I wonder if doing speeches in school makes people fear public speaking?

(I just noticed that the noun is speech but the verb is speak. No wonder it took me forever to learn how to spell!)

When I was a kid, we had to do speeches in school. It was like three or five minutes of talking in front of the class on a prepared topic. And this was so scary! You had to think of something, and research it, and make a speech out of it, and hold your peers' attention, and talk in front of EVERYONE! And your appearance and topic and eloquence and interestingness and who knows what else are all up for the very worst of elementary school scrutiny!

I'm wondering if this made us more afraid of public speaking than if we hadn't had to do it until we were older. No adult audience is as judgemental as a classroom full of 12-year-olds. Plus, (as I've blogged about before but can't find now) when you're in school your presentations are all about stuff you don't have any particular knowledge of - you have to do the research and become an "expert" specifically for the presentation - whereas in real life we're only ever asked to speak publically about stuff we are already experts in. I'm a very shy person, but I find that speaking in front of other adults about something that I know enough about that other people might ask me to speak about it isn't even in the same order of magnitude as doing a speech in front of my Grade 3 class. And actually, now that I think about it, doing Show and Tell in front of my Grade 3 class (about something I'm knowledgeable about and interested in, and on a completely voluntary basis) was something I could do without a moment's though, but doing The Speech for the same amount of time was the Worst Thing Ever!

I wonder if by making speeches such a big deal, they inadvertently taught us that public speaking is Big And Scary?

Chemo or death?

There's an 11-year-old who is being forced by CAS to have chemotherapy against his will. What surprises me about the reactions to this is that a lot of people seem to think that no one could make an informed decision about whether to let themselves die at the age of 11. Now the particular boy in this case has FAS, which might make a difference, I don't know enough about it, but people are saying no 11-year-old whatosever could possibly make this decision, which really surprises me.

Death is serious. It's the most permanent thing ever. You're gone, forever, never coming back. But because it's so serious and permanent, that actually makes this a less complex decision (and a decision more within the range of an 11-year-old's abilities) than some of the other decisions a person might have to make in life. You get survival statistics for the chemo treatment (which I have seen published but can't find ATM), you get a description from the doctor of what death without chemo would be like, then you go home and mull it over for a bit. In light of the foregoing, do you want to cease to exist? (y/n). It's not as complex as having to decide whether to save the life of a pregnant woman or her unborn baby. It's not as complex as house/apartment/condo/downtown/midtown/north york/what if i get married/what if i lose my job? It's not as complex as if you've been kidnapped by the Congolese army and they tell you to rape your child or they'll kill all your children. It's not even as complex as trying to figure out how far to drive to buy locally grown produce and what if it's not organic and what if it goes bad before you can eat it all? If you reduced chemo or death to an algorithm, you wouldn't even need a big chart to work it out, you could use an old-fashioned scales.

Thinking back to when I was 11, I did have some trouble with nuance. I knew I had to leave the church, but couldn't express why. I don't think I could have diplomatically suggested that someone wear something else. I couldn't have seduced someone even if I had wanted to. I probably wouldn't have been able to grok transgender. But I understood that death was permanent just as well as I do today. I haven't had any new information or enlightenment about the permanence of death since then. I don't know if I could have single-handedly made a decision about whether to get my pet put down at that age, but I could have decided whether to get myself put down just as well as I can now.

Actually, now that I think about it, earlier in childhood I tended to see it more in black and white: Death bad, life good. Then as I accumulated age and experience and maturity, I started to grok that sometimes mere survival is insufficient, in the words of Seven of Nine. It occurs to me that perhaps the fact that this boy thought of the idea of letting himself die may indicate that he is capable of grasping the nuances.

School buses

So apparently in the US they do or used to bus students around to different schools so that schools would be more balanced racially.

It's obviously a big and loaded issue, but there's one thing I'm surprised they didn't mention: taking the school bus SUCKS!

