Community Outreach Series Focuses on Well-being: Program on Adolescent Boys is January 19
January 14,2016
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, Ridgewood Schools present the next up in the Well-being series is “He’s Not Just Lazy:Helping Under-challenged and Unmotivated Boys” by Dr. Adam Price. This program will take place on Tuesday, January 19, 2016 from 7-9 p.m. at Benjamin Franklin Middle School Auditorium, 335. N. Van Dien Avenue.
The 2015-2016 parent/peers series consists of eight engaging presentations throughout the school year. Co-sponsored by The Valley Hospital, with support from The Foundation, adults are invited to attend these programs on creating balance in children’s lives.
Ridgewood NJ, Local Patch editions publish sex offender map as Halloween warning across the state . Do you think the Patch sites should publish these maps or leave it up to parents to look up the information?
While we do agree parents have a right to know and should know , we are not sure this is the best and most effective way to notify the public .
On several occasions the Ridgewood blog has been asked by readers to publish everything from sex offenders to property tax delinquents of the Village and we have up till know differed. We did however publish the properties who were fined for for violations of the Stage 4 watering because after 15 years of summer water restrictions its seemed justified on many levels . We have also been guilty of nagging non compliant winter snow sidewalk scofflaws as well.
We have always been been concerned about creating a “witch hunt” atmosphere in the the Village or doing significant damage due to a misidentified address.
Unlike some of our detractors we try to focus on the issues and leave the personal to the personal . Some issues however seem to straddle both realms.
Fourteen years ago, a leading drug maker published a study showing that the antidepressant Paxil was safe and effective for teenagers. On Wednesday, a major medical journal posted a new analysis of the same data concluding that the opposite is true.
That study — featured prominently by the journal BMJ — is a clear break from scientific custom and reflects a new era in scientific publishing, some experts said, opening the way for journals to post multiple interpretations of the same experiment. It comes at a time of self-examination across science — retractions are at an all-time high; recent cases of fraud have shaken fields as diverse as anesthesia and political science; and earlier this month researchers reported that less than half of a sample of psychology papers held up.
“This paper is alarming, but its existence is a good thing,” said Brian Nosek, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, who was not involved in either the original study or the reanalysis. “It signals that the community is waking up, checking its work and doing what science is supposed to do — self-correct.”
ATLANTA (CBS Atlanta) — A new study finds that the happiest parents are those who have four or more kids.
According to The Daily Signal, a study conducted by Australia’s Edith Cowan University found parents had the most life satisfaction with larger families.
“[The parents] usually say they always wanted a large family, it was planned that way, and it was a lifestyle they’d chosen,” study author Dr. Bronwyn Harman said, according to The Daily Signal.
Harman spent five years interviewing hundreds of parents from different family makeups and based her findings on resilience, social support, self-esteem and life satisfaction.
“What is important for kids are things like consistency, boundaries and [to] know that they are loved, no matter what,” Harman explained, The Daily Signal reports.
Parents stay calm teenagers are not having sex …anymore
Elizabeth Nolan Brown|Jul. 23, 2015 3:15 pm
According to popular culture, today’s teens are a bunch of “hookup”-scarred heathens, trapped in a sordid world of casual flings with one another and exploitation at the hands of online predators. In reality, teenagers today are having less sex than they have for decades. New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Center for Health Statistics shows that the number of (unmarried) 15- to 19-year-olds who’ve had sex dropped by 14 percent for girls and 22 percent for boys in the period between 1988 and 2013.
As of 2011-2013, 44 percent of teen girls surveyed and 47 percent of teen boys said they had sexual intercourse—compared to 51 and 60 percent, respectively, of their 1988 counterparts. Or, to put it another way, 4.3 million millennial girls and 4.8 million boys, compared to 5 million and around 6.15 million in the late ’80s. Congratulations, last of the Gen X’ers: you are better than the youngest of the millennial cohort at getting laid.
But kids these days are better about practicing safe sex: 79 percent of the girls surveyed and 84 percent of the boys said they had used some sort of contraceptive method the first time they had sex, with condoms ranking the most popular. In 1988, only 71 percent of male teens and 69 percent of female teens used contraception when they first had sex.
After condoms, the birth control pill and the pull-out method are now the most popular teen contraception choices. Fifty-four percent of 15- to 19-year-old girls surveyed said they had at some point been on the pill, which is similar to the 2002 rate; the rates of contraceptive-implant use (2 percent) and intrauterine device, or IUD, use (3 percent) were also relatively stable.
