The scene opens with an average looking 16-year-old boy, standing in front of an open closet in his messy bedroom, looking down at his phone. He’s wearing jeans, socks, and a T-shirt bearing the name of his high school with a picture of the mascot on the back. He looks up from his phone and opens the closet door wide, and we can see a full-sized mirror attached to the inside of the door. He glances back down at his phone, his thumbs furiously flying for a couple of second before tossing the phone on over to his bed, he grabs the shoulders of his shirt (the way only boys do) and pulls it off over his head – he looks at himself for just a moment, admiring his potential six pack. Reaching for his phone again, he looks over at his bedroom door to double check that he locked it and in one swift motion, he pulls his jeans and underwear down to his ankles and snaps a picture in the mirror (from the knees up) and before he can change his mind, he Snapchats it to the girl in his class that he hooked up with at the party last night. He quickly throws the phone back on the bed, pulls up his pants, puts his shirt back on and unlocks his bedroom door…the whole thing taking less than 60 seconds to maneuver.

I’m Ann Coleman, and this is Speaking of Teens

This nearly identical scenario just played out in the bedroom or bathroom of millions of teenagers across the world. Perhaps in your home. Sexting, a word first coined by the Daily Telegraph in 2005, has become ubiquitous among adolescents.

Just to make it formal – because you couldn’t possibly not know what it is; sexting is loosely defined as the sending or receiving of sexual content over the internet and via cell phones. Now that all of our kids have a cell phone in their pocket, sexting is as easy as – well – texting! Just a tiny bit of privacy, a few seconds and you can send or receive a sext.

In today’s episode 32, we’re going to talk about just how many teens do it, why they do it, the specific risks involved and how we should think about it and deal with it as parents.

First, because sexting is a fairly recent phenomenon in the realm of scientific research – we’ve only had the ability sext with ease for around 15 years – and researchers only began studying it about 10 years ago so there are some issues still to be ironed out in the research so we can understand it better. For one thing, scientists don’t use one single definition of sexting, so the data from the research is not easily compared. Some include non-consensual sexts in their data collection, others include only those sent with full consent, some include sending sexual content in text and others define sexting as only when images are sent, some include when teens forward sexts on to others and some researchers don’t. I’ll try to be as clear as I can while we’re talking about this today.

The first thing I wanted to know when I started my research was how prevalent is sexting among teenagers? Again, remembering that different researchers define sexting differently, it’s been reported that anywhere from about 15% to 60% of teens have participated in sexting. So, we’re going to have to look at it a little closer, right?

At least one study has shown that around 15% of teens have sent a sext and around 27% have received them. Another study found that around 40% of boys and 30% of girls have received a sext (specifically with a nude photo). It’s really hard to say whether girls or boys send them more often than the other – the survey results are all over the place. But it does look like boys do more of the requesting of photos and there’s evidence that more girls are asked to provide sexts than actually do – some refuse even under the pressure of coercion. It also appears that boys are most likely to show people or forward sexts they’ve received. Significantly, one survey found that 90% of adolescents think most everyone else is sexting (which we know from other research, in their mind, gives them permission to do it). It’s also pretty clear that the rates of sexting have increased over the years as the number of teens with smart phones have increased. There’s also a consensus that the older teens get, the more likely they are to sext

So, what about this question - is all this sexting completely voluntary and free from coercion? Some studies say the majority of the time – yes, it is. But at least one survey indicated that only 30% of teens send sexts completely voluntary - the rest said they’d felt pressured or coerced in some way to sext. There’s at least one study where more than twice as many boys as girls said they’d never felt pressured to sext. Another survey of over 2000 European adolescents revealed that of the kids who’d received a sext, around a quarter of them said it had made them uncomfortable or upset them in some way.

So, you can see we have to cobble together all these surveys and statistics to get any sort of picture of what’s really going on. Let’s just talk for a minute about the teens who sext completely voluntarily – no coercion.

There are experts who see consensual sexting as a normative behavior for teens – just an extension of experimenting with their sexuality and seeking sexual individuation. They just happen to have a device that allows them to do it in some interesting ways. And apps that give them a false sense of security because they disappear after a few seconds. They say these nude selfies or suggestive, partially nude pictures can be interpreted as digital flirting (when it’s strictly teen to teen). And actually, there is evidence that most teen sexting occurs in the context of a romantic relationship – either a current boyfriend/girlfriend or a person they want to be with. Of course, we also know there are plenty of cases when there’s coercion in a romantic relationship so just because it’s between romantic partners doesn’t mean it’s consensual.

