Category Archives: Parenting

The Power of a Good Mind

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

May 23, 2005

Their eyes are closed in intense concentration.  Each man has one hand resting lightly on the table, all hands holding onto an invisible handle moving in cadence with the leader’s voice.

Six highly trained men, each of whom commands $28 million dollars of metal and technology are in an empty room, mentally rehearsing the precision movements of a show performed at up to 700 mph, where one misstep will result in immediate death.  They are the Blue Angels.

The selection process for Blue Angel pilots is rigorous.  Each applicant must be a career-oriented, carrier-qualified, active-duty Navy or Marine Corps tactical jet pilot with a minimum of 1,350 flight hours.

Once selected, “Angels” enter into intense training.  At speeds approaching Mach 1, a hesitation of one second can spell disaster.  The squadron focuses stress in a program built around exercise, weight training, cardiovascular health, flexibility training and healthy diet.

It goes without saying that vision is essential to the success of these jet pilots.  Extensive physical exams ensure 20/20 vision that is sustained under intense g-force maneuvers.  But there is another vision required for success as an “Angel.”

Blue Angels, with all the skill, technology, and personnel supporting their own training, must also rely on their individual capacity to sit with eyes closed, visualizing the exact order and movements of their performance, a mental rehearsal of every detail.  Their body can only perform what their mind can envision.

The power of a good mind is central to human success.  Jet pilots “see” their F-18’s speeding through the air before they ever climb into the cockpit.  Mountain climbers fix their eyes on the heights before they ever take the first step.

Vision of success builds success.  It is the ingredient of dreams.  It inspires hope.  It creates endurance through faith built on a picture we see with our mind.

Visions give us dreams.  Lifting her lamp beside the golden door, the Statue of Liberty welcomes the tired and poor of the world to America.  But they arrive on our shore long before their ships set sail.  They arrive first in their dreams and visions of what life might be in a distant land.

What dreams and visions do we inspire in our children?

“We would teach abstinence,” some tell us, “but we know kids are going to have sex anyway.”  A vision of failure is planted.  It is nurtured.  It is cultivated with thoughts of eventual failure.

Looking below, seeing the possibility of eventual failure, picturing ourselves falling off the mountain, what good does that do?  Yet, that is what some would have us believe about our kids.

People came to America inspired by a vision.  Pilots train with a vision.  Yes, visions must be chased and caught.  They require something of your own blood sweat and tears.  But they give us the picture of heaven on earth, a target, a place to aim our aspirations.

Beware of people who expect us to fail.  Listen for words predicting disaster.  As we speak, so shall we think.  And as we think, so shall we do.

The best educational program begins not with books and lessons and charts and graphs.  It begins in the mind of a person who has captured the vision of success.

And the best teachers are those who can inspire the vision in others, who can train the eyes upward for the climb and paint a picture of what it will be like when you mount the peak, plant your flag and claim success.

March 14, 2005:  Does Abstinence Work?

October 29, 2004:   Food for the Brain

Liberty or Libertine?

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

May 16, 2005

Give me liberty, or give me death!

Fifth grade is the year for American history, when the Constitution is broken into three branches of government, the Bill of Rights is memorized, and famous patriots stir our imagination.  American children grow up, nurtured on the ideals of independence and freedom.

Patrick Henry lives on today at Colonial Williamsburg, America’s largest living history museum.  In body and voice, Richard Shumann recreates Henry and the words he used to stir colonists to battle.

In March 1775, Patrick Henry urged his fellow Virginians to arm in self-defense, closing his appeal (uttered at St. John’s Church in Richmond, where the legislature was meeting) with the immortal words:  Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains or slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take but as for me; give me liberty or give me death!

Henry, “a Quaker in religion but the very devil in politics,” mobilized the militia only a few hours after the British march on Concord. His words are said to mark the beginning of the American Revolution in Virginia.

Liberty, the cause of the American Revolution, burns bright in the minds of Americans as the ultimate cause worth defending.  We want our freedom.  Independence.  Liberty.  No one is going to bar our way, get in our face, tell us what to do.  America is the land of the free.

But there is another Henry.  And another quote.  This Henry speaks of liberty, too.  But more to the point, he speaks about the purest essence of liberty, the distillation of what our freedom must be in order to allow us to be free.

Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty.  –Henry M. Robert

 So, who is this Henry?  Henry Martyn Robert was born May 2, 1837, in Robertsville, South Carolina.  Active in his community, he was chosen to chair a committee and was embarrassed by his inability to handle their meetings effectively.

