If You're A Mom To A Teen - You May Want To Read This

When I was in the 9th grade - I got my first kiss.. Now this kiss was anything but romantic - he was a very cute boy that I had been stalking and he was much more experienced than I.. After that first kiss - he asked me if I liked sex.... I told him I did not know - I avoided him after that... he scared me.... Now after getting that first kiss - I was on the prowl for my 2nd kiss.... In those days - 1980 - to be exact - we did not have cellphones... facebook... IPod with skype - heck, no one owned a computer. But we did have party-lines and once I discovered them - I became addicted.... I soon met high school boys that were just as immature as I was.... I soon had my 2nd kiss... at the park... I told my mom I was going to the library - I forgot my bike lock - she went to the library to give it to me but instead found me sitting on a park bench making out with a boy she had never met... I was SOO Busted... But - I continued to sneak behind my parents back - sneaking out the bedroom window to meet boys... I have to say that I am lucky... I was never attacked... hurt... molested and I did not have sex - I just kissed.. I kissed a lot... and looking back on my dangerous activities - I was very lucky.....

Today - I have a daughter that just completed her 9th grade year... She has her own cellphone - Facebook - and IPod..... She is going through the same hormones as I was and is making bad choices similar to the ones I did - the difference is she does not need to sneak out of the house - she has a cellphone and an IPod with a camera.... She is doing things right in her own bedroom! Yesterday - she got in trouble and had her phone taken away... While I had her phone - I was going to block a number of a kid that kept calling her and she was getting annoyed.. While I was looking up the number (she has a touch screen and I had no idea what I was doing) I hit a message that she sent to a boy... I could not miss the message due to it being a picture of her without her top on!!! I could instantly feel the nausea come up to my throat.... I (in front of her) started reading the several texts she was sending to not one boy but a few boys... I could bypass the bad words somewhat - she is a teen and I'm not stupid.. I wish she did not use the F word and other choice words while talking to her friends but unfortunately she and her friends think it's okay.. What I could not over-look was the extreme and graphic sex talk that she was initiating - not the boys - but HER....

I know she still has not had her first kiss and I also know that she is desperate to get it... When talking with her last night about her texting and also the inappropriate friends (that she has never met) on Facebook..... She told me that every guy she talks to wants pictures and that she likes that they think she is "hot". Needless to say the conversation was awful... There is so much that was said but the end result is - I told her I was not going to give up on her... She can hate me now - that's okay.... But if I did not do something now to protect her - she would hate me later and more likely hate herself too... As of last night - she will no longer have a cellphone that she can call her friends on - she will use it for emergencies and the only calls she can make are to family members.... everything else has been blocked

Regarding Facebook - this is something that she and I have been going back and forth on basically since she started it almost 2 years ago.... I have to say a majority of the "friends" on her Facebook are kids that are friends of friends or friends of friends of friends... She will also meet "friends" on You Tube.... Most of the "friends" are boys.... no brainer there...... and Most of those boys are graphic... nasty... vulgar.... and people she would not associate with in person.... That is one of the things that is so flipping dangerous about Facebook - Facebook opens the door for so many low-lifes to invade your daughter's bedroom.. I thought I was so smart - I had her Facebook password etc and I would check it on occasion - but I wasn't monitoring it close enough - obviously.... She was making friends and "chatting" with people that would scare her if she ever saw them face to face...

Computers, cellphones, and IPods with texting etc - are easy to hide behind and allow a teen to say and do practically anything they want - things that they most likely would not do in person.. For example - last Friday - my daughter had a small pool party with friends - a boy that she has known for a while that she flirts with on FB came - and when he walked in the door - she walked by him and barely said "hi" - she did not know what to say or how to act... She is brave behind her cell but face to face she is tongue tied and shy.... Computers etc have stunted my kid's communication skills and I have a strong suspicion that my kid is not the only that is having this problem...

