Online pictures, videos and conversations remain online and can easily be made public. What was once a private, fleeting moment of adolescent foolishness can now quickly become a lasting, public display that may impact on a child’s life well into college and even beyond.

Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that studies children’s media behaviors, recently conducted a poll of teenagers and parents. The study found that parents don’t know how their children use internet sites like Facebook, Myspace and Bebo, but also that children don’t know how closely they are being watched.

This latter point is interesting because it begs the question: if 82 percent of parents check their child’s online profile regularly, and less than one quarter of children think they’re being watched, how is it that parents are so clueless? Well here are the facts:

* 49 percent of parents reported that their child was 13 or older before they used the Internet unsupervised. However, only 14 percent of teenagers said they waited that long.

* 23 percent of parents thought their children log onto social networking sites more than once a day while in actuality 51 percent of teens use them more than that.

* Just 4 percent of parents thought their children use social networking sites more than 10 times a day; 22 percent of teens said they’re online at least that often.

* Only 2 percent of parents suspected their child had posted explicit photos or videos of themselves or others online. However, 13 percent of teens admitted they had done so.

While 13 percent is a relatively small number, that corresponds to the one of the most extreme categories of online behavior. More telling I think is that nearly 40 percent of teens say that have posted something online that they later regretted and that almost 30 percent shared intimate and personal details online that they would not have shared in public.

As parents, we should make sure our children understand that while it’s easy to post things online because you are in the privacy of you own home usually, that online information is far from private. Even on sites like Facebook that provide various privacy features, that information can easily and quickly become very public.

In addition, because internet postings can be almost permanently public, actions that kids regret can come back to haunt them in the future. It’s important to understand that for those 54 percent of teens that say they had posted derogatory comments about teachers and those 24 percent of teens who report “hacking” someone else’s social network account.

These type of youthful indiscretions used to dissipate on the wind. Now that they are etched electronically into the public domain, they have the potential to derail college applications or job offers.

51 percent of parents say they know their child’s online profile password, but only 14 percent of teens think their parents know that information. Spying on our kids is not the answer. We need to teach our children to have a healthy life online as well as off. We need to talk to them about the ramifications of their actions.

The study found that child athletes from 9-16 failed to drink enough water to stay hydrated during athletic activity. That problem is exacerbated by the fact that they routinely fail to drink enough and arrived at summer sports camps dehydrated to begin with.

Because many arrived at camp already dehydrated and then practiced an average of three times a day, between 50 and 75 percent of children at the various camps ended up “significantly” dehydrated and 25 to 30 percent of them became “seriously” dehydrated.

Acute dehydration can cause kidney failure and death, not to mention that just a 1 to 2 percent reduction in body mass from sweating causes reduced aerobic performance in young athletes. Children also become dehydrated faster than adults causing their core temperature to also rise faster.

Additional studies indicate that children just don’t drink water even if it is available. The ironic thing is that the same children think they are doing a good job of staying hydrated during their activities.

The solution is much easier than preaching the importance of hydration and praying they’ll listen. Here’s one of those “they really needed a study to figure that out” moments – children will drink a lot more liquids when they taste good.

Children voluntarily drank 44.5 percent more when exercising if the available hydration was grape flavored water than if the available hydration was pure water. When carbohydrate (sugar) was added like in today’s sports drinks, children voluntarily drank 91 percent more than when only water was available.

There is a caveat – sports drinks are not appropriate for children of all ages and activities. Sports drinks are only appropriate for older children engaged in intense physical activity for an hour or more continuously or if they engage in multiple practices per day.

Most children younger than 10 or 12 don’t exercise intensely enough to require carbohydrate and electrolyte replenishment. If a child is not burning enough calories to require a sports drink, the drinks can be counterproductive, having been linked to obesity and tooth decay.

In today’s economy, sports drinks can also be expensive. Try this do-it-yourself recipe from Nancy Clark’s Sports Nutrition Guidebook”

1/4 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup orange juice
1/4 cup hot water
2 tablespoons lemon juice
3 1/2 cups cold water

In a quart pitcher, dissolve the sugar and salt in the hot water. Add the remaining ingredients and the cold water. The drink contains about 50 calories and 110 mg of sodium per 8 ounces, approximately the same as for most sports drinks.

