Tips for kids at home

Many children stay home alone for long periods of time during the summer. Here are some things to teach your children:


1. Provide telephone numbers for your children to reach you. Advise co workers your children may check-in.
2. Teach your children how and when to call 9-1-1.
3. Teach children not to open the door to others with out your permission.
4. Teach children to never let a person at the door or on the phone know that they are home alone.
5. You might consider getting caller ID and screen your calls.
6. If your trusted neighbors will be home during your absence, arrange for your children to check-in with them.
7. Teach children how to escape in case of fire and designate a meeting place.
8. Determine which household appliances you want your children to use.
9. Provide activities and chores for your children to help keep them busy.

Alcohol and the life of James

James is a 13-year-old boy who has been hanging around with friends that have parents that throw drinking parties every weekend. Now James parents drink but not very often, so he is not a stranger to alcohol. One weekend he asks his parents if he can go and spend the night at his friend Tom’s home. They agree. Tom’s parents are having a party as usual. James is introduced to the taste of his first beer. In addition, he really likes the taste and how it makes him feel. James is now on the road to alcoholism. Of course he doesn’t know it as of yet. Let us fast forward a few years.
James is now out of high school and in his first year of college. He has learned that a couple of beers will make him able to talk to other people without being shy or reserved, that it makes him feel better than he has in a long time, and that it helps him sleep. He has a few friends that drink with him but he always drinks them under the table and he never seems to get enough. James only drinks on weekends because of his schoolwork so he feels that it is not affecting him any. Fast forward, another year or two he is about 21 now and drinks on weekends and on Wednesdays just to get by. He hates the feeling that he has when not drinking and at this age it already hurts not to drink and just a day or two between drinking is just about all he can stand. James, at this point does not yet realize he is an alcoholic.
At the age of 23 he has been in his first car wreck and his first DUI, spent the night in jail, and has to call his parents to bail him out. James experiences for the first time how it feels to be a criminal. His car is a wreck but drivable but what do you think happens? Do you think that this first experience with the law will stop him? No, he is remorseful, sorry, upset at himself but after a few weeks he is back to drinking again.

Is my Child a Gang Member?

If you see a cluster of the following in your teen, start asking questions:

Insistence on wearing certain items or styles or colors of clothing or jewelry. Tattoos, especially temporary ones or ones drawn on the skin with ink. Graffiti marks on or in notebooks or bookbags.

Fascination with gang- or violence-related themes in movies or music. Truancy for reasons that are vague or unacceptable. Hand signals, strange words or other patterns of covert communication or patterns of movement among neighborhood youth who associate with your child.

Possessions of value (bikes, jackets, sneakers) that suddenly appear without your child having the financial means to buy them. Insistence on spending time with only a few people instead of a wide circle of friends based on common interests. Minor run-ins with the law or curfew violations.

Withdrawal from family activities or secretiveness about whereabouts or activities. Evidence of drug involvement; while all drug use may not be gang-related, drugs and gangs tend to "go hand in hand,"

Desire to carry, or actual carrying of, a "weapon" such as a knife or even scissors or a nail file. Fascination with weapons.
Questionable activities among your son's friend's parents, older siblings or other relatives. Be especially concerned if your son is developing "friendships" with young adult males a few years older than he is, especially if those friends also have had trouble with the law.

You need to be aware that gangs "need" kids of a certan age. Gangs, they say, have to have someone to do visible and dangerous things, such as deliver drugs or messages on the street -- tasks that more sophisticated adults might balk at. Young teens are easy marks because
1) they may not understand the seriousness of the legal consequences of their actions;
2) they may be willing to do things because of the promise of "big" money that would seem insignificant to adults, and
3) they're more easily sucked in by the power, prestige and "glamor"of being in a gang.

Gangs are alluring to kids because they offer them structure, support and security --things that become even more attractive if they're missing at home. Like a family, a gang offers a sense of belonging, But unlike a family, the structure and support are not their to encourage the child to stay in school and improve his own life but to continue and enhance the gang and its illegal activities. And the security, is only there so long as it's convenient for other gang members. "You could say to kids, "If you get in trouble, do you think gang members will do anything for you?'