Even though I have long participated in MySpace and Facebook, I have to admit that I worry about the judgment of young teens and tweens as they carve out their own corners of the Interwebs.

As a reporter I have come across horror stories of bullying, abuse, and even child predators on MySpace. The suicide of Megan Meier after she was bullied via a faux MySpace account cast a harsh light on the darkest dangers of these social networks.

Now it appears that teens are filming fights and posting them on YouTube and MySpace. That was the apparent motivation in Lakeland, Fla., where six teen girls were recently arrested for luring a former friend into a home and beating her unconscious:

For 30 minutes, six girls ganged up on a classmate, slamming her head into a wall and taking turns pummeling her and videotaping it all to post on the Internet. And when they were arrested and were being booked into juvenile detention, they joked about not being able to go to the beach, a Florida sheriff said Tuesday on TODAY.

The vicious attack was supposedly in response to slurs and insults the victim had posted about them on MySpace...

Officials released three minutes of the 30-minute video that show two of the girls taking turns screaming obscenities at the victim between attacks with their fists, while the others watched and taped the attack. They also challenge the victim to fight back, which she does not do on the video.

The 16-year-old victim suffered a concussion, and has hearing loss in her left ear and some loss of vision in her left eye, Judd said.

Six girls under the age of 18 will be tried as adults on charges of battery, false imprisonment and kidnapping. Because kidnapping is a first-degree felony, they face a maximum sentence of life in prison. Their arraignment is scheduled for today.

The most disturbing aspect of this story is the lack of remorse displayed by the girls, who while in custody joked about not being able to go to the beach; one girl asked a guard if she would be out in time for cheerleading practice.

Here's my most important advice should you see this film: Bring Kleenex.

So I like a good tearjerker as much as the next gal, but I really thought my sobbing-at-the-movies days were far behind me. After all, I'm no longer a melodramatic teenager...I'm a grown-ass woman!

But when a movie revolves around the painful, wrenching separation of a mother from her son and his against-all-odds Dickensian quest to reunite with her, all bets are off.

The Mexican film La Misma Luna is the story of 9-year-old Carlitos, played by the astonishing Adrian Alonso. His mother Rosario (famed telenovela actress Kate del Castillo) is one of the estimated millions of Latinas who have left children behind in Latin American countries in order to come here, legally and illegally, and make enough money to feed said children.

Carlitos and his mother have been separated more than four years when tragedy spurs the boy's decision to cross the border, alone, armed with nothing more than an address to find his mother. The resulting journey is by turns dangerous and blessed, fearful and joyous. The lump in your throat remains long after the last, mesmerizing frame.

The narrative puts an achingly human spin on the hot-button topic of illegal immigration. While the melodramatic twists and turns verge on maudlin, it's refreshing to see a multi-faceted portrayal of illegal immigrants, and the compelling, desperate reasons why so many of them come here. It's a welcome break from the rhetoric spewed by the Lou Dobbs and Minutemen of the world. Their law-and-order argument is a perfectly contrasted black-and-white; movies like this fill in those crucial shades of gray by depicting the daily indignities immigrants face, and why they feel they have no choice.

Cross-posted at The Mom Blog.

There were so many things I swore I would never do when I became a parent.

Because I found the concept yucky, I did not plan to breastfeed past the first few weeks (reality check: I nursed Maya for 14 months).

I planned to get back to work ASAP (reality check: I took a 5-month leave and still wish I could afford to cut back my hours or be a SAHM).

My husband and I would continue to take long, exotic vacations, and leave the kid with her very accommodating abuelitos (reality check: our longest trip away from Maya has been 2 nights...and we didn't cross the state line).

And last but not least, I would NOT let my home become Romper Room, strewn with toys and plastic and other assorted kid clutter.

Take a wild guess as to how that turned out.

We staved it off OK in the beginning; a little baby doesn't need much, and we managed to find a baby swing, high chair and bouncer in neutral colors that blended nicely with our decor.

But now that Maya is older, her toys are bigger. And more garish. And just plain MORE.

