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Health & Fitness

Over the hump.

Life events and our kids

Phew what a week already!  Hard to believe we are only at Wednesday.  So far this week I have had to talk to my daughter about the very real dangers of heroin and the other very real danger of terrorists.  Scary to think there is a heroin epidemic happening right around me and I had no idea.  For some reason, you think you will just "know" an addict and that is so far from the truth.  I grew up in Parma and learned much later in life I was growing up in cocaine central - who knew?!  I also shared a house with a pretty intense drug addict and had no real clue.  Actully I did that twice, bygones.

Seeing the headline for Lori Switaj's piece on Mayor Zilka and his statement on heroin abuse (article here) come through my email Monday triggered an instant conversation with Gabbie.  There is addiction in both her bloodlines and I try to be as real with her as humanly possible while not taking the total sparkle off childhood.  I am very much into medicine and she watches lots and lots of medical shows with me so she has seen the not so pleasant side of drug use and abuse.  She has also seen episodes of intervention with me.  Some chastise my parenting choices but both those shows were controlled versions of real life where I could be with her and we could have a discussion.  So much better than watching friends travel down the experimental road.  I remember growing up and you are always pressured with the glamorous side of partying and very, very rarely see the ugly side of addiction.  Plus we are all immortal as kids so even if we think we see it, well, it won't happen to us.  So she knows the long term affect of drug use and abuse and knows, to quote me, "if the drugs don't kill her, mom will".  I very simply told her to be smart, make smart choices, know your friends and your environment, do not ingest in any way anything you aren't 105% sure what it is.  The choice is to be smart and potentially "uncool" or to be a statistic.  Once addiction to something like meth or heroine sets in, mom can't help like she will want.  Great Monday morning conversation.

The Boston bombings, well, what do you really say about that?  I heard on the radio yesterday, the morning show staff talking about how the world and life has changed.  How they go to places like movie theaters, etc., and seat their families and themselves in terms of proximity to an exit and safety.  Forgive me my judgmental appearance, but I think that is something we all should do all along.  I don't need terrorists to emphasize that.  There is no protective bubble over us here in Avon Lake, or in the good ol' US of A.  Homegrown crazy is as bad as visiting crazy.

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Both these events got me thinking, I hear so many people say how awful life is now, how bad it is for our kids and how much they have to deal with that we didn't.  Of course, I hit the interwebs and had to process that.  I think that is wholly untrue.  I think the danger and the crime and the drugs and the darkness our kids have thrown in their face constantly isn't the result of a decline in human nature, but rather it is an increase in ability to circulate that information and the increase in avenues for such circulation.  I searched 80's tragedies and we definitely had our share.  When I was Gabbie's age, there was lots of chaos in the world, the year being 1986.  Iran contra event, Chernobyl nuclear accident, Libyan terror events.  It was so much easier to shield us as children because we didn't all have handheld devices with wireless access, we didn't have 800 cable channels and we sat down to dinner everynight to talk.  Only if the TV was with breaking news did we hear about it, or if our parents chose to discuss it.

I am a huge tech nut.  I love gadgets, I love devices, I love advances and I work at a software company.  Take away my internet and devices and I may just sit down and cry.  I can, however, see the flip side of the coin of these amazing advances.  Too much information, too much spin, too onesided, too inconsequential.  The blunt nature of our children literally takes my breath away.  I can't prove this, but I seriously feel it is the amount of actual talk time versus text time.  They say things like they type things in a texting program.  Blunt, honest, brash, lacking couth and empathy.  Good and bad, again.

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Googling events of the 80's I found this neat timeline - so much going on but so easily shielded by my parents.  I do remember things happening but I don't recall the replay and replay and twist and conspiracy theory and ability to google how to make meth or a bomb.  Freedom of speech doesn't mean it HAS to exist or be available just because it can be.  I will keep the lines of communication open and real as long as I can, it seems to be what we have left of keeping our children informed and safe.  When that fails, text them ;-)

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