According to Bernie Siegel, M.D. on the Huffington Post site, bad parenting can lead to health problems for the children later in life. Here is a quote from the article:

Studies verify what happens to children who grow up unloved and experiencing indifference, rejection and abuse -- by midlife if they haven't killed themselves and others while seeking revenge and experiencing guilt related to their actions, almost 100 percent of them have experienced a major illness, while loved children have one-fourth the serious illness rate.

Wow! Talk about the power of love. The article goes on to make many other various points on the health care debate, but this quote was what really caught my attention. What is the connection? Mostly the fact that modern medicine tends to treat the immediate illness and not the underlying cause. For example: We hold birthing classes for expectant mothers, but not parenting classes?!? Don't you think both are equally important?

I think it is safe to say that most people reading this sincerely care about and love their children (why else would you be reading a parenting blog?), but there are still many neglected kids in our area. If you have some spare time and good parenting skills to boot, then consider helping with our local kids who may not be getting the care they need. Check out Kids in Distress or the Boys and Girls Clubs for opportunities to help our youth, and remember to give your kids a big squeeze.

Photo courtesy of © Fernando Cortés | Dreamstime.com

Kids today (I know, I’m sounding like my parents here) have it too easy. They can blast out a message via Facebook or Twitter. They can send a text message or instant message to a buddy. They can chat via game systems.

And they don’t have to leave their couch, house, chair or the mall – or wherever they're hanging out. And now comes voting – early voting and even voting by e-mail.

I know early voting breaks tradition, but to me – at least for now – I cherish the process of going in person to vote.

There is value in being around others who exercise the freedom to vote, to gather in person to do so, despite our differences, opinions and politics.

My son should see this. He and his generation should never let the ease of technology minimize the process of thinking, choosing, doing.

It takes more effort that hitting “send.” It takes active participation.

It may be a new generation of iPad and iPod. But it’s still – I vote.

Check out the Broward County Supervisor of Elections for more voting and elections information.

And not a moment too soon. Motherlode, the parenting blog at the New York Times, ventured into somewhat similar territory with a post on a Chicago writer who, in a very serious story, used the term "ghetto parenting" to describe a particular kind of neglectful childrearing that produces everything from kids with their belts at their knees to young adults bound for prison.

Question: is the term "ghetto parenting" racist? Does it affect your answer to that question to learn that the writer who coined the term is, herself, black?

The next day, talk show host Rush Limbaugh stepped in it (actually, he gleefully jumped in it with both feet) by describing the late New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner as a "cracker" who made a lot of African Americans rich while firing a lot of white managers.

The comment seemed calculated to provoke outrage somewhere, somehow, from someone. Al Sharpton rose, or stooped, to the occasion by decrying the comment and suggesting an apology was in order.

Nonsense. The only thing that was offensive about Limbaugh's statement was that he neglected to mention the number of Hispanic millionaires Steinbrenner created. I hate when Latinos are left out of stories, especially when the stories are about millionaires.

I thought Limbaugh was rather clearly playing with people's perceptions of himself and making a serious point, too: while his detractors search vigorously for the smoking gun that proves his racism, he contends his real passion is not for white supremacy, but colorblind capitalism.

And it was funny. He calls it "illustrating absurdity by being absurd." Limbaugh calling someone a cracker is like me calling someone a hypersensitive p.c. cop (at least, according to MY critics).

My point is that we are bombarded daily by examples of people using words that provoke: sometimes they provoke pain, anger, hurt, or offense. Other times they provoke righteous indignation, resolve, determination and courage. At the very least, we can hope they provoke thought.

Did Rush Limbaugh go too far, using Steinbrenner's legacy to make a political point when the body wasn't even cold yet? Did Mary Mitchell go too far, coining the phrase "ghetto parenting" and not expecting race to overwhelm the ensuing discussion?

As parents, we are charged with the mission of teaching our kids right from wrong, good from bad, polite from rude. In doing so, we should also be able to see that intending offense is not always a matter of black or white.

When did advocating civility become a bad thing?

Last week, I wrote about my personal objection to the expression “that’s so gay,” a needless and usually thoughtless insult that, unfortunately, shows little sign of abating in popular culture.

And boy, did I hear it from some of you.