It has been a very interesting month. Since my first post I have connected with old high school friends who have active or recovering addicts in their families. I have been contacted by people who are living the nightmare of Addiction as parents, spouses, children and friends of addicts as well as addicts themselves. Many have shared powerful stories of recovery. I have written or spoken the words ‘I am sorry for your loss’ too many times to count, though we really do need to keep counting… Every person we lose leaves a gaping hole in the world. That hole will swallow us all if the tide is not turned.
I did not intend to start a blog, and I am a bit unsure of where to take it from here. I am, after all, just the Mom of a recovering addict who posted a bit of a hissy fit to her Facebook after learning of another senseless death. I don’t think I can keep tossing out hissy fits, it would get old pretty quickly. I have decided that I will post when something is swirling around in my head enough to make me sit down and write about it, since that’s what happened the first time. It may be a few things in a short amount of time, followed by a lull. We’ll just have to see where this blog leads me.
This is a new journey and I’m glad for the company of all who would like to walk this path with me. We have certainly walked it alone for far too long.
Today’s thought: What could I have done differently?
This question haunted me for many, many years. Should I have taken him back to school to get a forgotten book? When he left his report on the counter in fifth grade should I have left it there instead of bringing it to school? He had ADD so organizing was hard for him. Did I do too much? Did he never learn to be accountable for his own actions? Was I too worried about him failing a stupid sixth grade math test? Should I have let him fail and learn the result of not putting in the work instead of making him study against his will? Should have, would have, could have were constantly swirling in my head. Tiny voices blaming, blaming…
Yes, I should have let him fall on his face when he was little. The consequences of their errors grow as they do. I didn’t have to catch him when he fell —- I was holding on so tightly he never really fell. And when he went away to college he fell hard. So yes, I should have let him fail more when he was young.
In all honesty, that is the one thing I feel I could have changed. I don’t know what else I could have done differently that would have gotten him to ‘just say no’ to drugs. Above is an old newspaper clipping of my son and his friends from the neighborhood with their ‘just say no’ signs. They marched around the neighborhood chanting. He wore his D.A.R.E. (Drug Addiction Resistant Education) T-shirt forever. We spoke about drugs and drinking and sex. Once, when my son was a freshman in high school he had some friends over. Two of the girls brought booze into my home in soda screw top bottles (OK, lesson one: no outside drinks allowed in my home). They also had some joints on them. My son and his friend came to me and told me what was going on. THEY CAME AND TOLD ME. Parents were called, girls cried, drama ensued. BUT HE TOLD ME. How, then, did this kid end up a freakin’ heroin addict? The one who told. The one who knew better. No matter how much we think ‘they’ve got this’, they don’t. Life is not black and white, and adolescence is the murkiest of grays.
JULY 5, 2015 LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY, JULY 5, 2015, 4:48 PM
BY KARA YORIO
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
Go outside and play.
Those four words sent generations of elementary school kids out the door on their own each summer. The instruction was typically followed by another four-word directive: Be home before dinner.
These days, you’d be hard-pressed to find neighborhoods full of 6- and 7-year-olds in yards or streets, parks or playgrounds without adult supervision.
One of the most difficult and debated parental decisions is when to let kids be on their own — walk to school or the park with friends, go into town or even stay at the house without an adult. Some adamantly believe there’s only one choice: Never allow children out of sight until middle school and beyond or send an 8-year-old off on a solo bike ride around the neighborhood without a second thought. Most of us, though, sit somewhere in the middle.
We want to instill independence and a sense of adventure, but can’t quite bring ourselves to do it most of the time. The what-ifs overwhelm. Accidents can happen, but it’s the abductions that haunt us, the high-profile missing children cases whose names echo in our minds: Joan D’Alessandro, Etan Patz, Adam Walsh, Polly Klaas, Megan Kanka.
Sure, the abduction of a child by a stranger is statistically rare, but if it’s my daughter does it matter how rare it is? If it’s my kid that disappears on that first day I let her ride her bike around the block to her friend’s house then does it matter how many other kids do it without incident every single day? But why can’t I put those fears aside and give my daughter the same freedom I enjoyed?
At May 20 audience, he stressed that educating and raising children in the human values that form the “backbone” of a healthy society is a responsibility that each family has.