Of course, experts acknowledge that this sexting behavior is greatly influenced by several societal factors. For example, a 21^st century teen’s consumption of pornography and other sex in media and pop culture has greatly influenced sexting. Kids are now seeing porn for the first time on average at about 11 ½ years old – around 6^th grade in the US. I was in my 20s – what about you? In one survey at least half of the adolescents said they’d seen pornography and 8% said they watched it every day – and this was much more common for the boys. As we’ve mentioned before, exposure to pornography and the unrealistic portrayal of sex no doubt this plays into what adolescents see as normal sexual behavior for themselves and their romantic partners. The objectification and degradation of women, misogyny, sexual harassment, rape culture, all stem from pornography. So, it’s no wonder sexting is such an issue and so many boys ask girls to do it and even coerce them into doing it.

There’s also a study that links sexualized music lyrics to sexting in boys (but not girls). Sex accounts for 40% of themes in the top billboard songs and is a recurring theme in other genres like Country and Southern Rock. But Rap is the worst offender of all – it’s more than twice as likely to contain what the study called “sexual and sexually objectifying lyrics” compared to other music genres. I considered reading some of the music lyrics here, and I’m no prude, but I can’t do it – it’s just crazy that’s what our kids are exposed to – whether we want them to be or not – they hear it. Poor Tipper Gore I’m sure never realized it could get this bad. (if you’re not old enough to remember Tipper, just Google, “Tipper Gore and Music”). Let’s just put it this way, Prince and Cyndi Lauper have nothing on Eminem, Nicki Minaj, Ludacris or Cardi B. And the constant exposure to the vulgarity in this music, just like exposure to porn, desensitizes teens and makes things we would have never considered doing at their age, seem perfectly acceptable.

There’s also research that tends to show that certain teens may be more prone to sexting because of personality traits or mental health disorders. Teens with lower self-esteem, teens who are more extraverted, more impulsive or sensation seeking (hello ADHD), teens who are more concerned with seeking acceptance or popularity, (especially girls seeking popularity with boys). And it looks like perhaps those who are already more popular may be more likely to sext. It’s also been shown that those who are less self-disciplined and less achievement oriented may be more vulnerable. Sexting has also been linked to teens with anxiety or depression, teens using substances, having unprotected sex, having more than once sexual partner, not using contraception. Sexting is a risky endeavor just like a lot of the things teens experiment with.

As we know, a teens’ prefrontal cortex is not fully formed – that they have a lack of self-control and good decision making. Their reward system and emotional centers are much stronger, so they do things that feel good in the moment even when they’re absolutely fully aware of the potential unpleasant consequences – the reward outweighs the negatives. But if there unfinished brain were the whole reason for this risky behavior, there wouldn’t be so many adults sexting and getting in trouble for it (I’m talking to you Anthony Weiner, Jeff Bezos, Adam Levine – note, those are all men). Obviously, there’s a level of impulsivity associated with sexting for any age. And that impulsivity can definitely lead to some major risks – especially for teens.

Let this sink in - your teen is not immune to sexting – not immune to sharing a naked photo of themselves or asking someone else for one or possibly coercing someone else for one or sharing a photo of someone with another person. I know – we can’t imagine it – but no parent can imagine their kid doing things like this and it happens every day.

Let’s talk about those risks and the non-consensual side of sexting. Probably the most common form of nonconsensual activity involving teens and sexting is the sharing of someone’s picture or video without their permission. Now, researchers tend to look at this issue in a couple of different contexts regarding the intent of the person doing the sharing. In the first case, you have a kid who’s received a picture and screen shots it or takes a picture of someone and shows it to friends or lets other people look over their shoulder or posts it online just because they think it’s funny. Again, remember the impulsivity factor here. They look at this as having no real intent to harm the person in the picture – it’s just done on impulse. A survey of teens and young adults from age 13 to 30 found that 13% had distributed a sext (a text, a picture, or a video) of someone else, without their consent.

Now, before you go thinking, well, that alone enough to scare my kid into not sexting in the first place – not so fast – I read some quotes from several teenagers saying something like, “yes, I know once I send that picture, it’s out into the world and I can’t take it back”, “yep, I might apply for a job one day and my interviewer might pull up some porn site with me on it.” “I realize they can screen shot my picture and show it to anyone they want”…but I’m still gonna’ do it.

