Scott Miller (of dscotmiller.com fame) turned 50 today! Happy Birthday Scott, and many, many happy returns.
If you haven’t been to Scott’s website lately - what are you wasting your time on this lame blog for? Click on over and check out the incredible service Scott provides to the Catholic youth ministry community.
(ht to Eat the Crumbs.)
One of our local newspapers just ran an article about a program called “Know What to Say,” which is designed to train parents on how to talk to their teenagers about sex. The program comes from a secular, public school perspective, so obviously there are some points with which I don’t agree, but it still got me thinking. The article included a video of the presenter quoting a study (I’ve been trying for the last 30 minutes to find the title of the study, but so far, no luck) that found that 85% of young people want their parents to be the ones to talk to them about sex. That statistic, if its true, really impresses me, and I think it would be an eye-opener to a lot of parents.
The timing on this article was great, as we’re planning on offering a couple of gathered youth nights next month on the topic of sex, chastity, relationships, etc…. After reading this article I think I’m going to include an opportunity for the students to talk about what they would like to hear from their parents on the topic.
We’re also kicking off a series of “Let’s Talk” events for parents next month with a night on “talking to your kids about sex.” The idea is that each month we’ll offer a coffee & conversation style event based on one of the topics we’ll be discussing at our gathered program that month. I’ll try to post some updates on how they go and what we learn from the first few events.
In the mean time, feel free to post comments and share what you’ve found works and doesn’t work in your setting when it comes to getting teens and their parents talking about sex.
If you didn’t watch or record this week’s Frontline documentary “Growing Up Online” then you NEED to. It was incredibly well done, and the information they presented is the kind of stuff you need to hear if you work with, live with, or otherwise care about young people today. I got home just as it was starting, so I went into the tv room just to make sure it was recording, but after watching 30 seconds I was hooked and sat through the whole thing. Good stuff.
But never fear - if you missed it you can still watch it online.
One interesting idea that I’m thinking about incorporating into a parent/student workshop on social networking sites - make it a household rule that if your son or daughter is going to have a facebook or myspace or any other kind of profile page they have to give you the password, but agree to keep the password sealed in an envelope that will only be opened in a “need to know” situation. Obviously, there are some trust issue complications from both the parent and student perspective with this idea, but at least its a starting point.
Who else out there saw the show? Use the comments function to share your thoughts.
I gotta say - I am excited for this book to come out. Pretty sure I’m not going to agree with all of it, but it should make for a fun read and some interesting discussion.
From the website:
“Roughly two thousand years ago, Jesus was born in a dumpy, rural, hick town, not unlike those today where guys change their own oil, think pro wrestling is real, find women who chew tobacco sexy, and eat a lot of Hot Pockets with their uncle-daddy. Jesus’ mom was a poor, unwed teenage girl who was often mocked for claiming she conceived via the Holy Spirit. Most people thought she concocted the crazy story to cover the fact she was knocking boots with some guy in the backseat of a car at the prom. Jesus was adopted by a simple carpenter named Joseph and spent the first thirty years of his life in obscurity, swinging a hammer with his dad.”
Not entirely sure what an “uncle-daddy” is, but I’m looking forward to finding out.
And, just in case you weren’t hooked already, here’s an audio clip:
Copy and paste the following code into your site:
http://www.furfy.com/index.html
A collection of…interesting information, including maps that show the average age at which residents of a given country tend to loose their virginity and the number of billionaires per million people in a given nation (I wonder if there’s any correlation). Worth a surf.
Stephen Colbert had one of the creators of this new website on his show earlier this week and I was…intrigued. The basic concept is that everybody shares their ideas. Thoughts, questions, videos, pictures, text, etc…. I think its a great concept, and I can’t wait to see what happens as more and more people start using the site. One of the cool features is that they’ve invited a group of “experts” in various fields to share their thoughts, so you can watch CEO’s give their thoughts on leadership, famous chefs give their thoughts on what makes a great restaurant, etc…. Wouldn’t it be cool if they asked these experts what they think about things outside their expertise? Kind of like the “Not My Job” segment on NPR’s “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me”
So, what do you think?
http://www.bigthink.com
This Tuesday, January 22nd, PBS’s Frontline will air “Growing Up Online,” and I know I, for one, will have my DVR set to record.
From their website: “In “Growing Up Online,” FRONTLINE peers inside the world of this cyber-savvy generation through the eyes of teens and their parents, who often find themselves on opposite sides of a new digital divide.”
An added bonus for me, as the NFCYM just accepted my proposal for a workshop on this very topic at the 2008 National Conference on Catholic Youth Ministry. What do you want to bet that clips and quotes from this documentary are going to find their way into more than a few of the workshops at this year’s conference?
A few folks had asked way back in the very beginning to get updates about this little adventure. This afternoon I sent them a little story, and I thought I’d share it here as well. Hope you enjoy… Settle in while I tell you a story of a tiny little web site and a very long nap.
Long long ago, on an internet not so far away, a tiny little website called 2smallcoins was born. After bursting into existence with much exuberance, the little site was tired, and needed a nap. Unfortunately, the little site hadn’t learned about alarm clocks yet (hey it had only been alive for a couple of weeks…I bet it took you more than a couple weeks to learn about alarm clocks, didn’t it), so that little nap grew longer, and longer, and longer. And suddenly, just like that, a whole year had passed and the little site was still asleep. Fortunately for the little site, other bigger and more experienced sites had not forgotten about it, and after much cajoling, they were able to wake it from its deep slumber. And now, that little site is back among the world of the, uh, the…, er…of the sites that aren’t asleep. The End. Good story, huh? Now, everybody knows that every good story has a moral at the end. So what’s the moral of this story?
We’re back! That’s right, after an extended vacation, followed by a ridiculously long sabbatical, 2smallcoins is back. A skeleton outline of a gathered youth event based on the USCCB’s document on faithful citizenship has been posted to the resources section, and as of today there have been more posts to the blog than in the entire first year of the site’s existence (I know, I know, that second part probably isn’t a good thing, but its something). I’ve got high hopes that this time the site will not need any naps, so if you’ve got a couple minutes, feel free to give it a surf, and if you like what you see please feel free to share the story of The Tiny Little Site and a Very Long Nap with your friends!
I hope this little note finds you well. Please let me know if there is any way I can support you as you serve the young Church.
Peace&Prayers,
cHRIS
Welp, it seems the network techs discovered the source of the problems (kinda), so the updates have been made to the parent site. Now that we’re up and running feel free to pass the link along to anyone you think might be interested.
Have a great weekend!