So our formal dining room table has been relegated to a corner, sad and forgotten. We eat our meals in the kitchen, and Maya's beloved train table is now the focal point of the dining room.

We've got puzzles stacked under our coffee table and a couple of toy bins that are constantly overflowing. While it's too much for my personal liking, I've seen much worse. So I can live with the toys and the trains and the crayons for the time being...unlike this British mum, who wrote a column for The Independent about how her baby is cramping her style:

But as we cradled her blissfully in our arms, the midwife, doctor and nurses quietly going about their duties, there was one vital treatment they failed to administer. Somehow, someone, somewhere, forgot to give me the pill from the bottle whose label read: "You've just had a baby, from now on your aversion to all things cute, cuddly or smothered in teddy bear pattern will be forgotten. Go forth and spend a fortune on useless furnishings and ugly-coloured plastic items. Everything you thought you knew about how you wanted your home to look is wrong. Oh, and if it's a girl, prepare to like pink."

This then, is the diary of the design-freak-turned-new-mother, who was given a baby, but not the "right" pill, and whose life may never be the same again, but whose home sure as hell will be.

If you're a mother to a little girl, hang on to your hat: the beauty industry has set its sights on your 6 to 9-year-old, according to this New York Times article. The goal: to create ever-younger consumers:

Traditionally, young girls have played with unattended M.A.C. eye shadow or Chanel foundation, hoping to capture a whiff of sophistication. In the recent past, young girls have also tagged along on beauty expeditions by their mothers and teenage sisters.

But today, cosmetic companies and retailers increasingly aim their sophisticated products and service packages squarely at 6- to 9-year-olds, who are being transformed into savvy beauty consumers before they’re out of elementary school.

“The starter market has definitely grown, I think, due to a number of cultural influences,” said Samantha Skey, the senior vice president for strategic marketing of Alloy Media and Marketing.

The "starter market"? Shudder. How exploitive. How utterly shameless.

I first blogged about this issue back in 2006, when the notion of little girls tagging along to the spa to indulge in pampering rituals seemed, to me at least, misguided but relatively harmless. But it seems that the beauty industry has ramped up its efforts since then, responding to a growing demand for the luxe life:

In a study last year, 55 percent of 6- to 9-year-old girls said they used lip gloss or lipstick, and nearly two-thirds said they used nail polish, according to Experian, a market research company based in New York. In 2003, 49 percent of 6- to 9-year-old girls said they used lip gloss or lipstick.

Youth market analysts say this is part of a trend called KGOY, “kids getting older younger,” and cultural observers describe a tandem phenomenon, more-indulgent parents.

KGOY. Am I the only one who finds this "trend" desperately sad? I know my little girl won't stay little forever, but the thought of her feeling like she needs a "makeover" at the tender age of 5 makes me want to scream. Even event planner Tracy Bloom Schwartz, who makes a living planning parties like these, sees the absurdity. "Sometimes I want to ask, 'makeover what?'" she said.

Rosalind Wiseman, author of the Mean Girl survival manual "Queen Bees and Wannabes," perfectly captured my discomfort with this phenomenon:

“Mothers and fathers do really crazy things with the best of intentions,” she said. “I don’t care how it’s couched, if you’re permitting this with your daughter, you are hyper-sexualizing her. It’s one thing to have them play around with makeup at home within the bubble of the family. But once it shifts to another context, you are taking away the play and creating a consumer, and frankly, you run the risk of having one more person who feels she’s not good enough if she’s not buying the stuff.”

What say you, ladies? Is Wiseman right or is she making much ado about nothing? When did your daughters first show an interest in makeup or pampering? Is it too much too soon nowadays?

As for me, I was always fascinated with makeup, and loved to watch my mother fix herself up. But while she let me play with her makeup, she set strict limits. I wore lipstick at 11 and snuck a little eyeliner when I was 12, but made sure to scrub it off before coming home from school. Today, I wear lipstick and a little powder 90 percent of the time, and that's it. I love MAC cosmetics, but hardly ever take the time to actually wear them.

