Sue Scheff: CyberTipline - To Prevent and Protect Cyber Crimes Against Children

You have heard this many times, think before you post!  Unfortunately many children and teens do not understand the consequences of this, and before you know it, an innocent photo has not only gone viral, it has been manipulated to hurt or embarrass that person.  It can be considered another form of bullying.

CyberTipline was created to help you and your children to easily report crimes against children.  Their fact sheet has a vast amount of information for you to learn about how to report and determine crimes.

Launched in March of 1998, the CyberTipline offers a means of reporting incidents of child sexual exploitation including the possession, manufacture, and/or distribution of child pornography; online enticement; child prostitution; child sex tourism; extra-familial child sexual molestation; unsolicited obscene material sent to a child; and misleading domain names, words, or digital images. The CyberTipline is staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

What to report:

• Anyone you don't know who asks you for personal information, photos or videos.
• Unsolicited obscene material from people or companies you don't know.
• Misleading URLs on the Internet that point you to sites containing harmful materials rather than what you were looking for.
• Anyone who wants to send you photos or videos containing obscene content of individuals 18 and younger. (The possession, manufacturing, or distributing of child pornography is illegal.)
• Online enticement for offline sexual activities. (No one should be making sexual invitations to you online – and it’s an especially serious crime for adults to do it.)

Remember, your kids  could be one click away from the murky waters of the web!  Learn prevention and protection today.  Be noisy and be curious, you could save a life virtually!

Learn more on www.cybertipline.com.

Be an educated parent, you will have safer teens and children!

Read more and watch video.

Sue Scheff: Moments of Being: Finding Your One Moment in Time by Barrie Brett

Moments of Being: Finding Your One Moment in Time
By Barrie Brett

Barrie Brett has compiled and written a compelling collection of personal challenges and triumphs – and for the first time - shares the story of her own pivotal moment.

Is it possible that one moment, one brief encounter, can change the course of the rest of your life? If so, how will you recognize that moment? Will you let it pass you by? Will you let it defeat you? Or will you allow that moment, that experience, to help shape who you are and who you might become? 

Have you experienced your moment?

Moments of Being…finding your one moment in time reveals true stories that altered lives forever. Celebrities, athletes, business and community leaders and men and women from all walks of life share their amazing ‘twist of fate’ experiences. These are stories of courage, destiny, reunions, love, sacrifice, dreams and the fears and triumphs which are an integral part of the human experience. More that that, they illustrate that by recognizing and acting on a single, pivotal moment, a person can change his or her life forever. 

Barrie Brett shows you how to ‘Map Your Moment’ using the Three A’s – Awareness, Acknowledgment and Action – you may be able to harness the power of your own transformative moment in time, your moment of being.

Order on Amazon today or visit www.mymomentsofbeing.com. 

Sue Scheff: Drugwatch.com - Be an educated parent with RX drugs and your teens

DrugWatch.com is a comprehensive Web site database featuring extensive information about thousands of different medications and drugs currently on the market or previously available worldwide. DrugWatch.com includes up-to-date information about prescription and over-the-counter medications and includes details about associated side effects to aid in the protection of patients and consumers.

The resources available on DrugWatch.com are provided to offer visitors free and accurate information to aid in the understanding of various medications and conditions. The content on the site may help consumers formulate questions for medical professionals and alert the public about important information regarding potentially dangerous side effects associated with certain medications. By providing FDA alerts, drug interactions, and potential side effects on the site, patients have access to valuable knowledge that could enhance their ability to voice concerns with their doctor and improve their quality of care.

Visit www.drugwatch.com for more information.

Sue Scheff: Recovery Month - Join The Voices For Recovery

The Recovery Month Web sites aims to promote the societal benefits of alcohol and drug use disorder treatment, laud the contributions of treatment providers, and promote the message that recovery from alcohol and drug disorders in all its forms is possible. Today they are promoting “Join the Voices of Recovery: Now More Than Ever!” toolkit.


Join Recovery Month on Facebook for more up-to-date information on events throughout Florida and our country.  Don't be a parent in denial, be proactive.

