Dear readers,

I’m excited to announce that I have a brand-new MegMeekerMD.com online store!

Right now, I have four products for sale there:

• Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters

• Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: The 30-Day Challenge

• Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: Small Group DVD Study

• Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: Small Group Participant’s Guide

To celebrate my store’s grand opening, I’m offering FREE SHIPPING on any size order April 15-30, 2013.

To claim the free shipping, just place your order and enter the coupon code, APRILSHIP in the box.

When you click on “calculate shipping,” make sure you choose the option that says, “FREE.”

Proceed with your checkout, which will gather info from you then send you to complete it through PayPal.

Let us know if you have any questions as you use the store. We’re excited to be able to offer these items to you!

Have you seen the recent ad from Melissa Harris-Perry of MSNBC News? It’s made its rounds through social media, drawing criticism from parents and others. Watch below, if you haven’t seen it yet.

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I recently heard from a mother who has a seven-year-old son who is having issues with bedwetting. She says that her son potty trained at three and wore Pull-ups® at night until he was about five. Finally, he was dry all night long for two years. Then, out of the blue, he started wetting the bed. She is wondering if this is normal or if she should take her son to the pediatrician.

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Victoria’s Secret’s latest ad campaign, “Bright, Young Things,” features lacy, colorful thongs with words like “Wild,” “Feeling Lucky?’ and “Call me” written on them. Despite the company’s insistence that this campaign is not aimed at young girls, parents of pre-teens are outraged, believing these sexual messages are indeed targeting their daughters.

I hope that you find this as offensive as I do. If you don’t, read on.

Marketing cigarettes, alcohol, and sex to our kids has been a source of concern for the American Academy of Pediatrics for years because numerous studies show that advertising changes a teen’s behavior. If you make cigarettes look sexy, kids buy them and smoke them. That’s why we killed Joe Camel, remember? If you market seductive underwear to little girls, they are at higher risk for starting sexual activity. Period.

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I’m thrilled to be featured today at MarkMerrill.com.

Check out my post over there. Click here to read “How to Help Your Spouse Be a Better Parent.”

I am my own worst enemy. I say mean things to loved ones when I don’t want to, I fall asleep praying, and I hurt friends’ feelings. The fact is, I live in tension every single day knowing what I should do and then doing the exact opposite. You may do the same. I know that Jesus’ disciples did.

When Jesus went into Gethsemane during those last painful hours of his life he asked his friends for help.  “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” he said to them. “Stay here and keep watch,” Mark writes in his gospel.

What did the disciples do? They fell asleep when their dear Jesus needed them most. Has a good friend of yours been in pain, asked you for help only to have you let him down? I have.

“Simon,” Jesus said to Peter, “Could you not keep watch for one hour?” We can hear the hurt in his voice when his loved ones failed him. They wanted to stay awake, but they couldn’t. The good news for us is that the story doesn’t end there. Jesus sees their failures and still marches up the hill to Calvary to that horrific cross. Why? Because he wanted to show them a couple of things: that he loved them even when they disappointed him and he was making a way to redeem them from their failures. That’s what I need. When I fail loved ones, I need someone to redeem my failures and help me stop hurtful behavior.

If the story would have ended in the garden of Gethsemane, we might believe that Jesus was so disappointed with his friends that he gave up. They weren’t worth helping. But he didn’t. He went on and showed us what explosive love is all about. And he overwhelmed us with it.

If Easter hadn’t happened, I dare say that we would all be trapped in being our own worst enemy. We wouldn’t know that God loves us even when we let him down and we wouldn’t be able to change. These two things are the power of the Easter story. On the cross, Jesus fought off his own desires to avoid the torture of it.  He submitted to God when all he wanted was to let “the cup” pass. He stayed in the darkness in order to give us a way out of it. And because of this, we no longer have to stay our own worst enemy. He comes in our lives and fights off the enemy within us when we can’t. I don’t know about you, but that’s something to celebrate.

Today, I’m featured on American Catholic Radio. Hear my interview in the Sharing Faith segment.

Listen here, and then come back and leave me a comment.

Thanks for checking it out.

Your twenty-three-year-old just graduated from college and is home living with you for “just a few months.” Perhaps he is twenty-five, quit his job with his engineering firm, wants to go back to school to study philosophy, and he just needs “a place to crash for a little while.” Maybe you’re a mother of a twenty-one-year-old who never liked school, can’t seem to find a job he really likes, and now he’s back to share an apartment with you until he can “find a job where his boss respects him.”

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More women ages 24-39 are being diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer, a new study released in The Journal of the American Medical Association reports. The study found that from 1976-2009, the incidence of advanced breast cancer in this age group increased 2.1 % per year. The reason for this slow rise? The researchers aren’t sure but suspect that the rise may be due to genetics, smoking, alcohol intake, or obesity.

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Today’s post is a second follow-up to my original post last week about birth control, religion, and ethics. Read the original post here and my first follow-up post here.

I see that this subject ignites great conversation and I appreciate that. I want to clarify a few things.

First, of course I know what Natural Family Planning is; but in my mind, I still consider the methods to follow the “rhythm” of a woman’s cycles, so I refer to it as that. Many of my readers are not Catholic and still refer to NFP as “the rhythm method” in some circles, and I wanted to make sure everyone knew what I was talking about.

Second, I don’t talk to patients about NFP because I am a pediatrician! Remember, I am NOT a family doctor or an obstetrician/gynecologist, as many of you may have forgotten. When I speak to my patients about sexual activity, they are not married and my advice is always about how to encourage them to stop having sex.

I feel strongly that it is important to remember that we are on the same team here. Our cumulative goal with kids is to teach them abstinence (chastity, if you prefer). The issue I have raised is not about NFP, and I think that many of you are missing the mark here. This is not a discussion on which is the best way to manipulate childbearing, whether it is NFP or oral contraceptives.

I simply was asking for your opinions regarding the dilemmas that many pediatricians like me face, regarding hormonal birth control when girls refuse to be abstinent from sex.

Thank you all for taking the time to write.

Meg