As for my own 3-year-old daughter? She is obsessed with trains and I have to wrestle her just to cut her toenails. I am hoping it stays that way for a while.

I slather my child in sunscreen. Strap a helmet onto her head when she rides her tricycle. Buy organic foods and avoid high fructose corn syrup like the plague.

But if I lived in Illinois, I could potentially be charged with child endangerment, like Treffly Coyne was.

Coyne is a suburban mother of three who buckled her kids into the car last Christmas for a quick jaunt to Wal-Mart. The goal: to give $8.29 in coins collected by her daughters to a Salvation Army bell ringer, take a couple of pictures, and leave.

Her 2-year-old daughter was sleeping and it was sleeting out; Coyne opted to park in a loading zone in front of the store, turn on her hazard lights, lock the car and run to the kettle with her other kids rather than wake the sleeping toddler.

Coyne was 10 yards away, she says, and her car was within sight at all times. But trouble was coming:

She snapped a few pictures of the girls donating money and headed back to the car. But a community service officer blocked her way.

"She was on a tirade, she was yelling at me," Coyne said. The officer, Coyne said, didn’t want to hear about how close Coyne was, how she never set foot inside the store and was just there to let the kids donate money, or how she could always see her car.

Coyne telephoned her husband, Tim Janecyk, who advised her not to say anything else to police until he arrived. So Coyne declined to talk further, refusing even to tell police her child’s name.

When Janecyk pulled up, his wife already was handcuffed, sitting in a patrol car.

I admit it: I love TV.

I love TV so much that I've stopped adding season passes to my TiVo-- there's no time to watch new shows! But the recently ended writer's strike has left a gap in my viewing schedule, and the commercials for The Secret Life Of A Soccer Mom on TLC were too intriguing to ignore.

The premise is simple: take a SAHM who gave up an outside career in order to take care of her family, and throw her right back into it. Is it all that she remembers? Will she sink or swim? And will she choose to go back to that career?

As an added twist, their unsuspecting husbands have no clue their wives are off trying a career on for size. They think mom's off at a spa, and struggle with the caretaking duties while she is away.

In the first episode, mom Adrian blossomed as a fashion designer and accepted a full-time job at a design house at the end of the show. In the next episode, Katie proved her mettle as a gourmet chef but turned down the subsequent job offer at a chic restaurant; she wasn't ready to leave her preschool-aged sons.

The show is bittersweet; these moms clearly long for their former careers and their husbands rejoice in their accomplishments. But real-life decisions are nuanced and delicate, and the show reflects that.

Of course, Adrian's decision to go back to work triggered ?a predictable backlash from the judgy judgers, who used TLC's message boards to spew anonymous venom:

The posts said the premise of the show is "sick" and Adrian is "selfish." One mom wrote, "Let's show the other side of the story ... how the kids' world is going to be turned upside down by having to go to day care." Another woman goes even further: "Unless you're about to starve there is no reason for you to be at work. If you didn't want to raise your children, you should not have had them. It's child abandonment."

So since 70 percent of women with children under 18 work outside the home...that's A LOT of abandoned children running around! Speaking of which, I should see what my little 3-year-old munchkin is up to...it just occurred to me that I haven't seen or fed her in a couple of days. What can I say, I'm a working mom! I hope she didn't wander down the highway again...

Anyhoo...would you ever consider appearing on a show like this? What career would you want to try on for size? What are some of your favorite reality shows? And do you find the term "soccer mom" as annoying as I do?

The first article I read about Baby Loves Disco was a skeptical look at the then-nascent phenomenon. The writer seemed to chide the parents who participated as incorrigible grupsters who refused to give up partying for parenthood.

But I was intrigued by the premise: take over a nightclub in the daytime, stock it with healthy snacks and kid-friendly activities, spin some tried-and-true dance songs and get some baby booties on the dance floor. The party spread like wildfire and Baby Loves Disco is now in 27 cities from Boston to San Diego, as well as the U.K. and Tel Aviv. It was all started by an entrepreneuring mommy named Heather Murphy, who has turned her idea into a full-time gig.

