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October 24, 2006

Stop Bullying Now

Years ago, I worked for a huge, multi-national corporation. It was a great job, with great pay, and great benefits. But there was one great big problem: my boss was a bully. She didn't look like a bully--in fact, she was a petite, cute women in her fifties who you'd believe was probably quite pleasant if you just saw her. But once I got to know her, I was astounded. She would verbally abuse everyone in her midst, particularly her employees, to the point of intimidation. One of my peers once told me she felt "like a battered wife" in her presence. Although my former boss never crossed the line and physically abused anyone, she did plenty of damage to her employees with the emotional venom she spewed each day. It was one of the worst years of my life.

Some bullies, however, do cross that line, and initiate physical contact with their victims. And when a bully victimizes your child, well...there are no words for the anger and fear it can bring to your home.

Some facts about bullying, from the Stop Bullying Now! Web site, include:

  • Studies show that between 15-25% of U.S. students are bullied with some frequency, while 15-20% report they bully others with some frequency.
  • Young people who bully are more likely than those who don't bully to skip school and drop out of school. They are also more likely to smoke, drink alcohol and get into fights.
  • Children who bully are more likely to get into fights, vandalize property, and drop out of school. And 60% of boys who were bullies in middle school had at least one criminal conviction by the age of 24.

It's time to take back our schools and DO something. I am tired of seeing kids--mine and others--victimized. It's time to step in and HELP the bullies too--help them regain control of their own lives, and help them get on the right track before it's too late. Isn't that why we're all here? To help each other out, to take care of one another?

I wish the answers were easy. I wish there was a way to make all those kids who are being bullied feel better and safe. I wish I could say this is all hypothetical and not happening in my own family's life, but that would not be true. I just want to see it all end. And I have no idea how to do that.

Posted by L.C. at 01:38 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Filed under: General 40ish | Health | Parenting

October 17, 2006

Returning to Life

Well the house of mono is beginning to get a break. My daughter went back to school this week, and other than her fatigue, she feels almost normal. Of course, she has tons of work to make up at school, since she missed nearly two weeks. Two weeks of work, seeing friends, and of course, two weeks of good ol' high school drama.

This has been a strange year for my dear daughter. Last night we joked that her life seems to be trapped in a vortex of chaos and insanity. We're not exaggerating much. This year, she ended a very long-term (1 year) dating relationship, became friends with people she once hated, and became enemies with several she once loved. Her first love (puppy love, at age 14) reappeared unexpectedly after nearly two years, and we learned how much we all missed him. She learned that timing is everything, when we left for vacation and a friend covered her usual shift at her job, and he was robbed at gunpoint. It would have been her if we hadn't been gone. She has been threatened by a troubled young girl, she has changed her lifelong plans to pursue a career in medicine and decided to become a teacher instead. It seems that the changes just never stop coming.

But more recently, when she became ill, I told her that she would learn some things about the people in her life that might be good or bad, but that illness and absence did have a way of teaching us important lessons. And I was correct. It seems that for some people, out of sight equals out of mind. (Like the boyfriend who went AWOL as soon as she became ill.) And for others, seeing their friend suffer brings about their finest, strongest moments. When my daughter's best friend ignored the risk of contracting the disease and showed up at our door with a gift bag full of my daughter's favorite candy and two-dozen roses, I knew my kid had done something very right this year--choose a friend who loves her fiercely. She also learned that her little brother, who may annoy her at times (make that often) would do almost anything to see her happy. He and I went shopping when she was ill, and he kept finding things he thought his sister would like, need, or just make her happy, and badgered me until I bought almost all of them. Despite the fact that he'd been saving his allowance for a while and had a walletful of cash to spend on himself, he was much more interested in looking for things for her. Quite a proud moment for this mama.

So as we move on into a normal, healthy life, I told my daughter to be glad for the lessons mono taught her. That she has true friends after all. That she has a brother who adores her. That you don't miss being healthy until you lose it, so you shouldn't take it for granted. And that those icky, trying, difficult moments in life, in time, will pass.

Posted by L.C. at 08:27 AM | | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Filed under: Health | Parenting

October 10, 2006

Who Have You Been Kissing?

gownAs my daughter sits at her computer, she receives a message and lets out a sigh and rolls her eyes. For about the tenth time this week, one of her friends has asked her the question: "So...who have you been kissing?"

It's not that my daughter's moral character is suddenly being called into question by her peers. It's just that she has mono, and almost every time she tells one of her friends, they respond by asking her who she got it from, and who she's been kissing. Well the truth is, she's only been kissing one boy for the past two months, and he doesn't appear to have the disease (At least, not yet.) When she informs her friends that her boyfriend is still mono-free, they typically, although jokingly, add, "then who did you get it from?"

According to the MayoClinic.com:

Infectious mononucleosis (mono), or glandular fever, is often called the kissing disease. The label is only partly true. The virus that causes this disease is transmitted through saliva, so kissing can spread the virus, but so can coughing, sneezing, or sharing a glass or food utensil.

