News, Advice, and Tips for Parenting Teenagers

Teens may be more willing to help out their parents than their parents think, according to a new study from the University of Rochester in New York.

Prof. Judith Smetana surveyed 120 teenagers and their parents, giving them different situations when either a parent or teen requires help from the other. One example included asking a teenager to wait for a furniture delivery when the teen had plans to go to a movie with friends. Teens were twice as likely as parents to say that the teen should stay home and help.

Parents had higher expectations for older teens than for middle schoolers. "Parents seem pretty attuned to adolescents' need for autonomy," said Dr. Smetana.

This study appeared in the journal Child Development.

Labels: charity, assistance

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Young people under the age of 16 do not think about the future as often as adults do, even when they make decisions that would affect it. The reason might be that their brains are immature, according to a new study in the journal Child Development.

Researchers interviewed 900 people (ages 10 to 30) from diverse backgrounds. The teenagers tended to value short-term gains when they made decisions, preferring sensation or excitement in the present to delayed gains in the future. For example, the teens in this study preferred $700 today rather than $1,000 next year. Most adults in the study chose the opposite.

Prof. Lawrence Steinberg of Temple University said the results of this study "have implications for legal policies concerning teenagers' rights and responsibilities."

Labels: consequences, decisions

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Experts on adolescent psychology are concerned about high-profile cases of teenagers murdering their parents or guardians after the adults took away the teens' cellphones or video games.

• After her grandmother confiscated her cellphone, 14-year-old Jermea Simmons set fire to her family's home in Buffalo, NY, as 10 family members slept inside. Jermea's grandfather died in the fire; the others escaped.
• In Adrian, Mich., 17-eyar-old Marshall Sosby shot his parents in after an argument about the amount of minutes he had run up on a cellphone while talking to an out-of-state girlfriend.
• Daniel Petric, age 17, killed his mother and shot his father in the face when they took away his Halo 3 video game. His father is a pastor in Wellington, OH.

Some experts on teenagers and their use of media explain this kind of violence in terms of this generation's tendency to build their lives around technology. When their technology goes away, they feel as if their lives have been taken away too.

Parry Aftab, an Internet lawyer and expert on technology, said many children are sleeping with their cellphones.

"It's actually a physical addiction," she said. "They have an adrenaline hit when they get a new text message. When this is taken away, some kids will react violently."

Labels: violence, technology, aggression

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A study of children who were talking on cellphones while crossing streets indicates that they are at increased risk of being hit by cars.

Researchers from the University of Alabama in Birmingham found that children using cellphones took 20 percent longer to cross a street, were less likely to look both ways, and were less likely to see a car about to hit them.

About 54 percent of children ages 8 to 12 years old carry cellphones.

Labels: safety, cell_phones, accidents

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Teenagers with unpopular or uncommon first names are at higher risk for committing crimes, regardless of their race, according to a new study in Social Science Quarterly.

David Kalist and Daniel Lee of Shippensburg (Pennsylvania) University compared the first names of juvenile offenders with others the same age. They gave a number rating to each name based on its popularity. For example, "Michael" is a 100, because it is the most commonly used name, David is a 50 because it is half as common as Michael, and Kareem is a 1.

The authors wrote that having an uncommon name does not force a person into crime, but is linked to factors such as a disadvantaged home environment, one-parent homes, and low socio-economic status. Juveniles with uncommon names may behave badly because their peers treat them differently, or because they simply dislike their own names.

Labels: juvenile delinquency, crimes

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A prominent economist argues in a controversial essay that Americans are overworking at parenting, causing themselves and their children stress and unhappiness. Dr. Bryan Caplan advises them to relax, writing that "how you raise your children has little effect on how your children turn out."

Writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Dr. Caplan, a professor at George Mason University, points to studies of adoptees and separated twins as evidence that "the effect of family environment largely fades out by adulthood." In other words, he wrote, he believes that hereditary trumps environment.

"Adult siblings are equally similar whether they grew up together or apart," he writes. "Adoptive siblings are no more similar than two people plucked off the street at random. And identical twins are no more similar than one would expect from the effects of their shared genes."

Dr. Caplan uses time diaries that parents have been keeping for scientific research since 1965. The diaries are records of how many minutes parents spend with their children each day:

• Working mothers today spend about the same number of minutes with their children as stay-at-home moms did forty years ago.
• Fathers have increased their involvement: In 1965, they did three hours a week of childcare, but today that average has risen to seven hours per week.
• The problem, Dr. Caplan writes, is that parents do not enjoy taking care of their children, and most children do not want to spend a lot of time with their parents, which creates a stressful environment for both.

"A bird's eye view of parenting research suggests it would be good for the world if parents stopped trying so hard," he writes. "Parents would be better off because they would be doing less of something that -through excessive familiarity - has lost its charm. Children wouldn't be worse off, because parental investment has little payoff anyway. ... Kids know better than anyone that if mom and dad aren't happy, nobody's happy."

