I’ve been a die hard Boston Red Sox fan since I was nine-years old.  (See picture to the right as exhibit A.)  As such, my rooting passions have almost exclusively rested on those who call Fenway Park home.  Still in rooting, reveling, groaning, screaming, crying and cheering for the Sox, I don’t think I ever have rooted against someone else.  To me, that’s just not what sports and being a fan is all about.  I can hate the Yankees as an evil empire.  But it is a hate tempered with respect to their amazing traditions of success.  And it is attached to my admiring awe for the likes of Derek Jeter, Mo Rivera, Hikdeki Matsui and Jorge Posada.  Okay, so I didn’t include A-Rod, still you get my point.  I root for my team, not against the other.  Which is why I was so appalled last year when I went to my first game at Wrigley Field.  The Cubs were playing the Reds and my friends and I were seated in the outfield.  Sitting near me was a group of fans who were openly jeering and taunting one of the Reds outfielders.  Even though I’m not one for taunting, I’ve got no problem with others doing it if it is clever and in the spirit of fun. 

This was neither.

The player’s name was Josh Hamilton and his story is both legendary and cautionary.  A can’t miss prospect and former #1 draft pick, Hamilton’s career had been sidelined and derailed and his life expectancy dramatically cut short by his severe addictions to drugs and alcohol.  He went from can’t miss to can’t live.  There are numerous media accounts of his struggles and I suggest you read some.  They are sobering in more ways than one. 

 And, here he was making a brave attempt to right that life, conquer those demons and play his way back into the major leagues.  And in addition to his demons, he had to put up with drunken fools taunting him about those addictions.  This is no indictment of the Cubs and their fans.  (Surely, they’ve suffered enough.)  I have read that he faced similar reactions in a number of ballparks.  But, this was the moment I became a Josh Hamilton fan. 

This season Josh is playing for Texas Rangers and he is playing like a man determined to break records and not hearts.  He is the American league leader in Home Runs and RBI’s and is among the best in Batting Average.   And none of these things matter compared to his true victories.  He is beating his addictions and reclaiming his life.  He is doing great, but he has such a long, long way to go.

I’ll be rooting for him the whole way.  (Except when he plays the Red Sox of course.) 

• 	Posted by: James Ponti | 0 Comment(s)
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Many parents think the most critical time in their child’s development is when they become a teen or reach puberty; although it’s true this is a tumultuous time for both children and parents, the years leading up to the teen years (aka the “tween” years) just may be even more critical.  

At age 9, children are faced with the reality (albeit subconsciously) that they are stuck between two worlds; the world of sitting on mommy’s lap and the world of not yet being a big kid. This is the time it is the most essential to develop a connected relationship with your child, because it will define who they become as an adult.  

The Partnership for a Drug-Free America recently launched a new web feature called A Parent’s Guide to the Teen Brain.  As a parent coach and the mother of three children (and another one on the way), the message of “Teen Brain” is important because it offers parents support for how they can better understand the science behind the way their tweens and teens act — and guidance on how to better interact and connect with them.   

As a parent coach, the number one thing parents tell me is that they need more support with raising their children as they enter adolescence.  I am happy to be a part of the Partnership’s new initiative and believe it will offer parents great insight that will positively impact the lives of their tweens, teens and families!

• 	Posted by: Tara Paterson | 1 Comment(s)
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It is important to me to keep parents updated on teen and youth trends when it comes to drugs and alcohol so they know what to look out for. This is a rather weird one, but I wanted to post about it so at least you could hear it from me instead of another parent or from your kids!

I walked into a fraternity party this past weekend at a local college and saw a bunch of freshman boys taking shots of liquor through their eyes. Yes, you read that right…through their eyes.

They were putting vodka in paper Dixie cups, folding the cup so it had a lip like a beaker and pouring the vodka into their eyes. Most of the alcohol ran down their face and onto their clothes, but I suppose they were blinking in some of it.

Yes, I asked them the questions you are thinking:

Does it hurt?

“Yes it burns like hell!”

Why in the world are you doing this?

“It goes into your blood stream faster and you do not need a lot to get drunk…and you do not puke because it is not in your stomach.”

I was horrified and wonder if they will have permanent eye damage because of it. I wanted to alert parents to this, I hope it is not widespread but they said that they had learned it in high school and they knew other people who do it.

Watch out for the eye shot.

• 	Posted by: Vanessa Van Petten | 6 Comment(s)
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If I had to describe what coming home from college for the summer means in one word, I would say that it means losing. Losing the chance to party until three in the morning every Friday, no questions asked. Losing the ability to stay at a boy’s overnight without your parents ever knowing. Losing the shirt you’ve been wearing with heels as a dress for months. Losing your Nutella. 

Nutella—the chocolaty hazelnut spread that’s a) heaven in a jar and b) a representation of the complete lack of adult surveillance I experience eight months of the year—is forbidden in my mother’s kitchen. I found this out over Thanksgiving when my mom hijacked the jar I’d brought home with me and told me that I would not be eating “liquid chocolate” as long as I lived under her roof. So now for breakfast I eat granola or some other food purchased from the organic section at Wegman’s and pretend that I don’t exist for more than two-thirds of the year on Nutella, Friday’s frozen quesadilla rolls, and garlic-herb Alouette. 

