You know the scene in the movie when the Mom goes into the kid’s room to give a last good night kiss, and instead they find a faux human made of pillows, and the kid has run off somewhere?

When our daughter was missing from her bed, I did not react as calmly as Donna Reed might have in Father Knows Best. I don’t know who would have known best in the situation I found myself in, but it sure wasn’t me in that moment of discovery.

“OH MY GAWD!!!!” I screamed out for my husband. “HENRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Katie has been a rambunctious teenager. She has come in too late, had too much to drink, too much to smoke and gone too far away from home without asking if she could beforehand. 

She has been an honorable student and polite to strangers, but when it comes to getting her to put away her laundry or answering her cell phone when she’s out, she’s been a challenge.

I recognize Katie’s rage because it’s not that different from my own adolescent rants that still emerge from time to time.  Her beliefs are interwoven with contradictions but she can always justify them and sometimes what she says is hard to argue with. According to Katie, organized religion is the root of all evil, but she loves to rock out to Jimmy Cliff. (Ganga Man God.)  She thinks the police abuse their power in most situations but wonders why the police are never available to help the homeless people.  Homeless people should be respected as real and valuable however, her parents (Henry and me) have acted in ways that have not led her to respect us.

The list goes on.

Young people change the world, I know that, and so, when I found the rolled up clothes and pillows under the covers instead of Katie, after my shock I became quite thoughtful.

Maybe it was time for me to change.

Katie has just graduated from high school, it is the summer and I can’t stand fighting anymore. Henry and I did not devise a grand consequence for Katie after we tracked her down by texting all of her friends and eventually got her tucked away in her room.

As we lay in bed at two a.m., wondering how to be better parents to our teenaged daughter, we were exhausted. “Maybe it’s time to let her go a little,” Henry said.

Usually I was the bad cop parent, but at this point, I was too tired to enforce any more strict rules. “Yes,” I agreed. “What we’re doing is obviously not working.”

On Sunday morning after the debacle, we had “the talk.” We took a very different approach.

“Katie,” I said. “We know that you’re a good girl and are sure that most probably you regret the decision you made last night. We have a proposal for you that we’d like to try on an experimental basis. ”

She looked at me suspiciously.

“We would like to lift your curfew.” The surprised smile and delight on her face was large.

“Show us that you can handle it, which means you cannot be unreasonably late every night. Keep in touch with us so we know where you are, and help out around the house more. Show us more respect so we can give you more responsibility.”

Henry was unusually quiet. We usually spoke over each other during these group parenting events, but we both remained calm, and hopeful.

Like I said, this is an experiment, and we will see how it goes one night out at a time. Letting go, separating, leaving home, it is all so uncomfortable and awkward; but it does have to happen eventually.

By Gloria Saltzman

Labels: cell phones, curfew, dirty laundry, Donna Reed, drink, Father Knows Best, honorable student, Jimmy Cliff, missing child, rambunctious teenager, smoke

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Yesterday, I saw an orange "Baby on Board" diamond dangling in a minivan. I remembered seeing lots of those signs in the eighties, but I thought "Baby on Board" had disappeared, like torn Flashdance clothing, excess black eyeliner and fluffy hair.

As a twenty-something, I thought the signs insinuated that I had some control as to whether I collided into the parents' car. "Oh no, they have a baby on board," I would tell my college friends as we drove to the I-Beam nightclub. "We'll have to rear-end someone else!"

Now, I can see the point of a baby on board sign. It is not a warning FOR others drivers, it is a warning TO other drivers. I'm ashamed to admit that I've held the wheel with my left hand as I reached back with my right hand to locate and then stuff a pacifier into my screaming infant son's mouth while driving sixty miles an hour.

While navigating the steep hills of San Francisco, I have inserted the “Lilo and Stitch” CD and read the cover to locate the "Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride" track to sooth my irrational, but inconsolable, three-year old daughter. Driving across the Richmond Bridge, I've torn open a bag of Goldfish with my teeth, only momentarily taking my eyes off the road.

Now, my kids are six and eight, but they still affect my driving in a negative way. My son and daughter recently started arguing whether the Easter bunny is married like Santa Claus. After their disagreement escalated to punches, I had to arbitrate, while signaling to make a left turn off Sir Francis Drake Blvd.

Occasionally, on the way back from school, my children say titillating phrases like, "My knee bled all over the place today." or "Nobody is my friend anymore." I get to be a counselor at thirty mph.

Anyway, may be I should get one of those "Baby or Kid on Board" signs. Of course, I'll only hang up my diamond when cell phone users, tooth flossers and make-up artists display their own symbols as well.

By Beth Touchette

Labels: Baby on Board, Beth Touchette, cell phones, Easter bunny, eighties, Flashdance, Lilo and Stitch, San Francisco, Santa Claus

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I am getting my first grader a cell phone. Before you throw your hands up and scream in horror, I am doing this because of the absolute, cold terror that I experienced when she didn’t get off her school bus the other day.

It turns out she was busy talking to her friend – explaining how important she is in the grand scheme of things or something to that effect and didn’t notice the stop.

When she realized she had missed her stop, she promptly and calmly told the driver, who being a sub that day did not know to immediately inform the school so they could let me know.

So there I was at the stop, certainly not behaving as calm as my child was at that very moment, calling the school, waiting while they contacted the transport department and checked with her teacher. It may have been only five minutes or ten or was it twenty? All I know is that I had no idea where my child was.

By the time the school called back to say she would be dropped off once the bus circled back from its last stop, my legs felt like jelly and I could not feel my extremities.

That’s when I realized if she had had a cell phone, I could have called her immediately. I would not have had to take this side trip to hell and back.

When we got home, I fed her cake and ice cream to make myself feel better and got onto the Internet. I did some quick, thorough research into all the ‘kid friendly’ phones on the market and hit the buy button.

Is it unseemly for so young a child to have a cell phone? Am I wrong to make use of the technology out there? For now though, I have some peace of mind.

By Tania Malik

Labels: cell phones, kids, Tania Malik

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