Sue Scheff: TEENTRAKKER - Reduce the Risk of Teen Driving

TMG SYSTEMS, LLC unveiled TEENTRAKKER at the National PTA Convention in Memphis Tennessee. TEENTRAKKER is a state of the art Global Positioning Satellite tracking solution for parents who want to promote teen driver safety. By using this palm-sized and cost efficient device, parents can now experience more safety and security while exercising better control over the whereabouts of their teenager’s vehicle. This easy “plug and play” interface GPS vehicle-tracking system is complete with a variety of features including real-time vehicle tracking, digital mapping, speed alerts, and active boundary notification. Data is immediately relayed in real time to the cell phone via text message and/or available on the teen’s parents’ computer.

TEENTRAKKER was received with overwhelming support by the fifteen hundred plus attendees of the convention. Many PTA executives and delegates requested TEENTRAKKER representatives to be guest speakers at their respective schools, and join parent “open house” discussions and workshops to address the epidemic-like problem regarding the risks of teen driver safety. Over five thousand teens are tragically killed each year in the United States as a result of car accidents and over a half a million seriously injured.

With the highly successful launch at the National PTA Convention, TEENTRAKKER and its’ executive leadership will be attending numerous State PTA Conventions throughout the summer and into the upcoming school year. “The staggering statistics are too enormous to ignore. We must be vigilant in assisting parents by continuing to provide the latest data pertaining to the high risks associated with new driver behavior and abilities,” stated Joel Magaziner, Founder and CEO of TEENTRAKKER. “We believe, along with the PTA, TEENTRAKKER will help create a more responsible and dependable driver.”

To learn more about TEENTRAKKER, and how you can help, visit TEENTRAKKER at www.teentrakker.com or email at info@teentrakker.com.

Sue Scheff: Growums - Fundraising made easy

After attending the National PTA Convention in Memphis, TN, I was introduced to many fundraising ideas!  One of them that was new to me and based in West Palm Beach, FL is Growums!  What a great way to introduce your child to gardening and start to learn about healthy eating.


It’s time to take a fresh approach to fundraising – in an easy way that benefits your organization, our planet and the lives of our children. 

Growums™ garden kits are a fun, simple learning tool that teaches children and adults alike the joys and benefits of growing their own food. The results bring more than just entertainment and a tasty harvest.
It all starts with the Growums garden kit, containing everything a child needs to grow a real garden – whether it’s in the back yard or grown in containers on a patio or balcony. Each kit contains its own cast of “characters,” depending on what type of garden is being grown. Kids have five garden choices: Pizza, Taco, Ratatouille, Salad and Herb.

How Growums Helps Your Cause

As a fundraiser, Growums is a wonderful opportunity for your organization. Each Growums garden kit is sold for $10. For every kit sold, your organization receives a generous portion. In addition, $1 will be donated to help fight world hunger. A good goal for your group might be for each child to sell at least 15 kits.

This fresh approach to fundraising is really more than a fun and simple way to help your cause. It’s an amazing opportunity to encourage healthier children, a greener environment and stronger families – one character at a time

Sue Scheff: All Pro Dad's Day

All Pro Dad's Day is a simple idea with a profound impact.  It's a one-hour monthly breakfast held before school where fathers and their children meet with other dads and kids in the school cafeteria or a local restaurant.  During this time, they discuss a wide range of family topics, spend time together, create fun memories, and are equipped with resources to strengthen their relationship.


Visit ww.allprodad.com for more information.

Sue Scheff: YAY, YOU! Moving Out, Moving Up, Moving On by Sandra Boynton

YAY, YOU!

Moving Out, Moving Up, Moving On
By Sandra Boynton



For new graduates, or for anyone facing imminent change, here is profound insight, bold inspiration, and truly ensloxifying advice. Also an occasional hippo. No wombats.

What's more, Yay,You! will not overstress the weary mind. It's nice and short, with lots of pictures, no chapters, no index, no graphs, no study questions, and not a single Suggestion for Further Reading.

