A devastating look into teens’ sexual lives (not for the faint of heart).

What floors me is that there are tons of parents out there, including parents of teenagers, who have no idea what’s going on. I know what’s going on (well, I have a reasonably good idea) and I don’t have a teenage daughter. What’s their excuse?

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Tanya adds: The advice on curbing this behavior in your teen?  “Alot of the experts we talked with said, ‘You have to parent today…double time.’ ”  Like with so many of life’s problems, the solution is often to do twice as much of what was missing in the first place.
 
I realize that many people feel they don’t have a choice in the matter, and some in fact don’t.  But the average child today starts their life out in full-time daycare.  As parents, we spend more time than ever at a job that our children can’t even relate to.  (We’re bank proof operators or acturial scientists.)  That means, not only do we not know what they do all day, but they can’t imagine what we do either.  And this sets a pattern for the long-term relationship between our kids and us.
 
My daughter just finished her first year of preschool.  Away from me just six hours a week, I could hardly believe all the things I was not in the immediate know about.  Just six hours a week and she chose a new favorite colour without me.  She decided skirts were better than pants but not as good as dresses.  She’d established that boys are bad because they hit and girls do not.  And her idea of a really fun game is one where you get to stand on a chair and wave your arms.  She made all these decisions without me around.  Next year she’ll be up to 11 hours a week and I’ll have so much more to keep on top of.  I think all this preschool stuff is to get ME ready for kindergarten.
 
When she’s 12 and being confronted with choices girls her age are faced with, here’s hoping I’ll have done a good job establishing solid communication and trust.  Pink or purple?  Not life altering.  Holding hands or oral sex?  A bit of a big deal, wouldn’t you say?

Archie was supposed to marry Betty, or remain a terminally undecided teenager forever. Marrying Veronica was NOT supposed to happen.

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Andrea adds: I just can’t believe it took him 23 years to choose. (Last time I read Archie I was ten, at summer camp.) If I were Veronica or Betty, I’m just not sure I’d wait that long.

Baby Faith (see earlier post here) passed away this weekend, at the age of 93 days. A short life lived to the fullest. RIP.

I have a piece over at Mercatornet.com about the dignity of the body and the necessity to exercise regularly.

If you were trying to get me huffing and puffing, you might want to try quoting Saudi clerics. It usually works; especially when they claim that a woman who likes to exercise is shameless.

At our dojo we are preparing for a harsh weekend; Saturday and Sunday is our annual black belt test, where brown belts will test for their first-degree black belts and some first-degree black belts will test for their second-degree black belts. It’s a pretty tough test (I went through it twice), about 6-7 hours of gruelling exercise and self-defence drills, spread over the two days. The group testing this weekend has been training extremely hard since November to prepare for this coming weekend. I’ve helped train them, and it’s just so cool to see their determination to succeed (although these days they also look anxious and somewhat scared – that test is a challenge and a half, I tell you).

There are some people in that group I’m especially proud of – we have a few middle-aged women, nice moms (one grandma), who have slowly become fierce martial artists through constant discipline and exercise. Women who never thought of themselves as fighters who now cheerfully fling each other onto the floor, kick and elbow-strike their opponents with nary a second thought, and can do 50 push-ups at the drop of a hat. I’m not sure they believe they are fierce martial artists – yet. But I know. And when they put on their shiny new black belts at the end of the weekend, it will look good on them.

There’s a saying we have – something that’s written on the wall of our dojo – about becoming the best person we can be by disciplining both body and mind. Exercise is a great way to discipline both. We can’t all do karate, but we can all do something. And we should. If only to show those clerics how wrong they are.

I distinctly remember that Seinfeld episode where Elaine talked (incessantly) about who was, and wasn’t, “spongeworthy”. Turns out the “sponge” in question really exists:

It was made famous in the 1995 episode of Seinfeld when Elaine stockpiled it for boyfriends deemed “spongeworthy”—and now, the contraceptive sponge is set to return to store shelves in the U.S. Introduced in 1983, the Today Sponge, a spermicide-coated polyurethane barrier placed in the vagina to inhibit sperm, was once the most popular over-the-counter birth control for women. It was removed from pharmacies in 1994 after manufacturing problems, then reintroduced in 2005 under new ownership. After the new owner went bankrupt in 2007, the Today Sponge went out of production. Repackaged for a younger generation, it will be sold by a new distributor as of this weekend. Despite its pop culture bankability, the New York Times reports, the Today Sponge might generate comparatively little revenue: its failure rate can be over 10 per cent, and it doesn’t protect against sexually transmitted diseases.

OK, so it doesn’t really work, and it’s only available if you’re lucky. Other than that, it’s great!