“How about promoting thicker skins instead of curbing language?” one reader weighed in.

“We have turned into a society who tip-toes so as to not offend anyone. Maybe people should just be less easily offended,” wrote another, who [full disclosure] is an acquaintance of mine with a terrific singing voice.

“How can we compete globally as a nation of thin-skinned crybabies?” asked a third.

These criticisms raise a valid point, one I agree with. But they miss a valid point, too: I just don't see why it has to be an either-or proposition.

Let’s clarify: I intended to share what I think and what I'm doing with my conversations and my household. Yes, I hope you agree with me and do the same, but I don't advocate the counterproductive approach taken in one of the public service announcements I posted (comedienne Wanda Sykes berates a group of teenagers at a pizzeria who use the expression, reinforcing the stereotype of 'voluntarily indignant' p.c. police barging into other people’s conversations, uninvited, to tell them what they can and cannot say).

Some of us (myself included) need to grow a thicker skin. A thick skin is a virtue, no doubt. Looking for offense around every corner helps no one, and butting in on other people’s conversations only compounds rudeness, in my view.

But I don’t see where developing a thick skin on my part excuses a lack of politeness on yours.

A thick skin and a respectful attitude are not mutually exclusive virtues. They can, indeed should, coexist peacefully.

It's not about barging into other people's conversations. It's about taking responsibility for my own, and passing that sense of responsibility and respect onto my kids. You would think no one would have a problem with that, but some people do. They think any sensitivity is hypersensitivity, any voluntary show of respect a mandatory surrender to the ironically intolerant forces of political correctness.

In their paranoia, they turn boorishness into a virtue, and woe to those who have the inner decency to recognize their boorishness for what it is.

Here’s what I think: some people enjoy being offensive, and they hate being called on it. They gleefully use words as weapons to spread their rudeness, either with deliberate intent or reckless disregard, and when their rudeness has its inevitable effect and they are called on it, they play the victim by accusing their critics of political correctness or hypersensitivity.

Or they play the misunderstood comic genius, branding themselves as “equal-opportunity offenders” in the style of Don Rickles, failing to understand how Rickles brilliantly undermined bigotry by exposing its ugliness. Rickles should sue such amateurs for slander.

It is the height of hypocrisy, how they whine about the criticism by telling other people not to be so sensitive to their deliberate or reckless rudeness. Or worse, in other cases, they imply or state outright that because they're not offended by an insult that wasn't directed at them in the first place, no one else should be. The arrogance!

The truth is, you don’t have to be thin-skinned to know rudeness when you see it. There should be nothing wrong with insisting on civility in yourself, or in passing that virtue on to your kids.

So thanks for the advice. I'll teach my kid to grow a thicker skin. And to be a decent person, to boot. I've found that if you’re any good at either, it's not hard to be good at both.

Continue reading "Political correctness v. defending boorishness" »

Ever since moving to Florida five years ago, I have been amazed by the number of parents who don't use car seats. Heck, many don't even make their kids wear seat belts. This just blows me away. Are you really too busy to take 30 seconds to possibly save your child's life? My wife and I actually ended a close friendship because they would babysit our daughter and drive her around with no car seat. This was even after we told them how strongly we felt about it.

The new bill being floated around by Florida lawmakers would require children ages 4 to 7 and shorter than 4' 9" to ride in a booster seat. Senator Thad Altman, the senate bill's sponsor, says that children using booster seats are 59 percent less likely to be injured in an accident than those just using seat belts.

This isn't the first time lawmakers have tried to pass this. Back in 2001, Jeb Bush vetoed a similar bill calling it a "de facto tax on families living paycheck to paycheck". However, Florida and Arizona are the only two states that do not have similar laws. Is it time for Floridians to pay up for the sake of our kids?

Personally, I have a tough time with this law. I support our current law which says all kids 3 and under must be in car seats, but once they turn 4 they can move into a seat belt. Now maybe 4 is a bit young to be without a seat, so I agree that maybe we should tweak the guidelines a bit. However, a 7 year-old who is almost 5 feet tall seems a bit large to me for a booster chair.

Share your thoughts with us.

Let's talk about Obama's speech to schoolchildren today.