The party just rolled into Orange County so me and fellow MotherTalker sandrab decided to  take the kids and check it out. It started at 2 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon and it was quite the experience.

No detail was overlooked. There were bubble machines and maracas and scarves for the kids to dance with. The bar was laid out with a buffet of healthy snacks including fruit, Goldfish crackers, hummus and organic juice boxes. Balloons were free and plentiful. There was free face painting for the kids and neck massages for stressed out moms and dads. Maya cooled down with an organic strawberry-banana popsicle between spirited dancing and running around the darkened club.

She strutted across the stage, she bellied up to the bar and stared at the large fish tanks, she climbed into a tent and read a book in the "Chill-Out Zone." She was a dancing queen and a superfreak, and she had a ball.

I saw sleeping infants, jamming preteens and everything in between. Young parents, middle-aged parents, and grandparents chatted while keeping an eye on the dance floor; some even nursed a drink from the full-service bar.

It was a fun way to spend an afternoon, though I was a bit tired from chasing Maya around the club. She wanted to inspect every corner of the expansive venue, and she did.

I walked away impressed by the whole concept and execution-- and jealous of the brilliant mommy who came up with it and turned it into a stay-at-home career! And it was definitely a fun change after countless trips to the zoo, the neighborhood park and the science museum. Am I a grupster for introducing my daughter to a nightclub at the tender age of 3? Who cares? All that matters is that we got our groove on.

Have any of you been to Baby Loves Disco? What other alternative kid activities do you enjoy? Please share!

Crossposted at The Mom Blog.

As the daughter of Mexican immigrants, Spanish was my first language. Growing up, my father insisted that we speak Spanish exclusively at home; he reasoned that we could learn English in school, and that retaining Spanish would benefit us in the long run while allowing us to communicate with our elders.

I won't lie; like many children of immigrants, I chafed at my dad's rules from time to time, especially during those awkward teen years where all I wanted to do was fit in like a normal, American kid.

Now that I'm grown, I am so grateful to my father for forcing me to retain my Spanish. It has opened up a world of literature and culture that I treasure, and given me a valuable edge in my career. I can jump between the English and Spanish-speaking spheres with ease, and that's invaluable.

I always planned to teach my children Spanish, but life threw a wrench in those plans when I fell in love with a gringo of Polish-Italian descent. No matter; with my husband's unflagging support, I resolved to teach my daughter Spanish anyway. The plan was for me to speak Spanish to her exclusively so that she would be bilingual.

It started out great; I cooed, sang and read to Maya in Spanish. Her first words and sentences were all in Spanish, as were her favorite lullabies. Her Spanish vocabulary blossomed, even as my skeptical mother-in-law questioned whether or not Maya would ever learn English. I assured her that against all odds, I had managed to learn English, so I was pretty sure Maya wouldn't wander through life muttering "Que?".

I was right. Maya is now 3 years old, and she has learned English effortlessly. Too effortlessly.

She is stringing long, complex sentences together in English. She is spelling English words. She has even started to correct me when I speak Spanish! "No Mami, no es leon, es lion!" WTF?

I feel like I'm waging a losing battle. English is everywhere...when she hears me and my husband talk, it's in English. At preschool, it's all English. Her favorite cartoons and music are in English.

Sigh. What's a Mami to do? I am bloodied and bruised, but have resolved to keep fighting. I still speak Spanish to her. I still translate English words. I still sing to her. She will continue to spend time around my Spanish-speaking family.

I even signed her up for a Spanish for toddlers class offered here in my community, but it was too basic for her. I guess I am stumped as to how to take her Spanish to the next level, or just maintain all she knows now. My hope is that when she gets older we can spend time traveling in Mexico so she is immersed in the language, or that we can find a Spanish immersion charter school for her to attend.

In the meantime, I just want Spanish to feel familiar and comfortable to her. Which reminds me, I think it's time for a weekend with the Abuelitos...