I took the schoolbus in grades 6-8. Before and after that, my schools were close enough to our house that I could walk or my parents would drive me depending on circumstances.

The major problem with the schoolbus was you were trapped. You had no freedom. You had to be on that bus at that specific time, and you had no other choices. In grade 5 we could stop at Becker's for candy on the way to school, or go in early and join the pick-up soccer game, or sleep in a bit (or watch Jem and Punky Brewster) and get to school just in time for the bell. On the way home we could go to a friend's house or run home really fast to watch Ninja Turtles or dawdle and play Ninja Turtles. Then suddenly in Grade 6 we had to take the bus and all these options were gone. The bus got us to school half an hour before the bell - no more, no less. If you were a victim of bullying, you were trapped on the bus with your bullies, and you had to kill half an hour in the mornings before classes started instead of showing up just before the bell to minimize bullying opportunities. You couldn't go to the store and buy candy, you couldn't go to a friend's house without a note from your parents stamped by the office to let you on your friend's bus, there was just no freedom whatsoever.

My high school was closer than my middle school so I didn't have to take the bus any more. This was especially useful in OAC when we had spares. In my last semester of high school, I had first and last period spare, so I could sleep in a bit (which also eliminated bathroom battles with my sister, who had a class first period) and go to school for 10, then take three classes in a row and go home at 2 if I had nothing to do, or stay as needed for extra-curricular or social reasons. However, a classmate with a similar schedule who took the bus had to hang around the school from like 8:00 to 3:30 with nothing to do for hours. (Some people had cars in high school, but not enough that you could make policy on that assumption.)

Frankly, on a personal level, I would be pretty pissed off if someone tried to take that freedom away from me for the purpose of greater racial integration. Nothing against the people in the other school or the neighbourhood the other school is in, it's just the limitations of being dependent on a school bus. I'm rather surprised this hasn't come up as one of the factors.

Sibling rivalry

A writer in the Globe and Mail proposes that parents shouldn't mediate their kids' sibling conflicts, instead leaving the kids to work it out themselves.

Here's what I want to know: how exactly does he think the kids are going to work out their conflicts? Because when I was a kid, I didn't have any secret conflict-resolution skills that I was lazily not using - I seriously had no idea whatsoever how to get my sister to leave me alone. In fact, even with my adult interpersonal skills, I still have no idea how I could have gotten her to leave me alone within the limitations placed on me as a kid.

As an example, let's look at the most annoying and pervasive sibling problem I had: my sister would keep opening the door when I was in my room with the door closed. It didn't matter what I was doing, it didn't matter if there was a risk that I was changing clothes, it didn't matter if I had just gone into my room and closed the door specifically to get away from her, she would keep trying to open the door. If I blockaded the door, she'd keep pushing at it trying to get in. Countless hours were wasted pitting my superior mass against her superior strength, trying to get her to leave me the fuck alone so I could have a moment's peace. (This also meant I could never let my guard down even when in my own room with the door closed because I never knew when she'd come by and open the door, so if I wanted real privacy I had to physically barricade the door, which was also difficult because I'm not strong enough to move the larger pieces of furniture single-handedly.

So how would Mr. Wolf have my adolescent self solve this problem?

My adult self can think of a number of approaches. The first thing I'd do if this happened to me today is say "Well, if you aren't going to respect my basic need for privacy, I'll just be going home then." Then I'd go home. But as a kid I didn't have my very own apartment in an access-controlled building, conveniently located in another city. If someone was trying to open the door to my apartment despite my attempts to keep them out, I'd call the police. I think I could even make an argument for calling the police if I had a housemate who was trying to open the door to my bedroom despite my attempts to keep them out. But calling the police because your little sister is bugging you is considered frivolous, and even if it was an option I didn't have a phone line in my room or a cellphone of my own. Another thing I could do as an adult is install some locks on the door to my room, but when I was a kid my parents wouldn't let me do this. I suppose as a last resort, my adult self would go and crash elsewhere, with a friend or at a hotel, but as a kid I couldn't do this either.

