Traffic School 101

One of our primary responsibilities as parents is setting a good example for our children – especially when our teens are riding with us in the car. I have failed miserably on that count, I’m afraid. Case in point:

Last week, I was driving my teen and two of her friends to the beach. While they were taking goofy pictures of each other in their sunglasses and bathing suits in the back seat, my cell phone rang. I put it up to my ear to answer it just as a Highway Patrol officer pulled up alongside me.

CRAP!

Now, I’m one of those mavericks who refuses to buy a hands-free device simply because the law says you have to. I’ve read one too many reports about the possible link between cell phones and brain cancer, so I try to keep the radiation away from the vicinity of my head by using my speakerphone.

OK, that and because I’m too cheap and lazy to buy a Bluetooth.

Anyway, up until that moment, civil disobedience had worked well for me. But I knew I was toast, and I had to at least TRY to get out of the ticket. So here’s what three teenagers learned from me – good or bad, you decide -- about how to weasel out of a traffic ticket:


1. Play Dumb (very effective when you really are blonde): I pretended I didn’t know why he pulled me over. I had just bought my car, so as he walked up to my window, I said: “I know . . . I don’t have my plates yet. I just bought this car three weeks ago, so the plates are coming.”

Did it work? Hardly. “You were on your cell phone without a hands-free device, Ma’am,” said Mr. No-Nonsense. DAMN! And what’s this “Ma’am” stuff??


2. Act surprised and admit fault, but rationalize it: “Oh, of course! Yeah, I was just answering it. But I put it on speakerphone right away!”

“The law requires you to have a hands-free device, Ma’am.” He wasn’t budging. And there’s that “Ma'am” reference again!


3. Remain calm and try to sound intelligent (the dumb-blonde thing wasn’t working): “To be honest, Officer, I am afraid to use a Bluetooth. I’ve read a lot of reports about how the radiation from cell phones and cellular devices has been linked to brain cancer and could cause the rapid growth of cancerous cells.”

What’s that?? . . . he nodded! I think I had him. “I understand, Ma’am, but there are ways around that. You can buy the plug that goes from your ear to the cell phone.”


4. Play dumb again, but be gracious: “Really? I never heard of those. I’ll have to get one. Thanks for the tip, Officer.”

Uh-Oh! He started to pull out his ticket pad. Flattery was getting me nowhere. Quick! Think of something!


5. Beg, plead, cry and lose all sense of dignity: “Officer, please, please, PLEASE don’t give me a ticket!! I just finished traffic school a few weeks ago and I can’t afford another ticket or a ding on my record. I’m a single mom, trying to take care of two daughters, and I just can’t afford this ticket or higher insurance rates. PLEASE!

He started to soften. OMG . . . he was human, after all! He glanced at the teens in the back seat of the car and said, “OK, Ma’am. Please drive safely.” Off he went, and this time I didn’t care that he called me “Ma’am.”

While I’d like to take full credit for engaging my irresistible feminine wiles to get out of this traffic ticket, I also think it helped GREATLY that I had three teenaged girls dressed for the beach, wide-eyed and smelling like coconut oil, in the back seat of my car.

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A New Kind Of High

I’ve been writing this blog for six months and not once have I really talked about teens and drugs. Since I mostly write from my own experiences with my teenager, that means we don’t have any drug issues over at our house. And that’s a GREAT thing. I feel blessed.

In other households, however, it’s a different story. According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, there is a growing number of teenagers who are abusing prescription and over-the-counter (OTC) drugs to get high or to cope with school and social pressures.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration reports that every day, 2,000 kids, ages 12 to 17, abuse a painkiller for the very first time. And that among 12- and 13-year-olds, prescription drugs are the drug of choice.

Who would have guessed??

I’m sure you have all sorts of questions about this disturbing trend among teens. To provide some answers, TheAntiDrug.com has teamed up with pharmacist Karen Reed, spokesperson for the American Pharmacists Association, in this Q & A:


Q: Kids are taking uppers, downers, painkillers, etc., that have been prescribed for their parents. What can those drugs do to teens who have not been prescribed those medications?

A: It’s always difficult to predict what type of reaction teens will have to medication not prescribed for them, especially when we don't know the dose they will abuse -- and if it will be taken with other drugs or alcohol. Uppers can cause hostility, paranoia or seizures. These drugs can affect motor skills, impair judgment, and affect the heart. Downers and painkillers can decrease concentration, impair judgment, and slow motor skills. Taking downers and painkillers in excess can also cause sedation and seizures. Imagine a teen driver under the influence of these drugs driving a motor vehicle -- this combination could prove deadly, as well.


