Interesting stats out from the U.S. Census Bureau. In a nutshell, fewer families have children under 18 living at home. The number dropped to 46 percent last year, down from 57 percent in the ‘60s.

The reason, the bureau says, is because of lower fertility rates and the aging of Baby Boomers.

“Decreases in the percentage of families with their own child under 18 at home reflect the aging of the population and changing fertility patterns,” said Rose Kreider, family demographer at the U.S. Census Bureau.
“In 2008, not only were baby boomers old enough that most of their children were 18 and over, but they were having fewer kids than their parents, as well.”

Among the factors:

• Increases in longevity: The average numbers of years of life remaining at age 30 increased by about three years, comparing those 30 in 1960 with baby boomers who turned 30 in 1980 . As adults live longer, more married-couple households will be older and either childless or with adult children who live elsewhere.

• Increases in childlessness: The percentage of women 40 to 44 who were childless increased from 10 percent in 1976 to 20 percent in 2006.

So, society is getting older and having fewer kids at home. Or is there a deeper story behind the stats?

Remember the prom date? “In this earlier blog,”:http://parentsplace.lohudblogs.com/2008/04/23/the-prom-date-debate I spoke about a mom who put her foot down when her 15-year-old son was asked to go to the prom by a senior girl in his high school. Her thinking was that he was too young, etc., etc. That sparked some lively debate.

Well, the prom came and went, and the 15-year-old did, indeed, attend with the older girl. It turns out that the boy’s mom ultimately had discussions with the girl’s mom, discussed it with her son, and they agreed to the ground rules. So she relented.

How’d he do? Things went smoothly. He was a gentleman, there were no after-parties, and he was home at the agreed-to time. By all accounts, the two had a wonderful—and safe—time together.

So, does this make the concern some of you had moot? Or did the mom dodge a bullet?

Looking for input on this one.

This is an issue that came up in a friend’s family, and I differ with my girlfriend and others on it. The scenario is this:  A 15-year-old boy was asked to go to the Senior Prom by a senior at the school. The parents know each other and the kid’s a good kid. He’s never been in trouble, very mature and the whole bit. The girl asked him, and he said yes.

Next, he told his mom, who said he could not go because he is too young to go to a Senior Prom. The boy never shared this with the girl, and told her he would be going. When the parents ran into each other, the boy’s mom found out he had not declined as she told him. So, he got grounded and will not be going to the prom either way.

The two issues are this: Is a 15-year-old boy too young to go to a Senior Prom? Secondly, should he have been grounded for defying his mother’s wishes and not telling the girl he wouldn’t be allowed to go? Frankly, I’m not sure how he would’ve pulled it off when the prom day comes around, but perhaps he hoped to convince his mother before then.

For the record, the parent here is in a traditional two-parent home, so it’s not a single-parenting issue. Of course, I always think of these situations as they would apply to single-parent or blended family homes, and I think that adds other potential elements. So, my third question is, does your answer to the first two questions change if I apply the situation to a single-parent household?

Anyway, what do you think?

The video was striking: Four teenagers beating up a fifth teen during a violent encounter at a church parking lot in Ossining. At some point local cops said the kid taking the beating got a seven-inch gash across his neck. A 16-year-old girl is also punched in the face, and is threatened with more, at which point she walks away.

This was from a story we ran in recent days. Police said neither of the teens were seriously injured: The gash was apparently not very deep. The video itself, which was posted on YouTube by one of the kids later charged in the incident, has since been pulled off the Internet.

So, why is this on a parenting blog? Well, my very first thought when I saw it was, ‘Oh my God. What if that was my kid?’ It’s a horrifying thought. And what if it was one of our children doing the beating, since peer pressure can be a powerful draw?

To be fair, here’s what doesn’t worry me about this incident: It seems to be a “gang assault” in circumstance only. That is to say, it was a group, or “gang” of kids who are charged. They weren’t Bloods, or Latin Kings, or Hell’s Angels. They weren’t a real gang in the most frightening sense. It was just a group of kids seemingly beating another.

But that’s enough for me. It should be enough for all parents. Because regardless of how the criminal justice system deals with it, it is unacceptable, frightening and brutally dangerous. And it scares the heck out of me.

It doesn’t help when the act is downplayed, as seemed to be the case with a “New York Times column”:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/nyregion/02towns.html?ref=nyregion on this in yesterday’s papers. Was too much made of the incident by my own newspaper? Some might think so, but I don’t. Should the Times have spoken to the Ossining police and not just one of the arrested teens, his parents and his lawyer? Some might think not, but I do.