And if you’ll remember, we’ve talked about this in previous podcast episodes. Adolescents do not have an invincibility complex (we all tend to think – that won’t happen to me – maybe someone else, but not me – it’s a cognitive bias) but teens are no more prone to thinking that way than an adult. Teens know the risks, they listen to us, they hear the warnings all around them. But what happens is, they weigh the risk against the reward – the immediate satisfaction, the excitement, the fun, the gratification, and decide the opportunity to experience the reward is worth every bit of the risk of the consequences (especially when they’re around their friends). The reward outweighs the risk instead of the other way around. They know the odds. They’re playing the odds.

It sounds completely unreasonable and irrational to us. But not in their teenage brain. The best we can hope for is that they will learn to pause long enough before doing something so their prefrontal cortex can catch up with their reward system and yell-STOP!!!!

So, back to sharing images without permission. A teen is likely to share a naked picture with a friend without thinking twice about it – “Look, look, look!” – they may share it because they’re excited, they have it or because they think it’s funny but with no motivation to harm the person who sent it. On the other hand, there are cases where there is intent to harm the sender. Generally, researchers say revenge porn is when the sender’s image is shared or posted without permission, in the context of an intimate or romantic relationship, with the intent of harm.

So, maybe the teens break up and one or both of them have intimate images of the other and they each start posting and sending and showing them around. Or maybe a teen was sending pics to another teen who was receptive to it, and they had a little thing going, but the receiver was “found out” somehow and decided to take a defensive approach, “I didn’t ask for this – I don’t know why he sent this picture to me – I’m not gay, I swear” and to prove it, they post, share, make fun – that’s also in the realm of revenge porn.

Now, of course, the word, porn is a bit of a misnomer. This is obviously not what we think of as “porn” – this is not meant to be porn – it’s a form of cyberbullying and the image may end up on a porn site or it may not. But the term porn as it’s used here really comes from the legal side of this – and we’ll actually talk more about cyberbullying and the legal issues in a couple of follow up episodes over the next couple of weeks.

Of course, any and all non-consensual sharing of sexts should be lumped together. It doesn’t matter the intent of the person doing the sharing. You can call it all revenge porn if intimate images of a teenager weren’t meant to be shared, the results are the same for subject of the photo or video. It’s horrifying and life-altering.

But revenge is certainly the goal for many. There are literally somewhere around 2,000 revenge porn websites and apps out there with the sole purpose of allowing people to upload photos of someone purely for the humiliation and pain it will cause. Anyway, research shows that revenge porn rates have nearly doubled since 2019 – at least in part due to the proliferation of these despicable sites. And some experts point to COVID as one reason rates have increased – perhaps when people were trapped at home more sexting was going on, which was then followed up later with revenge porn.

But it was certainly going on before COVID. In England and Wales in 2019 there were more than 500 reported cases of adolescents (some as young as 10!) being victims of “revenge porn”. Then in Australia, there were more than 600 cases in the first quarter of 2022 – approximately double compared to 2021. I couldn’t find any specific numbers on teens in the US, but one survey conducted by the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative polled 1606 people age 18 to 30 (so they included the top end of adolescents). 23% of them said they’d been victims of revenge porn, of which, 27% were between 18 and 22; still adolescents. And from what I’ve read in the various research and reports, it appears LGBTQIA+ kids are victimized at much higher-than-average rates across the board – every kind of cyberbullying including revenge porn.

Because adolescents live online, their digital reputation is everything, it’s their life. When their explicit image is shared, no matter the intent of the person sharing, something like this happens to them, they can’t see a world in which their life will be normal again. To them, their life as it was, has ended. At a time when they’re embarrassed and self-conscious and want nothing more in the world than to fit in and be accepted and liked and even popular. Having someone share a nude or partially nude photo or video or even a sexually explicit text, could be psychologically devastating. Their entire reputation, how people see them, is completely annihilated. They don’t want to show their faces. They don’t want to go to school. They don’t want to talk to anyone. They feel like they have no way forward. The mental and emotional consequences are devastating. There’s depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts and even completed suicide.

