As a father of two teens, I know it’s impossible to shield our kids from messages that promote underage drinking. That said, it’s always nice to be given a heads-up so we know just who and what in pop culture may be negatively influencing our kids – and right now in particular, I think you’ll be surprised to find out some of the sources sending pro-drinking messages to our teenagers. Here’s a quick round-up of where our kids have been seeing and hearing “cool” alcohol-related messages lately:

Tweens and younger teens: The latest Harry Potter movie. If you think I’m kidding, check out this article from the New York Times, which cites a number of scenes in which our favorite young wizards, only about 16, drink “butterbeer” and appear to get drunk.

(More…)

• 	Posted by: Joe Keenan | 6 Comment(s)
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Did anyone else notice there were quite a few more drug and alcohol references at Sunday night’s Golden Globes than in years past? Here are a few I picked up on:

* Former party boy Colin Farrell while presenting an award, sniffed a few times and said, “I have a cold. It’s not the other thing. It used to be.”

* Ricky Gervais from “The Office” drank a beer on stage while presenting “Happy-Go-Lucky.”

* Presenter Sandra Bullock, when listing James Franco for his performance in “Pineapple Express” as a nominee for Best Actor in a Musical/Comedy, mentioned how fun it must have been to rehearse for this stoner film.

* While presenting, “Pineapple Express” star Seth Rogen continued with the drug references by commenting, “I wish I got to do this a long time ago, in a different era in Hollywood. Maybe in the ’80s. That way instead of being drunk with Mickey Rourke tonight I’d be doing cocaine with Mickey Rourke tonight.”

* In the acceptance speech for best picture for “Slumdog Millionaire,” Producer Christian Colson mentioned he’d drunk three martinis.

* And it doesn’t stop there. From stumbling over lines, slurred speech and wobbly walking, many of the night’s presenters looked like they had knocked back a few too many.

* Heath Ledger won Best Supporting Actor in a Film for his role as The Joker in “The Dark Knight” — the year’s biggest success at the box office. And while it wasn’t said outright, it is important to remember that Heath Ledger died just about a year ago from overdosing on a mix of prescription drugs.

As parents, how do you feel about the way these celebrities handled themselves at this year’s award ceremony?

• 	Posted by: Joe Keenan | 26 Comment(s)
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Techno Perfection: n. An individual’s personal desire to look good and be in flattering poses and styles at all times based on the new ability to edit, crop, color and change the way that individual looks online.

What are some aspects of techno perfection?

1) Constant Vanity
Teens and tweens are growing up in a culture where they might be snapped, filmed or captured at any moment.  With the rise of camera phones, built-in camera’s and camera’s that can take video, teens are always on.   Have you noticed your teen constantly looking in the mirror at him or herself.  A certain unknown somebody I know always changes the car mirrors to ‘fix their lipstick, ‘check their hair,’ or ‘just plain gaze at themselves.” Anyone have this with their kids?  Teens are very, very aware of how they look at all times.

2) Editable Beauty
I was asked at one of my client’s birthday parties to take a picture of her and her friends.

“Wait a sec,” one of them chirped, “Laura, switch with me, you have got to get my good side.”

“Don’t worry, we will take a bunch and edit them later,” Laura confidently reassured her.

Huh? Do I even have a good side? Would really think about it if I did? Teens have grown up being able to edit, crop, chop, lighten, darken and take away leg fat in any picture or video with basic computer programs.  This makes them think differently about their image.

3) Fame Happy
You can be famous.  I can be famous.  We can be famous.  Many members of this generation truly believe they are going to be famous and use it as an excuse to not work as hard in school or for future jobs.  The YouTube 15 minutes of fame has grown while the gap between celebrities and real people has shrunk with the rise of reality shows, Funny or Die spoofs and celebrity blogs.  This makes them strive to be perceived as perfect and think about personal branding, like previous generations thought about what color looked best on them.

4) There is Almost Perfection
Surgery is getting better and better.  Photography touch-ups are getting better and better and so is lighting, and other Hollywood tricks.  Celebrities set-up a very high level of techno perfection that most teens think is normal…and therefore also strive to have those ‘toned thighs’, un-messable make-up and perfect hair…all the time.

5) It Feels Close
High Definition make-up is here.  More and more companies are putting out tools and tips that make teens think they NEED to look like the celebrities.  I think it is actually taking teen girls longer and longer to get ready because there are just more things to cover, hide, nip and tuck.
-invisible tape for shirts
-false lashes
-HD make-up
-silicon falsies inserts
-bronzer for your legs
-hair inserts (you can Velcro volumizing fake hair to your hairline).