But even now, pushing 30, passing as a competent adult in a professional work environment on a daily basis, having even taken conflict resolution training, I still haven't the slightest idea how my adolescent self could have resolved that situation with all the restrictions placed on her, short of going "Moooom, make her leave me alone!" So I'd love to know how exactly Mr. Wolf thinks adolescents are going to resolve their own sibling rivalry.

Let's watch where we're pointing

Like many people, I've been thinking a lot about poor Aqsa Parvez.

A lot of commentators have been framing this as an immigration issue or a Muslim issue, but I don't think it is.

Aqsa Parvez, 16, who died Monday night after being attacked in her Mississauga home, wanted to hang out with friends instead of obeying her 5 p.m. curfew. She wanted to listen to rap, hip hop and R & B, which her parents didn't permit.

Vivacious and outgoing, Parvez wanted to dress like a Western woman in tight-fitting clothes and show off her long, dark hair by removing her hijab.

She wanted to be "free" and independent of her family's devout Muslim beliefs.

Think about your own adolescence. Did you ever want to hang out with friends instead of being home when your parents wanted you to? Did you ever want to listen to music they didn't want you to? Did you ever want to dress in a way they didn't want you to? Did you ever want to throw off the trappings of their values and be your own person?

This same drama is playing out in millions of households all around the world. There are, of course, variations. Perhaps instead of a hijab, the clothing in contention is hemlines or cleavage or heels. Perhaps instead of Muslim beliefs, it's Catholicism or Mormonism or Orthodox Judaism. But it is happening. And in some of these families, they do beat up their kids for not conforming. Hopefully in most they don't, but in some they do. I don't have statistics on hand to back this up, but I'd bet real money that within the next year, some other kid somewhere in the world will be killed by their parents in a similar dispute, and they won't be Muslim or a new immigrant.

So let's think carefully before labelling as an immigration issue or a Muslim issue. The real problem (if all the allegations are true - insert the word allegedly wherever legally necessary) is that the father thought threats and violence and controlfreakism were appropriate responses to a disagreement over fashion and pop culture.

Materialism and self-esteem in kids

So apparently, low self-esteem causes materialism in children, and parents are supposed to counter this by complimenting their children to raise their self esteem. (Ignore any dollar amounts mentioned in this article - the Globe and Mail lives in a different order of magnitude than the rest of us - and just focus on the message).

I see a couple of problems with this.

1. When I was a 12-year-old with no self-esteem, there was nothing my parents could possibly have done to raise it, because the source of the low self-esteem was my peers. Yes, parents, can easily do things to make it worse, but they can't make it better (all together now: life isn't fair!) My parents did try to raise my self-esteem, but all it did was destroy their credibility because clearly they didn't know what they were talking about - no matter what they said to support me or how they tried to advise me, I was still tormented at school. In fact, sometimes I was tormented because of what they did to try to help me - being spotted doing outdoor activities with a parent was worth a threat to spraypaint obscenities onto our lawn (no, I don't know how the bullies calculated that sort of thing), using a turn of phrase provided by a parent was worth at least two days of mockery, etc. No amount of parental reassurance would have negated the fact that I was treated like I was subhuman by dozens of people.

2. "Those with low self-esteem were more likely to arrange a hodge-podge of cars, money, jewellery, sports equipment and - among the youngest bunch - stuffed animals. The children with high self-regard assembled images related to friends, family and outdoor activities such as camping."

Camping is a hobby/activity. Sports are also a hobby/activity, an argument can be made for cars being a hobby/activity, and stuffed animals are both a hobby/activity and a friend. (I dare you to find anyone whose young childhood relationship with their stuffed animals was materialistic rather than affectionate.) They seem to be arbitrarily claiming camping to be superior to other hobbies/activities based on the fact that it takes place outdoors. In other words, this study would rate my self-esteem lower because I'm geeky and arachnophobic, and therefore love my computer more than camping.