What do you all think? Am I being unrealistic? Is English-only unavoidable in this country? What have you done to help your children learn and retain a second language?

Crossposted at
The Mom Blog.

Our fearless leader Elisa is celebrating a birthday today. May it be filled with laughter, love and some fine wine. :-)

Thanks for all you do to keep this community buzzing. You are the MotherTalker Extraordinaire!

Love you, mujer!

Beyond affixing a pink "DONOR" sticker to my California driver's license, I had never given much thought to organ donation. I don't know anyone with a transplanted organ and figured most donations were limited to older people with chronic illnesses.

Then I met Mitchell. He is almost 2 years old with pink cheeks and a head of golden brown curls.

He also had a heart transplant when he was 10 months old. A common cold gave way to wheezing and difficulty breathing, and a trip to the hospital revealed Baby Mitchell's heart was failing. Thus began a tortuous 78-day wait for a heart. As his heart function deteriorated, Mitchell's skin turned grey and clammy. He stopped playing and crawling and depended on oxygen and multiple drugs to pull through.

But pull through he did. It has been a year since the transplant and Mitchell's parents are hoping to establish contact with the anonymous organ donor's family. Their joy and gratitude for the heart that saved Mitchell's life is tempered by the knowledge that somewhere, there are parents grieving the loss of their own child. Through an official liaison, they wrote the family a letter and are hopeful for a response:

"We hope their grief will somehow be lessened," said Baker Blakey, who lives in Irvine with her husband and two sons. "Part of their baby is growing in Mitchell, and we would like to share that with them."

In the course of reporting this story I found out that children as young as 13 years old can register as organ donors. However, any time a potential organ donor under age 18 passes away, it is the parents or guardian who have final say over organ donation. Lawrence King, the 15-year-old boy who was shot and killed by a classmate because he was gay, donated his organs, according to news reports.

After little Mitchell's story ran in the paper, I received a voice mail from a reader who said her son was murdered more than a decade ago. She and her husband decided to donate their beloved son's organs.

"It helps me every day to think, my son's heart is out there, beating on. His lungs are out there, helping someone breathe. It has brought me such comfort," she said.

I know it's an awful topic to broach but I'm wondering: would you donate your child's organs? Have your children expressed an interest in organ donation? What are your feelings on donating your own organs? How have your lives been touched by organ donation?

My father was a practicing Catholic when he met my mother, who was a devout Jehovah's Witness.

In order for them to be together, religion took a backseat in their lives. I was not baptized and I didn't attend CCD. I grew up knowing that one side of my family did not celebrate birthdays or Christmas, and it didn't much bother me. But as I got older, it got weirder.

Older relatives-- I'm talking grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins-- would mention casually that I wasn't going to heaven because I was never baptized. Or that my parents weren't really married because it wasn't sanctioned by the church. Or that I wasn't going to survive Armageddon and spend eternity in paradise because I hadn't embraced the one and only true religion.

In short, they freaked me out.

So when I was 6 years old and set to be the flower girl in my uncle's wedding, I believed my Catholic relatives when they told me I couldn't participate unless I was baptized. So I asked to be baptized the day of the wedding ceremony, and my parents honored my wishes.

In high school, I attended Pentecostal church services with friends and studied the Bible with Jehovah's Witnesses. Then I had my first communion so I could have a special quinceañera Mass for my 15th birthday-- a time-honored tradition for Catholic Latinas.

In the end, I never bought into organized religion. There were too many contradictions and restrictions. I believe in spirituality and strive to be a good person, but I have no desire to attend church. I respect my parents for letting me figure it out by myself and not foisting any rigid views upon me. But I also wish they had protected me more from my well-meaning relatives who filled my head with guilt and shame and confusion all those years.

Now I find myself worrying about my daughter. She is 3, and she hasn't been baptized. But my Catholic relatives-- who love Maya to bits-- make it a point to ask: When will she be baptized?