First, I have to get this off my chest. There is no way I would pull my child out of school to avoid a 20 minute speech by the president -- any president. But if a parent wants to keep the kids at home, that's their right.

Parents send their kids to school with a lot of faith that they will be safe and that they will be educated. We entrust our precious babies to strangers who, in the best of situations, become our allies. Between the first and the last bell, a lot happens that parents can't control -- and I know that drives some parents crazy. I've met them.

Here's my question: Can one speech change a child's outlook either way? Or is a family's influence stronger? At what point does a child begin to see the world in their own way? Third grade? 7th grade? Senior year?

My siblings and I think differently from our parents, politically, though we share many many values. But my sibs' grown children tend to think like their own parents. Why is that?

I have no idea whether my kids will be watching Obama's speech today. Either way is fine with me. If their teachers feel they have the time to spare and can turn the speech into a healthy discussion, great. If they have other curriculum to teach, even better.

Today, my daughter's more concerned with finding a good science fair project and a big math test later this week. My son has benchmark testing. This curiculum is far more important to me than a presidential speech.

Yes, I had a good laugh when pictures of President Obama donning “mommy jeans” hit the airwaves not too long ago.

The president wore the infamous jeans when he threw the first pitch at an All-Star baseball game about a week ago. The media labeled them the “mommy jeans.’’

It’s not every day you see your president at a baseball game in pleated jeans that seem a little too short and a little too feminine!

But I realized the reason I laughed so hard was because I could recognize a pair of mommy jeans instantly.

I’m not ashamed to say that I’ve become a huge fan of mommy denim, as I like to call it. These are jeans I would not have been caught dead in before I had my daughter.

They’re super faded. Some of mine are high waters, barely reaching my ankles. And they have a way of flattening out everything. They are the kind of jeans that can make Jennifer Lopez look curve-less.

But I’m a mommy jeans advocate because they’re roomy and comfortable.

When I’m running late for my daughter’s dance class I can slide into my mommy jeans, no problem. When I’m heading to a long ballgame, I opt for my mommy jeans.

Ketchup, sweet-and-sour sauce, ice-cream, bring it on. My mommy jeans can handle it.

Every now and then when I want to shake things up, I wear my mommy jeans to a party or a club. While all the women in their skinny jeans and high heels are on the sidelines trying to look cute, I’m on the dance floor getting down in my mommy jeans.

We’re moms, after all. While some people sit back and listen to the music, we’re busy dancing to the music.

Thank you mommy jeans for allowing us to dance more comfortably.

Maybe this would be true even if Barack Obama hadn't won the presidency, but I've been really surprised how much my daughter knows about him, and about Michelle Obama and the girls. And this is my first grader we're talking about.

She picked this stuff up at school. She comes home with pictures of President Obama to color.

Well, today is election day again. This time, the elections are small, in various cities in Broward County. My city, Plantation, has an election. But I want to raise a voter. So I'm talking to the kids about the races.

If you want ideas on teaching your kids the A, B, Cs of good citizenship, check out Kids Voting USA.

And by the way, the Kids Voting election results also went Obama's way. But I found it interesting that 494 kids voted Socialist.

Let me get this straight: parents are complaining about the amount of homework their children are assigned.

Apparently the Broward County School Board is expected to vote on homework guidelines that instruct instructors to: provide increased academic challenges in a more coordinated assignment of homework and projects. Oh – and none over holiday breaks and weekends. It will become an actual policy. We paid taxes for this discussion!

I think teachers have their [home]work cut out for them on this one. I see more teacher-planning and staff meetings ahead. I guess teachers will have to add some teacher planning days to the school calendar. The more the better - that would be one less day of homework assignments, per planning day!

Of course I think most students can handle the homework load they get.

Parents overbook their kids in after school programs like dance, sports, clubs, etc.

Sure, some kids, maybe many, many kids have the drive to do 1,483 things after school. How many of those things include chores – that’s homework too.

But, what happened to the reward system? How about telling your future ballerina or football star that school matters?

Kids need to communicate what’s on their plate and plan. We do it as parents in the big-people’s world, and they’ll be a part of that one day.

Not too long ago, it was proposed that students get paid to attend school and do their school work. Wow!