3. Again thinking back to my low self-esteem days and the material things I wanted at the time, I never wanted material objects as status symbols in and of themselves; rather, I thought the function they served would help raise my standing in the world or make my life more pleasant. For example, I wanted a discman so I could listen to music more often, thus bringing my pop cultural knowledge up to an acceptable level, plus it was far more socially acceptable to be seen alone listening to music than to be seen alone doing nothing, and headphones would allow me to either tune out or plausibly pretend not to hear the things that were hissed behind my back rather than getting "Oooh, I'll bet her mother told her to just ignore us!" It wasn't the discman itself that I thought would help me socially, it was the ability to listen to music wherever and whenever.

Actually, now that I think about it, although my self-esteem has skyrocketed since its nadir in middle school, my materialism is probably higher now than it was then. Part of this is because I now have disposable income (which still feels new to me), but I think part of it is actually because my self-esteem is higher now - namely the part of my self-esteem that they're talking about in the article, the part that's based on parental approval. You see, my parents value frugality, so to Be Good I was supposed to not want material things. So I tried very hard to not want material things in order to Be Good. Then in university I tried very hard to spend as little money as possible so I could put myself through school and no one could accuse me of being spoiled. But getting a proper grownup job was a huge boost to my self-esteem. I used to feel like the whole world was looking over my shoulder disapproving of my life choices (the side-effect of being a B.A. student among scientists and mathematicians and engineers) but now that I've proven myself and it doesn't matter what anyone thinks, I can shop freely. Camera phone, iPod, ridiculous special-ordered dictionaries, the complete works of Eddie Izzard on DVD - I have a job, I can afford it, so WTF do you care? Also, especially in the area of fashion, having higher self esteem makes me more willing to take risks, which I never dared do back when I was trying to be invisible. The red purse, the tall shiny boots, the fascinatingly-cut green skirt - I never would have dared try any of this as a teenager. But now that I'm brave enough to wear it, it comes home with me in a shopping bag rather than being passed over on the rack.

It would be interesting to further compare grown adults' desire for material objects with that of their younger selves. I don't think your materialism gets noticed as much when you're an adult, probably because you don't have to ask for things, you just quietly go out and buy them. Also, more things fit unquestioned into adult life. If I express the desire for a cordless phone that can do call display, it is automatically assumed that I have a good reason rather than that I'm spoiled. I don't expect to keep acquiring material goods at the same rate for the rest of my life because one does build up a reserve, but I see no reason (apart from poverty, of course) why my "I want that - I'll buy that" threshold or my standard of comfort would lower as I age.

What about you? How does your desire for material goods compare now with when you were younger with lower self-esteem?

Coercion and other big words

This train of thought started in this post of mine from last week, which took me to this article in Salon (possibly NSFW - talks about sex and there's a picture of a couple in bed).

This all got me thinking about the one concept that's missing from our debate about age of consent laws, and is also missing from debate about polygamy, and debate about sex work.

That word is coercion.

What our laws tend to do is if we don't want people to be coerced into doing something, we make that thing illegal - generally in a way that punishes the alleged coercer while treating the alleged coercee as a victim. Which is perfectly appropriate if it is, in fact, a case of coercion, but needlessly punishes people if the situation is in fact perfectly well-informed and consensual.

What our laws should be doing is making it illegal to coerce people into doing these things, while making it perfectly legal to do them willingly. If the laws aren't succeeding in doing this, the laws must be rewritten so that they do succeed, rather than taking away people's rights to consensually and fully-informedly do something that doesn't hurt anyone else, or casting competent people as ignorant victims. Is this an easy thing to legislate? Hell no! I wouldn't know where to begin on wording it! But we can all grok the concept. We can all scrunch up our brains and think for a bit and picture how, say, a fully-informed consensual polygamous marriage could exist. And because we the concept readily exists, there must be some way to word it to create legislation that allows for personal freedom that doesn't harm others, but prevents coercion.

