Forget abstinence...

Nancy Reagan made "Just say no" to drugs sound easy, but a whole generation of kids proved it was a lot harder than that.
In my fair state, they like to take the same approach to sex and the twin problems of sexually transmitted diseases and teen pregnancy. Abstinence education -- just say no -- is the core of the effort to deal with the raging hormones and poor judgment that are so much a part of adolescence.
And guess what? It doesn't seem to work as a deterrent for sexual activity any more than it did for experimenting with drugs and alcohol. Go figure.
I've given the issue a lot of thought. And by that, I mean A HELL OF A LOT OF THOUGHT because my two girls, now 11 and 12, mean everything to me and I want them to have their very best shot at an education and a childhood and .,.. well, you know what I'm saying. I don't want them to sabotage themselves.
I have listened to experts, read the books and yet, my moment of epiphany came in a most unexpected moment. I was sitting in the grade school library, helping ring up sales at a book fair, when it hit me.

Tell them about PTA. If you get pregnant, you will have children. Who will go to school. And you will be expected to participate in PTA. Tell them in detail. About the meetings. And the projects. And fundraisers.

If that doesn't scare them into behaving, they're already lost.

If there were a weird kid contest

Today, the beastlies and I were driving along, reminiscing about how weird they are. And the subject of the birthday party Jeni didn't throw for herself came immediately to mind.
She was turning 8 (gosh, it has been nearly four years!) and we were having a Saturday afternoon birthday party for family at a skating rink about 20 miles away, splitting the difference in miles with our guests.
The night before, she mentioned casually that her friend Renee wanted her to have a birthday party and invite classmates.
That's nice, I told her. We'll do that sometime.
Oh, she said. We already did. We handed out invitations today.
Mind you, it was bedtime and she's telling me she and her little third-grade friend have invited people to a party we're not having at a time when we won't be home.
I think my voice pitch may have been a little squeaky.
It took a while to sort it out. She and Renee hand-wrote about 10 invitations and handed them out to girls on the school ground. She couldn't remember exactly who she handed them to.
I had a million questions floating through my mind. Like, how did she think there's be cake, or decorations, if I didn't know about it. Like, had she forgotten the real party we WERE giving her 20 miles away? Like, did she forget she had parents she should ask? And who the HELL did she think would let their kid go to a party when the invite was scribbled on lined paper, with no RSVP number?
I settled for "YOU WHAT?"
In the end, I made her quickly call the couple of little girls she remembered inviting, to tell them we weren't really having a party. On "party day," I typed a note in both English and Spanish to put on the door, explaining there'd been a family emergency and I was terribly sorry, but the party was canceled. And we left, chicken style.
And yes, someone tried to attend. There was a little gift on the step when we got home.
The best gift I gave Jen that day? The sure knowledge that if she ever pulled a stunt like that again....