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.

Since then, the blogosphere has erupted in debate about whether drinking while breastfeeding is harmful or whether the police were right. Only one thing is clear – that there are no clear answers. In fact, we can’t really be sure the woman was drunk at the time. While she pleaded guilty to child neglect, police did not administer a blood-alcohol test because they aren’t necessary for child neglect charges. Police said they knew she was drunk from the way she was behaving, but reports say no more than that.

Some bloggers think the police abused their authority even if Anvarinia had been drunk. “Since when is breast-feeding while drunk a crime?” said Dr. Amy Tuteur, a retired obstetrician and gynecologist who writes the Skeptical OB. If Anvarinia had been feeding her baby formula, “no one would have bothered to check what was in the bottle,” Tuteur opined. “You can do a lot more damage by mixing formula wrong.”

The thing is that no one can know what effect drunken breast feeding has on babies. No one has ever studied it directly because of the eithical implications of conducting studies whereby researchers induce intoxication in breast feeding mothers. The only evidence we have on the subject is anecdotal, which does not allow conclusions to be drawn one way or the other.

Most interest groups advise against drinking and breastfeeding but others see no harm in limited alcohol consumption among breast feeding mothers. It has also been said that alcohol assists a woman with making milk. Doctors report that alcohol remains in the body for two to three hours after consumption. Other interesting posts can be found at http://ecochildsplay.com

Commentators who feel the police came down too hard on the mother argue that the child’s best interests were harmed when its mother was put in jail for 5 years. They argue that drunken breast feeding is the lesser of the two evils. Police, however, argue that Anvarinia was arrested for more than just drunken breast feeding. Police say nothing more than that it was the totality of the circumstances and that they would have arrested the woman on child neglect charges even if she had not been nursing her infant drunk.

In Rodriguez v. Favalora, the court ruled that Florida law does not allow victims who remember their childhood abuse later in life to file suit against those who negligently allowed the abuse if the statute of limitation has already run.

Now, Florida Statute section 95.11(7) does allow victims who recall their childhood abuse later in life to sue their abusers even if the statute of limitation has already run.

The intense trauma that results from childhood molestation can cause substantial psychological damage including the loss of all memories associated with the events. Demands of secrecy by an adult authority figure alone may cause a child to suppress his or her abuse.

To combat this effect and bring abusers to justice, Florida’s “delayed discovery doctrine” allows victims of childhood abuse to sue their abusers in civil court within four years from the time the victim discovers an injury that was caused by the past abuse. Normally, a victim must file suit before they turn 26 or within four years after they become independent of the abuser (whichever comes first).

Without the delayed discovery doctrine, victims of childhood abuse who only remembered their abuse after the standard statute of limitation had run would not be able to sue their abusers. Now, Florida’s Third Circuit has ruled that the delayed discovery doctrine is only available to victims who sue abusers who act with intent and not those who act only negligently.

The case involved a man who was molested while in a foster home operated by the Catholic Church. His claim against the church was that it acted negligently in not providing a safe foster home where he would be free of abuse. However, his claim was denied because he alleged the church acted negligently and not intentionally.

The effect of this ruling is that those organizations and institutions that fail to protect our children against molesters and abusers when the organizations and institutions had a legal duty to do so (as in this case) will often go unpunished in civil court in cases of delayed discovery.

The delayed discovery doctrine will not allow people who intentionally abuse children to escape liability in situations of delayed discovery because those abusers acted with intent. However, if the abuser’s employer shares in the fault through their negligence, then the Third Circuit just gave them a free pass in cases of delayed discovery.

This ruling defeates the purpose of tort law. Civil liability for wrongful behaviour is designed to serve two purposes: make the victim whole to the greatest extent that the law can, and to deter the harmful behaviour in the future.

If organizations and institutions are allowed to escape liability for their negligence just because they are lucky enough to have harmed a victim who does not remember his or her abuse until after the statute of limitations has run, then the institutions are not deterred as much as they should be.

Florida law should subject negligent child abusers to the same liability and deterrent effect that we subject intentional abusers to. That way, the businesses, churches and other organizations charged with protecting our children have the greatest number of incentives possible to act responsibly.