News, Advice, and Tips for Parenting Teenagers

Ask parents which of their teenager's behaviors "push their buttons" and they'll quickly rattle off a laundry list. But do those same parents know which of their behaviors are frustrating their teens?

Juliana Semeniuk addressed this topic in her Nov. 25 column on examiner.com:

When you are aware of how you may inadvertently push buttons on your child, you will be able to model self-control and control the mood of the confrontation. ...

When you begin a lecture with cliches like, "When I was your age", your teen instantly tunes out. ...

Instead of saying to your child, "Take the garbage out, please", parents tend to talk in chapters and state:" I have told you for weeks and weeks to take the garbage out. How many times do we have to go through this? I am sick and tired of you not listening to me!" Because this long-winded speech contains many negative statements, your child will feel personally attacked. ...

When parents become aware of the ways their behaviors are exacerbating conflicts with their teens, they can take positive steps to ensure more open, honest and effective communication.

Labels: parenting tips, communication

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About 25 percent of children in the United States are growing up in families that use food stamps, according to a study that was published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

• The report also found that 90 percent of African-American children and 90 percent of children of single parents are in families using food stamps.
  
• Professor Mark Rank of Washington University in St. Louis noted that 40 percent of those who are eligible for food stamps are not receiving them.
• Dr. Ranks co-author, Professor Thomas Hirschl, said their study is evidence that there needs to be new kinds of thinking about how we construct society and distribute resources.
  

Children are our future, Prof. Hirschl said. If we mess our children up, we mess our future up.

Labels: children, poverty, food stamps

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A study by the Parents Television Council found that TV depictions of violence toward women have doubled in the past five years.

The Council compared prime time programs on ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox aired in 2004 to those shown in 2009, and found increases in stories about beatings, threats, shootings, rapes, stabbing, and torture of women. Among the biggest offenders were cartoons such as Family Guy and American Dad.

The Council rated the following shows as unacceptable for children under 14 years old: House, Heroes, American Dad, Family Guy, So You Think You Can Dance, Amazing Race, Survivor, and The Simpsons.

Labels: violence, television

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Unlike in past decades, many modern parents don't require children and teenagers do household chores -- but according to Professor Markella Rutherford of Wellesley College, thats not a good development.

Dr. Rutherford went through over 300 parenting magazines printed between 1920 and 2006, and found a drastic shift in giving parents giving children chores to do. Previous generations thought of chores as a way to allow them to contribute to their families and communities and to teach them responsibility.

Until very recently, Dr. Rutherford wrote, "greater autonomy and responsibility were emphasized as antidotes to teenage listlessness and rebellion."

• Between 1920 and 1970, teenagers often cared for sick family members; planned, shopped for and cooked family meals; maintained the family car, and kept household accounts.
• However, between 1970 and 1990, parents attitudes changed and schoolwork became a childs only real responsibility.

"In the past, parents did not feel the need to bribe children because they were confident chores benefited their children by making them feel both responsible and an active part of family life," Dr. Rutherford wrote in her study, Childrens Autonomy and Responsibility: An Analysis of Child-Rearing Advice. "Children of the past would not have expected to be bribed because their parents taught them to take pride in a job well done."

Labels: parenting tips, chores, responsibility, research

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A new study from the American Psychological Association found that about half of children under 17 years old are feeling enough stress to cause them headaches, difficulty sleeping, and changes in eating habits. Stress levels in children are higher than last year. Researchers believe the increase may be related to the recession and family worries about finances.

The study, which involved more than 1,200 children ages 8 to 17 years old, found the following:

• 30 percent worried about family finances
• 29 percent of teens worry about what will happen after high school
• Nearly half were worried about school related issues.
  
• A third of tweens and 42 percent of teens get headaches
• 39 percent of tweens and 50 percent of teens have difficulty sleeping
• 27 percent of tweens and 39 percent of teens say they eat too much or too little.

The study also found that parents underestimate their childrens stress levels. The APA survey of adults found that they are under much more stress than their children, and experiencing more frequent stress-related symptoms such as headaches, insomnia and stomach problems.

The APA report suggests talking to children about stress. Shielding children from your own worries about unemployment, illness, marital problems, and so forth can actually make them more worried, because children tend to assume worst-case scenarios.

