The geek lifestyle

At long last, there’s a national best-selling book that offers practical and proven advice on many of the social ills that plague our nation.

This book explains with measured solutions how to curb childhood obesity and enhance children’s nutrition, improve communication between married couples and among parents and their kids, instill sound values in the next generation, conduct civil political discourse, engage in community involvement and service, improve time-management skills, avoid the pitfalls of media saturation and much more.

The author isn’t a physician or a policy expert or a social scientist; she’s not a preacher or a teacher — she’s not even certified in her field. Nonetheless, if every American family purchased this book and followed the simple recipes for living contained in it, our communities and our country would be profoundly better off.

She's opinionated. She's controversial. She's a grizzly mama. And her outspoken comments about certain Americans are generating Twitter memes and death threats.

She's not Sarah Palin; she's Yale Law professor Amy Chua, author of the new book "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother," a tell-all about her successful (and not-so-successful) use of "Chinese parenting" to raise her two daughters.

Released last week with an excerpt in the Wall Street Journal, Mrs. Chua's book has garnered the attention of parents, parenting experts and Asian-American culture observers thanks to her provocative assertions that Western parents are too concerned with our children's happiness, compared to "Chinese mothers" who, in her view, are correctly obsessed with their children's achievements and success.

Mrs. Chua uses the term "Chinese mothers" broadly to describe a stereotypically Asian style of authoritarian parenting. Compared to Western parents, she makes sweeping generalizations, such as that:

A week ago, the tragic suicide of Rutgers University freshman Tyler Clementi prompted me and countless other columnists to consider the rising rates of bullying among our nation's youth and young adults.

Mr. Clementi was the apparent victim of an invasion of privacy, as a fellow student reportedly used a hidden camera to stream Mr. Clementi's sexual liaison over the Internet. The humiliation of this incident led to his decision to end his life by jumping off a bridge.

The nation is reeling from this and several other recent suicides attributed to ongoing bullying and harassment. Meanwhile, news stories of more incidents of bullying are becoming as regular as the weather report.

To wit: "Delaware Teen Knocks Over Portable Toilet With Boy Inside."

This time, according to the report, a 14-year-old bully threatened a group of 7-year-olds in a Newark, Del., park until one of them, in an attempt to defuse the threats, complied with the bully's demand that he enter a portable toilet. The older boy then knocked over the toilet, leaving the younger child screaming and covered in human waste.

Reports say the bully laughed and walked away while the victim's young companions scurried to get their pal out of the unit and find help.

The marching band, the tailgate parties, the chill in the air and even fireworks when the home team scored a touchdown — all the trappings of a perfect college football game created a magical parents weekend on our daughter's university campus.

But while we mingled casually with her friends and their families, the students at Rutgers University were forced to entertain an unwelcome visitor to their campus: Grief.

Last week, Rutgers freshman Tyler Clementi learned he had been videoed without his knowledge while engaged in a gay sexual encounter in the privacy of his dorm room. Authorities say the videographers were his roommate, Dharun Ravi, and another student, Molly Wei. Mr. Ravi set up a camera in the room so that he and Miss Wei could stream the video live online, police said.

Upon learning of his exploitation, Mr. Clementi sought redress through university housing authorities but apparently was emotionally unable to accept the public humiliation to which he had been subject. His Facebook status, "Jumping off the gw bridge sorry," conveys in its brevity his helpless desperation.

Even before I have the chance to stow my purse and kick off my sandals, my son pops into the room to ask: "What are the new rules?"

"Rules?"

"Yeah," he says. "I figured since the parent meeting at school was mandatory, they must be telling you about all sorts of new rules."

"Nope," I reassure him. "Same rules as before."

He can't imagine what administrators and parents would need to discuss if not some sort of complex rubric to define the various rings of hell one might be required to visit in the event of a behavioral lapse.

I explain that the meeting wasn't about school policy, but rather about the school's mission. "You might say it was a mission-effectiveness seminar for parents," I say.

He glazes over and then says, "Huh? Well, good night."

Sometimes I wonder whether my parish priests stand outside the windows listening to what goes on in my house during the week. How else could they deliver homilies from Sunday to Sunday that speak directly to the things we face at home?

One week we'll be dealing with financial worries, and the sermon is about trusting God to provide everything we need, even if we can't quite see how that's possible.

Another week will find us stressed by too many obligations and commitments, and we'll hear a lesson reminding us "From everyone to whom much is given, much will be required" (Luke 12:48).

Either the stuff we're dealing with is universal, or someone is feeding talking points to the padres.

This week, Father Joe displayed his typical, uncanny insight into my family's spiritual challenges. How did he know we're getting a little tired of spending so much time together, sharing bathrooms and cars, wondering when someone else will take a turn to replace the shampoo or fill up the tank?

Must be my family isn't the only one counting the days until school starts. Either that or short tempers are serendipitously part of the liturgical calendar.

"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.
 

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.

They're everywhere and you simply cannot escape them. They follow you to church on Sundays. They sit behind you on airplanes, in restaurants, even in the waiting room at the doctor's office. They disrupt family reunions and days at the beach.

They're the unwelcome but ever-present subtext to countless moments of irritation and unpleasantness. And now that it's summer, they're out with a vengeance, just waiting to raise your blood pressure and steal the peace of mind you hoped to find with a good book in a park, or over coffee with a friend, or while enjoying a movie with your spouse.

It's not politically correct to admit that you don't like them, but let's all confess our contempt for these ruthless killjoys and demand that someone do something about their growing numbers and the inescapable destruction they are causing civilization as we know it.

Next week, the U.S. Senate is slated to take up a long-planned and unprecedented overhaul of the American health care system. In such an effort, I'm certain these lawmakers will overlook a huge but hidden cost of their massive national health care program, that being the indubitable spike in high blood pressure among those taxpayers who read newspaper articles about health care reform and then pace across the kitchen, fuming. To wit: My husband.

I hope Altace is one of the drugs the government plans to hand out like candy on Halloween when it imposes its new system to assure our good health.