So what have I done??? I have learned (the hard way) that she is not mature enough to handle a cellphone... She has many numbers of kids she does not know face to face.. The sex-texting and pictures have to stop... and did I mention that she was trying to get her first kiss last night at our neighbor's son's birthday party? Yep - he's 18.... Another thing I did - I called the boy that she sent the "sexy" picture to and left him a message that I was her mom and would like to speak to his mom... Haven't heard back yet... This is one kid that she did know and I know his family to be a very devout Mormon family.... So NO Cellphone. Next - Facebook - after really looking at her activity on Facebook - She wasn't talking to her friends here at home... She was talking - flirting - befriending boys she has NEVER met... Facebook is for actual friends - Not for stalking boys who are strangers! So last night I deleted every one on her Facebook, changed the password, and then deactivated it.... IPod - took it away - because this gives her access to all that her cellphone and Facebook/computer do.... She can use her old IPod for music...

New rules have got to be made... Stronger and more effective monitoring will have to be done.
I know that I cannot do this alone - there are so many issues that need to be addressed and healing has to start... I have a message into my therapist for a referral for my kid... I will not give up on her!!!!

Has any of you gone through this - If so - HELP

The Most Romantic Night...

When I was a kid our family watched television together... There was one TV in the house and I was the human remote control... We later had a remote that clicked up and clicked down.(I'm thinking that is where the term "clicker" came from) It is very difficult for my kids to understand or imagine that we had one TV not several and no one - I mean no one had a computer in their home and cell phones (except for the phone in Maxwell Smart's shoe...) - were not invented yet....

The shows we watched backed then were very different than they are today - married people on sitcoms were just starting to share a bed... Father Knew Best and Pa moved his family to a Little Prairie near Walnut Grove, Archie liked his chair and The Jeffersons were moving on up..... I believe the world... my world was still innocent... still family oriented... still had morals...

Today - I think TV shows confuse our kids... Shows like One Tree Hill, The Secret Life of An American Teen, and many others like that - make it look normal... desirable.. to sleep around in high school... The show confuses sex with love.... with romance...

This morning my girls and I were talking about romance... love.. I told them I still remember the most romantic night of my life.... My thirteen year old automatically thought I was talking about sex... It's funny to watch my daughter get grossed out when my husband/her dad get all lovey dovey... We will often hear comments like "Get a Room" or something like that...

Both of my girls were very surprised that my "most romantic" night did not involve sex..... I remember that night like it was yesterday... My boyfriend surprised me by taking me to the Queen Mary. We had a great time exploring this grand ship... We went into areas that we weren't suppose to... that was part of the adventure... Later we were up walking on the deck -hand in hand - talking about nothing.... talking about everything.. and we heard the song off in the distance... A Kiss is Just a Kiss.... A sigh is just a sigh..... We drew closer to the music and walked into an old fashion piano bar... He took my hand and we danced to the music... I never wanted the evening to end... That's it... that is all we did... and over twenty-two years later I still remember that night.. That to me is romance...

I want my kids to know the difference between love/romance and sex.. I believe because of society's lazy daisy view of premarital sex and the various TV shows that make it appear to mean so little..... it is up to me as the parent to to teach them.. By my faith.... by my experience.... by my honesty...

Sex Texting The New Party Line?

I think when a woman becomes a mom - God gives her the gift of radar/intuition....The ability to know when something just is not right.. There might not be any real and obvious signs - but there's just this feeling we get... A feeling in the pit of our stomach that something just isn't right....

My daughter had befriended a girl a couple of years ago at school... When I met this girl there was something about her that just rang wrong - red flags were popping out all over her - as time went on - my dislike grew larger... The girls did not see each other outside of school so I did not forbid my kid from being her friend - As hard it is for me - I had to allow my kid to learn from her choices in friends.. If I protected her and sheltered her then - how would she learn? Backing off and watching from a distance is something very hard for me to do... My very high "A" personality trait makes me want to take over.. take charge.. protect at all cost...

