Title Teenaged Rebellion

From http://www.flickr.com/photos/hygienematters/As an adult parent, it may be difficult for you to remember the phase of your life where you liked to rally against the rules, rebelling against everything that your parents told you and enjoying every moment of it. This is unfortunately a necessary part of life for most teenagers, and you were probably once there as well.

Understanding Teenaged Rebellion

The thing about teen rebellion is that it is completely natural, and only a phase that will eventually go away if you respond to it. This type of stage can present itself in a myriad of different ways, from your teenager wanting to dress a certain way (such as in name brand clothing to fit in) or hang out with certain friends. Whether your child is insisting on wearing Rocawear clothes or is just spending less time listening to you or taking you seriously, it’s going to be okay. You simply have to give your teenager a little bit of slack to be himself or herself until the feeling passes.

Ultimately, it is important to realize that when you allow the rebellious phase to be well received, then your teen will eventually get over it. If you rally against it and fight with your teen over his or her ways, then it is much more likely that your teen is going to continue his or her rebellious phase to spite you. When you keep this in mind, hopefully it will be easier for you to deal with this stage of the teen life cycle so that you can maintain some sanity accordingly.

Filed Under: Education, Relationships, Teen Tagged With: , ,

How to Cope After a Car Accident

Being in a car accident can be tragic. It can lead to severe injuries, even being paralyzed, and you may lose others who were in the car with you. If you were driving, it’s especially traumatic, whether you caused the accident or not. So how do you move on after being in an accident?

Get Help

The first thing you’ll want to do is get help. Although it may be instinctual to want to hide and not deal with what happened, you’ll want to deal with the repercussions right away, especially if someone else was at fault for the accident. The best thing to do is find the best lawyer specializing in accident injury in Los Angeles California has to offer and get help. Once you give him or her information about the accident, your lawyer can deal with the particulars while you recover. If you wait, evidence might disappear and you may not be able to have a good case against the other driver.

Because of how traumatizing an accident can be, a good therapist can help you deal with what happened and move on. Make sure to use your support system as well, asking friends and family for help when you need it, whether it’s driving you to doctor’s appointments or helping to keep your house clean while you’re recovering. If you have kids, you may want others to watch them after school, as well.

Time

Overall, what will help you cope more than anything is time. You’ll need time to heal inside and out. Before you know it, you’ll being feeling more like your old self.

Filed Under: Advice, General Tagged With: , ,

Take a Family Stay-Cation

Are you wondering where to take your family on your next vacation? With people tightening the purse strings in these tough economic times, many people across the United States are deciding to take stay-cations.

So just what is a stay-cation? A stay-cation is a vacation that is taken at home or in the town in which you live. The basic concept involves remaining in your own home, but getting out to see and do things in your own town that you wouldn’t normally do. You can treat it just the same as a regular vacation; have a start date and end date, devise an itinerary of activities, and eat all the types of food you would only eat on vacation. Even though you are vacationing at home, you may still want to keep your expenses in check. A prepaid card will help you to do this.

Stay-Cation Activities

  • Visit local museums and art galleries. Most towns are filled with culture you don’t normally see.
  • Take advantage of the local scenery and have a lovely picnic in a park you have never been to before.
  • If there is a local festival or carnival on, be sure to visit. Many don’t visit such things because they are working, so a stay-cation would be your perfect opportunity.

Stay-cations are a great way to save money. As part of the theme, watch your spending and then compare it to one of your previous vacations. With no travel costs or hotel fees, you will no doubt save you and your family a large amount of money, and still have tons of fun.

 

Filed Under: Families Tagged With: , ,

Improving Your Relationship with your Teen

A picture of Japanese high school students fro...

Image via Wikipedia

Parents are often told that their children will hate them when they become teenagers. Is it any wonder that this is the time when some parents forget their role in raising adults and instilling morals and critical thinking skills and instead try to be their teenager’s new best friend? Let’s face it: If you’ve done a good job in raising your child to be social and learn to play and work with peers, your teenager doesn’t need another friend. They need a parent who still works to instill discipline and supports them during these formative years.

So how do you work on strengthening that parent-child bond in preparation for the teenage years? First of all, don’t change the way you parent. If you require your children to do chores, continue to prioritize getting those tasks done. Reward good behavior, but remember that bribes can actually have a reverse effect. What’s the difference? Rewards are given after good behavior has occurred and is usually a surprise. Bribes are promises in exchange for good behavior and are expected.

