DM, I have something like that letter that I read to my students every year, sort of an "it could be worse than a D in Chemistry."

Aqua, we've all been raising our kids since day one, and I'm guessing from what I'm reading here that most of us have been involved with our kids all along, and have pretty good relationships with them, and thats good because I don't think its a good idea to start getting involved when they hit adolescence (geez mom, you never followed me when I was playing doctor after preschool).

That being said, as parents we are becoming less important and less influential to our teenage children, which is perfectly normal because the peer group is becoming more important, after all our kids are going to work with, marry, grow old with these peers.

As far as I know, most coercive sex and most abuse is still carried out by someone the victim knows. I also believe that television sensationalizes everything nowadays, and implies more about things like MySpace than it can show evidence for. That doesn't mean that the net is safe, and I'm not suggesting it is. I think that a lot of our concern as parents stems from the fact we know that we are all probably lucky to have passed through adolescence relatively unscathed, and we probably all know someone who wasn't as lucky.

Which brings us to MySpace. I suspect that a lot of it is pretty harmless, just like most of the net, or most of the kids at my daughter's high school. The problem is that a kid can get to know someone over MySpace (or think they get to know them). Add to that the fact that all the bad apples, not just the local ones, can access the information on the net, and I can understand your concern.

Sooner or later our kids are going to find out for themselves though..

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My dick may sound bigger in metric, but its still average. That okay, its not as if I can wear it down anyway, not that I haven't tried...