Yesterday I noticed that my kid was texting a lot more than usual.. I would walk by her and ask who she was talking so much with and she said the girl I don't like.. Out of curiosity, I asked her what they were talking about and she said they were talking about movies, music, and clothes.. I said okay and walked away... As the day progressed my kid had her cell with her every where she went and this is NOT usual behavior. After the newness of the cell phone wore off- she would go days without it and all of a sudden it was her life line? The first feeling of something wasn't right started to hit me... but I let it go....

Last night as I was going to bed - I just got a feeling - a little voice in my head telling me that I needed to find out what was going on with all the texting.... So I went into my kid's room and took her cell... (Now for those you that may read this - I do NOT see this as invasion of privacy - she is 13 years old and I will be a parent and I will check on things if I feel something is not right...) She had deleted all the incoming texts - there were two (2) left but she did not delete her outgoing... Without going into detail - I did the right thing.... and from my daughter's responses she realized she was way over her head... In an around about way - I have to say I'm proud of her... Not for starting what she did but for realizing what she was doing was wrong...

This morning I asked my daughter who a certain boy was.... She said "how did you find out?" I told her that I had a mom's feeling... She crawled into bed with me and told me everything that happened... She told me that the girl who I don't like had hooked her up with this boy via cellphone who claimed to be a christian.. who claimed to be a "good boy" until he started asking her to do things that no child should hear.... Yep, my kid was introduced to the world of sex texting by the girl I do not like.... My daughter shared how she felt awful and how her stomach started to hurt... She said that she asked him to stop texting her.. I did see those texts... My kid learned a huge lesson..... My child cried.... she said this is not what she wanted but she did not know that until it happened.. I thought that was a very wise statement...

I did not punish her for the type of texting she got herself into - I believe she is punishing herself enough - but I did take her cell phone away for a week.. One of the rules with the cell phone was no calls or texting with boys... She's 13 and she is NOT allowed to date and she broke a rule.... I remember when I was her age and there were party lines. (the 70/80's version of texting) We would accidentally on purpose hit a party line when a phone had a busy signal - that is where we would meet boys... I remember yelling through the beep beep beep - and my parents heard me in the other room... I broke the rules - I too was not allowed to talk to boys and my phone was taken away..... hmmm
As I have stated before -

I HAVE BECOME MY MOTHER!

Lie To Me

One of my new favorite shows is 'Lie To Me'. It started last year and it hooked me on the first show... It's about a business that specializes in reading people to determine if they are telling the truth or not... I love the way they will show a body gesture of someone they are interrogating and compare it with a body gesture of a well known liar - I would love to have that talent with my kids.. or maybe not.. Maybe sometimes ignorance is bliss... I haven't decided on that one yet.

As most shows do eventually it tries to draw you into the personal lives of the characters. A show is never happy just presenting the fun stuff - like finding the truth tellers and the liars... The show wants you to connect with the people in it too. The main character is a divorced dad - he also is the owner of the business and the King of the reading people... He has a young teenage daughter and an ex wife that he still loves on occasion..

Last week's episode kind of made me mad - I would love to hear your opinion too.

The story line was a member of a fraternity was accused of raping a minor. The minor was a girl in the same clique as the owner's daughter. The owner/dad was asking his daughter if she knew these girls and she pretended to not really know them.... He could read that she was lying.. He walked into her bedroom - where her body language showed that she was hiding something... He opened the drawer and found two fake identification cards and birth control pills... The daughter is mad and yelling at her dad... The ex-wife comes in and says he should have left the pills alone - at least she hasn't started taking them yet......

As it turns out the girl that was "raped" set up the entire seduction - posing as a college girl and to add insult to injury she tapes it - the camera is found and some knuckle head posts it on the Internet. When the owner/father looks at the camera - he finds his daughter's picture posing with the rest of the seduction posse at her school.. Granted the daughter was not part of the seduction thing... But she did use the fake ID's to get into clubs.... and the pills were just in case.... The end of the show.. the father returns the pills to his daughter and hugs her..... show over.. That really got my goat!

