This essay originally appeared on BlogHer.
Daddy's Little Girl - All Grown Up
It’s prom season around our house. My seventeen-year-old son is a prom pro. He’s been to so many in the past few years, I don’t even need to give him the Prom Speech. He knows the drill and I trust him. This year, however, his fifteen-year-old sister was invited to the prom. Funny how different my reaction was; I said, “No!” Continue reading
A little over two weeks ago, we had yet another teen suicide in our fair city, the SIXTH in just two years. School officials, town leadership, parents, students, neighbors are all asking themselves, “How could we have prevented this?” “What can be done to ensure it doesn’t happen again?” My heart goes out to the families and friends involved, but with all this breast-beating and general flailing about, these tragedies still somehow seem so far away. Unreal really. Almost inconceivable. Until now. Continue reading This blog first appeared on Invincible Summer.
Let’s s call it what it is: being a teenager is just damn hard these days. Back in the Stone-age when I was sixteen, I didn’t spend six months planning my summer in order to ensure I was filling the requisite boxes for my college apps. No, I was busy perfecting my tan (grease up with baby oil, wait 15 minutes, turn), chasing down my latest crush (is he at the beach, the swim club, or the movies today?), and reading every Jacqueline Suzanne or Judith Krantz novel I could get my hands on. Sure I had a summer job. I babysat my neighbor’s kids in the mornings so she could go to her yoga class (Yoga? What weirdo does that?). It was a great summer. I was bored all of the time. Bored enough to realize that when three of my friends got pregnant, it was time to do something. I decided to volunteer at Planned Parenthood which lead to a lifetime commitment to ensuring women and girls, men and boys, have access to good sex education. I have taught classes, marched in Washington, volunteered, and given money. I even spent six years on the board of the Planned Parenthood Golden Gate Affiliate. None of this would have happened if my sixteenth summer hadn’t been boring. Sadly, my son won’t be bored this summer. He is too busy planning for his future. Continue reading
The blogosphere is a boiling over with discourse on transgendered children. As the mother of a son who, at the age of five, danced over the rainbow of exploration, I can only say I am saddened by the current politics of parenting children who refuse to wear the gender straight jacket. For a breather, I was asked by Blogher to post my article called “My Son, the Cross Dresser.” You can see the post and the comments at this link...
