When do you report child abuse and to whom? It is not our job to determine if child abuse is taking place. It is our job to speak for the children who may not be able to speak for themselves or get anyone to hear them.

I received a call from the school, a lady with a panicked voice told me to come pick up my son from the principles office. He was acting out and they felt I should come pick him up. Ok. Off I went not sure what to expect. What I found was the principles office in lock down as they tried to control my 5 year old. This included restraining him “for his own safety” as he was jumping on things, hitting and more. I told them to let him go, and my son ran to me. Then he became hostile to me as well as I tried to find out what was going on.

I was reading a blog “Am I a bad dad for letting my kid use the headset in Xbox Live?” about a dad talking about the things being said to an 11 year old on Xbox. I thought it brought up a good point, what are adults and teenagers saying to our kids and each other. The name calling alone was enough to say I cannot let my children, who are much younger then 11, play Xbox Live, even with the speaker on let alone with the headset on. As he pointed out his son has told him about the names, but what has he not told him about.

Over the years I have learned that I have no filter on my mouth. This means I say what I am thinking, good or bad. I don’t play politics, office or otherwise. I have found this to be harmful in work situations and people can find me difficult to be friends with. I don’t seem be able to identify boundaries and keep them. This is something I am working on as I see it as a hindrance. So imagine my surprise when I went for coffee with some ladies I met at a self-esteem group and they both said they envy me because I don’t have a filter on my mouth.

Today in my business email was a “wonderful” email of child porn. It was marked as Spam but as I could preview it before opening it I saw what it was about and had to stop from deleting it. It was talking about hardcore sex with little girls and boys and had seven links to video clips of said child sex. What the F*** is this.

Several months ago I discovered something about myself I don’t like. I have an addiction to my computer. I would spend most of my time on the computer.

Balancing a child’s safety with the need for free explorations is handled differently today then it was in the past. Why, because each generation has learned from the mistakes of the last generation and technology has changed.

Adults expect children to do things to keep them safe, but don’t do those same things themselves. Who pays the price?

With all this positive imagery of alcohol, what is the influence of alcohol on teen life?

I was watching the Montel show about identity theft and learned something new today. Sure I used to laugh when my husband would save our mail and shred it, I don’t now. I never thought about my credit or getting a credit report at all, let alone every 6 months. Check my bank account and credit card balance at least once a day, why would I do that, I knew what I spent. Cut the pin code off of an old credit card and dispose of it at a latter date, what cutting the card in half was not enough? My husband is having the last laugh now, because what he has always done is what we need to do now to keep our identity and credit for ourselves.