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Véronique adds: I never watched Seinfeld but I distinctively remember the sex-ed class in grade 9 where the sponge was hailed as the best thing since slice bread. All I remember thinking was “Gross…”  but then I went on to have 6 children so what do I know about contraception? Which leads me to wonder, when they write that the sponge’s failure rate can be over 10 percent, do they mean that out of 100 sexual encounters 10 will end up in pregnancy or that 10 will not protect you against pregnancy although you may not actually get pregnant depending on your cycle? Because if it’s the former, the failure rate is probably much higher than 10 percent.  But then again, what do I know about how babies are made?

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Tanya says: Failure rates are a thing of beauty. They are often preceded by phrases such as ‘If used correctly’ or ‘it is estimated that.’ If used correctly, it is estimated that condoms have a less that 1 per cent failure rate. Which is good, right? And if you were flying at 2000 feet and the captain got on and said “Good morning! This is your captain speaking. It’s a balmy 30 degrees in Barbados right now and we should be arriving in a little over 2 hours. By the way, there’s a 99% chance this plane will get you there safely. Have a pleasant flight.” Well, see, I’m not sure that would go over too well.

It’s race weekend in Ottawa, and I just did a 10K to raise funds for the Ottawa Hospital Cancer Centre. I hadn’t done a 10K-run in ages, and it, ahem, showed. (Karate is awesome for fitness, but it’s not the same as running.) But I did it, however feebly, and a dashed good thing it was, too. The sun was shining, the crowds (including Andrea, who was kind enough to wave at me and take a picture – if it’s not too horrifying we’ll post it here) were cheering us along. A great experience. And one that reminds me that for all our troubles and daily frustrations and whatnot, life is pretty cool.

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Andrea is making a mental note: that cheering and taking good photos do not go hand in hand. I was straining to see Brigitte. When she saw me I got excited and yelled a resounding Woo Hooooo! first, before taking a picture. This is what I caught of her then. Sports photography is possibly not in my future. (But cheerleading might be.)

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Brigitte admits: Yes, I’ve got lovely forearms.

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Véronique adds: I was going to say “nice manicure” but forearms work too. Not as sexy but given the circumstances, nice forearms will probably serve you better. In the mean time, I’ll be at the spa…

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Tanya says: But, you see Andrea, this actually isn’t the worst picture as long as you tell people you were trying to get an artsy shot of the gal in the white T-shirt. (Hey, is that one of our shirts?)

From the Daily Telegraph:

An attempt by the Taliban to infiltrate Kalam village was repulsed in the first sign that the army’s action is encouraging residents to stand up against the militants. Kalam’s deputy mayor, Shamshad Haqqai, said that about 50 Taliban fighters tried to enter Kalam on Wednesday but that locals had fought them off.

The militants had come to the village to collect arms, ammunition and food.

Muhammadi Room, a Kalam resident, said the Taliban visited the house of a local elder, Mehar Rafi in the Bijlee Ghar area of Kalam but, as there were no men inside the house, the women climbed to the rooftop of the house and opened fire. Five Taliban were killed at the scene.

These “militants” are the kind of cretins who think nothing of attacking school girls and under whose rules women were treated worse than cattle. They won’t be missed.

[h/t]

Apparently this ad is creating a bit of a kerfuffle. Wonder why, eh? Think it’s likely to discourage teenage sex? [warning: graphic]

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frHOZn3tpdQ]

The controversial video is the latest weapon used by a local primary care trust in the fight to reduce teen pregnancies, it said.

The clip, dubbed Teenage Kicks, was created by NHS Leicester City and features a girl giving birth on a school playing field surrounded by her peers.

It was created as part of a campaign to warn youngsters about teenage pregnancies.

The video is currently posted on video sharing sites popular with young people, including YouTube and Kontraband, and the primary care trust said it has now been viewed around 72,000 times.

Filmed in the style of a “happy-slapping” on a mobile phone, the video is designed to appeal to young people in a bid to spread the message.

It shows a gang of teens running towards a crowd of other schoolchildren.

In the middle of the jeering crowd is a girl giving labour, while another helps her.

The clip ends with the slogan: “Not what you expected?” followed by, “Being a teenage parent might not be either”.

It then refers young people to the campaign’s website, hey-babe.co.uk

A spectacularly moving piece about a woman whose son lived less than a day. This woman is amazingly brave and courageous and I can only wish that, were I to find myself in a similar situation, I would be as brave and courageous as she was. Thank you for writing, Ms. Phenix.

About that poll, which Andrea highlighted earlier, that says most Americans now call themselves pro-life, here. Personally, I find the piece irritatingly wishy-washy. I also tend to be highly suspicious of opinion polls – it’s too easy to say anything on the phone just to make the caller go away and get back to the dinner table. Maybe I’m just grumpy…