It's a rally cry all over the US. Abolish all abortions now! Pass laws against abortion. It's a moral imperative to keep other people from having abortions. There's just one little problem with it. Laws don't stop people from doing things, they just punish people afterwards.
Well actually there's 2 little problems with it (maybe more, i'll probably lose count). You can't stop wealthy people from having abortions. Yup that's right, you can't stop wealthy people from having an abortion. They'll just hop a flight and get it done. And anyone with the ability to pay will do the same, and anyone with a credit card can do the same too. So the only people you will stop are the young without resources and the poor. So why not categorize it properly. Let's pass a law to stop poor people from having abortions. Doesn't have quite the same ring, does it?
But we can prevent abortions. Huh? Yup, I said we can prevent abortions. How? By being responsible parents. Yup. Oh dear, I said it. I blame parents when their kids go wrong. Yup. Even if it's not directly the parents fault, parents should know what's going on in their kids lives and help out.
This is how parents can help out.
1. Do not allow their kids to date until they are 16. This involves knowing where your kid is at all times and making sure there's a responsible adult nearby to check on them. This will prevent kids from having the opportunity to be promiscuous and get emotionally scarred which contributes to unexpected pregnancies. There's huge pressure for kids at 1st grade to declare a boyfriend or girlfriend. Tell kids it's unrealistic and silly.
2. Teach your child responsibility. Kids need chores and an allowance to learn how the real world works. They need to feel useful or they'll have unmet emotional needs. When they waste their allowance, they need to know they have to do without. Parents need to teach kids how to save and plan for emergencies.
3. Explain to your sons about how they will have to pay for a baby should it come. Explain that this is one reason why you don't want them pressuring girls to have sex.
4. Stop allowing boys to pressure girls for sex. I know girls are doing more of the pressuring now, but boys are expected to be out for the hunt and on the prowl. They are expected to score and brag and put notches on their belt. Without explicit and repeated input from parents about how this is unaceptable (no wink and a nodd here) boys will fall into the mass media model that is being presented to them.
5. Prepare Girls for these types of boys. Prepare girls by helping them have good self esteem. Good self esteem is accomplished by making kids feel useful and self sufficient and also willing to ask for help
6. Dont allow your children to be selfish. This is very hard to accomplish but not impossible. Get some parenting books.
Now for all adults.
1. Ask your lover what s/he expects to do if a baby arrives. If you can't discuss this with your lover, you're not responsible enough to be having sex. If your lover gives you information that makes you nervous, then you need to ask yourself if you are in the right relationship.
2. Can you afford to pay for a baby if one should come along? If you cant, then why are you having sex? Sex makes babies. Yup, Sex makes babies. If you havent planned to take care of a baby as the result of having sex, then you aren't planning far enough ahead. Women who plan ahead for a baby contingency are more likely to be less stressed when it happens. Men who plan ahead for the baby contingency are more likely to honor their financial obligations.
3. Keep up with your family and keep up your networking. Support helps a person make good decisions.
For legislation:
1. Make boys & men pay for their babies. If girls know the male will be financially responsible for the child, they are less likely to have an abortion. If males know they will be held financially responsible they will be more likely to wear a condom.
2. Stop abuse. Girls in fear of abusive men will have abortion. Girls who are hooked up with crime figures are more likely to have an abortion. Teach kids in school about abusive and controlling relationships.
3. Stop poverty. Provide more work training, affordable college, affordable housing etc.. People with good resources don't live in fear that maybe they can't afford the baby and they have less stress. With less stress, they may opt for the adoption option. Adoption is a challenging avenue and people need to feel prepared for it.
I dont have all the answers and you shouldn't expect me to. Read, think, learn and prepare, it's what you can do. It's what we all can do.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
What About Finances?
First, please read this column
http://www.creators.com/lifestylefeatures/savage-truth-on-money.html
Everyone needs to understand the new financial climate in America. We are all responsible as individuals for all of our finances. Health care, retirement, living expenses and likely caring for parents & children at the same time.
