Don't hate, APPRECIATE!

Sky's right about the sex thing. The more you shield your kids from "running," the more they will want to run. The whole point in being a young person is to learn and make mistakes and learn some more. It's important to learn the lessons that often parents don't want you to learn before you head off to live alone. Take having a job, for example. Although I'm not the biggest fan of working, I'm glad that I have a job for many reasons. This job has taught me to be dependable, responsible, resourceful, punctual, and most of all, independent. I may not work is some big corporation, or at a fast food joint, but retail has taught me valuable skills that I cannot acquire by just asking my parents for them. The fact that they pushed me to have a job gets me ready for when I no longer live with them so that I can support myself. So then telling me that I can't NOT have a job makes me that much more determined to learn what I can from the experience they're essensially making me endure. It's the same thing with sex. The more parents embrace the fact that there is such thing as sex and their kids KNOW about it, then the easier it will be to cope. When parents fill their children's heads with lies about how sex is horrible and it ruins you, it makes kids want to do it more. Parents should encourage SAFE sex as opposed to no sex because the "no" goes through one ear and out the other. Drinking presents the same thing. If parents emphasize the effects of the activity (drinking, sex, running) and what could happen should something go wrong, that will prompt kids to consider that before engaging in that particular activity. But that's just my opinion...and I'm CRAZY! *xoxo*