Because while I know that schoolyard fights are going to happen, it shouldn’t happen this way. We, as parents, should care about it.

Yesterday was the deadline for many college applications. So my eldest son was at his school until 10 p.m. last night finishing his applications. I know that because at 8 p.m. he called to ask for an example of his stubborness, something he needed for his college essay.

“An example of your stubborness? How about waiting until the last minute to finish you college applications, even though we told you to do it months ago,” I said.

“I can’t use that in this essay,” he said.

That leads me to the following question: Is procrastination genetic? I once had a tendency for lateness that led a friend to come up with the concept of Maniace time - a time zone that’s somewhere to the left of the Eastern zone. I think the final straw was when I arrived a half hour late to drive him to his wedding. 

But procrastination had nothing to do with that. It was love. Before arriving at his house I gave my then-girlfriend some tips on driving my car, which she would need to get to the reception hall  since I would be in a wedding-party limo. It was love. I treasured that gleeming, cream-colored 1972 Super Beetle.

Eventually my wife cured me of my procrastination (This may come as a surprise to my editors; not the part about my wife, but that I’ve been cured). While I could be anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour late, my wife topped me by orders of magnitude. When it came to leaving on vacation trips, this meant we’ve been anywhere from three to six hours late. My reaction to her lateness was to reform; I’m now semi-punctual. That has allowed me to name a time zone after her.

Hence my original question: Is procrastination genetic? If so, my kids are going to be world champs.  

Interesting business story today about “changes to MySpace”:http://www.lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080115/BUSINESS01/801150324 to increase monitoring of the site. I’m sure we’re all familiar with MySpace, and the concerns many parents have with the unfiltered access some kids and teens have to it. So, this move would put in some changes to target sexual predators who may frequent the site.

According to the story, 49 states and the District of Columbia have endorsed the changes for the site, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Apparently, only one state, Texas, has failed to back the measure. What’s up with that?

I don’t remember the last time I saw my oldest son cry. I didn’t actually see him cry yesterday when his high school basketball team lost by two points.

After the small crowd had gone home and only the two teams and the score keepers remained, I looked across the court to see my son’s face buried in his hands. Then he pulled his jersey over his face as several of his team mates attempted to console him.

It had been a tough loss. His team had fought back after trailing by at least 13 points only to lose by by two. It hadn’t been his best game. He still hadn’t recovered from a torn rotator cuff suffered at the start of the season. He had scored and rebounded some, but it was his hustle yesterday that I really admired  - playing defense, wrestling for the ball while sprawled on the court, and  late in the game getting an opponents’ foul shot nullified when a player on the other team had stepped over the line too soon during a foul shot.

But with one second on the clock and his team down by two points, my son, who is 17,  was on the foul line to shoot two. If he hit both,  his team just might win its first game of the season.

The first shot bounced off the rim. So did the second.

I could guess how he felt. His teamates had named him team captain after he had led them last year in scoring, rebounding and foul shooting. But this day the shots did not go. He had let his team down and he had let himself down.

I walked across the court to him and rubbed his back and head. I told him it was OK, and that he had played a good tough game, but I don’t think he was buying it. Only after the coach had called him a second time for the post-game meeting did the jersey come down from his face.

Later I tried to figure out what I would say to him. I felt badly for him. The loss and his missed shots hurt. What could I say? But I had another feeling that I couldn’t quite place. Finally I knew what it was and what I would say – I was proud of him.

We talked after dinner last night, just the two of us, and it was the closest I had been to this stubbornly independent boy in a while. Maybe we did manage a win of sorts yesterday.

My son’s got it easy at school. At least that’s the way I see it, given that his classes don’t start until 9 a.m., and he’s out at 3 p.m. When I was a kid, I can’t recall starting school any later than 8:20 a.m., and that was seen as lenient. So what’s up?

I should note that my 10-year-old scores at the top of the class in all of the state tests he’s been required to take. And he devotes tons of his spare time to reading and games that incorporate mathematical and social studies skills. Fine. He’s studious.

But I find myself wanting more school time for him, something I think that there’s no real substitute for. It helps develop good study habits, improved listening skills, increased group-participation skills, and better social skills. True, he’s just in fifth grade now and his school day will get a tad longer as he gets into the later grades. That’s all well and good.

Still, something seems off. Take into account this “Boston Globe article,”:http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/mcas/articles/2007/11/30/longer_school_day_appears_to_boost_mcas_scores in which a handful of Boston public schools extended the school day and assigned more reading and studying to their students. The result was a significant increase in “MCAS”:http://www.doe.mass.edu/mcas/about1.html scores.