Since one of the key points in my original post was that my 14-year-old self was capable of making an informed decision about whether to have sex, I then found myself thinking about how she'd handle the concept of coercion. I am certain that I would have known at that age whether or not I was being coerced, but what I'm not certain on is whether I'd be able to articulate that concept to others. I don't remember if I knew the word coercion at that age or not, and it's a difficult concept to articulate if you don't have the word.

Then I found myself thinking that there are a lot of concepts that you meet in early adolescence that are very difficult to articulate, but it's very necessary to tell someone if they're happening. Examples:

coercion
hypocrisy
harassment
abuse
belittling
demeaning
extortion
etc. etc. etc.

It would be very helpful at about the age of 11 to know these words, just so you can put a name on your experience. Compare: "He's sexually harassing me!" vs. "He's...saying things to me!"

Now some of these concepts are simple enough that they could be taught as vocabulary words. But others are more difficult. Harassment and abuse, for example, you'd need to give a certain amount of training so the kids would recognize the scope of the words. (And this is nothing against kids, I've heard adults that don't grok the concepts either. Once someone wrote a letter to the editor saying that the fact that Sheila Copps didn't concede Liberal Party leadership to Paul Martin was sexual harassment). And training the kids on what exactly does constitute abuse/harassment/etc. could also result in problems, because the prospective perps would be taking the training as well as the prospective victims. They'd know exactly what their victims know, and may be able to use it to their advantage. This happened when I was in school - in grade 7 we had training on how to resist peer pressure, complete with role-playing. So then in grade 9, when I tried to casually continue socializing with my so-called friends without taking up smoking, they recognized the technique I'd used in grade 7 Guidance class for casually continuing socializing without eating any of the Doritos, and called me on it. But at the same time, it would also be useful to everyone to learn that because certain behaviour constitutes harassment/abuse, it is unacceptable. It's a tricky line and I don't know where exactly it lies. Hopefully someone does.

Going to hell

Similar letters from Cary Tennis, Dear Prudence, and Damage Control: religious kids who think their non-religious parents are going to hell.

Here's something I don't get, and I say this as a former religious child myself: why would you care if someone else is going to hell? The only reason I can possibly think of is because you want them to be in heaven with you. But surely any deity worth being worshipped as a deity can arrange things so that you have everyone you need for a heavenly heaven experience, while everything deserving of a hellish hell experience experiences just that. (In fact, just to make things easier, maybe some people's hellish hell experience is being trapped for eternity with their evangelical relatives!)

Age of consent

The big omnibus crime bill the conservatives want to pass includes, among many many things, raising the age of consent from 14 to 16.

I am strongly, almost viscerally, opposed to this.

As with most issues involving children, I look at this by putting myself in the kid's shoes and remembering my thought processes at that age. I was not yet ready to have sex on my 14th birthday, but I was ready to have sex before my 16th birthday. However, and this is the important part, on my 14th birthday I was perfectly capable of deciding for myself that I was not yet ready to have sex. Apart from medical advances in the past 12 years, I had the same information then that I do today, and was able to use the same reasoning then to determine that I was not yet ready for sex as I use today to determine that loving sex with mi cielito is a good idea while jumping the homeless guy who shouts stuff at me is a bad idea. This reasoning has served me well - I've never had sex that I ended up regreting - so I have no reason to believe that 14- and 15-year-olds are incapable of deciding for themselves whether to consent to sex.

They say the purpose of raising the age of consent is to protect kids from sexual exploitation, but it's degrading and paternalistic to do this by passing a law saying that people are not capable of making a decision they are perfectly capable of making. The existing law already raises the age of consent to 18 for situations in which one party is in a position of power or authority, rape and pimping (I forget the the legal term) and other similar stuff are already illegal - surely any capable legislator can close any existing loopholes without declaring competent people legally incompetent.

