I didn't need to read this letter on Planetfeedback to understand that giving your kid a cell phone is risky business. I know first hand how hard it is to get your child to follow the rules and live within the limits set by the bill-paying parents once that phone is in their hands. And as we also see from some of the letters, even an otherwise responsible kid can have trouble with self-control when access to a cell phone is so easy and temptation just a ring tone away.
It's not only a problem with teenagers either. Some adult children seem to have no qualm about feeding off a parent's cell phone account. And when something goes wrong, some parents have the audacity to blame the company for not being on top of things.
As astonishing as that is, I don't think anything can beat this.
Continue reading "Risky Business" »
So the Kiddo has been having a few behavioral problems at home and at school. He's been angry and contrary... typical for a a teenager, I know, but he's also been lying and trying to push his female teachers around.
He tells his tutor one thing, his teachers another, me something completely different and his counselor something else. Yikes. That makes it very hard to keep track on what's really going on. And when he gets called to the carpet for this (as he invariably does) he is uber-defensive.
So I did what any good parent would do. I called a a meeting.
Continue reading "The Teenaged Years" »
A lot has happened since my post about Nebraska's unique Safe Haven Law. Safe Haven laws in other states apply only to infants, but lawmakers in Nebraska wanted to extend the protection to all minors. The law went into effect in July and allows caregivers to leave a child at a state certified hospital without fear of prosecution.
It now appears that lawmakers did not know what they were getting into when they decided to use the word "child" to avoid assigning an age limit. Because of this unexpected loophole, significantly older children,
including teenagers, have been abandoned in Nebraska in alarming numbers. In fact, not one of the 24 children dropped off at hospitals was a newborn, and three of the teenagers were actually from out of state. In one instance, a father left nine siblings, ages one to 17 at an Omaha hospital.
When I said in my original post that I thought the law could be helpful to distraught parents, I had no idea how many families were so desperate.
Continue reading "Nebraska Revisited" »
