Young teens often take up new behaviors and want to try new things. Teen dress or actions may look strange or risky, but be completely normal and not a cause for concern. It is considered normal that a young teen:
• follows fads in clothes, hairstyles, and music;
• comes home 30 minutes to an hour late occasionally;
• spends more time alone or with friends; and
• shares less openly with parents or family members.
• comes home 30 minutes to an hour late occasionally;
• spends more time alone or with friends; and
• shares less openly with parents or family members.
Teens naturally take risks. Trying out for the team or the school play, calling someone for a date, or standing up for their beliefs are all normal, healthy risks. Teens also test the abilities of their rapidly developing bodies and minds. Teens can show great courage, such as risking their safety to save a child from a water accident.
There's nothing wrong with a little give and take, and teens will appreciate playing a part in the process. Make sure to match your rules with sound reasoning, and let your teen know that with maturity comes increased freedom. Think of your teenager's privileges in terms of a ladder: as they get older and prove that they can be responsible, move their curfew up a rung, give them increased phone or Internet privileges, or let them choose what limits they would like to negotiate.
The boomerang son, who returns home after further education, and becomes stuck, indebted, working part-time or not at all, with the compensations of a full fridge and parental indulgence and vague ambitions "to travel", has become a cliche of middle-class families; while for those in more impoverished circumstances, the relative absence of aspirational male adult role models seems too often to bring with it a deadening of possibility. A growing proportion of these young men, the argument goes, have lost the ability to motivate themselves; stuck in a permanent adolescence, they don't have the character, the capacity, or the opportunity to establish themselves as productive individuals.
"A lazy youth becomes a burden to those parents, whom he ought to comfort, if not support. But you can no more rouse them, with all of their fine arguments, than you can a log. There they lie, completely enchained by indolence… Business tires him; reading fatigues him; the public service interferes with his pleasures. Ask him what he has done with his morning – he cannot tell you; for he has lived without reflection, and almost without knowing whether he has lived at all!"
Some of the extremes of these behaviours were detailed in Debra Bell's confessional memoir about her eldest son William, who, despite all the advantages of a private education escaped from the anxiet ies of his adolescence into heavy-duty cannabis, after which his life, and that of the family, unravelled. In the three years since she published an article that led to The Cannabis Diaries, Bell tells me, she has been contacted by "many hundreds" of mothers whose story of their sons is all too familiar to her. "The problem was at its most extreme perhaps in William," Bell says, "but he was adamant that just about all 60 of the boys in his year were affected in some way. Hardly any of his friends, who had been high-achieving boys at 11, went on to university, and most of them now, at 23, are drifting like him."
Teenagers can wreak such havoc on their family. Maybe you know of a teenager who has moved you to tears. I often wonder why there aren't support groups for parents of teens on every street corner. These families need support desperately. Maybe even a 12-step program... you know like AA? If alcoholics can get so much support, then WHY not parents of teens? Teenager Parent Anonymous - why NOT? Parents of teenagers need a serenity prayer too, for crying out loud.
One fact to keep at the front of your mind is that concern and despair over delinquent or idle boys has been a persistent theme of the anxieties of middle-aged parents for as long as societies have existed. When he wasn't touring the country on horseback and writing Rural Rides, William Cobbett, the 19th-century polemicist, was drafting a series of brisk letters to what was seen as a work-shy class of teenage boys in the 1820s. His advice began with harsh warnings about the evils of indolence that would no doubt find favour among slash-and-burn coalition welfare ministers:
"Start, I beseech you, with a conviction firmly fixed on your mind, that you have no right to any earthly existence, without doing work of some sort; and, that even in that case, you have no right to breed children, or to be kept by others. To wish to live on the labour of others is, besides the folly of it, to contemplate a fraud at the least, and, under certain circumstances, to meditate robbery."
In July of last year, the American Automobile Association released results of a national survey in which they found that 46 percent of 16- and 17-year-olds send text messages while they're driving. While the number of teens who text may be alarming, the safety hazard is far more troubling to those at AAA who conducted the survey.
Automobile accidents are the top killer of teenagers in America, so the idea of one more distraction while they're behind the wheel is disturbing. In addition, the Insurance Information Institute found that almost 30 percent of all crashes are caused by driver distraction.
Most teens think texting while driving is "no big deal." They text so often that they can almost do it without looking. But the "almost" is the problem. According to the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration, a car accident can happen if a driver's attention is diverted for just three seconds. So, while teens may think they're perfectly safe because they only look down at their phones periodically while texting, "periodically" is all it takes.
For teenagers who are just learning how to drive, there are enough distractions already, without adding the challenges of talking on a phone or texting. Though texting while driving isn't safe for anyone, it's especially dangerous for teenagers who are still developing attention and coordination skills.
The University of Utah conducted a study in which it found that talking on the phone while driving impairs driving ability so much that a cell-phone-using driver is as impaired as someone with a blood alcohol level of 0.08, which is borderline intoxicated.
Teens and trouble: think they go together like bread and butter? Well, you may be wrong. While teenagers do tend towards “risk-seeking” behavior, and seem to enjoy pushing boundaries – and parents' buttons – troublesome behavior can be anything but typical.