We’ll talk about what we can do to help our kids in a minute, but first you need to be familiar with another horrific type of cyberbullying associated with the non-consensual side of sexting: sextortion, which is basically the use of sexting for extortion or blackmail. The general scientific definition of sextortion offered by the researchers at cyberbullying.org is “the threatened dissemination of explicit, intimate, or embarrassing images of a sexual nature without consent, usually for the purpose of procuring additional images, sexual acts, money, or something else.” As we’ll see in a minute, it’s almost always adults who perpetrate this crime on teens. There’s evidence that only around 1% to just over 3% of teens have ever committed the crime of sextortion and when they do, it’s usually a male perpetrator and a male victim.

The motivation for a teen perpetrator is essentially the same as an adult; to get more photos, have the victim perform a sex act or give them money. And the threats are the same (I’ll send the pictures to your friends and family or post it online). In a recent survey done by the researchers behind cyberbullying.org, about half the teen victims simply refused to comply. And as it turned out, the perpetrator did not end up sharing the pictures about 40% of the time. But the other half of the victims did whatever they were asked (they gave more photos, performed sex acts, or gave them money). And unfortunately, just less than half of these teens reported the sextortion to an adult.

But as I said a minute ago, most sextortion cases are perpetrated by adults and mostly against teen boys. Just last Monday, December 19^th, the FBI issued a warning about the staggering increase in adolescent sextortion cases in 2022. They’ve seen a 10-fold increase over last year with at least 3000 teen victims (again, mostly boys) with this crime being blamed for over a dozen suicides. This is a critical issue for our teenagers who are easy prey for these disgusting adult criminals. And this isn’t just a crime taking place in the US – there are thousands upon thousands of teen victims of sextortion around the world.

Usually what happens is the criminal will take on a fake persona – if the target is a 16-year-old boy, they may pretend to be a 17-year-old girl that lives the next town over, is a cheerleader, good looking and interested in him. Before long the perpetrator may send a naked picture of a teen girl claiming it’s them and ask for a naked photo in return. And as soon as the kid complies the sham is usually over and the perpetrator begins threatening the victim (I’ll post the photo online, send them to your friends, your family, or I’ll hurt you or your family etc.) unless they send more photos, or money or gift cards or whatever.

One case the FBI highlights on their website is that of a perpetrator, Justin Testani. Testani, a grown man living in Florida, befriended Presley, a 13-year old girl, through what the FBI refers to as “a popular messaging app” – I imagine that was Snapchat. Anyway, it started out friendly because Presley thought she was communicating with another 13-year-old girl. They exchanged photos in different outfits and messaged for several weeks until Testani got his chance. Presley, who was probably goofing around with whom she thought was a friend, sent a “mildly revealing photo” and Testani pounced. At that point revealed he was grown man and demanded that she perform graphic acts over a video call. He told her he knew where she lived, where she went to school and that he’d come and rape her and he knew where her mom worked and he’d send someone to kill her, if she didn’t do what he said.

He had already taken over this social media account (so she knew he could share the photo) and was in the process of having her open a new account so they could still communicate when she was able to contact her mom. She was literally terrified. But thank goodness she was brave enough to reach out to her parents because this guy had done this to hundreds of victims all over the US, some as young as 10-years-old.

We worry about our kids out driving and drinking and doing drugs, but this can happen to them in the security of our home. Right in front of us. And these criminals are heartless, relentless, and cruel.

Ryan Last , a 17-year-old boy from California, made straight As and was a member of the boy scouts. He and his mother had just visited a handful of colleges he was considering attending after graduation. Days later a teenage girl reached out to Ryan on social media, and they started talking. Only, it wasn’t a girl, it was a grown man who as it turns out, was part of a West African financial extortion ring. The conversation Ryan had, with whom he thought was a girl his age, got intimate pretty quickly. This man sent Ryan a nude photo of a young girl – who he was pretending to be and asked Ryan to send a nude photo of himself back. And he did. Immediately, this criminal demanded $5,000 from Ryan or he’d post the photo publicly and send it to his family and friends. Ryan told the man he didn’t have that much money and even sent him $150 from his college fund, but this man was relentless and kept on and on at him and within just a couple of hours, Ryan took his own life. His mom says the note he left behind showed how terrified he was and that he was so embarrassed for himself and his family. He said he saw no way out other than to take his life. Just last week authorities arrested the 25-year-old criminal who also lived in California and they’re looking for other victims.