Sue Scheff: Project Alert

What is Project Alert?

Today more than ever, teens need help resisting drugs. Project ALERT is a proven solution — a nationally recognized, 7th & 8th grade, evidence-based program that gives students insight, understanding, and actual skills for resisting substance use. Project ALERT successfully addresses tobacco, alcohol, marijuana and inhalants, the substances teens are most likely to use. 

Project ALERT core strategies

• Motivate students against drug use
• Provide skills and strategies to resist drugs
• Establish new non-use attitudes and beliefs

Project ALERT in the classroom

• Small group activities
• Role playing exercises
• Real life videos
• Guided classroom discussions

Sue Scheff: Right Response - A Fundraiser With Practical Products

The RightResponse fundraising program was developed by First Aid Only as a healthy alternative to old-fashioned candy and junk food fundraisers. For more than 20 years, First Aid Only has been committed to the health and wellbeing of our communities. By offering the RightResponse fundraising program:

• We help non-profits raise money
• We help homes and workplaces stay safe
• We help build healthier communities
• We create and support American jobs

Forget about the cookies, wrapping papers, nuts, pretzels - sell items that can actually be useful and make tremendous gift ideas.  After seeing these products, I am convinced if my kids sold these rather than the wrapping paper (no offense to the organization selling the pricey paper), this would have gone a whole lot further.

Sue Scheff: Strong Fathers, Strong Families

Dads, come work for the FBI - Fathers Being Involved

Strong Fathers-Strong Families is a training, technical assistance, and facilitation organization that is focused on strengthening children by strengthening fathers and families. Through staff training, consultation, and event facilitation, Strong Fathers-Strong Families works with Head Starts, Public Schools, and Churches as well as other organizations. Our goal is to improve the educational environment in order that men may become more involved in the lives of their children. Strong Fathers-Strong Families plans and facilitates events at the campus, organizational, and community level to bring men together with their children in the presence of other men to discover their true strength as fathers. Strong Fathers-Strong Families facilitates events such as Bring Your Dad to Head Start Days, Bring Your Dad to School Day, Saturday Workshops for schools, churches, and communities, Dad & Kid Reading Night/Day, Head Start Father Forums, Head Start Dad and Kid Reading Days, staff awareness trainings, and Father Involvement Staff Training.

Read more on http://www.strongfathers.com/index.php

Sue Scheff: Circle of Respect

About Circle of Respect

Vision Statement

To promote RESPECT as a way to manage conflict and prevent criminal behavior.

What We Do

The Circle of Respect is the National Crime Prevention Council’s (NCPC) latest and most comprehensive campaign to protect youth from bullying and cyberbullying. Launching in October, the campaign seeks to change the commonly held belief that bullying is a rite of passage, and teaches instead that such behavior is unacceptable through a positive, pro-social message that encourages respect and consideration for others. To succeed in its mission, the Circle of Respect will feature an education campaign, outreach materials including publications and public service advertising, and partnership efforts to reach a national audience.

More About NCPC

The National Crime Prevention Council’s mission is to be the nation's leader in helping people keep themselves, their families, and their communities safe from crime. To achieve this, NCPC produces tools that communities can use to learn crime prevention strategies, engage community members, and coordinate with local agencies, including

• Publications and teaching materials on a variety of topics
• Programs that can be implemented in communities and schools
• Local, regional, and national trainings
• Public service announcements broadcast nationwide starring McGruff the Crime Dog
• Support for a national coalition of crime prevention practitioners

Learn more: http://www.circleofrespect.org/ 

Sue Scheff: June is Gay Pride Month

Gay Pride celebrates the GLBT community and opposes the view that being GLBT is shameful or inferior to being heterosexual. A lot of communities celebrate gay pride with a parade or other events in June. Does yours?

Read more from About.com.

June is Gay Pride Month. 

