Entirely off topic. Please talk to your daughters about this

Scott was in class yesterday and a female student who was sick asked to go to the nurse. When she got back she was upset. It turned out the nurse asked if she was pregnant before giving her medicine. That's the law here for high school kids. But the girl was insulted thinking that the nurse thought she wasn't a virgin. So Scott pointed out that not all sex was consentual and mentioned that 1 in 4 college girls are victims of rape or attempted rape. They were shocked. No one had told them. So he started telling them things which improve the odds for them, like not setting down their drinks at parties. None of them had heard that before either. So PLEASE tell your daughters some basic info about keeping themselves safe.

Not just not setting your drink down, now you have to see it opened, or open it yourself.

True. It's crazy. Even though he teaches physics and not health, he said he wanted to discuss it again because out of the dozens of female students he has, not one of them considered herself at risk or took any precaution to keep herself safe. But I looked up some statistics for him to hand out and 2/3 of rape victims are under age 18.

Thank him for me! One of my biggest frustrations is that parents, especially mothers are not talking to their daughters about these things! Some claim they are too embarrassed to discuss sex and other topics! That is total nonsense.

One of my best friends had a younger sister who attended a party. She didn't do drugs but someone had spiked the punch with LSD. That child suffered from hallucinations for years and then she just died from the wear and tear on her body.

My mom told me the same thing Scott told his students. As a teen and then a young woman, it didn't become real to me until it happened to my friend's sister.

In some cases, I think parents are so busy running around doing their own thing OR even working trying to keep things going, that they completely forget about important things in raising a family. Some kids my be totally under the care of an older brother or sister who, themselves, haven't had that type of information available to them.

I knew a young mother who had two jobs and attended college at night while her oldest, around 10, was in charge of the other three children.

If it wasn't for teachers like Scott, some of them would never know their options. That is scary.

Thanks for putting this out there!

And one of the best books on this is Protecting the Gift by Gavin de Becker. Its about more than just girls too. Some shocking stuff but taught me alot about keeping my kids safe. Anyway - not affiliated with the book or author, I was just really touched by this book and as a mom of five kids the subject is VERY close to heart.

Heather

Thank you to Scott for helping to educate the children in his class. It's not just the girls nowadays that need to worry too, the guys should know as well. So they can then help and educate the females in their life.

When Tim and I first started dating, I put up my guard. I did that with all the new people I had met. Being a female and in the state of mind i was in, I did not want someone to take advantage of it. I always made sure someone knew exactly where I was going, who I was with, phone numbers of all the people I would be with. Because you can never be too careful.

I am worried about how i will go about teaching Timmy, without him losing his innocence. And without losing his spirit. He has a great instinct, but I have to be careful of when it might be wrong.

There is so much out there these days it is hard to keep up. Right now, on The Doctors they are discussing teens and drugs. There seems to be a new thing among the girls: soaking tampons in vodka and inserting them into their vaginas. This is said to produce a faster high. Sigh... As women I am sure you know the how destructive this is.

I wish I had advice for younger mothers who are still raising kids. I don't. All I know is that constant contact and conversations about drug abuse and sexual awareness will at least let them know how you feel about it. Lots of times, disappointing one's parents keeps us from doing some things. And with the information, it instills some fear of what can happen so fear is often a deterrent.

As an aside, I watched Wife Swap on Friday. One family had a very strict agenda for their kids and the other ones let their children do whatever they wanted. I have to say that the strict agenda seemed way over the top for me (checking the neatness of the school desks and talking with teachers at least twice a week) and I questioned the mental health of the children. BUT, way before the end of the program, I saw that those children were absolutely fantastic. The little boy, especially, had a lot of spirit... He was outspoken, a great dancer, polite, energetic, mindful and respectful to his parents.

The older boy in the other family was not so well adjusted. His grades were terrible and while he wasn't disrespectful, he was withdrawn and not so open. He and his stepfather didn't have a very good relationship. By the end of the show, the strict mom had given them some tools to work with and he was a much, much happier child. He even began calling his stepfather "Dad."

So Missy, all I can say is I don't think you will take away Timmy's spirit with keeping him within your guidelines. I would guess that your rules will make him secure and probably even more spirited with less tendency to give into peer pressure.

I had alot of trouble with this when my daughter went away to college. She moved out of the dorms into college run student apartments. She was off the relative safety of campus, and off dorm floors where kids see you coming and going. She didn't know her roommate, and once she did, they really didn't get along and kept to themselves. Her roommate would have lots of kids over, some would show up when she wasn't there, her roommate had given them a key. Her roommate would sleep at her boyfriend's aparttment many nights, and they'd not even see each other for days. My daughter was working nights, coming home late in the dark, and walking alone from her car, many times carrying tip money from waitressing. Worried me silly, as she was still quite innocent in the bad side of the world. She would say well my roommate knows if I'm not here, I'm at work, but her hours would change, and I knew she would just assume she was at work if she didn't see her.

We worked out a system where she would keep her computer on all the time if she was out of her apartment. She kept up AOL Instant Messenger, and would change her away message to say where she was that day. "Sorry I missed your message, I'm at the band party on campus.""I'll call you when I get home from work at 11:00.""Have to stay late after class tonight, so I'll be home about 10:00" It gave me peace of mind, and all her campus buddies started doing the same. They checked up on each other as they text messaged constantly so I knew they had contact. If she seemed missing for too long, or the message didn't change I was calling. I also had her roommates cell phone number, and a local friend she had met.

Scary times as I was several hours away. She did get one scare, as she went with friends on the bus to a nearby college for a fun night, got off the wrong stop, in a nearly abandoned downtown college town at night, and realized none of them had enough money to get home. It was quite cold, and they being girls wanting to look nice, had no coats. She never left home without a $20 bill and her driver's license after that.

You absolutely must talk to your children, several times, as they don't see the danger until they've seen it or had a close call.