An Open Letter to My Four Children:

I don't care what President Obama says, you may not remain on our health care policy until you are 26.

For the record, you also may not move into the basement and install black lights or hang Che Guevara posters (or posters of Barack Obama in the style of Che), nor may you consider our laundry room an intergenerational gathering place.

At 26, you will have been a legal adult for five years and will have obtained an education or professional training. You will have been taught to drive, cook, operate a power drill, call the cable company when the service goes down and, most important, prepare your own income-tax return.

You will be old enough to get married, enter into a binding legal contract, start a business, buy a home and even rent a car.

Twenty-six isn't terribly old, but it's old enough to know better. It is not adolescence, no matter what the American Psychological Association says.

Not to worry. We have confidence in you. Adulthood is not as hard as it looks.

Love and kisses, Mom.

Who would have thought you could contract carpal tunnel syndrome at the oral surgeon's office? After writing my initials and signing my name on roughly 217 consent forms, I was ready for an ice pack and a wrist wrap.

No surprise, really. After all, the surgeon was extracting seven teeth from the mouth of my 12-year-old daughter. Despite the fact that three of those were baby teeth, the risks of the procedure apparently are legion. With all the paperwork, I wasn't sure if I would find the tooth fairy or medical malpractice attorney Sam Bernstein in the parking lot when we were finished.

Of course, it would have been different if the procedure had been something insignificant and safe, lacking in any long-term physical or emotional ramifications, such as abortion.

For that, a minor girl can maintain her "right to privacy," and her folks don't necessarily need to sign a thing. That's because 14 states plus the District of Columbia allow teens to get abortions without parental consent, and Planned Parenthood's health counselors are adept at getting around the laws of the 35 states that do require parental consent or notification with a judicial bypass. (Utah has no bypass option.)

Thus, Planned Parenthood assures it never loses a sale.

Oops. Make that, assures that all girls get the "health care" they need.

They operate under names like Granny's Junction. Inside, among cubbies for winter coats, boxes of Legos and kitchen tables surrounded by booster seats, they offer a lifeline to millions of working mothers and fathers.

The nation's home-based child care providers represent millions of single business owners — women, mostly — whose entrepreneurial spirit and operating ingenuity are surpassed only by their willingness to clean the noses and backsides of other people's children.

In Michigan, roughly 40,000 such day care owners were perhaps too busy changing diapers, reading stories and making lunches to notice a random piece of mail in which they were invited to declare themselves unionized state employees.

Obviously, a private business owner cannot be an employee of the government. But the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) couldn't resist the lure of so many potential dues-paying members.

So AFSCME hatched a grand scheme. Suppose you declare that any child care provider whose clients receive state subsidies for day care are considered employees of the state? You'd instantly have 40,000 new state employees to add to the rolls of union membership.

Follow the union's logic: Say you own and operate Granny's Junction Daycare. A few of your clients attend job-retraining programs that qualify them for subsidized child care benefits. Along with the money that is paid directly to you from these clients, you receive a check each month from the state to pay some of their expenses.

This makes you … wait for it … a state employee. "Close enough for government work" never rang so true.

Earlier this month, President Obama created a task force on childhood obesity to be headed by Michelle Obama, who has taken up the issue as her public-service cause under the banner "Let's Move."

Pointing to the nearly one-third of U.S. children who are either obese or overweight, the administration will pursue a legislative agenda to support its efforts, expanding the federal school-lunch program by $10 billion over 10 years and spending $400 million to bring grocery stores to so-called food deserts, urban and rural areas without adequate food stores.

So I guess this means we'll now own the corner groceries, right next to our federally owned and operated car dealerships.

Mrs. Obama comes at the issue as a mother. In interviews, she says her pediatrician pulled her aside and encouraged her to improve her family's health status by initiating portion control, eliminating high-calorie convenience foods and sugary drinks, and getting her daughters moving with more exercise and less TV time.

She listened to her children's doctor, and her daughters are healthier for it.

Now, the Obamas have committed themselves to eliminating not only the possibility that their daughters might be overweight, but also the entire nation's childhood obesity health crisis, in the span of one generation.

No one can argue that this would be a good thing, as obesity is almost entirely preventable and contributes to some of the costliest maladies burdening our health care system.
 

"Mom, I need to ask you something," my daughter begins as she buckles her seat belt. Knowing the drive to school lasts only six minutes, she must figure the answer will be either concise or embarrassing, so I brace myself for a question about the meaning of a phrase I will undoubtedly have to look up on Urbandictionary.com.

"What's the difference between liberals and conservatives?"

Whew. An easy one. I'm just glad she didn't ask the difference between Democrats and Republicans. That's harder to explain.

"The short answer is, liberals think government can solve a lot of our problems, while conservatives believe the government should be limited so that people can solve their own problems," I say.

I offer up a couple of examples of government programs to illustrate the point — the economic stimulus package, "Cash for Clunkers" — but there's not much time to elaborate as we arrive in the school drop-off lane.

"Well, I'm definitely a conservative," Amy says as she climbs out of the van. "See ya."

I'm amused, but not surprised, that my 12-year-old already has decided on a philosophical label. Knowing Amy, it won't be long before she's asking me the difference between neo-cons and libertarians or the "Old Right" versus the "New Right." Clearly, she was sent to us by God to keep us on our toes.

I'm also not surprised to be having a conversation about political theory with one of my children. Call us geeky (we're OK with that), but we believe it's crucial to teach our children not only our core religious beliefs, but also our political beliefs. This is what it means to instill our values, and thus, to do the real work of parenting.
 

File this under: Unintended irony. The International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) released a report Tuesday titled "Stand + Deliver: Sex, Health and Young People in the 21st Century."