But the weird thing about this issue is it's very difficult to speak out against raising the age of consent without sounding creepy. I've heard other people do it, and they almost all came across as creepy, like they wanted to have the right to have sex with grade 9 students for their own personal purposes. So because of this, even though I'm so strongly opposed to raising the age of consent, I'm very hesitant to speak out. I don't even know if I've managed to succeed in not coming across as creepy here, I only dare speak out here because I'm not using my real name and I have a proven track record of prudishness. I just wish it were easier and more appropriate to speak out against.

Ping Globe and Mail editorial writers

"To applaud diversity for diversity's sake is to evade responsibility for the effects of that diversity on children."

And what about if those children grow up to be people who would benefit from a society that's accepting of a variety of family structure?

(Aside: Only 8% of Canadians are divorced. I thought it would be more.)

Parents and kids and cars and driving

I think this article somewhat misses the point.

If you choose to raise your children somewhere where driving is necessary to get around, you owe them transportation. Your kids have no say whatsoever on where you all live, they cannot possibly do anything to relocate to somewhere less car-dependent or to facilitate their own transportation, they have no control whatsoever over the situation and are entirely at your mercy. While I do agree that it makes things easier for everyone if everyone has an idea of what everyone else will require for them, I don't agree that your kid asking you for a ride is inconsiderate or treating your like a slave. It is simply...dependent. They are your dependent, depending on you. If you raise your kids in a situation where the only way to get around is by car, then their expecting you to drive them everywhere they need to go is no more presumptuous than their expecting you to provide them with food or proper clothing or school supplies, or to drop everything and make sure they get any medical attention they need. If you don't want to have to drive your children everywhere, then raise your children somewhere where people don't have to drive to get around.

You know, I know an awful lot of people who think I shouldn't have a dog because I have a job and don't have a backyard, but don't find anything wrong with raising kids somewhere car-dependent and then acting like it's this huge imposition to drive the kids around.

Homework

There is a bit of a debate in the letters to the editor page of the Star about whether Kids Today are getting too much homework, especially in the younger grades, or whether they're just spoiled and coddled or what.

I'm not going to offer up an opinion because I know that schools are now using a completely different curriculum than the one I was taught with. But I do have a question that I think everyone should be asking: what about the quality of the homework?

I remember a lot of time, especially in elementary school, spent gluing stuff to bristol board, trying to draw a picture of my house (yes, for that dreaded Grade 4 French project), frantically scrambling for pictures to make a collage with when my parents didn't subscribe to any magazines, etc. I found that all very time-consuming and stressful (because it did count, and it was just as important as anything else I had going on). More academic stuff - learning spelling words, doing work problems, studying for a history test - I didn't mind as much. Of course, I'm a pretty academic person for someone who is no longer involved in academia. I consider reading a journal a nice treat, I play Jeopardy for fun, and I sit down with popcorn to watch election returns. I don't know what less academic people thought of this kind of work. I do appreciate that there are different learning styles and some of the less academic kids might feel differently about what's a worthwhile use of their time, but I also think it's a problem if you're spending more time trying to figure out how to make a mobile about your book than you'd spend writing a book report.

I don't know if Kids Today are facing these kinds of issues, but I hope people who are more directly affected are taking this into consideration.

How to make a liberal adult

A new study suggests that a more stressful childhood produces liberal adults.

As with everything, I found myself thinking about this through the lens of my own experience. Any liberalism that I might have is the result of what conservatism my parents have. (They are conservative in some areas but not in others.) I find their conservatism very unattractive and unpleasant. Whenever they demonstrated conservatism, my train of thought would be "This is ugly and unpleasant. I don't want to be that kind of person. I want to be better than that." And so I do my best to be the kind of person I want to be instead of the kind of person I hate being around.

Now, I don't know if other people are liberal because they are repulsed by the conservatism they see in their parents. But nevertheless, this all led me to a follow-up question: Does having conservative parents produce a stressful childhood?

