May 3rd, 2012 § Click on title to comment!
A recent State Farm survey of 652 14- to 17-year-olds, conducted by Harris Interactive, found that 57 percent said they sent text messages while driving. A National Highway Traffic Safety Administration telephone survey discovered that drivers ages 18-20 reported the highest level of cell phone use in a crash or near-accident, and were three times as likely to report reading or sending a text or email than drivers over 25.
http://www.daytondailynews.com/lifestyle/survey-teens-3-times-as-likely-to-text-and-drive-1369411.html
Today’s teens send an average of 60 text messages a day, according to a recent Pew Research study. A survey of 1,243 teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17 by the company TextPlus finds 58 percent of respondents would ask out their date via text message.
http://www.wtma.com/rssItem.asp?feedid=116&itemid=29841760
April 30th, 2012 § Click on title to comment!
“All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhood completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.” [i]
I would add that some parents try to overprotect childhood and keep the glass in the case, never exposing it to the use it was intended for. To err is human. To parent is to err. No parent is perfect. You do too much of one thing or not enough of the other. Most parents “err” by trying to correct the errors of their own parents. My parents were too X. I will never be too X. I will always be Y. My children won’t have to grow up with all that X.[ii] Well guess what. Too much Y isn’t any better, just different. The problem is that we all are prone to this error of correcting for what we lacked. Other parents may try to live up to the ideal that they remember their parents setting. This can be just as difficult and problematic.
If you parent based on what you had and what you didn’t have, you are missing out on some important information, like what your teen is telling you she wants and needs. What you needed, liked, or missed out on, is not necessarily what she will need. She is not you. The problem is that parents tend to look at their parenting skills relative (no pun intended) to their own experiences as children. Compared to the X I grew up with, the Y is much better. Or conversely, I loved growing up with A, so I will always give my child A.
Your teen doesn’t have that point of comparison. She only has you. And you can’t be everything to her all the time. And even that would be “wrong.” There is always something to blame, because part of growing up is blaming your parents for all the wrongs in the world and then forgiving them.
[i] Mitch Albom, The Five People you Meet in Heaven (New York: Hyperion, 2003), 104.
[ii] As with the post Why do my kids pick up my worst habits, this section also raises the debate of nature versus nurture. For more information, refer back to that section and its endnotes.
April 30th, 2012 § Click on title to comment!
Older kids and teenagers may reject you as part of their growing up. Try not to take it too personally. That is why it is so important to make time to do things with them when they are younger.
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Do not expect your teens to make it easy for you. Part of parenting is telling your teen things that she doesn’t want to hear: telling her to do things that she doesn’t want to do because she should or because it is good for her, and telling her to stop doing things when she wants to continue. She will not thank you for this. She will likely resent or fight you. This does not mean you have done anything wrong. Do not take your teen’s dissatisfaction or frustration as a sign that you have. Sometimes you have to be the bad guy, and there is no way around it. Do not wait for her to make it easier on you before you become the parent you want to be; she won’t.
April 25th, 2012 § Click on title to comment!
April 25th, 2012 § Click on title to comment!
April 24th, 2012 § Click on title to comment!
The following quote is taken from the movie Parenthood (1989). It is an exchange between the somewhat stern grandfather and patriarch, Frank, played by Jason Robards Jr., and his adult son, Gil, played by Steve Martin:
Frank: “You know, when you were two years old, we thought you had Polio…Did you know that?”
Gil: “Yeah, Mom said something.”
Frank : “Yeah, well, for a week we didn’t know. I hated you for that. I did. I did. I hated having to go through that… caring… worrying… the pain… It’s not for me. You know, it’s not like that all ends when you’re eighteen, or twenty-one, or forty-one, or sixty-one. It never ends. There is no ‘end zone.’ You never cross the goal lines, spike the ball, and do your touchdown dance. Never.”
I find this exchange remarkably vulnerable and honest. Being a parent is a very vulnerable position. A child usually doesn’t realize how much it hurts his parent when her child is in pain. Children that do realize often manipulate that realization (as described in the posting Cutting off his nose to spite his parents).
It is not easy to live every day with this vulnerability. Worse yet, is that it comes with a child’s growing independence. It is bad enough tolerating how anxiety-provoking it is to have a child when he is younger. There is the fear of fulfilling the role and being a good enough mother/father. There is the constant worry of doing enough, providing enough, protecting enough, encouraging enough… but not too much. Add to that how you cannot be there every second. At least when he is younger, you have a fair amount of control. You, as parents, decide where he goes and what he does.
As your child ages and matures into a teenager, not only does he not appreciate all the effort and sacrifice and emotion that goes into this, he RESENTS it. He sees it as an infringement on his life. He curses you for it. He begins to do more and more that is outside your control and protection, even outside your awareness. His peers become a more dominant influence in his life. He shuts you out. He self-destructs, makes bad choices, experiments, blows opportunities, and generally makes a lot of mistakes. All you can do is watch for many of these incidents. For others still, you suspect that such incidents are happening, but you don’t get to hear about them. But Frank is right. Children never stop being children to their parents.
It is not easy to tolerate this fear for your teen’s safety and lack of ability to control and protect him. It is a painful secret that parents can partly resent this power that their children have over them. This is the real courage of what Frank says. That is why he felt the way he did about the Polio incident. He hated that what happened to his son could affect him so much emotionally, could hijack his life, and there was so little he could do to stop it from affecting him. Furthermore, there was nothing he could do to protect his son. For someone who is used to being in control, this is intolerable.
April 23rd, 2012 § Click on title to comment!
A five year study conducted with thousands of local teenagers by University of Montreal researchers reveals that those who used speed (meth/ampthetamine) or ecstasy (MDMA) at fifteen or sixteen years of age were significantly more likely to suffer elevated depressive symptoms the following year.
http://www.psypost.org/2012/04/speed-and-ecstasy-associated-with-depression-in-teenagers-11213
April 21st, 2012 § Click on title to comment!
Researchers from the University of Auckland, New Zealand created a novel computerized cognitive behavioral therapy called SPARX – an interactive 3D fantasy game that can benefit teenagers suffering from depression:
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/04/20/video-game-helps-teenagers-battling-depression/
http://www.bmj.com/press-releases/2012/04/19/effectiveness-sparx-computerised-self-help-intervention-adolescents-seekin
April 21st, 2012 § Click on title to comment!
This article offers thoughts on how to talk to your kids when sex abuse cases are in the news:
http://www.philly.com/philly/health/Talking-with-kids-about-sex-and-safety.html?cmpid=138896554
April 13th, 2012 § Click on title to comment!
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