Labels: children, stress, anxiety

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Kids today! Though many parents claim the current youth generation has become unacceptably sarcastic (especially when talking to their parents), many others are perplexed about how (or even if) they should address the matter.

In an article on the Good Housekeeping website, Charlotte Latvala offered the following insights:

As a mild, relatively safe form of rebellion, back talk appeals to teens' desire to feel independent and adult. Annoying though it may be, sarcasm reflects their growing mental capabilities. "There are several cognitive leaps during early adolescence that mean kids' thinking becomes much more sophisticated," says Maureen O'Brien, Ph.D. ...

If you accept rudeness, you'll get it, says Marybeth Hicks, mom of four and author of Bringing Up Geeks: How to Protect Your Kid's Childhood in a Grow-Up-Too-Fast World. "When a kid is rude, we shrug our shoulders and dismiss it with, 'Well, that's a teenager for you!'" she says. "But it's neither acceptable nor appropriate for kids to act that way  it's just common." ...

When one of her children makes a comment she deems over the line, Hicks calls the kid on it immediately. "I tell them when something they say is not OK, and then ask them to correct their language or apologize," she says.

Labels: communication

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In 1989, the Girl Scouts conducted a landmark study on the overall attitudes and behaviors of young people. They conducted a follow-up study this year, and found that, in general, today's kids are headed in the right direction.

The blog Ms. Twixt provided the following details from the study, which is scheduled to be published in December:

• 62 percent of surveyed teens say they would not cheat on a test (compared to 48 percent in 1989)
• 58 percent of surveyed teens say they would refuse an alcoholic drink if offered one at a party (compared to 46 percent in 1989)
• 18 percent say smoking is okay if the person finds it enjoyable (compared to 27 percent in 1989)
• 76 percent say they will give regularly to charity (compared to 63 percent in 1989)

Labels: tobacco, alcohol, research, morals, values

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Teen dating remains a contentious topic within many families. In a Nov. 1 article on the website of the Hattiesburg American, parenting expert Doreen Nagle (author of the book But I Dont Feel Too Old to Be a Mommy) advises parents to acclimate their teens to the dating world by following a process she describes as graduated dating

The first thing many parents consider when devising dating rules is at what age can their teens start to date? One way to approach this is with "graduated" dating - first a small gathering or birthday with a few friends of the opposite sex in your home.

This could lead to a small gathering of teens off to see a movie together without a parental chaperone. From there, two or three couples can perhaps go out for a casual dinner. As a final step, your teen and his or her date can go to a movie or dinner by themselves.

These graduated steps can be separated by as many weeks or months as you deem necessary before you allow your teen the next step.

As Nagle describes it, graduated dating helps families avoid conflicts by providing teens with some freedoms while allowing parents to retain a degree of control and influence.

Labels: parenting tips, dating, compromise

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Differences of opinion over parenting styles and childcare decisions are unavoidable experiences among couples who are raising children together. When those couples divorce, these arguments dont go away  and in many cases, they intensify.

In an Oct. 22 entry on the Wall St. Journal blog The Juggle, writer Rachel Emma Silverman reported on an emerging concept in the effort to reconcile the divergent childcare philosophies of former spouses:

To help ease ... tensions, more divorcing couples are turning to parenting coordinators. For instance, actress Anne Heche and her ex recently made tabloid headlines when they were asked by the court to hire one (for $375 an hour) after fighting publicly over the care of their young son.

These professionals, who usually have backgrounds as lawyers, mediators or mental-health professionals, help ex-spouses work through the nitty-gritty decisions of child care: who should pick the kids up from school, what summer camps the children should attend, even when its okay for kids to get their ears pierced.

They try to help parents resolve disputed issues themselves, but if parents cant settle an issue, the coordinator can often make a decision for them.

Labels: divorce, help_for_parents

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A study that was conducted by the British think tank Demos suggests that the children of mothers who experience significant stress, illness or substance abuse while pregnant are both more likely to be helped by good parenting and harmed by poor care.

A Nov. 9 article on the BBC website provided the following information about the study:

The report says its analysis suggests "the situation of at-risk children may be both graver and more hopeful than previously assumed".

