Teach consent to family, friends, and colleagues

Learn how to teach everyone around you about consent through casual conversation at work, at home with your family, at sporting events, and hanging out with friends.  The Date Safe Project and Mike Domitrz reveal this simple tip for engaging people in a fun learning moment.  Find out how your colleagues, employers, friends, sons, daughters, partners, boyfriend, girlfriends, teenagers, and others react and then SHARE their reaction with us in the “Leave a reply” box below.

Talking about and practicing today’s challenge will help people realize how important and VALUED consent is in all aspects of life.  As we make consent the standard for treating people with respect, males and females are more likely to be comfortable discussing sexual consent with each other before engaging in sexual activity – thus creating much safer intimacy and helping reduce sexual assault.

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REMEMBER to share what you experience in the “Leave a Reply” box below!!

Summer Dating & Your Teens

Parents, are you ready for the Summer Days of Dating when your teenager has soo much free time?  Here are 4 quick tips:

1) While you may have a great trusting relationship with your teens, still create safety measures for your house (parental settings on cable boxes; have a lock on liquor cabinets; etc…).  While your teen may be responsible, their friends may take some risks in your home.

2) When can friends be over and where in the house are they allowed?  Decide and talk openly about these rules.  Some parents do not allow sons and daughter’s friends in their kids bedrooms to avoid a “private” setting where kissing, touching, or sexual practices could occur.  Other parents say, “Basement door is always left open.”  Clarify.

3) With everyone home from school, how much is texting, IMing, and other technology forms of communicating allowed.  Some students become addicted to “staying in touch with everyone elses life” – so much that they are not LIVING their own life.

4) TALK.  With everyone home more often in the summer and/or spending some vacation time together, TALK unobtrusively about intimacy, equality, and respect.  If a news story breaks about dating, hooking-up, teen pregnancy, or sexual assault, ask your teenager their thoughts and do so in a non-judgmental manner.

What tips do you want to add and share with others?  Use the “Leave a Reply” section below to do so . . .

Kids online activities and Parent Monitoring

How many hours a month do you think pre-teens and teenagers are online? On average, most kids are spending 20 hours online. Most kids between the ages of 13 – 17 believe their parents have no clue as to what their activities are online.  imagine the freedom college brings 1st year students and their online explorations.  Here’s what they do, where they go, who they meet:

Friendships.
35% of our children ages 8-17 have made friends online 50 % of U.S. of our teens ages 13-17 claim to have made friends online 33% of children prefer spending time with their online friends rather than their offline friends

Social networking.
76% of our teens. teens ages 13-17 "constantly," "frequently" or "sometimes" visit social networking sites.

Shopping online.
35% of kids report being "very confident" or "confident" in shopping online.  Do you know where your credit card is?

Getting requests for personal information.
42% of kids ages 13-17 have received an online request for personal information.

Being approached by strangers.
16 percent of them have been approached online by a stranger; however, U.S. adults believe that just 6 percent of children have been approached online by a stranger.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?  Learn about online monitoring programs and software packages.  They can track EVERY little detail for you (from Instant Messaging to every visit online).  At the same time, you need to continually TALK with pre-teens and teenagers about the internet.  When they are at a friend’s house, your monitoring software is not going to do any good.  Educate them and empower them.

What program do you use for monitoring?  What do you like about it?  Help other parents by sharing with us here on the blog.