News, Advice, and Tips for Parenting Teenagers

Twitter -- the microblogging site that allows users to communicate in 140 character messages -- has experienced a usage boom over the past year or so. But unlike many other social media advances, this one hasn't been embraced to any great degree by younger users.

According to a Feb. 3 release by the Pew Research Center, teens and tweens Tweet far less frequently than adults do:

• 8 percent of internet users ages 12-17 use Twitter. This makes [using] Twitter ... far less common than sending or receiving text messages ... or going online for news and political information.
• 19 percent of adult internet users use Twitter or similar services to post short status updates and view the updates of others online.

The PRC release also notes that blogging remains much more popular among adults than among adolescents and teenagers:

• 14 percent of online teens now say they blog, down from 28 percent of teen internet users in 2006.
• 52 percent of teen social network users report commenting on friends' blogs, down from the 76 percent who did so in 2006.
• By comparison, the prevalence of blogging within the overall adult internet population has remained steady in recent years. Pew Internet Project surveys since 2005 have consistently found that roughly one-in-ten online adults maintain a personal online journal or blog.

Labels: blogs, internet, social-networking, twitter

Ambidextrous children have more problems in mental health, language, and school -- and may be more likely to develop Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder -- according to new research from Imperial College London.

• A study of 87 children ages seven and eight years old who were were proficient with both their left and right hands found that they had double the problems compared to other children.
  
• By ages 15 and 16 years old, many had been diagnosed with ADHD, and their risk for mental health and school problems still remained twice as high as among non-ambidextrous children.

This study appears in the journal Pediatrics.

Labels: adhd

Teenagers whose parents are serving in the military in foreign countries can cope with the situation as long as the parent at home is coping well too, according to two new studies.

The first study from the Rand Institute found that a parent's deployment causes teens to feel stress, but the more times the parent is deployed, the less stress the child feels.

The other study was by the Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute.

• This study found that teens cope better if they are in a strong family system, if they are involved in activities at school, and if they believe that their parents are doing something good for their country.
  
• Researchers found that 56 percent of the 559 teens interviewed said they were coping well or very well.
• 17 percent of surveyed teens said they were coping poorly or very poorly.

Separation from one's family members is just one type of childhood stress that, if not properly identified and addressed, can lead to continued problems later in life.

Labels: military, separation, stress

If a child's parents go to the dentist, the child is more likely to do the same, according to a new study in the journal Pediatrics.

• Researchers studied data on more than 6,000 children (ages two to 17 years old) and their parents, which had been collected during the National Health Interview Study.
• 86 percent of children whose parents had seen a dentist the preceding year received dental care
• 63 percent of children whose parents did not go to their dentists received dental care
  

"In order for good oral health of children to occur, parents need to value oral health as well," said Dr. Mary Hayes, a spokesman woman for the American Dental Association.

Labels: health, parental influence

How you feed your baby may influence whether he is overweight as an adult, according to a new study from the University of Copenhagen.

• Researchers studied over 5000 babies born between 1959 and 1961.
  
• Breast-fed babies were less likely to be overweight, but that did not carry over into their adolescence and adulthood.
  
• If their caretakers did not feed the babies solid foods until they were three months old or older, they were between 5 and 10 percent less likely to be overweight as teenagers and adults.

The study appears in the Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Labels: infants, nutrition, overweight, teenagers

One of the most significant risk factors for depression in teenagers is having a parent with a history of depression. With that phenomenon in mind, a team of researchers from Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College studied the effects of family group cognitive behavioral therapy.

A Vanderbilt News Service article provided the following information about this research effort:

• One hundred eleven parents with current or past depression and 155 9- to 15-year-old children of those parents participated in the study.
  
• The researchers focused on this age group because depression is known to increase in early to mid-adolescence and because the participating children needed to be old enough to learn the coping skills taught in the intervention.
• The cognitive behavioral intervention was delivered to small groups of families in 12 sessions.

Successes associated with the study included the following, VNS reported:

• About 9 percent of the children participating in the intervention experienced a major depressive episode within the 12 months following the study, as compared to almost 21 percent of those participating in the written program.
  
• 40 percent of the parents in the intervention group experienced a major depressive episode during that time as compared to 56 percent of the written group.