When boys' voices change

Bad day (Rogers sent me a bill for $200 when I was expecting a bill for $10ish, so I'm going to have to call and complain and sort stuff out and probably still end up paying more than I expected) plus I have to get up early tomorrow. So what does one do to destress? Watch Eddie Izzard of course!

So Eddie's talking about puberty, and around 2:00 he starts going into how boys' voices change.

You know, when I was that age, I never noticed guys' voices. Apparently they're very self-conscious about it, but I literally never noticed. Sometimes I'd notice when a guy I hadn't seen for a while was suddenly a baritone, but the whole process, the whole voice cracking thing? Didn't notice! Maybe it's because boys were yucky for longer for me than they are for most people, and by the time they started to be intriguing I was old enough that only post-growth-spurt boys were of interest, so I just never paid much attention to boys whose voices were changing. Maybe I was too distracted trying to manage my own body's strange secretions. Maybe I was too distracted trying to avoid being bullied. But at any rate, I never once noticed any guy's voice crack or squeak or change or anything.

The effect of parental age on parent/adult-child relationships

When I was born, my parents were several years older than I am now. This means that I have no memory whatsoever of my parents ever being my age, whatever age I've ever been in my life. Sometimes I do have to remind myself that they had more or less a decade of adult life before I came along - I sometimes feel incompetent that I'm not as good at grownup stuff as they are, and then I remember that when they were at this stage in their lives and perhaps still practicing this grownup thing, I wasn't there to witness.

But I do find myself wondering whether the dynamic of your relationship with your parents, or perhaps your perception of yourself as a grownup, changes when you reach an age that you can remember your parents being. I can't articulate why exactly I think this might happen, but I just have this idea that it might. Unfortunately, I don't know anyone who is close enough to me to discuss this sort of thing and also has young parents.

I think Dear Abby printed a fake letter

I think today's first Dear Abby letter is a hoax. It's alleged from a father warning people that the latest thing among teenage girls is to have a "prom baby" (i.e. get knocked up at the prom) to get out of going to college. But consider:

1. If someone is smart enough to get into an Ivy League school, they would know that taking care of a baby is harder than going to college. These people are 17, not 13.

2. In what world would it be easier to tell your parents you're pregnant than to tell them you're not feeling ready for college?

3. If they really wanted to sabotage their own chances of going to college, wouldn't they just submit a poor application? Don't US colleges require essays and interviews and all kinds of stuff like that rather than just filling out a form? Why not just submit a crappy essay or blow the interview?

4. If they really wanted to have a baby, why would they put all their eggs in one basket by depending on getting pregnant on one specific night? Wouldn't they instead work on arranging their lives so they have multiple opportunities to "try"? Even highly supervised kids, in their final year of high school, could arrange to have some "group projects" that required a lot of work at a conveniently parent-less house, or find some way to be alone in a car. This does take some stealth and lying and good luck, but if it's really that important to get pregnant, it's not that hard to make it work.

5. When I was that age, the thing to do if you weren't feeling ready for college was to work for a year. It was considered a responsible, perfectly respectable thing to do. Surely they've heard of that!

6. All the Google results for "prom baby" (excluding those where the two words appear next to each other but aren't intended as a single term) point to a) this column, or b) references to babies that were born at proms, not conceived at proms. The only Google Blog Search results or Technorati searches (again, excluding those where the words appear next to each other but aren't intended as a term) are referring to this specific Dear Abby column. If this were really a trend, it would have been mentioned on the internet by now.

What I'm surprised about is that Dear Abby didn't clearly see that this was a hoax.

The Right Clothes and The Wrong Clothes

A topic that seems to have come up in several completely unrelated conversations I've had lately is kids and The Right Clothes or The Wrong Clothes. As we all know, because we all have been (or, if there are any kids reading this, are) kids, during certain stages of life, wearing The Wrong Clothes is social suicide. We also know that some parents can't afford to buy their kids The Right Clothes. But we also know that there are other kids who aren't wearing The Right Clothes, either because they don't want to, or because they aren't aware of which clothes are Right, or because their parents won't buy it for them.