One of the biggest draws of going away to college is, clearly, the escape from prying parental eyes that it affords. And if you’re like me and go to a school that’s halfway across the country, practically every single thing you do goes unseen. This past year, between August and April, I think my parents saw me for a grand total of twenty-two days. It was awesome. I set my own rules for how I ate and what I wore and when I slept and what I spent and what I spent it on, and as long as I sounded happy and healthy during one twenty-minute phone call home each week, no further investigations into my personal life were made.            

Except for a few weeks ago, right after I moved back home for the summer. I’d cried my eyes out all day while my mother was at work, but had cleaned myself up and was happily watching TV by the time she got home. The first thing she did when she saw me was ask why there was a tissue box on the floor next to the chair I was sitting in. All of a sudden and without even meaning to, I started sobbing a semester’s worth of sobs about an awful breakup my mom didn’t know I’d had with a boy she didn’t even know I’d been dating. 

I think that going to college is a lot like stretching a rubber band. When you get to Michigan or Muhlenberg or Midwestern State or wherever it is that you go, you start to pull away from your family, and once you see how much you can actually get away with, you start to pull harder. Your parents may try to hold you back, but let’s face it: rubber bands can stretch pretty far. They can stretch to the not-so-healthy section of the grocery store, they can stretch to a friend who can provide a fake ID, they can stretch to the Delta Kappa Epsilon Tahitian party. But at some point, they hit a stretching limit, whether it’s a failed class or a sorority rush let-down or a broken heart. And then they snap and come flying back to the point at which they started.  

I adore college. I love the people and I love the ideas and I love the atmosphere and I love the freedom. But I also know that for every class I’ve skipped, for every jar of “liquid chocolate” I’ve consumed behind my mother’s back, there’s been a time I secretly wished I was nearer to the only person in the world who can see an innocent tissue box and immediately know it’s indicative of a much larger problem. Parents, whether your children are in college or high school or have just reached the “What did you do in school today?” “Nothing!” stage, know that they don’t want to be completely left alone—they just want to stretch. I, personally, would let them. I can almost guarantee that at some point, they’ll snap back.         

• 	Posted by: Jessica Hoffman | 0 Comment(s)
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So here’s the latest on Amy Winehouse according to the AP:

Soul diva Amy Winehouse has damaged her lungs by smoking crack cocaine and cigarettes, her father said in an interview published Sunday.

The Sunday Mirror quoted Mitch Winehouse as saying that Amy has early stage emphysema and an irregular heartbeat, and has been warned that she will have to wear an oxygen mask unless she stops smoking drugs.

“The doctors have told her if she goes back to smoking drugs, it won’t just ruin her voice, it will kill her,” Mitch Winehouse was quoted as saying. “There are nodules around the chest and dark marks. She has 70 percent lung capacity.”

Winehouse, 24, collapsed at her north London home Monday after signing autographs for a group of fans and was taken to a London hospital for tests. She remained there all week.

She is still scheduled to sing at a concert in London on Friday celebrating the 90th birthday of Nelson Mandela, the South African Nobel Prize-winner, and plans to take part in the Glastonbury music festival the following day.

Mitch Winehouse said it would be good for his daughter to perform.  “When she’s been inactive work-wise then that’s when the problems really start. The doctors have said that medically there isn’t any reason why she can’t do Glastonbury,” the paper quoted him as saying.

He also pleaded with her drug-taking friends to stay away from her.  “What hope does she have if people are taking drugs around her,” he said.

Chris Goodman, spokesman for Amy Winehouse, said “If that’s what Mitch says, that’s what he says. It sounds right.”  Mitch Winehouse could not immediately be reached for comment.

***

Can you imagine a 24-year-old with emphysema?  The entire Amy Winehouse story is such a tragedy.  Here is someone who is so talented and yet throwing her life away to her monstrous addictions. 

I don’t know how involved Amy Winehouse’s father has been in her life up until now – maybe very involved and swimming upstream against the “industry” and Amy’s circle of “friends” – but he certainly seems to be paying attention now.  This can only be a good thing.

• 	Posted by: Sarit Catz | 1 Comment(s)
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Don’t know if you folks caught the MTV Movie Awards but there was an “interesting” bit:

Seth Rogen and James Franco play stoners in the upcoming “Pineapple Express,” so MTV thought it would be hilarious if they pulled out a bag of “fake pot” and a joint and lit up as they presented an award.  Apparently, someone had a moment of good sense and the director pulled to a wide shot.  Even so, there was a lot of awkwardness, leaving Robert Downey Jr., accepting for “Ironman,” with a puzzled look.

I’ll say!  After all, Robert Downey Jr. has had a prolonged battle with substance abuse.  And so has a good chunk of the celeb crowd present.  There have been so many Hollywood rehab stories lately that I’ve stopped even commenting on them.  Now MTV thinks this is funny?  Honestly?

 (Getty Images)

• 	Posted by: Sarit Catz | 3 Comment(s)
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