What to do? TALK TO YOUR KIDS ABOUT THIS.  A lot of them do not even realize it is happening.  Whenever I talk to kids about techno perfection (at first they laugh), but then they usually think of all the ways that this has pervaded their own life.  In my mind, self-awareness is the first step towards becoming more authentic.

• 	Posted by: Vanessa Van Petten | 1 Comment(s)
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A few years ago, I read an interview with Jamie Lee Curtis, in which she said that parents with concerns about their children’s habits and behaviors—especially addictions—should examine their own behavior. (Curtis has some street cred, having successfully fought drug and alcohol addiction herself.) This notion rang so true to me, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

It makes sense. For one thing, kids clearly look to parents to model behavior. But I have another explanation that is less mainstream: Sometimes I feel as though we attract to our lives that with which we struggle. And it’s always easier to see in others (even our kids) what we can’t see in ourselves.

My children are too young to have issues with drugs and alcohol, but I do get very concerned from time to time about their dependence on TV and electronic games. I have nothing against either of these, in moderation. But for me, a red flag goes up when my kids appear “zoned out” with these screens. There are certain looks and postures that tell me they’re using TV or video games to numb themselves or escape from the world for a while. Even they will admit, during these times, that the games or shows have gone past fun to boring, but they just can’t seem to pull themselves away.

But thanks to Curtis’s remark, during those moments I also turn inward, asking whether I’m “guilty” as well. Here’s how my self-interrogation goes. First, I get defensive and in denial mode: “Hey, I only watch TV at the end of a long day and it’s only for two hours, max. Don’t I deserve that small enjoyment?” Then I vow to reform: “Tomorrow will be a TV-free day. And this time I mean it.” Then I fail. (Often, but not always.) Of course, by then, something has changed in my kids’ lives, and they’ve moved away from screens onto more constructive play. And so have I. Crisis averted. Until the next time.

 
I’m having mixed results—at best–helping my kids recognize numbing or addictive behavior and look at what’s going on beneath the surface. And I have ups and downs in my own attempt to thwart numbing behavior. But I persist in the effort. I do so because I’m hoping we’ll have enough successes in the short term to summon some confidence in the future when the temptations of more destructive behaviors come calling. I know there are no guarantees, but in the meantime, I figure it can only help to see where my own weaknesses show up in my kids and to practice hitting the off button.

• 	Posted by: Guest Blogger: Nancy Branka | 1 Comment(s)
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Let me make it clear that by no means am I a prude and in general I spend very little time (perhaps too little) worrying about how sex, drugs and the like are represented in popular media. (Maybe part of the reason I don’t think about it all that much is because my son is only three and therefore, the years when I won’t be able to just turn off whatever I don’t want to expose him to seem like some far off time in the distant future when kids dress in silver jumpsuits and are hovering off to high school on flying scooters.) When my son’s not around I listen to explicit rap music and I’ve been an ardent fan of more graphic TV shows such as The Wire for years now.

Despite this, on a recent visit back the U.S.A. (I’ve been living abroad for over five years now), I started watching a little hit show I’m sure you all know about called Gossip Girl and for the first time in ages, I found myself to be, well, shocked.

From what I can gather, Gossip Girl is to the current generation of teens what Beverly Hills 90210 was to mine or what The O.C. was to the one that came after. We all know the story- a bunch of privileged, good-looking adolescents who don’t say “um” nearly as much as any teenager I’ve ever met, run around having wittyesque conversation while at the same time wrecking constant havoc in each other’s lives. Some of them are good and some of them are evil while others are just misunderstood. Every so often the evil ones will do something likable just to keep us on our toes and the good ones will feel misunderstood and then the misunderstood ones will try to help and so on and so forth.

Gossip Girl is what happens when you take this formula and then put it on steroids with a shot of coke, literally. Of course there were drugs on 90210 and The O.C. There was also sex and eating disorders and kids with drinking problems. The difference is that on 90210, and to a somewhat lesser extent on The O.C., these things were treated as issues that had serious consequences. If someone had a drinking problem it was the focus of an entire episode. In some extreme cases it even took two or three episodes to deal with the problem!

Gossip Girl is different in that getting drunk, using drugs and having sex in high school are merely seen as par for the course. In one episode I watched, “good girl” Serena van der Woodsen is tormented because she has a secret that she is keeping from her boyfriend. Her friends press her to tell them what it is and finally she gives in and starts to confess. It started with the night she got wasted and slept with her best friend’s boyfriend. Later after drunkenly going to a hotel with some friends, she tries to avoid having sex with one of them by suggesting he do a few lines of coke. He does and overdoses at which point her other friend convinces her to flee the scene. Later she watches as his dead body is carried out of the hotel. In short, teenagers getting wasted, sleeping with their best friends’ boyfriends, and doing coke are not enough shock value for today’s teen audience. There now must be a dead body, a cover-up, and oh, did I mention a secret sex tape gone wrong?

