I want my teenager to take school seriously. I want to be done with all the back and forth arguing that happens every time I ask my teen to do anything around the house. If only my teen was respectful, would it be so much easier to hear his point of view.
Read MoreDoes this sound familiar? “Because I am your parent and I said so!” The next statement would sound like this, “well I am still not doing it and you can’t make me.” Ultimately, this exchange ends with a behavioral escalation and then consequences. None of which results in the desired task being completed.
Read MoreIn sports it is said that one rises to level of his competition. I suppose it could be conversely stated that one can also lower them to inferior completion. Overall I think this means that when presented a challenge that we are encouraged or expected to meet, we generally will outperform our expectations. This does not exempt us from failing to succeed or that we always reach our desired outcome, but it does make us think twice about how we set the bar for our challenging teens.
Read MoreThe year it all comes together. Yes, being a senior in high school is a time for reflection, a time to prepare for the next chapter, a time to say goodbye, and a time to celebrate. Wait a minute; it is still a school year, isn’t it? Doesn’t that mean there are still expectations to perform well and finish strong? With college admissions often based on the condition of maintaining academic performance, and scholarships dependent on performance as well, it is critical that senior year be taken just as seriously as all others. Enter the dreaded senior-itis.
Read MoreTeen depression is not a phase. The risk of suicide among depressed teens is scary. Recent statistics show that more teenagers and young adults die from suicide than from cancer, heart disease, AIDS, birth defects, stroke, pneumonia, influenza, and chronic lung disease, combined. Each day in America, there are an average of over 5,240 attempts by young people grades 7-12.
Read MoreNoted psychologist, Erick Erikson, described the period of adolescence in psycho-social terms of ego-identity vs. role confusion. I think all of us can relate to this explanation if we remember what life was like as a teenager. What clothes do I wear? What music do I listen to? How do I stay current with movies and shows so I don’t seem out of place?
Read MoreAs of 2017 6.4 million children in the United States had been diagnosed with ADHD. That translates to roughly 11% of all kids. So for those families, we need to give parent strategies that are practical and successful.
Read MoreFear of the unknown, fear of the future, fear of judgment or lack of acceptance, all of these are other ways of describing anxiety. Whatever the root cause or the irrational fear behind it, anxiety can be debilitating to the point of paralysis. For any person who deals with anxiety, the challenge lies in how to manage and eventually overcome the limitations that it creates, but for teens the impact speaks at a level of core beliefs that can drastically alter the trajectory of the developmental milestone of identity formation.
Read MoreWe all know the stories of teens hiding clothes in their backpacks so they can change at school. This allows them to avoid the conflict of arguing with their parents about their choice in clothing, yet still have their preferred style of self-expression. With the over-sexualized culture we live in, this can have devastating results.
Read MoreConsequences are built on deterrence theory. The idea is that if you cause pain to me, I will cause pain of equal or greater value in return. Structuring a behavioral modification plan for your teen around this concept is doomed for failure. Over time your teen will develop consequence fatigue and lose interest in changing because the threat of losing no longer holds the same weight.
Read MoreWe have all heard, you are what you eat. What we don’t often realize is that our minds operate on the same premise that what we feed it will be used to build it. Now obviously our minds don’t actually eat, but they do process external messages and internal thoughts every moment of the day. So what do you do when you notice your teen has a poor self-concept, low self-esteem, or does not deal well with failure?
Read MoreThe risk posed by online predators to our sons and daughters is extraordinary. These men often pose as teens themselves and promise money, escape, and the attention that so many teens desperately crave. They have infiltrated every crevice of online life and are experts on how to appeal to the teen psyche.
Read MoreIt seems so long ago that we had to call a landline to get a hold of someone we wanted to have a conversation with. Long gone are the days where parents acted as the gatekeeper for who their kids talked to. Now it is as easy to talk to anybody you like with the click of a button, and with people posing as others on the Internet it is near impossible to be certain who your kid is actually talking to.
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