News, Advice, and Tips for Parenting Teenagers

A new study from Northwestern University found that learning to play a musical instrument may enhance a child's ability to learn languages by increasing the brain's sensitivity to sounds, including speech.

"Playing music engages the ability to extract relevant patterns, such as the sound of one's own instrument, harmonies and rhythms from the soundscape," said Professor Nina Kraus, the author of the study.

One implication of this study is that learning an instrument may help an easily distractible child to better process speech in noisy settings.

Labels: music, language

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The "hip-hop" culture is about sexually suggestive music, dancing and videos. However, researchers at Columbia University believe that hip-hop does not necessarily encourage teens to experiment with sex. Factors that do influence early sexual expression are drugs, alcohol, peer pressure and "sexually degrading" lyrics in contemporary music. The Columbia group found that hip-hop lyrics are not always sexually degrading, but sometimes were actually sexually empowering for girls.

Dr. Miguel Munoz-Laboy, an assistant professor of socioeconomic sciences, and his colleagues studied more than 1,400 teenagers over a two-year period. They explored the hip-hop culture, and even went to dance clubs. They found that sexually degrading lyrics, as opposed to sexually explicit lyrics, negatively influenced young people. The worst were lyrics that portray women as sexual objects, men as insatiable and sex as meaningless.

Dr. Munoz-Laboy's work appears in the journal Culture, Health and Sexuality.

Pine Ridge Academy is a boarding school for troubled teens that helps teenagers transition from a residential treatment center to a more traditional boarding school.

Labels: sex, music, influences

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Most adults don't know what kind of music their teens are listening to. This article from OnMilwaukee.com delves into the world of popular teen music, surveying high school students to find out what they do and don't love. Their answers may surprise you.

"You might be surprised to find out just how many teenagers love the rock 'n' roll tunes of the '60s, '70s and '80s that mom and dad were rockin' to decades ago. Jake, 16, says that the loves classic rock because it's the foundation for all today's new breeds of rock."

Screamo, rap, and electronica where also listed among their favorites. Don't know what they are? Read more at OnMilwaukee.com.

Labels: music, trends

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Blame the media?

Young white teens who take in a lot of sexual content from movies, television, magazines and music are twice as likely to have sex at an earlier age than those who don't, according to a study done in North Carolina. The "media effect" was much weaker for black teens, who were more influenced by parents and friends.

Researchers in the Department of Sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, interviewed about a thousand middle school students ages 12 to 14 years and asked how often they were exposed to sexual content in the four media. Two years later, the white teens who had the most exposure to such media were 2.2 times more likely to be sexually active than those who did not.

The research team also concluded that parental attitudes among both white and black 16-year-olds could deter them from having sex, but the biggest risk factor was if the teens believed their friends were sexually active. This study appeared in the April 2006 issue of Pediatrics.

Labels: teens, music, tv

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