that is that it established that he had a voice, and that I had different ideas than him and he could hear them and they could get into his head and they could influence him. Had I just said no, it would set him up at school in a way that would have alienated him from me, and I knew that at some point he was going to have to live in this world.
Kids have two boxes in their heads—the pop culture box and then the family-school-societal-culture box, which is all the things we hope kids will learn to be good, contributing members of society. The boxes now are pretty much disconnected. I hope this will help parents realize that they have to see what's in their children's world. They have to connect the boxes. Talk to your kids about the media in their lives. Watch those shows or games and ask your children questions about them. If you're not sure if they're appropriate, watch them yourself first.
What do we parents say if our 7-year-old says she hates her body and wants to be sexy? That's another distressing real-life example from your book.
You don't need to have the right answer. The important thing is to talk about it. If you say something is wrong, later you can say, "I have another idea." Or you can say, "Hmm, that's a good question. Let me think about it and we can talk about it tomorrow." There are ways you can regroup. Even if you say the wrong thing, it's better than saying nothing.
What else can parents do?
Work with others—talk to other parents about this and get your kids' school involved. Schools are at fault for saying that this is the parents' job. Schools have to counteract the pop culture lessons kids are learning and help them develop alternate views and skills. Parents can't do it themselves. >>>>
Children are sure to encounter sexually explicit photos and lyrics. Help them stay safe
Talking with kids about sex is a challenge for most parents, and it's getting harder by the day, what with children exposed to sexually explicit terms and images at younger and younger ages. Diane Levin, coauthor of So Sexy So Soon, gives these six pointers on how to help your children navigate safely through an oversexualized world. "It's much harder for parents now," Levin says. "But there's a lot more they can do than they realize."
1. Stay connected, so your child is comfortable telling you about sex or other emotionally charged issues. When children say or do something that seems inappropriate, a good start to the conversation is: "What have you heard about that?"
2. Protect children as much as possible from exposure to sexual imagery in the media and popular culture. Ban TVs and computers from kids' bedrooms. Set up a schedule that spells out how much screen time your kids have each day. Encourage other activities, including sports, music, and volunteering.
3. Learn about the media and popular culture in your children's lives. Ask them what shows, videos, and games they do and don't like, and what their friends like. Watch shows or play video games with your children, so you know what's in the media and can talk about why sexual or violent images disturb you. Preview shows yourself if you're not sure whether they're appropriate for your child. If you have tweens or teens, join MySpace and Facebook to keep an eye on their online activities.
4. Get beyond "Just say no." If you are too rigid as a parent, your kids will sneak behind your back or be afraid to tell you about disturbing images they see. Try working out solutions with your children. When you do need to say no, say it constructively: "I know you saw that show at Jared's house, and we've talked about how much you want to watch it here. But I've watched it, too, and it just makes me too uncomfortable to let all the [inappropriate content] into our house. But I'm glad we've talked about it."
5. Counteract the narrow stereotypes of boys and girls in commercial culture by helping boys learn alternatives to tough and violent behavior and by encouraging girls to be physically active and independent, rather than focusing on appearance and sexiness.
6. Share your values and concerns with other adults—including other parents and teachers. We're not in this alone.
Bravenet Blog 
Blog Community
Get a Free Blog
Manage your Blog
bravenet.com