Second of all, recognize that your child is changing and your relationship will probably change, too. Your teenager will probably start to have secrets. This doesn’t mean that it’s time to panic. Attempting to establish a sense of self with secrets is entirely normal. Trust your instincts but let your children have a little privacy.

Lastly, don’t give up. Talking to other parents can help to yield parenting tips that can help you continue to build and improve your relationship with your teen. Chances are, your child will grow out of any typical teenager rebellion phase.

Filed Under: Teen Tagged With: , ,

Freshman Year and The Struggle To Succeed

The first year of college is always a time of uncertainty, excitement, and fear for teenagers. Depending on the home life the child came from, one emotion may outweigh the others. For instance, if the child comes from a negative household, excitement to get away is at the forefront of his or her mind. College can be extremely overwhelming. They are thrust in to a whole new world where they must fend for themselves and find out where they belong. It is very much a sink or swim mentality. Many freshman drop out before ever reaching their sophomore year. There are ways to survive in the jungle of college life.

  • Get to know everything about the campus: go to orientations, read up on the classes being taken, and make connections with roommates and people in the dorm.
  • Try not to take too much on at one time. High school academics is nothing compared to collegiate curriculum and requires a lot more attention to detail.
  • Don’t feel the pressure to decide on a major upon reaching university. Many new students pick Business as a general degree while they learn and decide what they want to do with their lives.
  • Eat right and exercise. The Freshman fifteen is legendary because the teenager has so much freedom. They don’t have to eat what their mother cooks them and can eat as much pizza as they want. Also, fast food is the meal of choice when studying. Gaining weight like that can cause depression which is the last thing any teenager needs to add to the pressures.

If it all gets to be too much, seek help from counselors at the college.

Filed Under: General Tagged With: ,

Poker for Teens: Is It Possible?

Yes, when you think of poker, the last thing that comes to mind happens to be “teenagers.” As always, poker is associated with bets, and bets usually involve money, which teenagers don’t have — or at least they don’t have much! But believe it or not, it’s possible to play poker . . . without money!

It’s not all about winning pots of money and coming out rich, although that’s how the history might’ve portrayed it. Poker is indeed very money driven. That’s how the whole risk is injected in there. You lose, you lose money; it’s a pretty big deal. Instead, you could just use chips (with no value attached) or candy. But think about some of the other fashion and appealing factors of the game of poker. For instance, poker tables!

Look at the style, the ambience, the craftsmanship. You can get some poker tables large enough to fit 10, maybe 15 players! That would make for a pretty good poker party with a bunch of teens. Not to mention it would turn you into one of the coolest parents on the planet. You can’t go wrong with that.

Moreover, the actual study of the game is, by sheer observation, a true art form. You can really study it, practice it, and be phenomenal at it. And know that when you become that proficient in it, the result is immediate attraction, appeal, and a general popularity. Think of your teen saying the words, “Yeah, I know how to play poker.” It feels good. For sure it feels good when you’d say it, too. Only you would be playing with real money!

Without a doubt, poker is an excellent game for your teens to learn and play. When in the home, you can expect loads of fun on that poker table for years to come.

Filed Under: General, Teen Tagged With: , ,

Methods of Discipline and Their Effects on Children

Discipline is one of the most important parts of being a parent. Good discipline is a harder thing to attain as methods that work for one child may not work for another. Adults tend to discipline their child according to the way they were brought up as a child. The standard in African American families is using violence to bring their child to order. Whether it be a slap on the wrist or bringing out an object to beat the youth, this has been a disciplinary action taken for years. How many siblings are in a family could be a factor. A mother who has five kids may not be able to give individual attention to each child at one time so beating a child is more effective than giving them a time out or talking to them about their wrong action. Yet for some families, smacking the child seems to be effective and the child never doubts their parent loves them. They associate the bad action with a beating so no longer do the action. This is how African Americans and Caribbean cultures have disciplined their children for years.

Psychologists say there are far more constructive methods of disciplining the child. One way to to let the child know the rules beforehand so they know the consequences of their actions. Once the child misbehaves, you explain what they did wrong and why they are being punished. Then they can be punished in different ways. Some parents take away their electronics or toys for a certain amount of time.

Discipline must be tailored to the child’s personality as each one is unique and reacts differently.

