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.

A friend of mine has an allergy to latex. Because of this I have found out that latex is in a lot of things most of us don’t even think about.

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.

There are underage boys and girls getting ID’s that gives them preserved legal ages. They use these to get into clubs, bars and buy alcohol. This is bad enough. They are out drinking and partying and doing everything we as parents don’t want them to be doing. Now for the most part it is kids 16 and older doing this but there are kids as young as 13 getting into bars. They look older then they are and the have the ID to back it.

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.

you have to deal with the reality that your teenager is going to party with her friends some where out of your control.

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

As parents we need to have the sex talk with our children, both boys and girls as early as possible. This way they will hopefully have a good idea of what sex is, what is ok and not ok, and the consequences like pregnancy, Aids and other STD’s. We cannot stop our teens from wanting sex, or even having sex. All we can do is try to make sure they make the best possible informed decisions.

Now talking about sex to your three year old is not going to be the same as if she/he was eight, thirteen, or eighteen. But it is a good place to start and get some things out of the way. It makes it easer to have the bigger talks when they are older. It lets both of you become comfortable with the idea of talking about it and actually having the conversation. The other part is that three year olds need to know some things.

Everyone in the world seemed to be giving me contradicting parenting advice when I was pregnant with my son. I listened to what everyone said, even the extremely obnoxious neighbour who seemed to think she knew it all even though she did not have kids. It seems her friends had them and that was enough to make her an expert on every thing. I smiled and said thanks for the information. When people told me I was doing this wrong, that wrong, I needed these or that I said I would look into it. No matter how ridicules or sensible every piece of unsolicited parenting advice was I took the time to let the people know I heard them. I never said what I would do with their advice.