Q: Kids take pills that aren’t theirs and sometimes when they’re drinking alcohol. What is the resulting effect?

A: No one, adults or teens, should take medication with alcohol. Teens who are taking medication that is not prescribed for them are probably also taking excessive doses. And mixing that medication with alcohol could prove deadly for teenagers. The effect of the medication could be intensified, causing the teen to stop breathing or have a seizure that could be fatal. If this practice is combined with driving, others could be injured, as well. The combination of medication and alcohol could lead to poor judgment that could cause serious injuries or worse. Teenagers often feel invincible. The combination of drugs and alcohol may intensify this belief.


Q: What is the best way to monitor cold, cough, and other over-the-counter medications in the house?

A: Keep them in limited quantities and monitor their use as you would a prescription drug. Never use them to help your teen or yourself sleep. Children (regardless of their age) mimic adult behavior. Be a good role model and never abuse OTC products yourself.


Q: What if a teenager has prescribed medications she takes regularly. How do you ensure those pills are not abused?

A: Keep track of the number of pills that should be on hand. Keep track of refills, lost pills, and request for refills. Paying close attention to use will help prevent abuse.


Q: What are some of the signs to look for if you suspect your teen has been abusing prescription drugs?

A: It’s easy for parents to miss prescription drug abuse because mood changes, temper outbursts, changes in sleeping habits and interests are typical teenage behaviors. You can smell alcohol and tobacco and marijuana -- you can’t smell pills.

Watch for changes in grooming, habits and interests. Watch for negative changes in school work, school attendance, and declining grades. Watch for increased secrecy, changes in friends and increased needs for money. Monitor your own prescription drugs and encourage friends and family to do the same.


Karen L. Reed is the national spokesperson for the American Pharmacists Association.

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Biting Is The New Hickey

I was perusing my SECOND favorite teen blog, "Radical Parenting" by Vanessa Van Petten, who does an incredible job of discussing topics that are close to a teenager's heart, and I came across a post about "biting."

Have you heard about this? (Click here to read Vanessa's blog.)

My own teen says that she hasn't, so it might be a fairly new trend. Apparently, some teens are biting into each other and leaving bite marks as a token of their affection. It's the modern-day hickey. Personally, I'd rather be gently sucked on than bitten. But hey, I'm just an old, out-of-touch parent. What do I know?

Vanessa doesn't talk about how or why this trend started. But I have my theories. One word: "Twilight." The vampire obsession launched by Stephanie Meyer's book series is literally "taking hold."

I'm hoping this is one trend that the public won't sink its teeth into (pardon the very obvious pun). Seems silly. If my teen came home with bite marks anywhere on her body, I would be more than a little concerned about who she is hanging out with.

Biting, to me, is an act of aggression and violence. Toddlers do it when they're angry or they want another kid's toy; dogs do it to protect their owners or private property; women are taught to do it in self-defense class. When you're bitten, usually you have to go to the ER for a tetanus shot. I have never in my life associated getting bitten with love.

I don't get it!

Would anyone care to explain?

How To Talk To Teens

Today is "Guest Blogger Day." I'm very excited to have Debra Beck gracing our blog today. Debra is the author of "My Feet Aren’t Ugly: A girl’s guide to loving herself from the inside out." Learn more about Debra and her work with teens at www.myfeetarentugly.com.



Do you want to communicate better with your teen? Hopefully, you all said, "Absolutely!" The biggest problem I see with teens and parents is that a parent doesn’t set up the platform for easy communication until it is to late. If you start the process when your teen is 14 years old, you may hit a wall.

I encourage you, as parents, to start the communication process at an early age. Start communicating with your kids when they are young, asking them what they think about a lot of different situations in the world. If we wait for our kids to come to us, it may never happen.

It’s up to us to teach our kids how to communicate. Start teaching them the ease in talking to you about all subjects, that nothing is off limits. Every opportunity you get to open a conversation with your teen about anything, do it. The topic isn’t really important, so, talk about the issues on the cover of magazines, relationships, body image, hairstyles, sex, drugs or clothes. Talk about things happening on the streets, the homeless, fast food, pollution, the attitudes of people, whatever you see, start a conversation about it, no matter how petty the topic appears, it keeps your kids talking to you and this is the key.

Try to let them have their own opinion, keeping your opinions out of it. Let them have an opinion with out squashing it with yours. Parents don’t realize that most every time they speak their opinion, it feels like a judgment to their teen. When we only express our options and beliefs to our kids it’s not communicating.