"In the case that differentially susceptible children are subjected to poor quality childcare, poor parenting, or the detrimental effects of poverty itself, their risk is increased substantially - it is risk squared.

"On the other hand, if interventions occur in the right way and at the right time, children with a poor start in life have every opportunity to make up for lost ground and even exceed their more advantaged peers: differential susceptibility may be one of the factors in what helps certain kids to 'buck the trend'."

The BBC article quoted Demos Director Richard Reeves, who co-authored the report, as describing parenting as "the final frontier for issues of social justice and social mobility."

Labels: mothers, parental influence, at-risk_youth

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A study by the American Psychological Association (APA) found adults arent the only ones stressed-out by the economy and performance expectations. Kids are feeling the pressure, too -- but many parents aren't aware of the degree to which stress is affecting their children..

An APA press release that announced the study's findings included the following details:

• Teens and tweens were more likely than parents to say that their stress had increased in the last year.
  
• Nearly half (45 percent) of teens ages 13-17 said that they worried more this year, but only 28 percent of parents think their teen's stress increased.
• While a quarter (26 percent) of tweens ages 8-12 said they worried more this year, only 17 percent of parents believed their tween's stress had increased.
• Similarly, only 2-5 percent of parents rate their child's stress as extreme (an 8, 9 or 10 on a 10-point scale) when 14 percent of tweens and 28 percent of teens say they worry a lot or a great deal.
  

"It's clear that parents do not fully appreciate the impact that stress is having on their kids," says psychologist Katherine C. Nordal, PhD, APA's executive director for professional practice, said in the release. "What we're seeing with stress is in line with existing research about parents' perception of their kids' engagement in risky behaviors. Parents often under report drug use, depression and sexual activity in their children. Now it appears the same may be true for stress."

Labels: stress, parental-involvement, awareness

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Children are watching more television than ever, according to a new report by Nielsen.

• Children ages two to five years old spend an average of three hours and 47 minutes a day watching television -- an increase from three hours and 40 minutes a day in a previous Nielsen study done during 2007.
  
• Older children (ages six to 11) watched three hours and 20 minutes a day, up from three hours and 17 minutes a day in 2007.

"Children should not be watching five hours of television a day," said Dr. Vic Strausberger, a professor of pediatrics at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. "They should be outside playing. They should be having books read to them."

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children under two years old do not watch any television at all, and that children older than two should limit TV to less than two hours a day.

Labels: children, television

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Even if your child breezed through high school and appears to be doing well in college, don't assume that there's not need to worry about matters related to emotional well-being.

According to a study that was published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, university students report feeling significant levels of stress, much of it associated with the pressure to excel.

• More than 65 percent of the students in the survey told researchers that they felt overwhelmed at times
• 44 percent told researchers that depression sometimes made it hard for them to function.
• Only 30 of students said they regularly got eight hours of sleep a night, and 35 percent told researchers they stayed up till 3 a.m. at least once a week.

Though lack of sleep is often associated with anxiety and depression, experts believe that the late nights are neither the sole cause nor the only effect of the students' emotional distress.

"Stress levels in college students are so high because of the pressure to perform well," said Washington University psychiatrist Eleatha Surratt. "Performance is tied to the subsequent ability to obtain better postbaccalaureate employment or educational programs. There is an added pressure of a tighter job market with lower starting salaries for college graduates."

Labels: stress, anxiety, college

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The Today Shows parenting expert, Dr. Michele Borba, will be the keynote speaker at a Wellness Fair Saturday, Nov. 14, at Bloomfield Hills Lahser High School in Michigan. Borbas keynote address will begin at 9 a.m. and is open to the public.

According to a Nov. 1 article on the Hometown Life website, the wellness event will also feature breakout sessions (moderated by experts) on a wide range of topics, including the following:

• Stress Management for Parents
• ADD/ADHD Tools for Keeping on Track
• Family Nutritional Wellness
• Keeping Kids Safe from Childhood Sexual Abuse
• Childhood Obesity
• Setting Limits and Increasing Responsibility

Tickets cost $15 dollars in advance, $20 on the day of the event. For more information or to purchase tickets visit www.bbfaprevention.org.

Labels: parenting tips, conference, michigan

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