Sometimes once you're an adult it's really hard to recover from financial loss and get very far ahead. You may just end up living paycheck to paycheck until your social security kicks in and then keep working until health forces you otherwise.
The one prevention for this scenario is starting young. I have a friend who did it. Really she is quite amazing. First I'll disclaim any inaccuracies in this, as I am only going by what I have figured out because she's very shy about explaining her history and very private about her finances, so i'll apologize for any possible misinterpretations on my part because the it's the story as the whole that is what's important.
My friend started working at her parents & uncles businesses. She saved most of her income. She was able to mostly pay outright for college. I'm not sure if perhaps she worked in the summer or not. My guess is she did. She saved all her money, lived at home with the parents, used an older car, shopped frugally and bought her first house when she got her first job. I'm sure she had a large down on the house. The mortgage was a larger percentage of her employment then she desired so she got a roomate and paid extra on the mortgage. She put lots of money away while working. I have to say that she had a good paying job which helped in this matter.
She was downsized from her job. She didn't worry too much. She immediately got her separation package, unemployment and fought for a retraining program. Because she had always kept her expenses low, she had no problem continuing to pay for the mortgage. She's been disapointed by the fact that she did have to eat into her savings a bit during all of this but happy that she was able to keep her house unlike many of her coworkers.
Here is the scenario for most teen agers & young adults.
Get job as teen: pay for car, car insurance, parties, toys and credit cards. Get loans to go to college and pay for apartment. Move home and then move into an upscale apartment they can barely afford. Buy all new furniture on credit for new apartment, buy new car, buy lots of gadgets to keep up with the other kids.
Get married: borrow money for wedding, borrow money for honey moon, borrow money for first home, buy all new furniture on credit for new home.
Lose a job or get divorced: and when lucky, move back in with mom & dad while recuperating. Go through bankruptcy or damage credit. Start the process all over again. At some point they'll realize they need to save for retirement, or maybe not. The ultimate success in this pattern frequently depends on the person's income. I've seen plenty of people who went into the correct field or career who got paid well recover from this. I've seen plenty of people who got the first job they could and just spend year after year just barely making ends meet with no hopes of future retirement.
Now it's even tougher. Large employers are saying they can no longer pay for employees health care or fund pensions. While at the same time they are paying their CFO's and board members more than ever in history. They are also getting more production from their employees than ever in history and higher profits. Seems a little weird to me. They are getting more bang for their buck out of their employees and saying they can't provide benefits any longer. But that's not the point of this post, so i'll go on with the original point.
The point is, that the only way anyone is going to make it in this current American climate is if everyone gets started out on the right foot.
What is your plan? What have you explained to your children?
Do you give your children an allowance? An allowance is the number 1 best method to teach children about money.
I'll post the allowance guidelines in another blog, as this one is getting a bit too long.
http://www.creators.com/lifestylefeatures/savage-truth-on-money.html
Everyone needs to understand the new financial climate in America. We are all responsible as individuals for all of our finances. Health care, retirement, living expenses and likely caring for parents & children at the same time.
Sometimes once you're an adult it's really hard to recover from financial loss and get very far ahead. You may just end up living paycheck to paycheck until your social security kicks in and then keep working until health forces you otherwise.
The one prevention for this scenario is starting young. I have a friend who did it. Really she is quite amazing. First I'll disclaim any inaccuracies in this, as I am only going by what I have figured out because she's very shy about explaining her history and very private about her finances, so i'll apologize for any possible misinterpretations on my part because the it's the story as the whole that is what's important.
My friend started working at her parents & uncles businesses. She saved most of her income. She was able to mostly pay outright for college. I'm not sure if perhaps she worked in the summer or not. My guess is she did. She saved all her money, lived at home with the parents, used an older car, shopped frugally and bought her first house when she got her first job. I'm sure she had a large down on the house. The mortgage was a larger percentage of her employment then she desired so she got a roomate and paid extra on the mortgage. She put lots of money away while working. I have to say that she had a good paying job which helped in this matter.