Ryan’s story is one of many. In May of this year a Michigan 17-year old, Jordan DeMay took his life just hours after the exact same thing happened to him. Brandon Guffey of South Carolina took his life in July after falling victim to the identical scam. His father, a South Carolina state house representative is pushing a bill in the state to make sextortion a crime punishable by up to 30 years in prison. I’m not sure 30 years is enough for these deplorable scum.

I’m sure there are countless stories like this across the world. And often these perpetrators (just like with sexual abuse cases) hide in plain sight. We don’t know who could be doing this to our kids on their phone or computer.

For example, a 33 year old Branson Missouri high school teacher was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison back in August of this year for sextortion against 11 kids around the US, apparently using the Kik app. Law enforcement found an external hard drive hidden in his house with thousands of images of kids and teens – many of whom have yet to be identified. The Department of Justice press release sounds like these victims were probably girls. He pretended to be a 15-year-old boy and tricked them into sending naked pictures - and like other perpetrators, he threatened to send them out and post them online unless they sent him more. He didn’t want money – he wanted more photos.

But sextortion perpetrators don’t always use trickery. There have also been cases where the perpetrator hacks a teen’s phone, snapchat app or Instagram account and gains access to nude photos that way somehow and then begins threatening them. So, if teens have sent pictures to someone else that didn’t share them, these types of perpetrators may still be able to get them.

According to another DOJ press release in the fall of 2019, Barton Scott, a 36-year-old man (and registered sex offender) was sentenced to 25 years in prison for hacking into dozens of teens’ Snapchat accounts, somehow gaining access to sensitive photos and then threatened to disseminate them unless they sent him explicit photos and videos.

It’s so scary. It’s scary that teens know about this and still fall victim. And not one of the parents whose kids have sexted or been victims of revenge porn or sextortion thought their kid would ever, ever make a naked photo of themselves and send it to someone – not someone they were dating and especially not someone they’d never met in person. But it happens. Every day it happens. It doesn’t mean they’re stupid or irresponsible or perverted…it means they’re working with an unfinished brain just like every other adolescent out there. And it takes seconds for them to do something they could regret more than anything they’ve ever done. BUT, that’s not what they’re thinking about in the moment when they hit send. It just isn’t. Their brain’s sloshing around in all that extra dopamine. It’s exciting, it’s new, it’s a rush – someone is interested enough in them to want to see them naked. The regret only sets in after the break up or after the photo is leaked to someone else or posted online or they’re threatened to send more photos or send money or do something else for them.

We can’t blame teenagers for this. Remind yourself of how their brain works – of how much further it still has to go before it can make better decisions. If this happens to your kid (or has happened to your kid), they almost assuredly think you’re going to blame them. They will not come to you if they feel that way. They need to know you’ve got their back and that mistakes like this do happen to other people and that it can be overcome together. This is not one of those mistakes where you set back and let them deal with the natural consequences. This falls into the danger zone – all the zones. Because if they think you’ll be upset with them, lecture them, punish them, or shame them, they might as well let the perpetrator do that.

Remember that many kids are very reluctant to tell an adult when sexting goes wrong. You’re no good to your kid if they don’t feel like they can tell you sensitive things. If they don’t think you will understand. If they don’t see your empathy on a regular basis. If you continually lecture and fuss and nag and punish them in the regular course of business, you will not hear about the revenge porn or the sextortion. They’ll be afraid you’ll freak out on them. They will try and handle it themselves. And as we’ve seen, that can have disastrous results. It's because of the rare situation like this – the ones you assume will never happen – the ones you can’t believe would ever happen – that you need to make sure your relationship is prepared. You need to be certain that your connection with your teen is so strong that they’ll come to you, without fear, when something awful happens to them. It’s the awful things you really want them to be able to talk to you about. So, you have to start there – your connection – your relationship. But what else? What do we do with this information about sexting, revenge porn and sextortion?

Well, the researchers at cyberbullying.org feel it’s time to teach safe sexting. Justin Patchin and Sameer Hinduja argue that trying to convince them not to do it, educating them about the risks, including revenge porn and sextortion, isn’t working and won’t ever work. Like I said earlier, kids know the risks yet, they’re willing to take their chances in the moment, like all the risky things they do. Patchin and Hinduja liken this situation to sex education. They argue that telling kids “just don’t ever send a nude photo and you’ll never have to worry about revenge porn or sextortion” is the same as telling kids, “just don’t have sex and you’ll never have to worry about diseases and pregnancy”. They point out that the abstinence argument for sex didn’t work and neither with the abstinence for sexting. We’ve come to accept teaching kids to have safe sex, so we need to do the same here and teach safe sexting. That’s the argument in a nutshell.

