Kids These Days

Are you responsible for a youth? If so, make sure you get him or her involved with youth sports as soon as possible.

Even if your youth is still in diapers, it’s not too early.

The recent story of a St. Louis-area junior league football coach illustrates why this is so important. During the post-game handshake line, the coach was caught on video violently shoving an 11-year-old player on the opposing team.

The player had apparently been mouthy and disrespectful. All highly trained child development specialists know a healthy shove is the best way to take care of that problem, so I don’t see why this is such a big deal.

But the over-protective parents are pressing charges, thus undermining the coach’s powerful message about sportsmanship.

The message you, as a parent, must take from this story is clear: other people know best how to raise your child.

Have you spent years studying child psychology and education, like all the genius football coaches have? Not likely.

Six or seven hours a day in school is not enough time away from your child. Make sure she or he is involved in enough structured activities to keep you free and clear of parenting responsibilities until well after dinner.

I should probably acknowledge that for every story in the media about some heroic coach or parent who beats up somebody else’s kid at a hockey game, there’s another coach or parent under the radar who doesn’t take things too seriously and just wants all the kids to have a positive experience.

This bleeding-heart approach makes me sick, but we shouldn’t let a few bad apples keep us from letting other people do what’s best for our children.

In his book “Hold On To Your Kids,” psychologist Gordon Neufield tells us that kids spend so much time away from parents these days that they develop stronger attachments to peers than to adults.

This realignment starts at a surprisingly young age and builds momentum.

To test this theory, ask any child over age 10 who is more important to them, parents or friends. Ask again once you get them to take out their “ear buds.” The eventual response is likely to be:

“Well, obviously, my parents are, like, the most – wait, somebody is texting me… Oh My God! Tara says Jamie totally posted some sick photos of herself on MySpace. She is, like, such a skank.”

Fifty years ago, teen suicide was usually traced to rejection by parents. Nowadays, it’s usually linked to rejection by peers. No wonder teen suicide rates have ballooned like a skyrocket through the roof.

Studies show that kids involved in sports are less likely to kill themselves, get pregnant, or become drug addicts.

I wasn’t able to find any studies about suicide or pregnancy rates of kids who spend a lot of quality time with their parents, so it’s safe to assume those kids are also offing themselves in record numbers.

This is a matter of life and death. I urge you to put your kids first. Instead of selfishly insisting that they be home in time for a family dinner and a game of Monopoly, let them spend all their time with other kids.

And when they finally do get home, ignore them and watch TV. They’ll thank you for it.

MySpace and the Media

Last week, Maine Attorney General Stephen Rowe made headlines by awaking from a deep, 20-year slumber and proclaiming himself a loyal subject of King George the Third.

NO, wait, that's Rip Van Winkle. My bad. But you can see how I might get them confused.

What Rowe did upon waking up from a two-year slumber (no less amazing, really) was stretch, belch, pour a cup of coffee, and start thinking about maybe, after lunch, trying to track down some sex offenders on MySpace.

In case your idea of being tech-savvy means proficiency at both abacus and typewriter, MySpace is a social networking website popular with young people, especially teenagers.

You wouldn’t know it from reading the Maine media, but several other states have already nabbed alleged perpetrators who allegedly used MySpace to try to lure alleged children into their alleged sordid grasp.

News reports here made Stephen Rowe seem innovative and tough on sex criminals for demanding cooperation from MySpace, even though he’s actually a Johnny-Come-Lately. While other states took action months ago, Rowe (screen name: “zzzzzzz”) waited around for more and more predators to gain access to Maine children before finally stepping forward to make noises to the effect of maybe doing something about it.

One would hope that MySpace, which has been obscenely popular for at least two years now, would have already done more to root out sex offender use on its own. After all, the site is owned by our culture's premium icon of integrity and wholesomeness: the same company that owns Fox News, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

(It's no secret that Murdoch and Fox News lean Republican. Consider the fact that the few liberal commentators they interview tend to have the intellect and debating skills of a Saint Bernard puppy. Plus, a recent investigation found that Bill O’Reilly has his own MySpace page, on which he declares that embattled U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez is, “like, sooooo hott!”)

As official mouthpiece for the GOP, we would expect Fox News and its parent company to stand up for decency, family values, and protecting our children from squalid, unclean influences.

Unless, of course, they can make more money by doing the opposite.

A recent study at Fresno State University found that 59 percent of MySpace users, including 71 percent of the 14-15-year-olds, posted sexually explicit or risqué materials on their sites. Often these innocent cherubs use the service to publish photos of themselves posing suggestively. Nearly ten percent of users also posted readily-accessible links to pornographic websites.

News Corp is not exactly moving swiftly to restrict their profitable teen-oriented site to only wholesome material.

If the rest of the media does, in fact, have a liberal bias, I’d like to know why Murdoch's inaction hasn’t been blown up into an obese, gnarled, pulsating scandal.

Instead, the media, at least here in Maine, seems wound up in the technicalities. The Morning Sentinel and the Kennebec Journal each published a ghastly editorial June 29 criticizing Rowe for demanding too much information from MySpace. These papers feel law enforcement should only be able to get account information for a few sex offenders, those whose conditions of release prohibit them from using the Internet.

Uh-huh. If you're a convicted sex offender, and you signed up for a MySpace account for some reason other than to meet lonely, vulnerable teenagers, then step forward right now and I'll give you my entire life savings ($37.22) and the keys to my car (R.I.P.).

No takers? Hmph. Would have been a good deal two years ago.