As parents - I believe it is our duty to try our best to have our kids not grow up too fast.. There is a reason the legal age to drink is 21... I would not allow my 15/16 year old kid to have a fake ID... and go on the pill... I hope that my kids will wait until they are older.... I am not blind and ignorant to the fact there is a possibility that my kid may go on the pill without my knowledge.... (I did) but I would not drive her to the clinic... I would not hug her and say it's great you're on the pill..... or that I am so proud of you for thinking of safety... I would be saying "What the heck (I believe my words would be a little more colorful) are you thinking - You're 15 years old... You're 16 years old.. Getting pregnant would be least of your problems, Missy!" I don't believe we should condone under age drinking and pre-martial sex - I think we need to make it as difficult as possible for them to attend a "drinking party" or have alone time with their boyfriend or any other guy for that matter... I am not going to let it be easy for them to do any of these things.... and if my kid decides to have sex - I really don't want to know about it..... because if I do - I have no idea how I would handle it... I would love to say - I would handle it with love and understanding.... but until it (and I hope it won't) happens - I'm just going to have to wonder....

Love, Marriage, and Then Sex......

I remember when I was in the tenth grade and I had a boyfriend named Derek. He was a nice boy.... I was not allowed to date so the extent of our relationship was holding hands between classes and him waiting at the bus stop with me and giving me a kiss goodbye as I climbed onto the bus... there was one time that I sneaked over to his house... his mom was home so I felt safe... I remember we were in his room and he was showing me pictures and such... then we started to kiss... make out really... and then his hands started to travel to places that only I had traveled too... in the shower. I took his hand and said no.... we continued to kiss and then those hands had a mind of their own.... again I said no.. We stopped and I asked him if he ever had sex because he had become very frisky... he said that he had... I was in shock - so I broke up with him then and there..... The idea of me having sex or my boyfriend having sex was something that I was not ready for..

Today sex is everywhere.... more so then when I was a sophomore in high school in 1981. It's on television and not just on soap operas anymore... It's in almost every sitcom, magazine, drama, and reality TV show. It's something that appears to be taken for granted... You date.. you kiss... you have sex... there's another word that comes to mind - but this is a G-rated site..

My kids have developed the idea that sex is not a big deal.. Because everyone is doing it... of course they both tell me that they are going to wait until they get married and I hope they will but today's world culture is so very blase about sex and that blase attitude is going to make it very difficult for my kids to wait - I know because I did not wait.. and I regret that...

You can pick up any tabloid magazine and read about Angelina and Brad and their large brood of children... they are not married.. they are not teaching their children about family values.. The process of a loving family relationship - love, marriage, and then children... How about the octomom... having so many children without a husband or father to her children... she got her babies out of a tube... Where have our family values gone... our Christian values???

Monday night I was watching The Bachlorette.. I used to love the show - but now it has lost the little class it once had... the bachelor or the bachlorette is sucking face with whatever candidate is with them at the time.. can you image if one of them had a cold sore? The whole cast would be in pain... a thought I had the other night... my point is that - here I was sitting watching this show.. my daughters walk in and start to watch the show.. I did not think to say no no no - you can't watch this... or turn the channel... and it struck me.. I am guilty of promoting "the idea sex is not a big deal" too by what I watch in front of my children... that was a major moment for me... Our children are influenced by what we watch.... I am not saying to start watching the Disney channel over what you want to watch - we are the adult.. I am saying that we need to be diligent on what we watch on TV around our children... watch what we say.. what we do... and what we read.... We need to set the example of what we want our children to become... we need to teach our child about the family values that the world no longer supports.. Love, then Marriage, and then the baby in the baby carriage...