Labels: stress, worries

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The British government is in the process of initiating several controversial new programs and advertisements to combat a national epidemic of obesity.

The nation's Food Standards Agency has asked every restaurant to provided detailed information, including calorie counts, on their menus. The FSA also would like restaurants to judge the healthfulness of their menu options by posting "red traffic lights" next to high-sugar, high-fat choices, and "green lights" next to healthier options.

The effort is not without its critics.

"This is just ridiculous." said Stephen Glaister, a prominent London restaurant owner. "People who go to restaurants for dinner are out for a good time. They are not interested in calorie counting."

On the electronic front, the video game industry is complaining about a controversial television advertisement that shows a cartoon boy playing video games, and then zooms in on his belly fat. The commercial ends when the boy shoots an effigy of himself, and the words "Game Over" appear.

"The ad suggests that playing video games makes children fat," said a spokesperson for the video game industry. "This is another example of naïve stereotyping and scapegoating. Video gaming can be part of an active and healthy lifestyle for everyone of all ages."

About one in four Britons are obese - the highest national obesity rate in Europe.

Labels: tv, obesity, adverstising

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A new study appearing in the February issue of the journal Addiction indicates that the cost of alcoholic beverages has a direct effect on the amount of alcohol that people consume. The study, conducted by the University of Florida, College of Medicine, analyzed 112 studies across four decades in order to document this relationship. Alexander C. Wagenaar, Ph.D., a professor of epidemiology and health policy research at the University of Florida, College of Medicine, and the senior author of the study, commented on the findings:

"Results from over 100 separate studies reporting over 1000 distinct statistical estimates are remarkably consistent, and show without doubt that alcohol taxes and prices affect drinking. ... When prices go down, people drink more, and when prices go up, people drink less."

(Source: www.sciencedaily.com)

Labels: alcohol, taxes. underage-drinking

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Rita Ruelas, chief of the Family Court Services in El Paso, Texas, knows how devastating divorce can be on kids - and she's trying to help parents better understand those effects.

"The office began cooperative parenting classes about five years ago to teach parents how they impact their children. That parenting class and other related courses received grant funding from the Texas Attorney General's office in 2006."

The open hostility that divorcing parents often display toward each other can cause their children to develop depression, struggle in school, and experience a range of additional developmental delays. The Texas classes aim to help parents handle their divorce and subsequent court orders regarding custody and other matters responsibly. Source: El Paso (TX) Times

Labels: parenting, divorce

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A four-year study of parenting styles found that stricter parenting of young children means better-behaved teenagers.

Researchers from Iowa State University who followed 300 seventh graders for 48 months have concluded that poor parental skills were more to blame than biology was for problem behaviors in teens. The behaviors studied were temper tantrums, talking back, bullying, blaming others or external forces for one's own problems, and oppositional/defiant behaviors.

This study appeared in the Journal of Marriage and Family.

Labels: parenting_styles, strictness

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Teenagers expressed "unprecedented high levels of interest" during the last presidential election, and are excited about the results, according to a report from the Girl Scout Research Institute.

Researchers surveyed 3,284 people ages 13 to 17 years old and found that the election of Barack Obama had a positive effect on youth:

• Fifty-nine percent told interviewers that his election increased their confidence in achieving their own goals.
• More than 70 percent of survey respondents said that they intend to vote in the next election.
• The survey also found that President Obama was more popular among teenagers than among the general voting population.

Labels: influences, politics, achievement

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After analyzing two million DNA variations among 32,000 people, an international team of scientists identified six genes associated with obesity.

All six genes are active in the brain and influence appetite regulation.

According to the report, which was written through the German National Genome Research Network, "The two main causes of obesity are poor nutrition and lack of physical activity. But the biology of these genes suggests genetic factors underlying the different reaction of people to lifestyle and environmental conditions."

Labels: research, obesity, genetics

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Fathers of autistic children do not prefer women with the curvy figure that many men find attractive, according to a study from the University of Bath in Great Britain. Women with curvy figures tend to have optimal levels of sex hormones, while those with thick waists tend to have higher levels of testosterone, which is linked to having a child with autism.

Researchers asked 100 fathers of autistic children to rate pictures of women with athletic frames or curvy figures. Previous research indicated that most men universally prefer the waist-to-hip ratio of 70 per cent, which has been linked to fertility and health. However, the men in this study showed no preference.

"Autism is widely regarded to have genetic origins, which may combine with hormonal influences," said Dr. Mark Brosnan, co-author of the study. "We wanted to investigate the mechanisms by which these genes come together in a parental pairing, whether it is by chance or if it could be due to different preferences in choosing a mate - so-called 'assortative mating.'"

This study appeared in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorder.

Labels: autism, genetics, fathers

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