How does watching this sort of TV show influence adolescents? Do they just see the rampant sex and drug use as another part of an exaggerated fairy tale world that they’re logically aware is only accessible to .000001% of the population? Is that supposed to make it okay? Dawn Ostroff, president of The CW network seems to think so, telling the New York Times that “Everybody approached this with the understanding that this was a heightened reality… It wasn’t teenagers as we know them throughout the country.” The thing that’s dangerous about this is that while it’s true that the majority of teenagers are unlikely to ever have access to Park Avenue penthouses and designer swimwear; drugs, alcohol and sex are the one part of this fairy tale that every kid in America does have access to.

In an attempt to ward off criticism Stephanie Savage, one of the show’s producers, told the LA Times that people who say that the show “glamorizes teen drinking and sex” aren’t “really watching the episodes… There’s decision-making, regret and consequences involved.” Oh really? Funny because I haven’t really seen any obvious consequences to the martini glass that seems to be permanently attached to bad-boy Chuck Bass’s hand. But maybe I’m just not watching hard enough.

But what is a parent to do? I honestly don’t know. I’m certainly not the first person to make a fuss over the show. The Parents Television Council has been up in arms since the show’s inception, only to have their criticisms turned into a “clever” ad campaign in which quotes from the PTC about the show (”mind-blowingly inappropriate”), are superimposed over steamy images of the half-nude teen characters. In the end, rather than coming off as sensible and caring parents who may have a point, the critics are seen as a bunch of over-reacting fuddy duddies with nothing better to do than promoting censorship. I’m genuinely curious about how parents of adolescents out there are handling this show and others like it. Any good suggestions?

• 	Posted by: Johanna Bailey | 9 Comment(s)
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Gas prices are bad enough. But there’s another thing that makes our family car trips annoying. 

It’s not my wife, LaVeta. She just wants to be chauffeured. My 6-year-old daughter, Eve, occupies herself with mirrors and play makeup. Sixteen-year-old Adrianne dons her iPod while texting at a mind-numbing pace.   

Four-year-old Little Solomon? Between bouts of hitting his sister, he has this aggravating habit of asking us to play RUN-DMC.

I guess I should be grateful. Most RUN-DMC lyrics are pretty tame. 

“I’m the king of rock / There is none higher / Sucker MC’s / Should call me sire / To burn my kingdom you must use fire / I won’t stop rockin’ ‘til I retire.”

Great song. Problem is, Little Solomon has been asking us to play it every day since 2006. Factor in the getting-on-my-nerves element, and it seems we’ve heard it, oh, about 500,000 times.

In an effort to stave off insanity, we’ve begun playing the radio instead. And since we can’t afford satellite radio, most of the songs aren’t for kids. That is, unless you want your pre-kindergartener hearing stuff like:

“Smack it up, flip it, rub it down, oh no!”

Oh no is right. Between the suggestive lyrics and the E.D. commercials, we often find ourselves playing Name That Tune.

Me: “I can name a Beyonce song in three notes.”

LaVeta: “I can name it in two!”

Me: “Name that tune!”

The last time LaVeta and I raced to change the station before the kids could hear some suggestive little tidbit, it hit me. Parenting is very much like playing a game show.

But as a parent, you don’t play just one game show. You play them all.

When Eve is performing a Mary Poppins number for the 40th time, I end up wishing I could morph into Chuck Barris from The Gong Show, and banish her from the stage.

When Little Solomon is crawling under Eve’s chair as she’s eating Cheerios, I imagine he’s a contestant on Survivor. Our carpet is the jungle, the soggy Cheerios are the worms he must eat, and LaVeta and I are the nearby production team that will make sure he lives through it all. 

Sometimes game show parenting is actually fun. Like when we play Family Feud.  

Me: “How many days this week has daddy eaten junk when he wasn’t supposed to?”

Eve hits her buzzer and says, “One!”

Me: “Survey says … seven!” 

The possibilities are endless. Spinning the Wheel of Fortune to see who stays up late, opening the closet door and having them jump in to play Hole In The Wall. Having them answer astrophysics questions like they’re on Jeopardy.

All of that is intriguing, of course. But all I really want to do is let them be kids. I’ve started by censoring the radio. In a world where almost everything glorifies booze, drugs or sex, I wonder what I’ll have to turn off next.    