BY CNA/EWTN NEWS 05/20/2015
VATICAN CITY — In his general audience, Pope Francis spoke of the essential role parents play in educating their children, a role he said has been usurped by so-called experts who have taken the place of parents and rendered them fearful of disciplining their children.
“If family education regains its prominence, many things will change for the better. It’s time for fathers and mothers to return from their exile — they have exiled themselves from educating their children — and slowly reassume their educative role,” the Pope said May 20.
He gave harsh criticism to the “intellectual critics” that he said have “silenced” parents in order to defend younger generations from real or imagined harm, and he lamented how schools now are often more influential than families in shaping the thinking and values of children.
“In our days, the educational partnership is in crisis. It’s broken,” he said, and he named various reasons for this.
“On the one part, there are tensions and distrust between parents and educators; on the other part, there are more and more ‘experts’ who pretend to occupy the role of parents, who are relegated to second place,” he said.
Posted: 05/13/2015 10:36 am EDT Updated: 05/13/2015 10:59 am EDT
By Anjali Enjeti
You remember childhood, don’t you?
We wore our house keys around our necks like dog tags, walked home from school alone and let ourselves inside while our parents were still at work. We crossed busy intersections during rush hour to purchase bubble gum cigarettes with change from empty soda cans.
Our playgrounds were construction sites, heaps of dirt, creeks filled with snakes and turtles we collected as pets. We climbed trees, muddied our Garanimals, scaled fences between neighbors’ backyards. We spent Memorial Day to Labor Day barefoot, the soles of our feet blackened like coal, dirt clumping underneath our toenails. Skateboards, roller skates and bikes defined our boundaries — our Baby Boomer parents would scoff if we asked for a ride somewhere. They were too busy reading the newspaper, watching soaps or drinking beer on the stoop with the neighbors.
We were told to come in at dark, not a second earlier.
We had our kids late. Probably too late. Now we’re cranky, sleep-deprived 40-somethings changing chlorine-free, biodegradable diapers while Dora the Explorer morphs into a hormonal teen right before our very eyes. We claim we don’t regret waiting because we “needed to get established in our careers first” and “wanted to save enough money,” even though we know damn well we have neither viable careers nor anything resembling a nest egg.
We cart our children to chess, robotics, baseball practice, ballet, cello, swimming lessons and birthday parties. Though they run our lives like lunatic ringmasters, we insist such activities make them well-rounded / social / intellectual / competitive / creative.
They are rarely out of our sights. They’re our extensions, buds hanging off our stems, the quality, durability, and character of their bloom wholly dependent on our careful, measured, intentional nurturing. We stuff them into slings as babies, backpacks and strollers as toddlers, tie them with leashes as preschoolers and use GPS and apps to monitor their whereabouts as teens.
Mom filmed berating her son at Baltimore riots didn’t ‘want him to be a Freddie Gray’
By Abby Ohlheiser April 28 at 6:30 PM
A woman seen berating and hitting a black-clad teenager, later confirmed to be her son, has been hailed as “mom of the year” after her intervention on the streets of Baltimore was caught on video. As violence flared up across the city on Monday, the woman, who was identified as Toya Graham on Tuesday afternoon, was filmed telling her child to “take that f—— mask off.”[I was knocked to the ground by Freddie Gray rioters, then helped to my feet]
Graham spoke to CBS News about the video, which initially went viral with little context. In the interview, the single mother of six tells the network that she intervened out of concern for her 16-year-old son’s safety.
“That’s my only son, and at the end of the day, I don’t want him to be a Freddie Gray,” Graham said. “But to stand up there and vandalize police officers, that’s not justice.”
Shocking toll of social media on girls’ mental health: How sexualised images are fuelling rise in anxiety among pupils aged 11 to 13
Sexualised adverts and social media leading to emotional problems in girls Girls aged between 11 and 13 more affected than they were five years ago Rise may be linked to seeing women portrayed as sex objects, study finds
By SARA SMYTH FOR THE DAILY MAIL
PUBLISHED: 18:00 EST, 19 April 2015 | UPDATED: 03:37 EST, 20 April 2015
Sexualised images of women in advertising and social media are leading to an increase in emotional problems among young girls, new figures suggest.
Girls aged between 11 and 13 are now more likely to worry, lack confidence or feel nervous than they were five years ago because they feel under pressure.
The rise in girls suffering from emotional problems may be linked to stress brought on by seeing images of women portrayed as sex objects on Facebook, Twitter and other websites, researchers from University College London believe.
