Guilty After Proven Innocent

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Late one night, one of my sons was picked up by police in the parking lot at a Wal-Mart in downtown Atlanta. Video cameras showed he was with a group of young people who “forgot” to pay as they strolled out of the store with a cart full of camping equipment. He was waiting at the car for his friends to finish shopping and claimed he had no idea they didn’t intend to pay for their goods. Police arrested the entire group, leaving it up to the courts to sort the innocent from the guilty. After a frantic middle of the night phone call where he INSISTED he was innocent of shoplifting, we bailed him out of jail with $1,500 in cash, and about a month later the case was heard by a judge and the charges against him were dismissed.

Cherie Miller On What a Terrible Parent a State Makes

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I went into foster parenting with a touch of optimism, a dash of parenting skills and a whole heap of naiveté, none of which prepared me for the role of foster parent. One of my first lessons was the tenuous role I actually was allowed to play in two little girl’s lives. I welcomed Jayden* and Alicia* into my suburban Wheaton, Ill., home on a sunny morning in August. The bedroom was prepared with bunk beds and a chest of drawers ready to fill with little girl clothes and toys. We had a great set-up for adding children to our family of three sons.

Cherie Miller On Stopping the Exploitation of Children

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Not long ago, authorities discovered a 15-year-old Wisconsin girl in a suburban Atlanta hotel room who was “employed” in the sex trade. With her at the time, was her one-year-old daughter. If we don’t understand how a girl can end up thousands of miles away from home, we really don’t understand the tragedy of human trafficking. Young people are being stalked, pursued, and, against their will, persuaded to become prostitutes. Atlanta, where I live, has one of the highest rates of children working in the sex trade in the United States.

Cherie Miller On Boys, High School and Dropout Rates

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I have seven boys, and all of them struggled in high school. None were star athletes or straight-A students. They just wanted to get by, so they could grab their diplomas. They tended to do well in interesting subjects, but in others they just drifted along. My middle son, Josh, struggled with the transition between middle school and high school.

Cherie Miller On Suspensions, Zero Tolerance and the Wood Shed

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When my husband Steve was in middle school he got caught one day sneaking off campus. The principal later called him to the office on the intercom. Punishment, a paddling, was in waiting and everyone knew it, so the students responded with an “ooooohh!”

This otherwise good student was suddenly famous. In one stroke of brilliance, and in one good spanking, he achieved what every other kid in his Georgia school sought — coolness — the very opposite of the school’s intent. Gone, mostly, are the days of paddling -- just as well, it didn’t seem to work anyway – replaced by more… prosaic punishments.

Cherie Miller On Keeping My Boys on the Straight and Narrow

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I lived for almost 15 years in Wheaton, Ill., a wealthy suburb outside of Chicago. Within the city borders were five different colleges, therefore, city officials kept a very tight rein on teenagers. My sons, who went to high school with hair past their shoulders, often felt “targeted” by the high school police officers and the local cops patrolling our downtown. Wheaton had very tight curfew laws. The Wheaton city code applied to anyone under the age of 17 requiring them to be home “from 12:01 a.m. to 6 a.m. Saturday and Sunday, and from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. Sunday through Thursday nights.” The state also had curfew laws that made parents responsible.

Cherie Miller On Deadbeat Dads, their Children and the Cost to Society

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For 17 years I was married and living in a beautiful home in Wheaton, Ill., a suburb of Chicago. I was a stay-at-home mom, choosing to raise my three sons, rather than delegating that to a sitter or child care center. I had been successful in constructing an almost perfect life. That’s why it was so devastating when my executive level husband lost his job. His company, a trade association of the savings and loan industry, was a victim of deregulation.

Cherie Miller: The Bank of Mom and Dad

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As I sit down to write a check to cover son number three’s auto insurance payment, I realize my bank account is taking another hit. It’s not the first time, and I’m not the only one. Parents like us have quasi-adult children on economic life support. When we blended our families, my husband and I never intended to become the “Bank of Dad & Mom.” When Steve and I combined our seven sons into one family in 2001, the economy was strong. I thought it’d be a breeze to put my two oldest to work when we packed up our home in Chicago and moved south to Atlanta.

Cherie K. Miller On Bullying, Junior High and Bad Memories

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Junior high school was a special hell for me, a daily torture made especially terrible by one particular boy I’ll call “T.”

He delighted in standing behind me and pointing out to everyone in the band room that, though I was in eighth grade, I didn’t shave my legs or wear nylons. (My mom had five kids, worked full-time, and had an alcoholic husband. My beauty regime -- or lack of it -- was the least of her worries.)

Anyway, those days were spent with my nose in a book. As I devoured Gone with the Wind, every page convinced me that if Scarlett could survive the burning of Atlanta, I could attend another horrible day at Lance Junior High in Kenosha, Wis. Dealing with T was bad, but I’ll never forget that bus incident involving “Miss M.” Since my dad was already at the factory and my mom was at work, I rode the bus home to babysit my four younger siblings.

Cherie K. Miller On Her Boy, Teen Sex and Condoms

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There’s a lot of boy-stuff we have to deal with in my household. But that’s what you get when you have seven of them. So believe me when I say, when it comes to sons, I’ve seen it all. Still, there’s one thing that never gets easier, that’s seeing them fall in and out of love and having to deal with all the challenges in between. One of my boys was a freshman in high school when he fell hard for another girl in his class.