Conference

Long day today. I went with two other nurses to a conference in Northern Kentucky. The conference was on Suicide in the youth population. It's an exhausting topic to learn about...partly because it deals with a lot of emotional topics, and partly cause it's been a while since I've been in school and had 8 hours of classes! :) I learned some interesting things though. The speaker had some interesting insights for parents:

-Be a parent, not a friend
-Keep the computer in a "public" location
-Have the capability to access your child's myspace/facebook/blog
-Work on active listening with the child, but most importantly, set and enforce limits!

Take it for what you will, but I certainly think there was some truth in what he was saying.

We also had a fascinating discussion on the way home about cell phones. How early is too early for a child to have a cell phone? How about facebook/myspace/blog? I know I didn't get a cell phone until I was driving myself around, and that seemed to work for me. And yet there are 11-year-olds running around texting during their ELEMENTARY school classrooms. Crazy!

On a side note...I think we're having bisquick pizza for dinner! Yummy!