I don't think they are trying to be confrontational or judgmental. For Mexican Catholics, baptizing a baby is just automatic. And I don't want to seem argumentative or disrespectful, so I have tended to brush it off with a "We'll see," or "When she is old enough to express interest in being baptized."

Soon she'll understand enough that they just might start asking her directly, and I have no idea how to handle it. Part of me thinks I will freak out on the first person to do it, as the last thing I want is for my daughter to face a lifetime of confusion over the "right" religious path. And god help them if they ever tell her that her parents aren't "really" married. Things could get mighty ugly.

So I was really intrigued by this story about the growing trend of baby blessing ceremonies.   Interfaith and nonreligious couples are increasingly opting for personal ceremonies in order to welcome their babies into the world:

Baby blessings can help fill the need for ritual, says Macomb. "If you’re not religious, or don’t belong to a specific religious community, you still have that need."

Their rise in popularity may be driven in part by some members of the post-baby boomer generation who have bypassed religious institutions and are experimenting in ways that make sense to them spiritually, said Richard Flory, a research associate at the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California.

"It usually comes out of a dissatisfaction of what they were brought up with," he said. "They don’t want to participate in (religious) institutions. But what they do want is to be part of some spiritual activity that meets their understanding, to create some sort of spiritual identity for themselves."

Baby blessings can take many forms. They can be held outdoors. You can light candles, sing songs, read poems, vow to love and protect your child, even baptize them outside of a church.

I must say I like the idea of some form of ritual or formal welcoming. We are hoping to have a second (and final) child. I will definitely consider the possibility of our very own baby blessing. We could include our older daughter and verbalize our devotion to our children, our intent to love them and guide them through life as best we can. It would be a public declaration that we're a family.

Have any of you held baby blessing ceremonies? How did you handle interfaith issues? If you baptized or christened your children, how did you come to that decision? For those of you that don't belong to a church, how have you explained faith and religion to your children?

I know different numbers have been bandied about in recent years but the latest government data shows that nearly 1 in 3 U.S. women had a C-section in 2005.

That compares to 1 in 5 women back in 1995:

The report also said that about 1.3 million women gave birth via Caesarean section in 2005 -- a 38 percent increase over the 800,000 Caesarean sections performed in 1995.

The increase occurred as vaginal deliveries among women who gave birth in hospitals declined from about 3 million in 1995 to 2.9 million in 2005 -- a decrease of 3 percent. The sharpest decline in vaginal deliveries in hospitals was among women who had previously given birth by Caesarean section.

I don't question the medical need for C-sections, but I do wonder why the rates have climbed so significantly. Like the article stated, one reason is that women who previously give birth by C-section are in many cases compelled by their doctors to have another C-section during subsequent births.

Of course, there are those cases of women who are "too posh to push" and schedule a C-section-- a la Christina Aguilera, who was afraid of tearing (aren't we all?).

But medical experts are increasingly ackowledging that many women have a "clinically significant" fear of childbirth that leads them to schedule C-sections:

These women also mentioned that they felt less happy before the delivery and were afraid their child would die. Dr Ingela Wiklund, from the division of obstetrics and gynaecology at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, led the study. She said "Women suffering from significant childbirth fear indicate that they are less self-confident, unhappy, afraid that the child will be injured and don't long for the child. This clearly emphasizes the need for pre- and post-natal support."

Many of the comments on Jezebel were predictably judgmental, in the "Get over it!" vein. I personally don't begrudge a woman's right to deliver her baby whichever way she sees fit. I was pretty terrified of childbirth myself; it stemmed from watching my own mother give birth when I was an impressionable 15-year-old. Best. Birth control. EVER.

Luckily, my own vaginal birth went smoothly almost 15 years later, and I'm grateful for that.

But there was one comment that resonated with me:

"What about the "clinically significant fear" of being sliced open?! While you're awake?! My clinically significant fear is of scalpels."

What about you ladies? Did you fear childbirth? Did you have planned or unplanned C-sections? For those of you that have delivered both vaginally and via C-section, how did the experiences compare?