Okay, here goes a guilty mom confession: In my zeal to multi-task, I sometimes talk on the cell phone while I drive. I know. It's wrong and it's totally illegal here in California. But, if it's a quick call and the cops aren't watching...Well, you know where this is going.

But here is something that gave me pause: Apparently teenagers are the worst offenders of driving while yakking on the phone, according to an article in MSN Money. The idea of a teenaged Ari or Eli yakking while driving made me hang up forever. (Seriously, this time I am quitting for good!)

Staking out high school parking lots in North Carolina, researchers found the number of teen drivers on cell phones was essentially unchanged after the state banned the practice, according to a study released last week by the nonprofit Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

Two months before the ban's December 2006 start, 11% of teen drivers were observed using cell phones as they left school in the afternoon. About five months after the ban went into effect, 12% of teen drivers were spotted using phones.

Girls were more likely than boys to use their cell phones while driving. SUV drivers were more likely than sedan drivers, and solo drivers were more likely than those with passengers, the study said.

Cell phone use remained steady -- about 13% -- at comparison sites in South Carolina, where teen driver cell phone use isn't restricted.

Then again, my kids will be taking public transportation as I don't want them driving at all. Ha!

On a more serious note, have you discussed DWY with your teenagers? Do YOU talk on the phone while driving?

I am feeling a little election-fatigued, but it is an exciting race in that moms here and everywhere have a say in the nominating process. Indiana and North Carolina moms: Please give us updates!

The polls in North Carolina close at 7:30 p.m. EDT and at 6 p.m. local time in Indiana, according to my quick and dirty google search.

As someone who was raised in a Spanish-speaking household and heard her parents endure disapproving comments like, “You are in America. You should speak English!” and my favorite, which I still hear today, “Aren’t you worried that your children will be confused?” I was thrilled to read this New York Times piece: Building a Nation of Polyglots.  

Public elementary schools are starting to teach children a second language. It's about time!

The United States, often fiercely chauvinistic and sometimes outright isolationist, has never considered the ability to speak a foreign language an essential talent. Unlike many Europeans and Asians who learn languages in primary school, most Americans do not get the chance until high school or in the grades just before — at too advanced an age to soak in quirky words and syntax with the nimbleness needed for fluency. That is why traveling Americans resign themselves to speaking menu French or Spanish.

But with an economy that recognizes few geographical borders, and with people from all over the planet becoming our next-door neighbors, more Americans are demanding language instruction earlier in school.

Martha Abbott, director of education at the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, said that while there is no reliable data on the trend, her organization keeps learning of more school systems that think paying for elementary school language teachers is money well invested.

Since September 2006, all students in grades one through five in Loudon County, Va., have been given 30 to 60 minutes of Spanish instruction each week. Last year, officials in Fairfax County, Va. — which, with 165,439 students, is the nation’s 13th-largest school system — decided to expand the study of foreign languages to all 137 elementary schools over a seven-year period. Twenty-five Fairfax schools provide 30-minute lessons twice a week in Spanish, Japanese, Arabic, Chinese or French starting in the first grade. Ten schools have ambitious “immersion” programs where math, science and health are taught in a foreign language.

Foreign language instruction does not come cheap. Some school districts are already hearing the grumbles of taxpayers.