I'm guessing the title alludes to the critically acclaimed film "Stand and Deliver," in which Edward James Olmos played a dedicated math teacher who challenges his erstwhile high school dropouts to learn calculus. In the movie, these misunderstood yet courageous young people come of age, metaphorically, as they realize their true potential.

As it happens, according to the Web site phrases.org, the phrase "stand and deliver ... was used by 17th century highwaymen (robbers) in the [United Kingdom], when holding up stagecoaches." It literally means, "Stop and give me your valuables."

Come to think of it, given the contents of this ghastly report, the title may be apropos after all, because what the IPPF wants to do is hold our children up and steal their innocence, their childhoods and, worst of all, their sexual morality.

First, some context: The IPPF is the international umbrella for 180 Planned Parenthood organizations worldwide. Its political agenda includes population control through contraception and abortion, as well as the broad promotion of "sexual rights."

The IPPF works closely with the United Nations and other international groups to promote social and political change in support of their views on sexuality.

Those views include seven principles of "sexual rights," including that "Sexuality is an integral part of the personhood of every human being, for this reason a favorable environment in which everyone may enjoy all sexual rights as part of the process of development must be created" and "Sexuality, and pleasure deriving from it, is a central aspect of being human."

The IPPF's new report on sexuality in young people - loosely defined, but including anyone over the age of 10 - expands on these rights to include children.

That's right. Children.

I'm not sure how to explain my reticence to speak up.

Perhaps the dark-brown muck oozing its way into the roots of my hair is causing me to doubt my credibility. Perhaps the aluminum foil squares hanging wildly in my face are cutting into my self-confidence.

Or maybe it's the knowledge that one of the women whose conversation I am overhearing — and whom I dearly wish to admonish — will soon stand over me with a pair of scissors and my hairstyle in her hands.

Whatever the reason, I don't comment. Instead, I pretend to read a magazine while listening to two women, both mothers of 12-year-old middle school students, lament the difficulties their daughters are having on Facebook.

"I just cannot believe the things these kids write on their walls," one woman says.

"I know — and in their text messages too," the other agrees.

Worried about their daughters' emotional health and about the long-term consequences of rumors, gossip and high-tech teasing, their chatter continues for a solid 15 minutes. It's a rambling, estrogen-infused diatribe about the indignities of the nasty texts and Facebook comments their daughters endure at the hands of other, meaner middle-schoolers, but also the great parenting strategies they use to make sure their girls do not respond in kind.

"I said, 'You had better not do that.'"

Masterful. Really.
 

Perhaps most curious of all the results of the recently released Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) study "Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds" are the headlines it has generated.

"Researchers shocked at kids' online time," says one. "U.S. kids using media almost 8 hours a day," another screams. "New media use by children up by hours per week," another story warns.

Essentially, the news coverage since last week's unveiling of the updated research on children, teens and the media has focused on the sheer quantity of media consumed by America's youths, and this is newsworthy, to be sure.

The very idea that children and teens are physically able to absorb more than 53 hours per week of media content — or seven hours and 38 minutes per day — astonished even the researchers, who had thought the previous average of six hours and 21 minutes per day calculated in 2004 represented the maximum amount of time that could be spent.

Even more mind-boggling, thanks to multitasking (using more than one kind of media at a time) children and teens "actually manage to pack a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes … worth of media content into those 7½ hours," the KFF study says. A note to the already astonished: The study didn't include the time youngsters spend texting via cell phones. Add another 1½ hours per day.

As the mother of four, I wonder if the folks who are surprised by this research have children. It strikes me that only the childless would be shocked by the results. The rest of us spend much of our time saying things like, "Turn off the computer and go to bed."

The television hanging above my head in the waiting room airs an episode of the syndicated talk show "The Doctors." The topic? Sex.

But not just sex. Graphic sex. The guest talks candidly to the show's regular cadre of physicians about exactly how she contracted HIV, and she's not using any euphemisms.

Call me repressed, but I just don't want to share this moment with a roomful of strangers. As my teenagers would say, "AWK-ward."

On the other hand, I've never felt awkward talking to my teens about sex. It's a subject we've discussed openly in our home since our children were young. At every age and stage of development, we've addressed their curiosity and need for information about human sexuality just as we talk about other issues of health and morality.

It turns out for all our culture's "sexual liberation," today's parents are still too reticent to discuss sexuality with their children. This month's edition of the journal Pediatrics includes a study that shows when it comes to communicating with children about sex, America's parenting can be summed up thusly: too little, too late.

"Many adolescents report little or no communication about sexuality with their parents," the study found. Worse, "Many parents and adolescents do not talk about important sexual topics before adolescents' sexual debut."

Past studies have suggested that many parents underestimate their adolescents' sexual activity, assuming their children are not engaging in sexual behaviors. One such study found 58 percent of teens reported they were sexually active, while only one-third of their mothers believed they were. Perhaps this is why so many parents miss the chance to influence their teens' choices to become sexually active.

Yet one thing is abundantly clear: Parents who make their moral beliefs about sex known to their children and clearly express their disapproval of adolescent sex have a positive influence on their children's attitudes and behavior. These conversations also serve to strengthen relationships between parents and adolescents, and closer relationships also are a key to avoiding premature sexual activity.

Left: The cast of MTV's "Jersey Shore." Snooki is the girl in black.

A message for Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi: I am not a hater.

I can see why you'd come to that conclusion after last week, when my comments about you and the show on which you appear, MTV's "Jersey Shore," made their way from Us Weekly online to countless entertainment Web sites, including the infamous PerezHilton.com.

But honestly, it's not personal, Snooki; it's strictly business.