Communication is the number one thing that parents need to do better. Although the idea of a heart-to-heart with your teen may sound like the stuff of fantasy, parents can talk to their teen if they do it right. Bernstein recommends approaching teens “at the right time,” and not when they're angry, busy, or tired. “Start on a positive note,” he suggests. Try making a joke or telling him you're proud of what he's doing right. In other words, don't start with “We need to talk, young man!”
There's nothing wrong with a little give and take, and teens will appreciate playing a part in the process. Make sure to match your rules with sound reasoning, and let your teen know that with maturity comes increased freedom. Think of your teenager's privileges in terms of a ladder: as they get older and prove that they can be responsible, move their curfew up a rung, give them increased phone or Internet privileges, or let them choose what limits they would like to negotiate.
The boomerang son, who returns home after further education, and becomes stuck, indebted, working part-time or not at all, with the compensations of a full fridge and parental indulgence and vague ambitions "to travel", has become a cliche of middle-class families; while for those in more impoverished circumstances, the relative absence of aspirational male adult role models seems too often to bring with it a deadening of possibility. A growing proportion of these young men, the argument goes, have lost the ability to motivate themselves; stuck in a permanent adolescence, they don't have the character, the capacity, or the opportunity to establish themselves as productive individuals.
"A lazy youth becomes a burden to those parents, whom he ought to comfort, if not support. But you can no more rouse them, with all of their fine arguments, than you can a log. There they lie, completely enchained by indolence… Business tires him; reading fatigues him; the public service interferes with his pleasures. Ask him what he has done with his morning – he cannot tell you; for he has lived without reflection, and almost without knowing whether he has lived at all!"
Some of the extremes of these behaviours were detailed in Debra Bell's confessional memoir about her eldest son William, who, despite all the advantages of a private education escaped from the anxiet ies of his adolescence into heavy-duty cannabis, after which his life, and that of the family, unravelled. In the three years since she published an article that led to The Cannabis Diaries, Bell tells me, she has been contacted by "many hundreds" of mothers whose story of their sons is all too familiar to her. "The problem was at its most extreme perhaps in William," Bell says, "but he was adamant that just about all 60 of the boys in his year were affected in some way. Hardly any of his friends, who had been high-achieving boys at 11, went on to university, and most of them now, at 23, are drifting like him."
Teenagers can wreak such havoc on their family. Maybe you know of a teenager who has moved you to tears. I often wonder why there aren't support groups for parents of teens on every street corner. These families need support desperately. Maybe even a 12-step program... you know like AA? If alcoholics can get so much support, then WHY not parents of teens? Teenager Parent Anonymous - why NOT? Parents of teenagers need a serenity prayer too, for crying out loud.
One fact to keep at the front of your mind is that concern and despair over delinquent or idle boys has been a persistent theme of the anxieties of middle-aged parents for as long as societies have existed. When he wasn't touring the country on horseback and writing Rural Rides, William Cobbett, the 19th-century polemicist, was drafting a series of brisk letters to what was seen as a work-shy class of teenage boys in the 1820s. His advice began with harsh warnings about the evils of indolence that would no doubt find favour among slash-and-burn coalition welfare ministers:
"Start, I beseech you, with a conviction firmly fixed on your mind, that you have no right to any earthly existence, without doing work of some sort; and, that even in that case, you have no right to breed children, or to be kept by others. To wish to live on the labour of others is, besides the folly of it, to contemplate a fraud at the least, and, under certain circumstances, to meditate robbery."
In July of last year, the American Automobile Association released results of a national survey in which they found that 46 percent of 16- and 17-year-olds send text messages while they're driving. While the number of teens who text may be alarming, the safety hazard is far more troubling to those at AAA who conducted the survey.
Automobile accidents are the top killer of teenagers in America, so the idea of one more distraction while they're behind the wheel is disturbing. In addition, the Insurance Information Institute found that almost 30 percent of all crashes are caused by driver distraction.
Most teens think texting while driving is "no big deal." They text so often that they can almost do it without looking. But the "almost" is the problem. According to the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration, a car accident can happen if a driver's attention is diverted for just three seconds. So, while teens may think they're perfectly safe because they only look down at their phones periodically while texting, "periodically" is all it takes.
For teenagers who are just learning how to drive, there are enough distractions already, without adding the challenges of talking on a phone or texting. Though texting while driving isn't safe for anyone, it's especially dangerous for teenagers who are still developing attention and coordination skills.
The University of Utah conducted a study in which it found that talking on the phone while driving impairs driving ability so much that a cell-phone-using driver is as impaired as someone with a blood alcohol level of 0.08, which is borderline intoxicated.
Teens and trouble: think they go together like bread and butter? Well, you may be wrong. While teenagers do tend towards “risk-seeking” behavior, and seem to enjoy pushing boundaries – and parents' buttons – troublesome behavior can be anything but typical.
Communication is the number one thing that parents need to do better. Although the idea of a heart-to-heart with your teen may sound like the stuff of fantasy, parents can talk to their teen if they do it right. Bernstein recommends approaching teens “at the right time,” and not when they're angry, busy, or tired. “Start on a positive note,” he suggests. Try making a joke or telling him you're proud of what he's doing right. In other words, don't start with “We need to talk, young man!”
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