Understanding Eating Disorders: What is an Eating Disorder

Eating disorders are very common among the teens. Teens facing eating disorders often tend to put on weight all of a sudden. They often tend to skip their meal and they tend to vomit if they eat anything.

They even feel sick if they try eating more then usual. Teens suffering from eating disorders feel exhausted, fatigued and irritable. They fall sick and suffer terribly from stomach cramps.

Weight obsession is a serious problem for the eating disorders and millions of teens suffer this especially girls.

Out of every seven women are struggling from eating disorder at any given time. According to a survey by Youth Risk in 2003, 36% of the teen girls were overweight while 59% of them were trying to loose weight. More than 90% of the teenage girls have an eating disorder.

What is an Eating Disorder: read here

-www.teenhealthline.com

Cyber Bullying Illegal: Mass. Governor Signs Landmark Anti-Bullying Law

The governor of Massachusetts has signed a bill designed to crack down on school bullies and require teachers to report bullying to principals.

Gov. Deval Patrick signed the bill Monday. It had been passed after the suicides of two students who were said to be victims of intense harassment.

Sirdeaner Walker, of Springfield, called the bill a watershed moment. Her 11-year-old son, Carl Walker-Hoover, hanged himself at home last year. Walker said he had been tormented by classmates.

In January, 15-year-old Phoebe Prince killed herself after allegedly being bullied at South Hadley High School. Several classmates have pleaded not guilty after being charged with various crimes in connection with her death.

The new law prohibits bullying on school property and outlaws cyberbullying.

The Department of Education reports that 25 percent of American students say they were bullied at least once a day. States have tried to address the issue by mandating their school districts adopt anti-bullying initiatives, CBS News correspondent Bianca Solorzano reported in a story featuring Sirdeaner Walker last month.

CBS News has identified 10 other students ages 13 to as young as nine years old who were bullied and committed suicide in the last 12 months. Suicide is so rare among children that young the CDC doesn't even consistently track the numbers.

Yale professor Young-Shin Kim has done research on what's been termed "bullycide" and has found that victims of bullying are 5.6 times more at risk of attempting or thinking about suicide.

"I want Carl's legacy to be not that he was 11 years old and he committed suicide," Walker said. "I want Carl's legacy to be we've enacted laws to protect and help all of our children."

-Posted by Edecio Martinez, cbsnews.com

Taking It Easy with Time and Touch

Maybe it's because I just had another birthday. maybe it's because I'm a granddad several times over. Or maybe it's because of a struggling young seminarian I met recently who wishes he had been higher on his parents' priority list than, say, fifth or sixth. He was hurried and ignored through childhood, then tolerated and misunderstood through adolescence, and finally expected to "be a man" without having been taught how.

My words are dedicated to all of you who have the opportunity to make an investment in a growing child so that he or she might someday be whole and healthy, secure and mature. Granted, yours is a tough job. Relentless and thankless . . . at least for now. There is every temptation to escape from the responsibilities that are yours and yours alone. But nobody is better qualified to shape the thinking, to answer the questions, to assist during the struggles, to calm the fears, to administer the discipline, to know the innermost heart, or to love and affirm the life of your offspring than you.

When it comes to "training up the child in the way he should go," you've got the inside lane, Mom and Dad. No teacher or coach, neighbor or friend, no grandparent or sibling, counselor or minister will have the influence on your kid that you are having. So - take it easy! Remember (as Anne Ortlund puts it) "children are wet cement." They take the shape of your mold. They're learning even when you don't think they're watching. And those little guys and gals are plenty smart. They hear tone as well as terms. They read looks as well as books. They figure out motives, even those you think you can hide. They are not fooled, not in the long haul.

The two most important tools of parenting are time and touch. Believe me, both are essential. If you and I hope to release from our nest fairly capable and relatively stable people who can soar and make it on their own, we'll need to pay the price of saying no to many of our own wants and needs in order to interact with our young . . . and we'll have to keep breaking down the distance that only naturally forms as our little people grow up.

Time and touch. nothing new, I realize, yet both remain irreducible minimums when it comes to good parenting. Take it easy! Listen to your boy or girl, look them in the eye, put your arms around them, hug them close, tell them how valuable they are. Don't hold back. Take the time to do it. Reach. Touch.

Don't stand alongside your son or daughter like statues, unable to say what you feel, uncomfortable and distant. Take time to feel, to listen, to hold your child close.

When you are tempted to get involved in some energy-draining, time-consuming opportunity that will only increase the distance between you and yours, stop and think of the unspoken message it will convey. Ask yourself hard questions like, "Could my time be better spent at home?" and "Won't there be similar opportunities in the years to come?" Then turn your attention to your boy or girl. Hold nothing back as you renew acquaintances.
Take it easy!

-Taken from Charles R. Swindoll, The Finishing Touch: Becoming God's Masterpiece (Nashville: Word, 1994), 524-25. Copyright © 1994 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights reserved.
-www.oneplace.com

May is national teen pregnancy prevention month

Bristol Palin makes it look way too easy. She appears on the cover of national magazines with her famous mom and baby. She partners with organizations that encourage teens to practice sexual abstinence.

What are conspicuously absent are the pictures of crying babies who suffer from chronic health issues and their mothers who have dropped out of high school.

While I certainly wish Bristol and Tripp all the best, I’m concerned about the growing trend in teen pregnancy. According to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, one third of all young women become pregnant before they reach their 20th birthdays. Eighty percent of these 750,000 pregnancies are unplanned. Seventy-nine percent are to unmarried teens.

Although teen pregnancies declined between 1991 and 2005, they rose for the second straight year in 2007. Teenage birth rates in the United States are high, exceeding those found in most industrialized nations.

Teens and their babies face increased health risks.

Read entire article here.

By Linda Lewis Griffith, St. Louis Tribune

Kyleigh's Law Aims to Protect Teen Drivers

New Jersey will become the first state to require decals on the cars of teen drivers when Kyleigh's Law takes effect on Saturday, and people are split on how they feel about the law.

The new mandate will require all motorists with a permit or provisional license to display a reflective red sticker on their front and back license plates. Not placing the decal on a car of a qualifying driver carries a $100 fine. They are available at $4 per pair and are available at any local motor vehicle agency.

The new law, named after 16-year-old West Morris Central student Kyleigh D'Alessio, aims to cut down on accidents among teen drivers. Donna Weeks, Kyleigh's mother, began lobbying for new legislation when her daughter and another high school student died in a 2006 crash in Washington Township.

Kyleigh's Law targets the most vulnerable of all age groups, teens. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Teen Driver Fact Sheet, "Per mile driven, teen drivers ages 16 to 19 are four times more likely than older drivers to crash." In 2008, 3,500 American teens between the ages of 15 and 19 were killed in motor vehicle crashes.

The law's intent is to cut down on the number of accidents by easing the identification of teen drivers for police officers. It would enable officers to more strictly enforce the restrictions placed on younger motorists. A driver who holds a provisional license may not drive between the hours of 11:01 p.m. and 5 a.m. and is only permitted to drive with a parent, guardian or dependent or one other passenger unless accompanied by a parent or guardian.

Read More...

-By Sam Waters, www.milburn.patch.com