• 	Posted by: Guest Blogger: Solomon Jones | 0 Comment(s)
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We have finally stooped to a new all time low with reality TV shows! So what do we value in this country more? Our children or ratings? Well it appears according to NBC’s latest The Baby Borrowers, we value ratings above all else.
 
As a mother of three (with a 4th on the way), a parent coach, author, speaker and spokesparent, I am appalled at what NBC feels is acceptable treatment for the most innocent among us: children. Infants and toddlers are isolated from their parents in order to make an impression on teens as a  form of birth control?! What will they do next, baby swap? As if swapping wives, selecting a mate, and filming your life for the world to see isn’t enough, we have now officially established an agenda to damage children on national television.

To the parents who agreed to allow their children to be test subjects, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves and for the  producers, I hope America has enough sense to send your ratings plummeting.

• 	Posted by: Tara Paterson | 4 Comment(s)
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Thank goodness the writer’s strike has ended.  (For the record, I was part of the 90% that voted to end the strike.)  In the absence of traditional Hollywood fare, a slew of reality shows developed in their place.  Many of these had a surprisingly high drug and alcohol content.  In case you missed them, here are some scenarios:

Liar, Liar - The West Wing meets Sports Center in this political drama that pits rivals battling it out in Congress.  Only in this drama the rivals aren’t Republicans and Democrats, but a legendary athlete and the trainer who claims to have supplied him with Performance Enhancing Drugs. 

Full (Wine) House - This popular awards show features a star with a drug problem severe enough that the US Department of State won’t allow her a visa to enter the country.  Therefore she has to accept her awards on a closed circuit television.  Amazingly, one of the awards she wins is for a song called Rehab.  (That, children is what we call irony.) 

American Idle - Like the similarly named talent show, this series features an attractive young woman with a good if not great singing voice who, with the help of high production value, big-time packaging and hype, is turned into a superstar.  Only during this series, she doesn’t sing.  She is just a pawn as others move her in and out of therapy and medical care. 

• 	Posted by: James Ponti | 0 Comment(s)
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It’s been an odd time watching them grow older. 

There was a time when I was a writer on a show called the Mickey Mouse Club for the Disney Channel.  It was a fun two years (luckily no writer’s strikes during them) and people were always amazed when I talked about how amazing the Mouseketeers really were.  I thought they had tremendous talent, but I had no idea they would go on to what they went on to.  A quick run through some of the better known ones: Keri Russell, Ryan Gosling, Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake, JC Chasez and Britney Spears.  (Let me tell you, the others were just as good.)  Amazingly I always got the impression the show was cancelled because the network didn’t think the kids had enough talent.

These kids (and to me they will always be kids) have gone on to become extremely rich and famous adults, but they live in my memory as tweens and teens.  My office was the closest one to the school where they all went for tutoring.  As a result sometimes they would plop down as they waited for their class to begin and talk.  The thing that struck me was how normal they all seemed.  They had the same problems and hopes as all of the kids their age.  But they also had something else - fame.  I’ll never forget how sad they seemed at our final wrap party.  (Christina sticks out particularly.)  I sensed that the thing that some of them were most worried about was losing that fame or that chance to demonstrate what made them special.

Now, when we see them on television and I talk about them with my son (who wishes he had been born a couple of years earlier so that he could have known them), I stress the importance of talent.  Not show biz talent - any talent whether it’s singing, dancing, calculus or writing.  And I stress the importance of being happy with yourself.  That’s what has carried some.  (You couldn’t help but know that Christina was going to be a star the first time you heard her sing.)  I tell him that if you use your talent and you’re happy with yourself, you will find real success.  But I also stress the danger of fame.  (After all, isn’t fame just a broadband version of popularity.) 

I think it is the most dangerous drug of all.

Being well liked and loved is incredibly addictive - whether it’s to viewers of a television show, fans at a rock concert or classmates in a high school.  But, like a drug, that high is only temporary.  There will always be another singer, another actor, another star.  And when that drug passes, it makes it so easy to fall prey to the more garden variety drugs that don’t care whether you’re a multi-millionaire or just a high school sophomore.

Just as I never imagined seeing this kids do so well, I also never imagined seeing one of them so publicly wheeled out of her mansion and placed in an ambulance with photographers craning to get every last shot.  For most people, it’s just another chapter in a very public saga.  But for some of us, it’s a heartbreaking moment for a girl we knew as a sweet eleven year old.  I’m sure she is still that same girl.  It’s just so sad to see what all of the addictions have done to her. 

• 	Posted by: James Ponti | 0 Comment(s)
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