When I was in college, I had a friend who would hardly eat. At meals, she’d take half a banana, put some peanut butter on it, and take tiny bites. She wouldn’t finish it, and she wouldn’t eat anything else. She wasn’t fat. But she thought she was.
I used to say to her, “Just eat [...]
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Tags: eating disorders
As parents, we spend a lot of time worrying about our young teens’ seemingly reckless behavior. Parents like myself are all too often mystified as to why our teens would choose to, say, take drugs, have sex, or drive drunk — when we can see so clearly that these are bad ideas.
According to a new [...]
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Tags: parenting·risk taking·teen brain·Teens
We love the Girl Scouts. They are one group that keeps up with the times. Today marks the launch of a collaboration between the Girls Scouts and Microsoft, called LMK: Life Online. In texting jargon that means “Let Me Know.”
The campaign includes a website for girls (13-17), and an e-newsletter for parents.
This seems rather timely [...]
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Tags: computers·cyberbullying·girl scouts·myspace·Technology·Teens·texting
A recent Boston Globe Sunday magazine article reported that high school students are shown images of people engaged in sexual intercourse, taught how to properly use condoms–and more, all during their sex education classes. Wow, has sex ed been given a makeover.
This program—called Our Whole Lives (OWL)—is implemented by [...]
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Tags: Current Events·parenting·sex·sex education·Teens
“F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies are Failing in America,” a recent report from the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is certainly a hefty document, worthy of its weighty topic. The report calls for the creation of a National Strategy to Combat Obesity and includes state-by-state data about obesity [...]
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Tags: Obesity Prevention
With Valentine’s Day approaching it is apropos to draw attention to National Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Week, which runs February 2-6. We blogged about the topic before, and will continue to do so given that the rates of teen dating abuse are shockingly high.
Camille Winbush Public Service Announcement on uTube
The sobering facts:
Approximately 1 in [...]
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Tags: dating abuse·Teens·violence prevention