What you learn when you talk to your children

These are the things I've learned from talking to my daughter today. But first I would like to say that I couldn't believe that I am this out of touch with society and the teen population. I've always thought of myself as being a realist and knowing what's going on in the world of teenhood. However, I also realize that I shelter my kids as much as possible and in fact I shelter myself as well since I don't have to navigate my way through things I don't want to by choice. But still some of what she told me I found a little shocking.

Today she found herself having a conversation with five people, four girls including her and one guy. They are all graduating from high school this year. She can't remember how the conversation got started but surfice it to say. She found out that--out of all five of them, she was the only one that has never had sex, two; had never had a miscarriage along with the boy, (of course) All three of the girls had miscarriages in the last year and one of them has had three and still does not use birth control while engaging in sex. Yikes, have these kids not heard of sexually transmitted dieseaes. None of them used any precautions what so ever. I thought we had spread the campaign about using birth control and condoms. Or I know how about abstanace that seems to be a new one.

Off to her next class she sits behinds this boy who proudly turns around and shows her his freshly black inked flesh. He has gotten his first tattoo a japanese characters. Then he proceeds to rub lotion on it. My daughter, My daughter says, "Don't do that it will make it smear." Excuse me how does she know that. So I ask. "Mom, everyone knows that. Besides there are lots of kids with tattoo's at school.

Now I realize that yes, there are lots of kids with tattoo's, but how many is a lot. My daughter in forms me she thinks it's probably seventy percent has some form of tattoo. Again excuse me. I was thinking it was probably in the twenty-five percent range had a tattoo. Evidently I was wrong. Again don't you have to have parental permission to get a tattoo if your under eighteen. Who are these parents. Or is it just me but tattoos are permanent things. They cannot be easily removed should we not talk about this, maybe have a wait and see period, before we all jump off the cliff and do what everyone else is doing. I found this all a bit nauseating. I guess I'm showing my age here, but tattoos were on military personnel when I was young and they meant something to these men that wore them. Yes men. ( I never saw a woman with a tattoo until years later.) My grandfather had one on his forearm and I always thought it was kind of cool. However, it was mostly because of the story that went with it. My grandmother however, said, "It was a foolish and stupid moment in my granddad's life." You guessed it. She didn't like it.

See what you can learn when you talk to your children.