She was downsized from her job. She didn't worry too much. She immediately got her separation package, unemployment and fought for a retraining program. Because she had always kept her expenses low, she had no problem continuing to pay for the mortgage. She's been disapointed by the fact that she did have to eat into her savings a bit during all of this but happy that she was able to keep her house unlike many of her coworkers.
Here is the scenario for most teen agers & young adults.
Get job as teen: pay for car, car insurance, parties, toys and credit cards. Get loans to go to college and pay for apartment. Move home and then move into an upscale apartment they can barely afford. Buy all new furniture on credit for new apartment, buy new car, buy lots of gadgets to keep up with the other kids.
Get married: borrow money for wedding, borrow money for honey moon, borrow money for first home, buy all new furniture on credit for new home.
Lose a job or get divorced: and when lucky, move back in with mom & dad while recuperating. Go through bankruptcy or damage credit. Start the process all over again. At some point they'll realize they need to save for retirement, or maybe not. The ultimate success in this pattern frequently depends on the person's income. I've seen plenty of people who went into the correct field or career who got paid well recover from this. I've seen plenty of people who got the first job they could and just spend year after year just barely making ends meet with no hopes of future retirement.
Now it's even tougher. Large employers are saying they can no longer pay for employees health care or fund pensions. While at the same time they are paying their CFO's and board members more than ever in history. They are also getting more production from their employees than ever in history and higher profits. Seems a little weird to me. They are getting more bang for their buck out of their employees and saying they can't provide benefits any longer. But that's not the point of this post, so i'll go on with the original point.
The point is, that the only way anyone is going to make it in this current American climate is if everyone gets started out on the right foot.
What is your plan? What have you explained to your children?
Do you give your children an allowance? An allowance is the number 1 best method to teach children about money.
I'll post the allowance guidelines in another blog, as this one is getting a bit too long.
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
Why I Cant Clean my House
I have always known I'm not normal. Many of my teachers would tell me they knew I had to have some sort of learning disability but they couldn't figure out what. The half hearted attempt the school made in testing me in 6th grade was to no avail. They said they could tell something was wrong. My reflexes were slow, I couldn't get things in order, I had no concept of time, and I was the clumsiest kid they had seen. But then again, maybe I was just not trying and maybe I was trying to just get attention. Boy were they wrong.
You have to attempt to understand the frustration of trying harder than that kid who got the A. I tried way way harder then Him and I only got a C. Can you imagine that? If you had/have a learning disability then you most certainly can.
My quandary I found most recently is, what do you call it when it's no longer a learning disability? I'm no longer in school, so what is? This answer was kindly given to me by the face blindness support group on yahoo groups. A Cognitive dysfunction. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to call it a neurological problem or not. I'll get to that in a moment. I'm jumping the gun here.
Face blindness is a condition where you cannot recognize people, even people you should be able to recognize. I can recognize close friends and immediate family when they get really close to me, but I cannot recognize them in a crowd or if they walk up to me in an unfamiliar location until they get really really close. The technical name for face blindess is Prosopagnosia. You might have heard of it recently, it's been making the news and popular television in the United States.
While chatting with the faceblind group they told me of a few other cognitive dysfunctions that they have found are fairly common among their bunch. Once of those is dyspraxia. What a whammy suddenly seeing all my problems mirrored back to me on the dyspraxia websites. Which I might add, I thought most of the dyspraxia websites were pretty poor. They jumbled around the symptons and I thought they grouped some conditions together that weren't appropriate and made some pretty big assumptions about people with the condition. But all in all at least they gave me a big ah-ha!
Twenty years searching for answers, and I finally hit upon it. I guess it is fairly unknown in some circles. Dyspraxia is a condition with is classified as an Order processing condition. It is fairly well established by many of the websites that the left and the right side of the brain don't work well together. They cant get things in the right order and work together properly.
Different people experience this in different ways and other people frequently have different addition cognitive dysfunctions or neurological symptoms as well.