Labels: depression, parental influence

Teen Internet use remains exceedingly popular, but fewer teens keeping blogs or online diaries, according to a study from the Pew Research Institute. Researchers found that teens today are more likely to be active on social networking sites such as MySpace or Twitter.

• The Pew study found that in 2006, 28 percent of teenage Internet users kept blogs, but today, that rate is 14 percent.
• Teens are more likely to use status updates on social networks to keep in touch with their friends.
  
• Teens were more likely to use MySpace, while adults preferred Facebook.
  
• Teenage girls are twice as likely to use Twitter compared to boys.

The number of adults who blog has remained consistent at one in ten adults among those who use the Internet.

Labels: blogs, facebook, internet, myspace

It may be hard to believe, but that teenager who only grunts in response to questions and has iPod earbuds permanently affixed to his ears listens to you. Really.

Kim Painter of USA Today's "Your Health" blog addressed this topic in a Feb. 7 post:

The latest example: a survey on media use by the Kaiser Family Foundation. It found that typical kids ages 8 to 18 spend an astounding 7 hours and 38 minutes a day consuming entertainment media, drinking deeply from the fire hose of TV, computers, game consoles, cellphones, music players and other devices (while occasionally glancing at books and other non-electronic media).

Many experts, including the pediatrics academy, consider that much screen time bad for mental and physical health.

But the study also found that kids whose parents set any time or content limits were plugged in for three hours less each day. "Parents can have a big influence," says Kaiser researcher Vicky Rideout.

Labels: parental influence

If you want your children to develop a passion for the arts or sports, a new study from the University of Montreal indicates that the best course of action is to let them "own" the activity and don't push them for excellence.

• Dr. Genevieve Mageau and her colleagues studied 588 musicians and athletes ages six to 30 years old.
  
• They found that being passionate about art or sports was not a personality trait but part of the special relationship the person develops with her activity.
  
• Too much parental involvement can seem like pressure to a child.

"Children and teenagers who are allowed to be autonomous are more likely to actively engage in the activity," said Dr. Mageau.

The study appeared in the Journal of Personality.

Labels: hobbies, parenting tips, sports

In a Feb. 3 column on insidebayarea.com, psychology professor Tom McMahon addressed the dangers of parental "blind spots":

A blind spot is more than your driver's-side window. It also can be something that is disturbing or worrisome to other people, but not to a specific individual.

It's quite common for parents to have blind spots about their own children's behaviors. Everyone else seems to notice a particular hurtful behavior, some even talk about it with other parents, yet the parent in question doesn't seem to be bothered. A mom might watch her son hit two children at a party, followed by the mom's "blind spot" reaction: "He gets so exuberant. He's a character."

All parents have a blind spot at some point in their lives. And the spot gets larger in late childhood and through the teen years. Just think about some things that your own parents didn't know about you during your youth.

Some parents have a self-imposed blind spot. It's called denial. Denial may help lower the parents' anxiety or uncomfortable feelings, but ignoring the issue only makes matters worse. Serious behavior problems seldom go away on their own.

Labels: parenting tips

Allowing your teenager to drink alcohol with you may actually backfire as an approach to teaching responsible drinking, according to a new study in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

• Dr. Haske van der Vorst studied 428 Dutch families.
• He found that the more teenagers were drinking at home with the parents, the more they drank outside of the home.
  
• The study also found that teens who drink with their parents or on their own increase their risk for developing alcoholism.

"The thinking is that if parents show good behavior -- in this case, modest drinking-- the child will copy it. Another assumption is that parents can control their child's drinking by drinking with the child," said Dr. van der Vorst. However, he said, the results of his new study and several previous ones indicate that the opposite is true.

Dr. van der Vorst advice to parents is that they should try to postpone the age at which their children start drinking.

Labels: alcohol, parenting tips

When a company hires new employees, job training and orientation are often required. Yet, when we become parents, no one requires (or even offers) training of any kind.

Six years ago, Amy McCready saw this need and decided to help fill it -- and, according to a Jan. 25 newsobserver.com article, her efforts have garnered attention far beyond the Raleigh, N.C. area where she began:

Positive Parenting Solutions, founded by McCready in 2004, offers courses on how to correct children's misbehavior without nagging, reminding or yelling. Last year she started an online version and began to attract media attention, including being quoted in a New York Times article about parents who yell and scream too much.