Filed Under: Child Development, General Tagged With: , ,

Drugs and Teenagers- The Deadly Combination

If asked, most smokers would admit they lit their first cigarette when they were teenagers. The teen years are the most susceptible time in a person’s life. It’s the time when children are pulling away from their parents and seeking the approval of their friends. All it takes is one friend to start smoking and pretty soon the entire group of friends are lighting up to fit in. Aside from peer pressure, there are a few other factors that provoke teenagers to spend hundreds of dollars on cigarettes a year.

  • Media has a powerful impact on teen smoking. Celebrities often make smoking look attractive and the cool thing to do. Parents may tell their kids smoking will kill you, but these actors still look great so the teenagers assume their mother and father are overreacting.
  • If a family member smokes, there is a far likelier chance the child will follow suit. Children learn by example, not by what they are told. In their opinion, if dad smokes then it’s fine for them to do it. Ironically, it is often the smoking parent that is most vehement about their child not getting hooked on nicotine.
  • Smoking cigarettes make it easier to move on to more illegal drugs like marijuana, which brings on feelings of euphoria. From there, it’s not hard to transfer to harder drugs like cocaine or heroine. Today marijuana is more popular than cigarettes because it is seen as all natural. Teenagers know nicotine can cause cancer so they only smoke marijuana because it’s “all natural” and won’t harm them. This is far from the truth. True, there is no nicotine but kids get addicted to the feeling they get after smoking weed.

Parents should make a list of points to talk about with their children, including the immediate and long term damages of drugs and cigarettes.

Filed Under: Relationships Tagged With: , ,

How Home Life Affects School Education

With teachers being laid off by the thousands, the education system is failing. Children are not getting the attention they need and those who don’t pay attention often slip through the cracks and fall behind on literacy and common math skills. The kids who really suffer are those who struggle at home. Many of today’s youth who rebel in classrooms are reacting to a lack of discipline at home. Scientific studies performed show how test scores and comprehensive tests lowered depending on the type of home life the child experienced. The rate was higher in single family households.

Then reasons may be parental neglect, which promotes the child to act out in other ways to get attention. Fighting between parents can cause the children to become aggressive in school. There is the other side of this spectrum- the kids who grow anti social and barely speak to others. The ones who never speak up because they feel no one will listen. These are the children that have higher levels of depression and prone to suicide.

It may not be something as extreme as child abuse that affects the children. Low moral values taught by parents have an impact, too. Kids soak up information like a sponge and carry that knowledge through all areas of their life. If the parents tend to be selfish, the child grows up to be the same way. If the mother is obsessed with being beautiful, the daughter will naturally follow in her footsteps. Why do your school work if your mother tells you beauty will take you farther than an education? Parents with low education might tell their child that hard work at a job is more beneficial than learning literature and history. So the child learns to read, write and do math but doesn’t broaden their learning experience.

Parents need to take a more active role in their child’s life and teach them life lessons that will help them succeed in school and survive in the adult world.

Filed Under: Education, General Tagged With: ,

How To Manage The Rebellious Teen Years

So here’s the harsh truth: there is no way to stop teenage rebellion. Every parent wishes they could either keep the child who saw them as the world or bypass the teen years and go straight to adulthood. Unfortunately, this is all part of the learning process for both parent and child.

The first realization to accept is the parent will never do anything right in the teenage eyes. They will do exactly the opposite of what their parents tell them to. They don’t have a desire to hurt you but want to assert their independence. The next five or six years (12-18 yrs old) is especially hard on the parents because it is the time kids start to separate their lives from them. Hanging out with their friends is ten times more important than being with family.

Now is also the time when peer pressure becomes a huge issue. The desire to “fit in” with friends is a powerful motivator to get in to stupid stunts. They are liable to get very depressed if they lose the respect of their peers and deal with that by lashing out at their parents. Never take it personally when this happens. It has nothing to do with you. Accept that some things cannot be changed, but there are ways to reduce how rebellious the child gets.

  • Let them know you will always be there if they need to talk. When they do come, give your full attention and don’t judge. Let them vent and get their frustrations out before you attempt to give advice.
  • Treat teenagers with respect, as you would an adult and don’t talk down to them. Nothing will annoy a teen more than being made to feel like a child.
  • Admit when you’re wrong and you will gain respect from them, even if they don’t tell you.

No matter what, try to keep a cool head at all times and be supportive in every way possible.

Filed Under: Advice, Teen Tagged With: , ,
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