Most common is clumsiness. For a while educators even named it Clumsy Child Syndrome. Many people with dyspraxia also have dyslexia, ADD, ADHD, aspergers, autism, dysgraphia and a host of other common problems. The most common thing is that people may have one and not the other of the problems.
The most comforting part of reading up on it is that people with dyspraxia are quite generally thoroughly disorganized and cannot keep a house! That's right people, cannot keep a house. So I guess I'm not as awful as I thought I was, it's not just plain ineptitude that causes me to not be able to keep house, it's the same problem that caused me years of learning disabilities as a child.
Unfortunately there's not really any treatment.
If you think you may have this problem here's a list of websites I found that were useful. Please note the 'useful' phrase. It doesn't mean I really thought they were the greatest, just that I could decipher useful information from them.
http://www.dyspraxiaireland.com/
http://www.nldline.com/newpage41.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyspraxia
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/members/madeleine.portwood/dysprax.htm
http://www.tayloredmktg.com/dyspraxia/interact.shtml#dyspraxia
Please be kind to that weird and ditzy coworker of yours. You have no idea what s/he has gone through in all the years. Maybe s/he suffers from dyspraxia. You never know.
You have to attempt to understand the frustration of trying harder than that kid who got the A. I tried way way harder then Him and I only got a C. Can you imagine that? If you had/have a learning disability then you most certainly can.
My quandary I found most recently is, what do you call it when it's no longer a learning disability? I'm no longer in school, so what is? This answer was kindly given to me by the face blindness support group on yahoo groups. A Cognitive dysfunction. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to call it a neurological problem or not. I'll get to that in a moment. I'm jumping the gun here.
Face blindness is a condition where you cannot recognize people, even people you should be able to recognize. I can recognize close friends and immediate family when they get really close to me, but I cannot recognize them in a crowd or if they walk up to me in an unfamiliar location until they get really really close. The technical name for face blindess is Prosopagnosia. You might have heard of it recently, it's been making the news and popular television in the United States.
While chatting with the faceblind group they told me of a few other cognitive dysfunctions that they have found are fairly common among their bunch. Once of those is dyspraxia. What a whammy suddenly seeing all my problems mirrored back to me on the dyspraxia websites. Which I might add, I thought most of the dyspraxia websites were pretty poor. They jumbled around the symptons and I thought they grouped some conditions together that weren't appropriate and made some pretty big assumptions about people with the condition. But all in all at least they gave me a big ah-ha!
Twenty years searching for answers, and I finally hit upon it. I guess it is fairly unknown in some circles. Dyspraxia is a condition with is classified as an Order processing condition. It is fairly well established by many of the websites that the left and the right side of the brain don't work well together. They cant get things in the right order and work together properly.
Different people experience this in different ways and other people frequently have different addition cognitive dysfunctions or neurological symptoms as well.
Most common is clumsiness. For a while educators even named it Clumsy Child Syndrome. Many people with dyspraxia also have dyslexia, ADD, ADHD, aspergers, autism, dysgraphia and a host of other common problems. The most common thing is that people may have one and not the other of the problems.
The most comforting part of reading up on it is that people with dyspraxia are quite generally thoroughly disorganized and cannot keep a house! That's right people, cannot keep a house. So I guess I'm not as awful as I thought I was, it's not just plain ineptitude that causes me to not be able to keep house, it's the same problem that caused me years of learning disabilities as a child.
Unfortunately there's not really any treatment.
If you think you may have this problem here's a list of websites I found that were useful. Please note the 'useful' phrase. It doesn't mean I really thought they were the greatest, just that I could decipher useful information from them.
http://www.dyspraxiaireland.com/
http://www.nldline.com/newpage41.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyspraxia
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/members/madeleine.portwood/dysprax.htm
http://www.tayloredmktg.com/dyspraxia/interact.shtml#dyspraxia
Please be kind to that weird and ditzy coworker of yours. You have no idea what s/he has gone through in all the years. Maybe s/he suffers from dyspraxia. You never know.
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