Now, we’re asking the teacher to be considerate of weekends and holidays. How much of that valuable time will the kid spend in front of a TV, text-messaging friends, e-mailing and playing video games? Please.

I’m wondering: while we’re asking teachers to be so considerate, think I could get a couple over to my house to wash a few windows?

[UPDATE: The Broward County School Board approved today new homework guidelines that urge teachers to assign academically challenging work while also being considerate about not assigning too much homework over religious holidays and weekends.

While the policy is careful not to assign time limits for homework, the district's guidelines suggest 10 minutes of work for each grade level. So a first grader would get an assignment that takes about 10 minutes to finish, while a high school junior's total homework load would take 110 minutes to complete.]

The Bush twins, Barbara Bush and Jenna Hager, wrote an open letter last week to Sasha and Malia Obama about growing up in the White House. It was published in the Wall Street Journal, and NBC had them read it and produced this piece.

It’s hard not to be moved, no matter what your feelings about W as a president. It’s remarkable, and I think refreshing, to know that there is always a space inside a family that remains unknown to the outside world. Bush’s daughters remind us of this.

I'm going to concede that I've only been at this parenting thing for a year, and my stepdaughters (aged 13 and 15) are more interested in Chris Brown v. The Jonas Brothers than they are in Barack Obama v. John McCain.

So I have to wonder whether anyone could really be persuaded by their offspring to vote for or against a particular candidate.

I mean, I think of all that goes into parenting, particularly the sustained, 18-plus-year effort to instill your values in your children, only to have them travel halfway across the state, country or world to tell you that they have decided how you should vote.

Like I don't hear enough from TV commercials and Saturday Night Live; now I have to worry that my kids are going to grow up to tell me to vote Democrat. Or Republican. Or Libertarian. Or whatever.

I just wonder whether some McCain-supporting grandparents are just aching for their children's children to "schlep" on over to tell them to vote for Obama.

Let's remove the candidate names from this: You support candidate A. You grandchild pays you a visit to tell you he knows better; you should vote for candidate B.

How likely are you to listen?

I've been puzzling over my feelings about John McCain's choice for his running mate for several days now, as more details about Gov. Sarah Palin and her family life come to light. Like many women my age, who came to adulthood in the era of Gloria Steinem, Ms. magazine and the ERA, I have been waiting for the day when I could vote for a woman for president.

As the mother of daughters, I look forward to seeing them live in a world free of sexism, where they can truly be anything they want, including president.

With some chagrin, I'll admit that I've caught myself thinking that a mother of five might have more on her mind than running a country -- particularly when one child is a handicapped baby, one is headed off to war and one is pregnant as a teenager. She also has a bad ex-brother-in-law and a potential son-in-law who claimed on his MySpace page to be a "f--ing redneck."

Well, sheesh. If that was my family, I'd want to run off on the campaign trail, too.

Palin's daughter is a poster child -- literally -- for why abstinence-only messages don't work on teenagers. The hunky boyfriend trumped mom's message pretty thoroughly, didn't he?

Lucky for Bristol it's only a baby and not HIV disease, sterility-inducing clamydia or any number of other serious venereal diseases that can be the consequence of unprotected sex.

The public reaction to Palin's teen-pregnancy revelation makes me laugh:"Oh, well, this happens to millions of families. The American people will understand."

Uh, not really. Most parents of 17-year-olds do not, in fact, have to deal with pregnancy. It's neither normal nor common, thank goodness. It is, in fact, a problem. Bristol Palin, like Jamie Lynn Spears before her, is no role model for my two teenage daughters.

I'm sad that the Grand Old Party couldn't find a more qualified woman with a little less baggage to put forward as their vice presidential candidate. Call me elitist -- I'm sure someone will -- but I think Sarah Palin sets back the position of women in this country by decades. It's just too easy to look at her and think: "This is it? This is the best women have to offer?"

Thank goodness there are plenty of women and mothers like me who know that it is not.

I'm all for women achieving the highest political offices. But at what point do you have too many kids to take on the nation's second, and potentially first, most important job?

Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin's kids are 19, 17, 14, 7 and four months. The four-month-old has Down syndrome. The 17-year-old is pregnant.

Palin's family issues have ignited debates among women across the country, sometimes switching stereotypes. Lots of normally conservative women are cheering her ability to juggle family issues and political life, while some normally liberal women are wondering whether she can handle so many heavy responsibilities.