Henry’s work in the army allowed him to travel and study the different systems used in various communities to order their meetings.  He envisioned a uniform set of rules used by all people that would allow people from different towns to work together effectively.

Encouraged by friends, Henry wrote a book and finally found a publisher willing to gamble on a printing of 4,000, enough copies to last a couple of years.  Instead, the first copies of Robert’s Rules sold out in a few months.

Henry M. Robert died in 1923 in New York, leaving us an important lesson about liberty.  Unfettered and unrestrained, liberty is a freedom that will enslave us.  Order, rules, and governance are the friends of freedom that protect us from ourselves.

Too much liberty corrupts us all.  –Terence (185 BC – 159 BC)

Liberty:  Defined in simple terms, it is the power to do as one pleases.  But if one is thorough in reading to the end of the definition, the reins on freedom are spelled out:  permission especially to go freely within specified limits.

Libertine:  A word no longer needed in America where everything goes, it has a lesson to teach.  A person who is unrestrained by convention or morality; specifically : one leading a dissolute life…a life dissolving through unrestrained liberties?

Dissolute:  lacking restraint; especially : marked by indulgence in things (as drink or promiscuous sex) deemed vices <the dissolute and degrading aspects of human nature.  Is this a concept Americans are able to…even willing to…understand?

As we work to teach our children the value of saving sex until marriage, we must look ourselves full face in the mirror.  We must admit that our culture has used our love affair with liberty to enslave us to our passions.

In a culture that celebrates excess, we must restore the truth about liberty. Give us liberty.  Yes.  But give us also the courage and character to submit our liberty to restraint.

Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos.

–Will Durant (1885-1981)

 Law is order in liberty, and without order liberty is social chaos.

–Archbishop Ireland

 

Why I Teach Abstinence

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

April 11, 2005

Years ago, reading endless attacks on abstinence education in the newspapers, I decided to see for myself.  I called up abstinence programs and asked if I could sit in on their classes.

From the beginning, abstinence educators were open and willing to share their message.  “Yes,” they invited me.  “Come, and sit in a class.  Talk with the students.  We would love to have you.”

It was a good thing I went.  Because I was shocked.  In less than five minutes of entering a middle-class, racially diverse high school classroom, I was struck dumb by what I learned.

Sitting discreetly in the back of the outside row, I read the student book as kids gradually finished chatting and took their seats.  Looking up to check for the teacher, I caught the eye of a pretty young girl.  We smiled at each other, and I decided to break the ice.  “What do you think of this class?”

“I like it,” she answered.  “I’ve never heard this before.”

“Really?”  I asked.  “What do you mean?”

“Well, like being abstinent and not having sex,” she clarified.

I blinked.  I tried to think of something to say.  “Really?” I commented, not expecting her to answer back.  It was just impossible to know what to say as I sat and contemplated a beautiful high school junior who was hearing someone for the first time in her life encourage sexual abstinence until marriage.

That class, and every abstinence class I have visited since, was a friendly honest room filled with open dialogue.  Medically accurate information reinforced possible consequences of having sex even as one or two highly charged boys made it clear they favored sex, even if there were consequences.  Even as talk focused on serious decisions, students and the teacher knew how to joke and tease.  It was a safe place where students could be challenged with the truth and encouraged to choose abstinence.

The young girl’s comment has stayed with me ever since I first heard it over six years ago.  “I’ve never heard this before.”  At first, I couldn’t believe her.  Then I started to attend to the movies, the music, the magazines, the news…and I understood how easy it is in the American teen culture to never hear abstinence validated and advanced as the healthy life choice.

When one considers American insistence on portraying sex as a recreational activity, it is amazing that abstinence education is able to impress students with its “new message.”  But it is.  Just this week, a series of student comments came to me from an educator friend.  Her students let her know their hearts.

“Before, I was practicing risky business. After this class I now realize how my behaviors affect my goals, so I am going to make a 180!  Thank you so much for showing me how to respect myself and my values.  I can definitely wait until I get married.”  A young girl, 16, heard…and changed.

“Realizing that having sex before marriage can be a major risk in my life, and that’s not what I want in my life, I want to enjoy my life and be risk free.  I enjoyed your class and learned a lot of things I did not know.  I will choose to live a risk-free life.”  Is this another student who heard abstinence affirmed as a positive choice for the first time?

