Obesity and diabetes among American children is an epidemic. Many children and teens are not eating nutritious, home cooked meals. Instead, they are surviving off Coke, Pepsi, French fries and fast food. I often had kids come into my class after lunch with sixty-four ounce Cokes. Their speech would be slurred; their eyes glazed. Research shows that too much sugar messes with long-term memory and the area of the brain that solves problems.
Teen drug abuse
Many American kids cannot find the family they need at home, so they find one on the streets. In Los Angeles, there are one-hundred-thousand kids that belong to street gangs. Other major cities also have street gangs. Street gangs become the family of choice when parents are not there or not talking. Drug use among teens is also a problem leading to depression and low self-esteem. This may result in decreased interest, negative attitude, drop in grades, many absences, truancy, and discipline problems.
When we pick our daughter up from school, we see the ratty dressed kids on their skateboards hanging out by the graffiti covered walls in the mall parking lot. Our daughter says many of the kids she knows at her high school get drunk regularly and smoke.
Continued in Where are the Parents – Part 4 or return to Part 2
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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