In other words, we need to accept that our kid might sext (or have sex or do drugs or drink or vape or anything else) and in addition to teaching them about the potential consequences of doing these things, we need to also provide them with guidance on (as they put it) “preventing major fallout during and after”. We tell our kids, never attempt to drink, and drive, call me, call an Uber, have a designated driver. So, let’s do the same thing here.

Yes, it’s important that kids know the consequences and that we try to deter them from engaging in risky behavior. But, the fact is, that’s simply not possible for many of them. It’s not possible because of their brain. It’s not possible because they play the odds. I’ll link in the show notes to their article in the Journal of Adolescent Health as well as the article on cyberbullying.org that summarizes it. They make a very convincing argument that we need to guide our kids in this area, acknowledging that of course we don’t want our kids sending dick pics and sexy topless selfies …and, as we’ll discuss in the next episode, that those photos could be considered child pornography under the law.

In the full journal article, they list 10 things that we need to make sure our teens understand so they can reduce the potential for harm when they or someone else they know sends a sext. Patchin and Hinduja aren’t the only academics ringing the “safe sext” bell. Others around the world are already teaching this. And here in the US a couple of Harvard sociologists, Emily Weinstein and Carrie James, have been collecting data on teens and their digital lives for over 5 years. They’ve written a book called “Behind Their Screens: What Teens Are Facing (And Adults Are Missing)”. I haven’t read it yet but it’s another one on my list now. Don’t worry, I’ll link to it.

Weinstein and James interviewed over 3,000 kids ages 12 to 18 about their phones and other screens and how they influence their lives, and they have a message for us. WAKE UP! The “just say no” approach to sexting will not work. They, just like Patchin and Hinduja, compare it to the abstinence only education that failed to help teens navigate what they were really doing (rather than abstaining). If we just tell our kids “don’t do it” and they go and do it anyway (because that’s how they’re wired), we haven’t helped them a bit. We’ve left them completely high and dry. They sext despite what they know about the risks – yes, they make bad decisions. We should be used to that by now.

One thing that Weinstein and James mention that Patchin and Hinduja didn’t include in their tips about sexting, is pretty freakin’ brilliant…some teens (in addition to cropping their face out and clearing all other identifying objects out of the photo) will imbed a watermark on their photo with the recipient’s name so if the recipient leaks the photo, it will be traced back to that person.

Another thing mentioned is that some girls even search for “body doubles” online somewhere and send them to the recipient instead. And at the same time, they’d screen shot the whole page of search results and send it to close friends so if that fake photo was ever leaked, they could prove it wasn’t even them in the photo.

So, these kids aren’t stupid. Many are taking precautions – some that would make a CIA agent proud – and they think parents are completely unrealistic when we tell them – just don’t sext.

So, in addition to those couple of tips, and the 10 in Patchin and Hinduja’s article, I’m going to link to several other articles about safe sexting and talking to your kids about sexting, from a variety of sources. I want to continue this conversation next week along with the legal side of things. I would have drafted a download for you with all these tips in it but I’m recording this the day after Christmas – the day before it drops – and I’ve worked on the research for days including 12 and 14 hours on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day – and I just couldn’t get it all done. So, I’ll plan on having a download of tips and advice for you next week and probably talk about it in that episode as well.

Here's what I’ll leave you with: Remember, your connection to your teen is what will keep you influential in their lives. Being able to not freak out over something you discover or something they tell you will help keep you in the loop. Your kid needs to know they can count on you when they’re in a jam. Make sure they see that. Don’t just say the words. Let them see it in your actions. Your empathy, your calm compassion and validating of them as an individual. Treat them with respect. Don’t kid yourself about their world. Accept that they’re going to take some risks and not take others. You don’t know which are which, so cover your bases. Talk to your kid about this. Buy Weinstein and James’ book – it sounds great.

I hope you had a great weekend with your family and enjoyed the holidays or are still enjoying the holidays and I’ll see you again next Tuesday. Until then, eat up the last of the nasty calorie-filled goo sitting around and get ready for the New Year!