My poor kid is tired, sick, and really doesn't want to hear the question anymore. The truth is that like the common cold she had last month, she has no idea where she picked up that nasty little mono virus. She does work at a drugstore, and is regularly sneezed on, coughed on, and in general contact with sick people each time she goes to work. Her friends just aren't buying the story. And they're really starting to get on my nerves.

Anyway, this week has been draining for all of us here in my house. I moved my son's belongings out of the bathroom he shares with his big sister, because I sure don't want two kids with mono on my hands. I've been e-mailing teachers, talking to high school administrators, and trying to find some way to return to my own normal routine, which doesn't include so many doctors visits and pharmacy visits and spraying Lysol all over everything my oldest child has touched in a week.

So maybe life will get back to normal soon. And all those pesky teenagers will stop asking my daughter about her kissing habits.

Posted by L.C. at 02:32 PM | | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Filed under: Health | Parenting

October 09, 2006

Cheating Death

For the second time in a month, I'm writing about death. Well actually, today the topic of cheating death is on my mind.

About four years ago, my mother (then 74) had her first stroke. She'd had high blood pressure for more than 20 years, and had tried a series of medications with little success (or too many side effects). Her first stroke was serious, and two more strokes followed over the next two years. Add to that a heart problem and the onset of Alzheimer's disease, and it seemed that my mother was a time bomb waiting to explode. It wasn't a question of if. It became a question of when.

Nearly a year ago, as my mother was quicky deteriorating in an assisted living facility (in the full-care, Alzheimer's wing), her doctor called my sister and told her he would like for Mom to enter the Hospice program. He and Mom's neurologist felt she had about six months to live, perhaps a year if we were lucky. We proceeded with the paperwork and she was approved, then we moved her into a Hospice-participating facility. We sat back and waited, as we watched the wonderfully attentive Hospice nurses tend to Mom, preparing her (and preparing us) for the end.

Ten months later, we were still waiting. Then we got a call last week: "Your mother has improved so much, that we are recommending she be taken out of the Hospice program." After our collective "HUH?", my sister and I tried to determine how in the world this woman, who had been knocking on death's door for years, had managed to cheat death, again. She'd had a few hospital visits over the past few years when she wasn't expected to live through the week. But she just keeps on ticking and ticking.

Years ago, when my mother first became ill and was still able to communicate, she told me her secret, and it went something like this: "I won't die. Good, nice people die. I'm too fiesty to go." I assumed she was kidding, then I remembered how she'd been all her life, and fiesty was a great understatement. She was smart and funny and creative, but her difficult streak was a mile wide. She was quite proud to be called bitchy and grumpy and difficult, and just laughed when anyone would point out these traits. Once when she was still communicating, I told her I would fly down to visit her if she could behave for a few weeks. (The nursing home staff had told us she was being bossy and uncooperative at the time.) When I suggested the deal to her, she said "Well, I guess you won't be coming!" and hung up on me.

Is it true that only the good die young? Does a defiant, you-can't-take-me-that-easily attitude make the Angel of Death quiver in his boots and say "Okay. I'll be back in a few years"? I'm not sure. But somehow, my 90-pound, incoherent, ill mother has figured out how to stay alive for years beyond what her doctors and everyone else has expected. And for that, I think bitchiness deserves at least a bit of the credit.

Posted by L.C. at 11:16 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Filed under: Aging Parents | General 40ish | Health

October 02, 2006

Are We Media-Numb?

About two weeks ago, my teenage daughter, her boyfriend, and I went out to lunch to my daughter's favorite restaurant. We promptly ordered our favorite appetizer: spinach and artichoke dip. But the waiter informed us that the restaurant was currently not serving this dish, or any other containing spinach, due to the E-coli-infected spinach that has been found in 26 states across the U.S., and has already killed one person and made 187 others sick.

I'd heard about the whole spinach E-coli scare, of course, because like a good little citizen, I try to read the newspaper, scan news items on the Internet, and watch a television news broadcast at least a few times a week. But I started thinking about how although I knew eating spinach was not the greatest idea, I ordered it anyway. And I decided that I do not have a death wish, I'm just one of the many Americans who gets so much news on a daily basis that not all of it sticks. To be perfectly honest, I began to wonder if the amount of media I am exposed to has made me a bit numb.

I feel particularly strange about this revelation because I am, by trade and by education, a journalist. Although I ditched news journalism for the fluffier, much-more-fun lifestyle stuff more than a decade ago, I do remember my hard news days well, covering the city and police beat in a South Florida town, spending my days staying on top of whatever news the residents of my community needed to know. When I was an eager journalism student, I could not imagine a time when important news stories would just float through me, when much of the news would have little-to-no affect on my day-to-day life. I never imagined that there would be a day when I would hear about deaths and armed robberies and even war without so much as looking up from the dinner I was cooking at the time. But that day has come.

Has the news become just another backdrop of our lives, like the music being emitted from our iPods? I'd like to think that isn't the case. Perhaps as I get older, my brain is just a little lower on bandwidth. Whatever the case may be, I'm just glad that alert waiters and the CDC are looking out for me. Every little bit helps.

Posted by L.C. at 07:35 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Filed under: Health | News/Media/Studies