What's your take? Can Palin be supermom and Vice President? Or are five kids too much for a VP to handle?

I was talking about the election with my daughter Beth the other day, and she said: “Well, all the Republican kids in my class are completely looney anyway.”

You cannot let a sentence like that fly by without a follow up. “Really?” I said. “How are they looney?”

This is a paraphrase, but it goes something like this: One boy, whose redeeming qualities include a love for baseball and a straight-A average, says he hates McCain almost as much as Obama and Clinton. Because McCain is too liberal.

But that's not what makes the boy crazy, according to Beth. He's crazy, she says, because he thinks the war in Iraq is a good thing — and he says that it would be OK to draft people to build up the Army.

Ha, she says, scoffing at him. “I know him. He’d be the first one across the border to Mexico if he got drafted. He’s not going to fight and risk getting himself killed.”

But that’s nothing compared to one girl in her class, a spoiled brat whose parents seem to give her every possession she wants despite her frequent detentions and skipping class enough to be at risk of failing eighth grade even though she makes 5s on her FCATs.

She says that women do not need to vote and that all a girl really needs is to marry a rich man. Women should not work, she says, and they don’t need any rights because their husbands will take care of them.

Well, how can everyone marry a rich man? Beth rightly wonders. “It’s crazy.”

That it is. I can only hope that these two kids do not represent our future.

It has become a college sport to ask Chelsea Clinton, when she is campaigning for her mother at college campuses, about her father's affair with Monica Lewinsky.

She has been asked three times in the past two weeks. Each time, she gives a different but non-committal answer.

"I think that is something that is personal to my family. I'm sure there are things that are personal to your family that you don't think are anyone else's business, either," she said during a visit to North Carolina State University in Raleigh last week. "But also on a larger point, I don't think you should vote for or against my mother because of my father."

I kind of liked that answer. It was better than the "none of your business" answer she gave the first time at Butler University in Indianapolis.

How do you think Chelsea should answer these questions? Do you think they're out-of-line?

Prepare to be impressed by the lengths one parent went to to make a scrapbook for his daughter.

If you want to steal this idea, time your next pregnancy to the next presidential election.

I love the Broward County program to get kids interested in voting. But something tells me that Tuesday's referendum on
property taxes just might have the opposite effect on our youth.

When a colleague came in with a copy of the ballot the schoolkids were given, we eagerly grabbed for the summary on the tax issue. We thought maybe the amendment had been boiled down in an interesting way for the students. And if so, maybe we could borrow from that creativity, as we try to dumb down the issue -- I mean, "explain it'' -- to our readers.

No such luck. Here is what our children had to weigh in on:

PROPERTY TAX AMENDMENT TO THE FLORIDA CONSTITUTION—SUMMARY Increases homestead exemption from current $25,000 by exempting assessed value between $50,000 and $75,000. Does not apply to school taxes. Allows homesteaded property owners to transfer up to $500,000 of their Save Our Homes benefits to next homestead purchased within 2 years. Limits assessment increases for all non-homesteaded property to 10 % per year, until 1/1/2019, unless renewed. Does not apply to school taxes. Exempts $25,000 of assessed value of tangible personal property from all taxes. If passed by 60% of those voting, takes effect 1/1/2008.

Seriously, the amendment was hard for most adults to figure out. I think Kids Voting Broward, Inc., was brave to put this one to the test in the schools. (Results still not in. Stay tuned.)

Maybe I'm underestimating the students.

Kids, if you figured out what this Amendment means, please, by all means, tell your parents!

Does how a presidential candidate holds a baby tell us anything about his or her leadership abilities?

During the New Hampshire primaries, New Hampshire resident Darren Garnick asked the major presidential candidates to hold his five-month-old daughter and took their pictures as they smiled, squirmed, looked her in the eyes or freaked out.

He was on the CBS Morning News this morning and posted his photos and commentary at www.slate.com. You gotta love Barack Obama's obvious connection with the baby; he looks her right in the eyes and seems to forget the cameras. John Edwards looks stilted; Rudy Giuliani looks totally uncomfortable. At least John McCain makes a joke when the baby cries: "There goes another vote!"