Ridgewood NJ, On Tuesday, April 21, “Raising Financially Literate Children” will be presented by financial planner Kerry Fitzgerald. Strategies will be shared to help children learn the make prudent financial decisions starting early in life through independence. The program will take place at the Education Center, 49 Cottage Place, floor 3. Please click here for the flyer.
New: Curriculum Series Continues with Google Program
The district has added a program, “All About Google Apps for Education,” a series of three stand-alone workshops designed to introduce parents and guardians to the world of technology in the classroom. The April 15 (elementary school level) is full. A few spots remain for April 20 (middle school level) and April 22 (high school level). Each workshop is limited to 25 participants and pre-registration is required.
Click here to go to the pre-registration page.
Click here for the flyer and more information.
How to Free-Range Your Kids (And Not Get Arrested)
Flood the streets with kids.
Lenore Skenazy|Mar. 9, 2015 3:47 pm
How do we fight back against cops and child protection workers who think parents that let their kids walk outside are negligent?
By flooding the streets with kids.
Busybodies who dial 911 the instant they see an unsupervised child are not going to do that when they pass a park filled with 15 kids. (Well, most aren’t.) And when masses of moppets take to the sidewalks after school, no one is going to call the cops to report, “Tons of children are walking home!”
But how do we get to that point? Today, only about 13 percent of children walk to school. One report I read found that only 6 percent of kids 9-13 play outside on their own. Part of the problem is that parents are scared of predators. But compounding that problem is the fear of the police. The Meitiv family in Maryland faced that fear firsthand when they were investigated for letting their kids, 10 and 6, walk a mile home alone.
But you know what Danielle Meitiv wrote to me, just after CPS declared her and her husband “responsible for unsubstantiated neglect”?
“Allowing kids to be Free-Range is critical for their development. We will continue to let our kids roam. Thankfully, CPS harassment like this is NOT common. The best way to make sure it doesn’t happen is to make Free-Ranging as common as it was when we were kids.”
If you’re ready to give it a try would like a little push, watch this video. Then, do what I do help this nervous family do: Give your kids one little errand that they feel they are ready for that you haven’t let them do yet.
The Ridgewood Education Association invites parents and community members to a free screening of “Standardized”
February 07,2015
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ,The Ridgewood Education Association invites parents and community members to a free screening of “Standardized” at 7 p.m. on Feb 11 at the Bow Tie Cinemas in downtown Ridgewood. “Standardized” is a documentary film that examines the impact of the high-stakes standardized testing movement in public education today.
Michael Yannone President Ridgewood Education Association states in a letter to the Ridgewood News
“Here in Ridgewood, we are beginning to see how tests mandated upon the district by bureaucrats from afar is impacting the education of our students. Next month, all Ridgewood students in grades 3 to 11 will begin taking the newly created PARCC exam. This new test has affected many aspects of our district from technology, professional development, staffing, daily lessons and assignments, and even our calendar. As we get closer to this test, I encourage parents to educate themselves. You can take sample tests for yourself at parcconline.org and more information is available on the district website, websites like njkidsandfamilies.org, and via films like “Standardized.”
Due to theater capacity, seating is limited, but if you would like to attend you can reserve your seat online at ridgewoodstandardized.eventbrite.com.
Educators, parents urge commission to drop or delay new state standardized tests
JANUARY 28, 2015, 6:32 PM LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 28, 2015, 7:46 PM
BY HANNAN ADELY
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
JERSEY CITY — Parents and educators told a state education commission Wednesday that New Jersey should drop new state standardized tests, or to consider delaying them, given many problems they already present .
Speakers at a public forum held by Governor Christie’s commission on student testing repeatedly referred to preparations for the tests as having a negative effect on classroom learning and the tests themselves as badly constructed.
Christina Krauss, a member of the Ridgewood Board of Education and parent of an eighth grader, said the new tests put a burden on teachers and students and that test preparation was consuming classroom learning.
“Our children are not lab rats,” said Krauss, who was one of about 45 people who spoke at the forum at the Franklin L. Williams School. “They are curious, creative, individual learners who should be allowed to flourish.”
The tests, known as PARCC, will be required in grades 3-11 in math and reading this spring. State education staff have said the tests will provide useful information about students’ progress and needs as they prepare for college and career. But critics say they take too much time much time away from instruction, are too long and stressful and hamper learning in non-tested subjects.