"That really touched a nerve with people and boosted my visibility," she said. "All jobs come with a ton of training, but for the most important job we do, there's none. Parents are looking for tools and resources." ...

McCready and her husband/business partner now employ three instructors, all parents and former students. ...

The online course includes tips on how to handle back talk, whining, tantrums, sibling rivalry, bedtime battles and more without yelling or losing your temper.

Positive Parenting charges $199 for a year subscription, or lifetime access for $225. The cost includes one-on-one instruction and live help creating an action plan, she said.

Labels: parenting tips, parenting_coaches

Helen Jung's husband works for a beer company. They both like to unwind with a beer at the end of the day.

But Jung, a reporter for The Oregonian, has noticed that her two-year-old has added the word “beer” to her vocabulary, and it has her wondering if she’s setting a bad example. She addressed her conundrum in a Jan. 25 article:

Are we serving as a bad example by having a pint or two each night? Are there any downsides to just simply unwinding with a drink?

I talked about this with Bonnie Nagel, an assistant professor in OHSU's departments of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience. ...

"If parents are going to drink alcohol in front of their kids, it's really important to educate their kids about how drinking during adolescence is much more damaging to their brains than to adults' (brains), " said Nagel. "Having drinks during that time can alter the course of development." ...

Explain to your child that there are serious negative outcomes -- developmentally and socially -- from drinking at a young age. Not only could your child be hurting their longterm decision-making and memory, but he or she could find themselves in a dangerous situation.

Labels: alcohol, parental influence

While her two children were growing up, Maria LeRose fought hard to keep from becoming a "helicopter mom" who hovered over every activity and micro-managed every decision. She’s so certain of the detrimental effects of this style of parenting, that she created a documentary about it, Hyper Parents & Coddled Kids:

"The hour-long documentary examines this relatively new child-rearing phenomenon – one that sees parents hovering (poised to 'swoop in' to the rescue), and micro-managing every aspect of their kids' lives – and its impact on kids," The Calgary Herald reported.

Parenting stories are accompanied by expert observations from people who are both parents and authors on the subject. The documentary reveals that our attempts to build self-esteem in our children may instead be creating a generation of kids who are depressed, anxious and lack basic coping skills.

Labels: helicopter_parenting

Do your children hate to exercise? The reason could be that they have been ruined for life for exercise by one bad gym teacher, according to a new study from the University of Alberta in Canada.

• Professor Billy Strean interviewed 24 adults about their attitudes towards sports, physical activity, and fitness.
  
• They found that bad experiences in physical education classes carried over into adulthood.
  
• Just having one bad gym teacher who humiliated you in front of class or treated students unfairly can create bad memories and attitudes that last for decades, the researchers found.

One participant, a woman in her 50s, told the researchers that her "childhood experiences with sports, particularly as handled at school, were so negative that even as I write this my hands are sweating and I feel on the verge of tears. I have never experienced the humiliation or felt the antipathy toward any other aspect of life as I do towards sports."

Dr. Strean stressed that it is important for children to think of sports and physical activity as fun. Participants had better memories of minimally organized activities, such as pickup games of baseball or street hockey.

"We've got to remember that these are kids," he said.

The study appears in the journal Qualitative Research in Sport and Exercise.

Labels: exercise, physical education, sports

Keeping your child's television time down to two hours or less a day will decrease their risk of dying prematurely, according to a new study of the lifestyle habits of 8,800 Australians.

• People in this study who watched TV for four or more hours a day were 46 percent more likely to die prematurely and 80 percent more likely to die of cardiovascular disease than those who limited TV to two or less hours a day.
• Participants in the study were an average age of 50 years old at the beginning of the study in 1999 and 2000.
  
• Six years later, 284 of them had died, including 87 from cardiovascular causes and 125 from cancer.
  
• The researchers did not find a correlation between watching TV and getting cancer. However, the risk of death from any cause increased by 11 percent for each hour a day of reported TV watching, and death from cardiovascular disease increased by 18 percent.
  

Dr. David Dunstan, lead author, explained that it's not about getting vigorous exercise versus TV watching.

"It's the incidental moving around, walking around, standing up and utilizing muscles that [doesn't happen] when we're plunked on a couch in front of a television," Dr. Dunstan said.

This study appeared in Circulation, the journal of the American Heart Association.

Labels: health, heart attack, television, tv