“Faith is taking the first step even when you can’t see the whole staircase.” – Martin Luther King Jr
For some teens this is too abstract an idea to understand. This might be especially true for your younger teen. Their brain is still growing in a way that can be stuck in concrete thinking. Concrete thinking [...]
Anytime you want to grant a new privilege to your teen, it’s a good idea to let them know the rules before they break them. Let your teen know what your standard is so they know that when you revoke the privilege it’s because they demonstrated they weren’t able to handle the responsibility.
A perfect [...]
When you think of peer pressure you may automatically think about whether your teen will buckle under the pressure. Change your thinking, there’s something called good peer pressure too!
Your teen is at a time that in their life wherethey gravitate towards friends. They do this bcause they are socially inclined and to balance what you’ve been [...]
You might want to move with your teen the next time they do something that makes you want to give them a lecture on better behavior, manners, or being considerate. Why?
Since your teen’s brain is under construction, there are connections that are being made that aren’t working perfectly yet. One of the ways you can [...]
Every time you pose a question to your teen, they answer with whatever your favorite movie, restaurant, CD, insert interest here is. They do this or they try and guess what might make things easier for you even if they are dying to do something else.
If you can remember gently probe your teen to get [...]
Rejection. No one likes it and even parents understand the hurt of it as they listen to their teen try to brush off the disappointment of a friend’s or a group’s rejection. Their sense of self is so new they can often mistake that rejection as a reason to become someone they aren’t.
There’s a desire to want to sweep in and make it [...]
“I just hate it when people tell me what to do.” That’s what she said in response to why she is so irritated when her Mom asks her to do something. Well, do you know what to do? She said, “Yes.” Then why not do it before your mother has to remind you?
This is [...]
