LtlFirecracker
Ideal_Rock
- Joined
- Feb 29, 2008
- Messages
- 4,837
There have been many good points made on this thread. I enjoyed reading the many different prospectives people had, and I do feel like I have learned a lot from other people's experiences, and that what I learn will be useful to me.
Miraclesrule: Thanks for sharing your experiences. I am sure you learned a lot from your children, as you children learned a lot from you. And I also remember you saying you are going to be a Grandmother? Congratulations! I am sure you are going to be a great support for your daughter.
Haven: I really enjoyed reading the prospective from a teacher. I found it very interesting about what you said about meeting the parents. You are right, parents have a big influence on a child's values. In adolescence's, the peer group plays a bigger role, but often, the values the parents teach the child influences their choice in friends. And there have been a lot of posts, but I think it was you who talked about addressing the underlying cause. You are so right about that. There are so many ways to attack a problem. There are short term solutions and long term fixes. Right now, the best I can do is offer immediate solutions as I tend to work with individuals. Long term fixes involve working at the level of the community, and the national level. And there are a lot of barriers to making those long term fixes at this time, but we have to try to continue to break them.
Vespergirl: Thank you so much for sharing your life experiences. I feel like what got lost in what I was trying to say was even though teens as a group might not have fully developed the same decision making skills as adults, like any other developmental skill, there is a bell shaped curve. Some teens have amazing decision making skills at a very young age, and are ready to make adult decisions despite their chronological age. I admire that you knew your risks and figured out how to minimize them, and that you had a back up plan if something were to go wrong. The way you protected yourself using both BC and condoms is usually my first recommendation to teens who have made the decision to have sex. I usually quote the perfect numbers you quoted, as well as the typical user rate numbers, just because most teens are probably "typical users." I also stress that BC does not protect against STI's. However, if a teen tells me she wants to wait, I tell her about the health benefits she gets for waiting. I don't talk about birth control, but I tell her if things for some reason change, to please come talk to us. As you said, the point is not to judge people for their decisions.
Ebree: I think you hit a good point when you said that a parent should not be a kids best friend, there are 2 extremes to parenting, and both have been shown to cause problems.
I also think that Bristol is doing the best she can do with the situation she is in. An extended family, if they are willing, can be a very strong asset to a teen in this situation. My aunt had a baby young, and her husband than left her. My Grandma flew across country to help her until she got on her feet. My cousin never really knew her father, but she is closer to my Grandmother than all the other grandchildren.
Miraclesrule: Thanks for sharing your experiences. I am sure you learned a lot from your children, as you children learned a lot from you. And I also remember you saying you are going to be a Grandmother? Congratulations! I am sure you are going to be a great support for your daughter.
Haven: I really enjoyed reading the prospective from a teacher. I found it very interesting about what you said about meeting the parents. You are right, parents have a big influence on a child's values. In adolescence's, the peer group plays a bigger role, but often, the values the parents teach the child influences their choice in friends. And there have been a lot of posts, but I think it was you who talked about addressing the underlying cause. You are so right about that. There are so many ways to attack a problem. There are short term solutions and long term fixes. Right now, the best I can do is offer immediate solutions as I tend to work with individuals. Long term fixes involve working at the level of the community, and the national level. And there are a lot of barriers to making those long term fixes at this time, but we have to try to continue to break them.
Vespergirl: Thank you so much for sharing your life experiences. I feel like what got lost in what I was trying to say was even though teens as a group might not have fully developed the same decision making skills as adults, like any other developmental skill, there is a bell shaped curve. Some teens have amazing decision making skills at a very young age, and are ready to make adult decisions despite their chronological age. I admire that you knew your risks and figured out how to minimize them, and that you had a back up plan if something were to go wrong. The way you protected yourself using both BC and condoms is usually my first recommendation to teens who have made the decision to have sex. I usually quote the perfect numbers you quoted, as well as the typical user rate numbers, just because most teens are probably "typical users." I also stress that BC does not protect against STI's. However, if a teen tells me she wants to wait, I tell her about the health benefits she gets for waiting. I don't talk about birth control, but I tell her if things for some reason change, to please come talk to us. As you said, the point is not to judge people for their decisions.
Ebree: I think you hit a good point when you said that a parent should not be a kids best friend, there are 2 extremes to parenting, and both have been shown to cause problems.
I also think that Bristol is doing the best she can do with the situation she is in. An extended family, if they are willing, can be a very strong asset to a teen in this situation. My aunt had a baby young, and her husband than left her. My Grandma flew across country to help her until she got on her feet. My cousin never really knew her father, but she is closer to my Grandmother than all the other grandchildren.