“I think secondary virginity wouldn’t be a bad idea for me.  I haven’t had sex a lot.  I am going to stop.  I know now that I am worth waiting for.”  A male, 16, has been validated as a man for having the courage and intelligence to save sex until marriage.

Kids are learning…one by one…thanks to tireless teachers who care enough to affirm students and their ability to use self-restraint to make healthy choices.  And that’s enough to keep my friend going.  Her own comment says it all, “I love this soooo much!!!!!!!!!!”

Whether it’s the first time they hear it, or the tenth…abstinence from sex outside of a loving and healthy marriage is a message that empowers kids.  And like all truth, when students hear this message, they know it makes sense.

That’s enough to charge the batteries of at least one teacher.  It’s why she teaches abstinence.

April 30, 2004:   Condoms: A Failure to Protect

I remember the challenge from one female teen on my radio program who demanded to know, ‘Why can’t I have sex in a casual way with a number of people if it feels good?  My mother couldn’t give me any good reason.’  But, I asked, can you feel really good if you know that ultimately nobody cares about you, nor you about them, much at all?  Isn’t that a lonely thought–a lonely feeling?  She quietly said, ‘Yes.’

–Dr. Laura Schlessinger

 

Does Abstinence Work?

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

March 14, 2005

“We’ve seen it sneaking up on us, we’ve known it’s a problem, and now it’s reaching epidemic proportions,” Anne Loudenslager told CNN.  She heads the Tioga County Partnership for Community Health. “We are using a good portion of our limited resources to stop this.”

Dr. Ellsworth, a director of research on the problem, said he hopes to have several hundred children in a new health program this year. He calls himself an optimist.  One has to wonder why.  Everything in the CNN health report proves that things are going from bad to worse.

In northeast Pennsylvania, one in 10 kindergartners were found to be obese in 2001-2002. That number doubled for eighth-graders.

These high numbers of obesity are predictors of future health problems.  During a recent health fair, Ellsworth found that 60 percent of adults tested had metabolic syndrome, a collection of unhealthy conditions that raise the risk for diabetes and heart disease.

Nevertheless, Ms. Loudenslager and Dr. Ellsworth talk tough.  The community is galvanized to solve this health crisis.  At the largest high school in the county, they plan to alter physical education next year.  Students will have more choices:  sports teams, wellness classes, and traditional gym classes.  The goal is to get kids involved, get them moving, and get them healthy.

Maybe they want to help the kids, but shouldn’t we be asking a few questions about their plan first?  After all, the community resources are limited.  And here they are devoting a good portion of those resources to unproven programs with no statistical evidence that new gym classes will make kids loose weight.

If this were a story on the epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases, reporters would be all over the health officials demanding proof positive that taxpayer money was not going to be wasted on failed programs.

If this were a story on teen sex, reporters would not give the good Dr. Ellsworth a pass at being an optimist.  They would feed him the statistics to prove how hopeless the future is for fat teens.

After all, Dr. Ellsworth said it himself.  “The numbers for obesity in children were nowhere near what they are today and you can just imagine what we’re going to be looking at 10 to 20 years from now if nothing is done,” he told reporters. “That 60 percent … that’s going to seem like a pretty low figure.”

If this were a story on abstinence, reporters would help him prove the hopelessness of the future.  They would pick a teen and show how impossible Dr. Ellsworth’s job will be.

“I’ve started trying to take it easy on the junk food,” sophomore Ray Crawford says.  At 240 pounds and 5 ft. 9 inches tall, he is already a promising lineman for the school’s football team.  And if he’s overweight, he’s not alone.  So are many of his classmates.

Sure Ray hopes to change his eating habits and exercise.  But a good reporter would go after such baseless optimism.  After all, Ray’s father died of heart disease at 45.  And, according to Dr. Jeff Holm of North Dakota, “…Habits are passed vertically from Grandma on down.”

If this were a story on abstinence, the reporter would search high and low for experts to quote on the inevitability of fat habits.  After all, eating is natural.  All kids are going to eat.  Do we want kids to feel bad about themselves, hurting their self-esteem by telling them they are fat?

If this were a story on abstinence, the reporter would serve up a research study to prove that nobody can really lose weight and keep it off.  We would read about yo-yo diets where kids lose weight one week, and put it back on the next.

If this were a story on abstinence, the reporter would find a student who had failed.  We would hear all about how temptation was just too hard to pass up.  Photos would trace the weight gain of the student from kindergarten to high school, and quotes would be plied from the student:  “I’ve tried, but I just can’t seem to control myself.”