It's the latter situation that I wish to address here.

I've heard three arguments in support of parents who can afford The Right Clothes refusing to buy said clothes for their kids:

1. There are other, less expensive clothes available, and I want my kid to learn the value of frugality.
2. I want my kid to learn not to give in to peer pressure.
3. My kid could have chosen The Right Clothes when we did our back to school clothes shopping. They did not. They must now learn to live with the consequences of their decision. (This one obviously applies to cases where The Wrong Clothes turned out to be those of the kid's choosing.)

And all these three arguments also have the underlying fact that some kids can't afford The Right Clothes at all, and it isn't right for them to be socially ostracized simply because their parents happen to be poor.

I actually agree with all these statements. However, I think there's one thing parents need to think about (and, again, I'm still talking about parents who can afford The Right Clothes): Will refusing to buy The Right Clothes actually help my kid learn the intended lesson?

If you have your kid wearing cheaper clothes even though they're Wrong, will that teach them the lesson of frugality? Or will it just teach them that if their clothes are cheap they'll get tormented?

If you have your kid wearing The Wrong Clothes will that teach them not to give in to peer pressure? Or will it just teach them that if they'd only give in to peer pressure, they wouldn't be tormented?

If your kid picked out The Wrong Clothes and is now being tormented for it, will that teach them to make better decisions? Or did they pick out The Wrong Clothes because they didn't no any better, so it teaches them that their parents are just as cruel and punitive as their classmates?

And, in all cases, will not buying your kids The Right Clothes improve the lot of their poorer classmates?

If you buy your kids The Right Clothes, I can see two possible outcomes: a) it makes their social lives better, or b) it doesn't. If it's b), I think that would teach any of the above lessons better than refusing them the clothes, leaving them to think about what might have been. If it's a), then you get to see whether or not your kid continues to have empathy for their classmates who are now below them on the social scale. If they cease to have empathy for their classmates with The Wrong Clothes, then you have a perfectly good reason to not buy them The Right Clothes in the future. If they do have empathy for their classmates with The Wrong Clothes, then they can leverage their new social position to improve their classmates' lot, and the entire social circle benefits.

Parenting advice from the childfree

Inspired by a train of thought arising from the first letter in Friday's Vine (i.e. Friday March 9, it hasn't been archived yet):

Think about the sexual values you want your kid(s) to have. Yes, I know, squicky. You don't want them having sex at all ever. But work past that mentally and think into the distant future, when your kid is a full-fledged adult and in whatever kind of situation you think it's appropriate for people to be in before they have sex. What do you want their sexual values to be? Do you want their sex to be loving? Kind? Gentle? Respectful? Fair and equal? Fun? Romantic? Not taken too seriously? Taken very seriously? Heterosexual? Homosexual? Married? Unmarried? For procreation purposes only? Heavy protected by contraception? Just decide, quietly and to yourself, what these values are.

Then, whenever a book you're reading contains sex scenes that reflect these values, buy the book and keep it on a bookshelf in your home. The books don't have to be about sex, they just have to contain one or more sex scene of whatever level of graphicness they happen to be. You can read them or not as your preferences dictate to you, just keep them on a bookshelf in your livingroom or some other public area of your home. Don't point this out to your kid or anything, just keep it there in your home.

Why? Because at some point in early adolescence, your kid is going to learn that some books have sex in them. And they're going to look for the sexy parts of books so they can learn more about sex. While they might prefer a more visual medium, books have the advantage of being innocent- and respectable-looking, silent, and easily portable. Once your kid discovers that there's sex in them thar books, they will read the books, especially the sex scenes, and most likely surreptitiously. But because you have chosen books whose sex scenes reflect what you consider to be positive sexual values, your kid's earliest exposures to sex portrayed in media will reflect the values you want to instill.