Study: Most teen moms were clueless they could get pregnant

The Associated Press

ATLANTA — A new U.S. government study suggests a lot of teenage girls are clueless about their chances of getting pregnant.

In a survey of thousands of teenage mothers who had unintended pregnancies, about a third said they didn’t use birth control because they didn’t believe they could pregnant.

Other studies have asked teens about their contraception use and beliefs about pregnancy. But the new report is the first to focus on teens who didn’t intend to get pregnant but did.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the study on Thursday....

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New Moon Girls is a magazine by girls, for girls

By Genevieve Hinson, MotherOfConfusion.com

Girl power! We’re used to hearing the term now, more than a decade after the Spice Girls made it popular, and are seeing more opportunities and support available for girls transitioning into womanhood. But what was available for girl empowerment before those words and ideology became an influence on society? Not much. Which is exactly what Nancy Gruver, mom to twin girls and founder of “New Moon Girls” magazine, discovered in the early 90s when she began searching for information.

“When my daughters were 9-years-old, I was thinking that my adolescence and my transition from girlhood into womanhood wasn’t a pretty memory. It was a lot of struggles and a lot of feelings like nobody understood,” Gruver...

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Is teen obesity linked to mother-toddler relationship?

By Jill Reed, The Orange County Register

Childhood obesity is a growing issue in this country (pun not intended). So any new study that comes out about why kids become obese is gobbled up by parents and media.

Is teen obesity linked to mother-toddler relationship?

A study found that a toddler’s relationship with the mother could have an effect on the child’s weight as a teen.

I count myself among both of those, so of course I had to read up on a recent study done at Ohio State University that says how a mother interacts with her toddler could lead to weight issues more than a decade later.

The research, which included 977 kids, looked at how the moms played with the kids as toddlers. They analyzed and assessed the child’s...

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Parents held responsible for underage drinking

By LEANNE ITALIE, Associated Press

NEW YORK — Parents of teens: If you think a drinking disaster at your kid’s party can’t happen at your house, not with your kid, because he’s a good kid, it’s time to wake up and smell the whiskey bottle tossed on your lawn.

Because of the high risk of underage drinking and driving this time of year, many parents open their homes to partying teens as a way to keep them off the roads. What some may not know is that liability laws can leave Mom and Dad vulnerable to lawsuits, fines and even jail time if underage drinking is found to be going on under their roof.

Parents can get in trouble even if they didn’t know about the drinking.

That’s what a Menlo Park, Calif., father...

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Pot use up, alcohol use down among teens, study says

By TIM MARTIN, Associated Press

More teens are turning to pot and see it as less of a risk at the same time alcohol use among the same age group has dipped to historic lows, according to an annual national survey of drug use released Wednesday.

The findings were based on a survey of 47,000 eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders conducted by the University of Michigan for the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

One of every 15 high school seniors reported smoking pot on a daily or near daily basis, the highest rate since 1981.

One of every nine high school seniors reported using synthetic marijuana, sometimes called Spice or K2, within the previous 12 months.

Marijuana use rose among 10th- and 12th-graders, the study said. None of the changes was...

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Community must band together to prevent gang violence from growing out of control

By Fabiola Santiago, McClatchy Newspapers

It’s impossible to forget the image of the little boy shot at West Little River Park in Miami who lifted his shirt with a mix of tender innocence and aplomb to show the media the wound made by the bullet that grazed his tummy.

The 3-year-old was one of four children shot while playing at the park last July when masked gunmen opened fire with AK-47s.

No child should get his tetanus shot for a bullet wound instead of a scraped knee. No child should have to fear that his life might end at any moment while playing with friends at a neighborhood park. No mother, no father should remain silent while their children grow up amid such violence.

But again, for the second time in three months in this North Miami...

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Teaching teens to be charitable

By LEANNE ITALIE, Associated Press

NEW YORK — As the daughter of a minister, Jennifer James traveled frequently while her family served the less fortunate, from the rural heartland to the inner city. A lot of the time, she went without as a kid.

“My earliest memories are of working among the homeless in downtown Los Angeles, dipping ice cream for drunks,” she said. “I learned a lot and I was a better person for it, but there was a lot of pain along the way.”

In her zeal to spare her own three kids, the 44-year-old mom in Oklahoma City, Okla., has given them a world she didn’t know — braces on their teeth and cushy furniture for their rooms, fancy computers and private schooling. But now, at 14, 6 and 4, she realizes something is...

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Teens turn to life coaches to cope with pressures

By LEANNE ITALIE, Associated Press

NEW YORK — At 17, Maggie Duwelius is a busy high school senior with her eye on a tough, competitive college.

She’s a hard worker, her mom said, but her grades often fall short of that goal as she navigates a whirl of extracurriculars: sports, volunteer gigs, voice lessons, baby sitting.

Maggie’s life — much of the crush self-imposed — felt out of control, with up to six hours of homework nightly and as little as five hours of sleep.

“She’s the most self-motivated of my three kids by far, but she’s not one of those naturally ‘I can walk into this test with a pencil and do all right’ kids,” said mom Sarah Duwelius in suburban Portland, Ore. “I’d see her working so hard...

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Skimpy clothing isn’t going away, so talk to girls about their choices

By Cristina Bolling, McClatchy Newspapers

Shopping at the mall recently with her mom, Claudia, and friend Sierra Lee, 7-year-old Caira Moore was on trend in a rhinestone-studded hot pink tunic with matching leggings and Ugg-style boots.

Caira and Sierra love fashion and they know what they like. After emerging from P.S. from Aeropostale, they admired a giant ad featuring larger-than-life photos of “The X Factor” judges Paula Abdul and Nicole Scherzinger decked out in black micro-minidresses and striking provocative poses.

“I like how they look,” Sierra says, noting that Scherzinger’s dress “looks like what I’m wearing.” She smoothed her fitted black top and matching short skort.

Sexy is everywhere in girls fashion today....

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Half of teens shy, but for a few it’s more serious

By LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical Writer

WASHINGTON — Does your teen show normal nerves about the weekend party, or always stay home?

Nearly half of teenagers say they’re shy, perhaps a bit surprising in our say-anything society. But a government study finds a small fraction of those teens show signs of a troubling anxiety disorder that can be mistaken for extreme shyness.

The report challenges criticism that the terms “social phobia” or “social anxiety disorder” medicalize normal shyness.

“Shyness is a normal human temperament,” says lead researcher Dr. Kathleen Merikangas of the National Institute of Mental Health, whose teachers always noted her own childhood shyness on her report cards.

But just as it can be hard to...

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