NEWSPAPER COLUMNIST TALKS TO KIDS ABOUT PROBLEMS THEY FACE GROWING UP

Kids ask Peggy Hinders questions ranging from how to deal with fights with parents or siblings to how to resist pressure to try smoking cigarettes.

Hinders, a newspaper columnist based in St. Louis, was in Cape Girardeau Wednesday to talk with students. Her column is published each Monday in the Southeast Missourian.

A teacher and counselor, Hinders also has 10 brothers, one sister, and two daughters. Her husband has eight brothers and sisters.

"I know about problems you have with your brothers and sisters," she told students at Barbara Blanchard's fifth grade class at Washington Elementary School.

As a classroom teacher, Hinders assigned her students to write daily journals. Hinders graded the journals regularly.

"They started asking questions in the journals, and I was answering them at home," she said. Some questions were silly; others were serious.

"Sometimes kids need to ask questions and they don't know who to ask," she said.

Hinders began to write her Kids Ask Peggy column in March. She said newspapers in Missouri are carrying the column, and after the first of the year, newspapers in other states are going to begin carrying the column.

"I am working with Newspaper In Education newspapers," Hinders said. "Those newspapers are read by more students."

She targets the column to students in elementary schools, middle schools and junior high schools. "High school kids think they know all the answers."

Most of the questions she receives are about sibling rivalry. But other frequently asked questions are about peer pressure and divorce.

"With the holidays coming up, kids have a lot of problems with divorced parents pulling them in different directions."

In addition to writing the column, Hinders tutors students in St. Louis who are at home because of illness or injury.