Doesn’t that all seem to make sense? Or is there a case to be made for less time in class? I’d love to hear it.

For the last nine months I’ve been on the college hunt with my oldest son, who is in the 12th grade. All of a sudden I have to add another academic search – a high school for my youngest son who is in the eighth grade.

Both sons are in an unusual public school – for our area at least. It goes from kindergarten through high school. Four years ago I had my doubts about keeping my older son in the same school for 12 years. I wanted him in a new school, where he could meet new kids and also benefit by better facilities of a full-fledged high school.  My wife, though, was convinced he couldn’t handle a bigger school, in part because he has dyslexia. My oldest son was never a shrinking violet so I didn’t share those fears. But it’s a marriage and you have to compromise (even when you know you are right.)

Now it’s time to make the decision for my youngest son – who like my oldest son,  has dyslexia*. I still have the old reasons for him to go to another school, but also a new one too. I want him to be able to pursue his interest in track. His school has a basketball team, which his brother plays, but does not have a track team.

It’s helpful for kids to grow up with a sport to which they are devoted. It provides another thing for a kid to feel good about. And those teen years can be rough; a kid needs as many things as possible to bolster his or her confidence.

Right now we’re looking at more traditional public high schools and a couple of Catholic high schools. So far my wife is on board with this plan, but the deadline is looming. We have to make a decision in early December.  

*In one of my first postings, I wrote about some of my oldest son’s experience with dyslexia. I promised more but never returned. I hope to do so soon.

I was taken aback last year when, during back-to-school night at my son’s school, his fourth-grade teacher noted that students would not be taught cursive writing if they had not learned it in the earlier grades. There just isn’t time to teach it by the fourth grade, he said. For those that don’t know, cursive writing is what we commonly refer to as “script,” or what a friend from England told me this weekend is known as “joined” writing back home.

I’ve thought about that teacher’s comment ever since, and it came up in conversation over the weekend. It strikes me as sad that such a school policy — perhaps a natural consequence of the modern-day, state-test-driven public school system — might spell the demise of cursive writing. I was therefore not surprised to find that I wasn’t alone in that concern, and that there has been some debate over this in recent years, as expressed in “this article from The Washington Post”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001475.html last year.

Now, my son does write in cursive, and I frankly don’t know that any of his friends don’t. But it seems clear there are kids out there that still use block writing, and perhaps it is just a matter of time before the computer keyboard replaces all penmanship. I certainly hope not. Heck, our own Constitution and Declaration of Independence are written in cursive. Are we heading for a generation of children who won’t be able to read them?

Looking for some tips on how to become a better parent? Then you might want to check out a forum on Thursday night in Harlem featuring motivational speaker Les Brown. The event is called “Success Principles for Power Parenting and Mentoring.”

Brown came from very humble beginnings in Miami was adopted by a single mother along with his twin brother when they were six weeks old. His career has been diverse, including jobs as a radio DJ, community activist, county supervisor in California, and television show host. For many years, he has been a motivational speaker, addressing a variety of topics, including the power of positive parenting.

Thursday’s talk will be held at the Harlem Children’s Zone, 35 E. 125th St., in Manhattan. Doors open at 5 p.m and the program begins at 6 p.m. Seating is limited, so a response is suggested, but not mandatory. Call 917-532-5011 to RSVP or drop an email to info@proudpoppa.net. Admission is free and you’re asked to bring a young adult to hear the message.

Add this story to the “Horrific/idiotic things that can occur in school” file: In Grahamsville, slightly upstate from here, a high school student was pulled out of class by a security guard who wanted to make sure no kids had backpacks or bags that students are banned from carrying during the school day. The girl apparently had a small purse with her that day.

The security guard was just doing his job, right? Perhaps. But what’s problematic was the question the guard asked the young lady: Whether or not she was menstruating. Yes, you read that right. Apparently, that’s the only reason why students at Tri-Valley High School are given a pass to have a bag with them during the day. Read it all for yourself here.

I can’t even begin to imagine how upset this girl was. I think if someone – and a man, no less – asked me that when I was 14, I would have fainted. And apparently, “The Question” is asked quite freqently. And it has upset so many students that girls – as well as boys, in support of their female friends – have taken to wearing tampons and sanitary napkins on their clothing in protest of this despicable question.

According to the news story, the school banned bags in the halls to prevent kids from being hurt by heavy bags and to avoid falls, as well as a concern about concealed weapons. Valid concerns, for sure.

But “The Question?” Hardly valid, I’d say. What do you think?