And armed with data, quotes, and examples, the reporter would stick it to the good doctor.  “Aren’t you just wasting your time?  Wouldn’t taxpayer money be better spent on finding ways to make Styrofoam into tasty and nutritious food substitutes?”

Where are the tough journalists when you need them?  Where is the skepticism, the doubt, the challenge and resistance?

You can talk about exercise all day long.  You can have your fancy schmancy gyms, and you can serve vegetables in the school cafeteria.  But before we give you one thin dime of our precious limited resources, tell us what we want to know.

Do exercise and good eating habits work?

April 30, 2004:  Condoms: A Failure to Protect

September 10, 2004:  Duh

See Archives for past editorials.

Sex Without Value

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

February 21, 2005

The large card still stands on my dresser, a sweet remembrance from the man who has shared over thirty years of life with me.  As February winds down, my mind is filled with the many pictures of love

renewed on this past Valentine’s Day.

At one luncheon, going around the table for introductions, we shared special thoughts about the husbands and wives who completed our lives.  From newlyweds to those married over forty years, it was refreshing to see the tenderness used to describe the object of each person’s affection.

Last Sunday, Andrew thanked those who organized this month’s Sweetheart Dinner.  As he talked, sounds of babies surrounded us, until one coo and babble turned more insistent.  Mom bundled up her hungry babe, and headed to the private room in the back.

Sex is at the center of so much loveliness.  It is the intensity of passion, the bond of reconciliation, the playful encounter and…the creator of life…building and sustaining relationships of love, promise and honor.

And then…we turn on the television and see sex purchased with a hundred dollar bill on prime time television during what used to be family hour.  Wives are traded, singles prowl the city in search of sex, and nearly naked ladies sell everything from potato chips to beer.

Computer filters must fight the ever-mutating attacks on family life by XXX fare.  Even public librarians defend the right to provide porn, resisting filters to protect the minds and hearts of children.

Cheap sex is not new.  Modern culture simply puts a new shine on the “world’s oldest profession” and magnifies the ways to profit from sex.  Yet, one sad result of our ability to reproduce sex on stage, television, music and film is the complete disconnect of sex from its greatest purpose and its best expression.

Promiscuity is a concept undone by American marketers and impotent judges.  Still defined by a dusty dictionary… aimless, designless, desultory, haphazard, hit-or-miss, indiscriminate, irregular, purposeless, unplanned…the word promiscuity carries no meaning today because all sex is permissible.

The director of a major metropolitan agency worked to explain the finer points of their sex education program to me.  They taught it all, she said.  They empowered kids to embrace their sexuality.  They reinforced that sex was just a normal part of life, complete with deprovera, cherry-flavored condoms, and “confidentiality,” the promise they will help kids evade the loving supervision of parents who know that sex is not meant for teens.

What about abstinence? I asked.

Sure, she said.

Sure, what?  I asked.

For some kids, abstinence is a choice…until they are ready for sex.  Responsible sex.

Responsible sex?  What would you tell a thirteen-year-old girl in your sex ed class who came to you for your advice about having “responsible sex” with her sixteen-year-old boyfriend?  Could you tell her, since she asked, that you advised her not to have sex of any kind with him…that sex at her age was unhealthy and out-of-order…and even just a teensy weensy irresponsible?

Without a pause big enough to blink, she fired back at me.  No.

No?

No.  We are values-neutral.  We don’t teach values.

Sex without values?

What kind of educator is reluctant to teach our children the immovable healthy boundaries of sex?  This means more than mentioning boundaries…saying that abstinence is a choice…something that some kids will choose…until they don’t choose abstinence.

Sex education is a matter of connecting sex with a nobler, finer purpose than recreating in the backseat of a car with a kid you just met.  And it is a matter of believing in that purpose with enough conviction to commit to it and promote it and counsel for it.

Everyone teaches the value of sex.  It’s just a matter of focus.  Either you link sex to the values that sustain healthy relationships and support the care of our next generation with mothers and fathers who love each other…or you don’t.

Our children learn what we teach.  If they are having sex that is aimless, designless, desultory, haphazard, hit-or-miss, indiscriminate, irregular, purposeless, unplanned…need we wonder why?  Aren’t they doing exactly what we are teaching them?

Sex without value IS a value.

May 14, 2004  Order in the Courtroom!

 See Archives for past editorials.