The world of preteen and teen sexual exploration has changed dramatically since today’s parents were that age. Since our culture pushes our kids to be ’sexy’ before puberty begins, it’s more important than ever that we give our children the best “owner’s manual” that we can to their newly developing bodies.

The Talk helps parents explain the power of sexuality in a way that promotes healthy, age-appropriate behavior and draws connections between sexual biology and the portrayal of sex as seen in this techno-erotic culture of ours.

Much earlier than we imagine, our daughters especially begin noticing the new power that comes with developing a tween or teen female body. They are bombarded with marketing messages insisting that being ’sexy’ is critical to social acceptance.

If you as their parents do not step in to shape your children’s beliefs and character and provide some sane and trustworthy guidance, then they will learn it from their friends or worse, the television and other media where sex is a commodity to be traded and bartered in the pursuit of other desirable things like social status, affection or otherwise.

The Talk helps parents explain the social power that comes from looking sexy, and the personal responsibility each of us has to use that power appropriately.

I was impressed by the connections that Maxwell draws between biology and culture. She argues that tweens and teens don’t understand why Victoria’s Secret is such a powerful draw. Maxwell says that tweens and teens can benefit greatly from learning about the sexual drive in a context that describes it as part of the miracle of procreation.

Maxwell argues that if we properly explain the biology of sexuality, intercourse and pregnancy, then our youth will be less confused by our hyper-sexual culture and will be more apt to behave responsibly.

Michael Sokolove wrote Warrior Girls: Protecting Our Daughters Against the Injury Epidemic in Women’s Sports and has some very important things to say about sports and our culture’s view of girls.

He describes the differences between boys and girls as they mature from children into adolescents and young adults. During puberty, boys develop muscle mass and strength as a natural consequence the process. On the other hand, girls do not have the testosterone levels to stimulate that same muscle mass and strength development. Girls gain flexibility instead of strength.

The problem with that is that our joints require strong muscles to protect them during sports play. In addition, our culture frowns upon girls lifting weights for strength and praises, thin, weak females. Since girls don’t naturally develop much muscle strength and don’t develop it on their own to a large extent, girls suffer a much higher rate of injury to those unprotected joints.

I know from experience the importance of having strong muscles to protect our joints. I began triathlons a few years ago and never did any strength training for my legs. Not long after I began biking and running, I developed knee pain.

A top sports medicine doctor said nothing was wrong with my knee except that I had weak quadriceps. He prescribed weightlifting and said, “the quads are the great protectors of the knee.”

I did minimal lifting twice a week and three months later, I had no knee pain.

If your child is a female and plays sports, make sure she understands the importance of a little strength training.

The Vermont Legislature is the first among the states to do the right thing and update its child pornography laws to bring them in line with the changing technological times.

At the time most child pornography laws were written, no one could have imagined that teens would be using cell phone cameras to take naked pictures of themselves and sending them via text message to friends.

That’s the reason overzealous police were able to charge teen girls with violating laws against distributing child pornography. The laws just weren’t written with that kind of behavior in mind.

The laws were written to protect teens from being exploited. They weren’t written to punish the victimless behavior of the teens, no matter how tasteless and immature it was.

I’ve written about the hypocrisy of charging people with violating the very law that was written to protect them elsewhere in this child injury blog. In this post, I just wish to recognize Vermont as a thought leader and applaud the speed with which the state acted to prevent the stupid, unnecessary and even tragic consequences of punishing these girls as sex offenders.

David Martin, a 40-year-old Rockledge man, was arrested and charged with sexual battery. Because the boys are 12 or older but less than 18 and Martin was a person in a position of authority, Martin will be charged with a first degree felony. Martin was also charged with lewd or lascivious molestation.

Two boys, ages 11 and 13, said that Martin molested them inside a cabin at the Life for Youth Church Camp in Vero Beach. The boys were visiting the camp as part of a church group from the Faith Fellowship Church in Melbourne.

Of course the perpetrator was “very well liked and someone who was very active with the kids and just had great relationships with the adults and children” the news report reads.

Martin attracted several hundred children to his congregation. At the time this blog was published, no other victims had come forward.

I would be quite surprised if a civil lawsuit did not arise from this in addition to the criminal charges. This type of behavior is dispicable. I wonder if there were warning signs from previous boys at previous camps.

This type of behavior is usually habitual and a 40-year-old has likely left signs that he had committed these acts previously. That is why I am going to lobby the Florida Legislature to enact a law providing for civil remedies against people who fail to report suspected child abuse of any kind,  sexual or otherwise.

Now, istitutions have no incentive to train employees to look for telltail signs of abuse and investigate them appropriately because the only punishment for remaining silent while a child is abused is criminal. The institutions can not be held liable under today’s law.

They should be liable. We entrust our children to them and they should be trained to detect abuse and required to report it. Stay tuned to this blog for further news on my lobbying efforts.

The girls are charged with possession of, and manufacturing and distributing child pornography. While absolutely tasteless, the behavior was in no way criminal.

The girls voluntarily took naked or near-naked self-portraits with their phones, and then sent them to the boys via text message (hence the moniker “sexting”). One Florida cyber crime lawyer points out that these charges make the girls “simultaneously the victims and the perpetrators of the alleged crime — a nonsensical situation.” Indeed.

I admit their acts were tasteless, immature and childish, but law enforcement’s response was even more so. What we have here is a typical situation of teenagers exploring their sexuality. The girls were certainly naïve and lacked foresight, but that’s just par for the course as teens. It is certainly not criminal. To charge them with child pornography is a result that can be reached by using only the most faulty of reasoning.

The problem here is law enforcement officials’ rote application of a rule without thinking. Child pornography laws are intended to protect our youth from adults who seek to exploit them. The laws were never intended to protect teens from their own sexual curiosity or consensual behavior with each other.

If I were the teenagers’ attorney, I would advise them to counter-sue the school and police for violating their right to privacy. The pictures were discovered after a teacher confiscated one of their phones because the owner was using it during school hours.

Where people have a reasonable expectation of privacy, it is illegal for others to intrude. One may argue that the girls did not have an expectation of privacy because they sent the pictures via text message. However, federal law recognizes a right to privacy in telephone conversations. I see no meaningful differences between a phone conversation and a text message.

I doubt that these charges will stand, but this episode is not isolated and should stand as a sharp reminder that we should all think before we misapply a rule or law in contexts where it is not appropriate. Legislatures across the country need to address this problem in their next session.

Otherwise, teens could find themselves subject to lifelong sex offender registration requirements. State legislatures must fix this problem. They would be irresponsible to allow the mindless enforcement of laws out of the context they were intended for to ruin the lives of some teens simply because those teens behaved stupidly.

Putting teens in jail doesn’t protect them or other youths from sexual predators.

I’ll be blogging about many issues including lawyer advertising in Florida and why it is so awful (we have the Florida Bar to thank for that). The chilling effect of the Florida Bar’s heavy handed enforcement of its advertising rules is a theme will run though this blog and was the inspiration for its title. In addition to commenting on lawyer advertising, I will also be lobbying the Florida Legislature to reform and improve our laws on child abuse. This blog will follow those efforts closely. Other blog topics will include legal discussions of negligence in nursing homes, accidents and medical settings. Finally, my personal interests will certainly shine through now and again.

That’s all for now. You’ll learn much more about me in the future. For now, I’m headed out for a 70 mile bicycle ride. I’m training for the Florida Ironman. Swim 2.4 miles, Bike 112 miles, Run 26.2 miles, brag for the rest of your life.