In the dictionary, communicate means to exchange information. It doesn’t mean that the conversation is one-sided, someone giving their opinion. When we are giving our opinions instead of communicating with our teens, it shuts them down.

One of the most important things is for our teens to be able to come to us with critical issues if they need to. If we haven’t set up an open relationship that our teens feel comfortable in and in which they have a voice, they will not come to us.

During this time of raising our kids, teaching and encouraging them to communicate, we are also teaching them how to make good decisions. If we are telling them what to do, what to believe and how to think, how are they ever going to develop into confident adults? By asking their opinions and allowing them to have their own opinion, we are helping them build the tools they need to make good decisions and the best part is that they will want to come to us with problems because they will know that we will give the space they need to figure things out on their own.

Teens are smart. If you allow them the room to explore the situation and you keep asking the right questions, they will make a good decision. Telling them what to do never works. It shuts them down and they don’t listen anyway.

There is a time when teens normally start pulling away from parents, to develop their own individuality and to explore who they are. If we don’t have a solid base in place when this happens, they will be looking outside of the family unit for guidance. We won’t be the ones influencing our teens; their friends and the media will be guiding them. Isn’t that a scary thought?

So, start early communicating with your kids, again, talk to them about everything, and get them in the habit of talking to you with ease. Keep our opinions out of the conversation, and just ask a lot of questions about how they feel about the things, and how they see it. Give them the space they need to explore without your judgments getting in their way. Remember, this is their life journey, and we are here to guide them along their path and to help them become independent, confident adults.

Debra Beck is the author of "My Feet Aren’t Ugly, A girl’s guide to loving herself from the inside out." www.myfeetarentugly.com

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25 Reasons I Owe My Mother

I usually don't like chain e-mails -- jokes and videos and inspirational thoughts that have been around the Internet and back a zillion times. But every now and then, I get a jewel, like this one. And a timely jewel it is, too. Happy Mother's Day to every woman who has stretch marks to prove it. Enjoy!


1. My mother taught me TO APPRECIATE A JOB WELL DONE: "If you're going to kill each other, do it outside. I just finished cleaning."

2. My mother taught me RELIGION: "You better pray that will come out of the carpet."

3. My mother taught me about TIME TRAVEL: "If you don't straighten up, I'm going to knock you into the middle of next week!"

4. My mother taught me LOGIC: "Because I said so, that's why."

5. My mother taught me MORE LOGIC: "If you fall out of that swing and break your neck, you're not going to the store with me."

6. My mother taught me FORESIGHT: "Make sure you wear clean underwear, in case you're in an accident."

7. My mother taught me IRONY: "Keep crying, and I'll give you something to cry about."

8. My mother taught me about the science of OSMOSIS: "Shut your mouth and eat your supper."

9. My mother taught me about CONTORTIONISM: "Will you look at that dirt on the back of your neck!"

10. My mother taught me about STAMINA: "You'll sit there until all that spinach is gone."

11. My mother taught me about WEATHER: "This room of yours looks as if a tornado went through it."

12. My mother taught me about HYPOCRISY: "If I told you once, I've told you a million times. Don't exaggerate!"

13. My mother taught me the CIRCLE OF LIFE: "I brought you into this world, and I can take you out."

14. My mother taught me about BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION: "Stop acting like your father!"

15. My mother taught me about ENVY: "There are millions of less fortunate children in this world who don't have wonderful parents like you do."

16. My mother taught me about ANTICIPATION: "Just wait until we get home."

17. My mother taught me about RECEIVING: "You are going to get it when you get home!"

18. My mother taught me MEDICAL SCIENCE: "If you don't stop crossing your eyes, they are going to stay that way."

19. My mother taught me ESP: "Put your sweater on; don't you think I know when you are cold?"

20. My mother taught me HUMOR: "When that lawn mower cuts off your toes, don't come running to me."

21. My mother taught me HOW TO BECOME AN ADULT: "If you don't eat your vegetables, you'll never grow up."

22. My mother taught me GENETICS: "You're just like your father."

23. My mother taught me about my ROOTS: "Shut that door behind you. Were you raised in a barn?"

24. My mother taught me WISDOM: "When you get to be my age, you'll understand."

25. And my favorite: My mother taught me about JUSTICE: "One day you'll have kids, and I hope they turn out just like you.

National Mom's Nite Out

My blogging partner, Maria Bailey, has been very, very busy for months and months pulling together the first annual National Mom's Nite Out scheduled for TONIGHT, May 7th!