How Gay Pride Effects GLBT Teens

Sue Scheff: We've Got Issues by Judith Warner

New York Times Best Selling Author, Judith Warner brings you "We've Got Issues, Children and Parents in the Age Medication"

In her more than twenty years as a journalist, Judith Warner — a former contributing columnist for the New York Times and special correspondent for Newsweek in Paris — has written about women’s issues, American society and culture, adulthood and child care, fatherhood, family leave, the politics of everyday life, and much more. Now the author of the New York Times bestselling Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety offers a provocative and compelling report from inside many American homes where families are grappling with how to help children suffering from a host of disorders, including autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder, Asperger’s disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), dyspraxia, dyslexia, and more.

Written with a reporter’s eye, Warner’s new book, WE’VE GOT ISSUES: Children and Parents in the Age of Medication (Riverhead Books; February 23, 2010) explores how pervasive these disorders are today and shows how complex and painful a journey it can be for parents trying to make the right decisions, particularly in the face of the ongoing discussion in this country as to whether we are misdiagnosing our children with special needs and overprescribing medications to modify their behavior.

How many kids really have behavioral, emotional, and learning issues? What is the nature of those issues, and are they really epidemic? Why do they appear to be so greatly on the rise? Are they real? Are parents willing to “drug” their kids? And perhaps most significantly, how do the children themselves feel about it? What are their lives like? Warner answers these and many more questions in a book that reframes our most commonly held beliefs about children and parents struggling with mental health issues.

Warner’s starting point was a common preconception—that children are being overpathologized and overmedicated by anxious, neurotic parents and test result–driven schools that were demanding unrealistic levels of performance from kids. She found, however, once she began seriously researching her book, that this storyline didn’t hold: epidemiological studies didn’t indicate a widespread pattern of gross overdiagnosis or overmedication. Interviews and surveys didn’t indicate an avidity on the part of parents to “drug” their kids to enhance their performance and behavior. And the children receiving diagnoses and medication weren’t just “normal,” high-spirited kids who simply didn’t meet society’s unrealistic demands. They were, by and large, children who suffered, often enormously, and experienced serious limitations to how fully and well they could live their lives.

Drawing on extensive research and interviews with parents, child psychiatrists and psychologists, pediatricians, and other experts, Warner lays out the current scientific understandings of the disorders that affect millions of children each year. She shows what life is really like for parents and children struggling with these very real illnesses. And she shifts the focus of our attention beyond the hyped-up headlines and all the hand-wringing, finger-pointing, moralizing, and catastrophizing that too often dominate our discussions of children’s “issues,” and instead starts to articulate a new way to think more realistically, compassionately, and productively about and to help a very vulnerable population of kids and their parents.

Order on Amazon today!

Sue Scheff: Safe Florida - Helping Keep You and Your Family Safe in Cyberspace

Welcome to SafeFlorida.net, a Florida website dedicated to fighting CyberCrime and supporting CyberSafety. In today's world, internet child predators, child pornographers and other cyber criminals are exploiting our children and engaging in online solicitation. My top priority is protecting Floridians from CyberCrime and my Child Predator CyberCrime Unit (CPCU) is working to carry out that mission, arresting online predators and providing services to victims of child pornography.

According to the Federal Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force, one in seven children between the ages of ten and 17 have been sexually solicited online. Additionally, Florida ranks fourth in the nation in the volume of child pornography. Internet predators are a serious threat to the safety of our citizens, particularly our youth. We must do everything possible to protect our children from these predators.


Computer-facilitated crimes are not limited to child pornography or sexual solicitation. In 2007, Florida ranked fifth in the nation for identity theft with more than 19,000 victims. Today's tech-savvy criminals are using the internet and other computer resources to gain access to Floridians' most private information.

With an ever growing population of senior citizens in our state, extra caution must be taken to protect these Floridians who fall victim to many types of exploitation including internet-based fraud. We must remain vigilant in protecting our seniors and providing them with useful information so they are better able to protect themselves.

Whether we are protecting our children from internet predators, shielding individuals from identity theft or keeping our senior citizens safe from those who target them for fraud, your Attorney General's Office will remain diligent in our fight against cybercrime.

Visit www.safeflorida.net for more information.