The National Mom’s Nite Out is the first nationally organized celebration of motherhood that will unite more than 150 social media groups, companies, local playgroups, mommy bloggers and mother social networks, physically and virtually, because, as Maria says, moms deserve a night off, too.

The evening will consist of local events held across the country, as well as mom-organized parties and virtual activities. To allow moms everywhere to join in on the fun, mothers will be invited to throw their own mom’s nite out event by downloading party ideas and elements from The National Mom’s Nite Out website. The night of the event moms can join in the fun through online chats, Skype and Twitter tweet-ups.

A big, huge, virtual hug goes out to Maria and her entire team for looking out for us moms and for organizing what is sure to be a highly successful event.

Enjoy yourselves tonight, Ladies! I'll be in the dugout tonight at my tween's softball game, so have a Mamatini for me!

Common Ground . . . At Last!

When I was a teenager, I was in LOOOVVE with Donny Osmond! Those BIG brown eyes and horse-sized teeth – YOWZA! He was my Jonas Brother. My Zac Efron. I owned every one of his albums (CDs didn’t exist back then) and collected every Tiger Beat magazine that had Donny’s picture in it. His centerfolds were taped to every square inch of my bedroom walls. My oldest sister, Lori, was equally as smitten with David Cassidy, so there was a bit of a rivalry going on in our household as to who was the hottest teen heartthrob.

I was CERTAIN that one day, I would be Mrs. Donny Osmond. I just hadn’t worked out the little detail of how we would eventually meet. All I knew is that once he met me, his soul mate, his search would end, too.

Adolescence is a culture of cruelty, they say. And my 6th Grade friends fed right into this. My family and I lived on an Air Force base in Florida, and one day my friends told me that Donny Osmond was going to make a guest appearance at the Base Exchange that coming Saturday, and why hadn’t I already heard about it? It’s what everyone was talking about! We didn’t have the Internet or Google search back then to verify Donny’s tour schedule, so I had to believe them. I WANTED to believe them.

You know where this story is going, don’t you? Yep, I walked nearly two miles – alone! – up to the Base Exchange early that Saturday morning on a humid summer day in Florida, expecting to join a mob of teenaged girls screaming for my future husband and NO ONE, not even a janitor, was in sight. A tumbleweed blew by. (OK, I made that up.) As Ashton Kutcher would say, “I was punk’d!”

Life goes on, gullible, young girls grow up and crushes fade away. Donny eventually settled for second-best and married some lucky woman named Debbie. So fast-forward to last week. I’m in the kitchen cooking dinner, and I hear my teenager say, “OOOH! He’s CUTE!” Who, I ask? “Some guy named Donny Osmond,” she says.

I drop the spatula and fast-walk into the living room, and “The Insider” is running a story about the day Donny got married (click here). There he is, as big as life on our plasma TV, the boy of my dreams, looking right at me, all dressed up in his wedding tuxedo. The young Donny. The Donny I loved. The Donny with his real-life wife standing right next to him. It took me back, let me tell you.

“You think he’s cute?” I asked my teen.

“Uh . .. DUH!” she said.

My heart warmed. Not over seeing young Donny again, but because I realized that as much as my teenager and I disagree over music and everything pop culture, we could easily have been friends back in the ’70s. Best buds, rivals, competing for the love of the same teen heartthrob.

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Dirty Harry

I heard a story today that made me sick. No, not Swine-flu-sick. But "eeeww . . . that's disgusting" sick! British Heir-To-The-Throne Prince Harry confessed to his Army buddies (and it was overheard in a pub) that he hasn't washed his moppy red hair in TWO YEARS!!

Are you kidding? Why on earth not??

England's 24-year-old prince claims that hair is self-cleaning, and doesn't need to be fussed over. That's really bad news for the shampoo industry.

I don't know about you, but I wash my hair every other day. If I put it off any longer, my hair looks greasy and limp. My daughters wash theirs every night. You might think that's a bit excessive, but they're kids, and kids get sweaty and dirty at school, and then sweaty some more playing after-school sports.

I would think that Harry would have a fairly unpleasant odor coming off his scalp. And what do his girlfriends think? I guess when you're dating a future king, there are some bad habits you're willing to overlook.

Although it might explain his recent breakup.

If Princess Diana were still around, I'll bet she would grab her unkempt son by the ear and drag him to the nearest wash basin for a vigorous shampoo. She knows better than anyone how important it is to keep up appearances.

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