To bring positive change, you must take an honest look at your child’s behavior and your family situation. You may or may not know the underlying issue for your child’s behavior. Your child might have a diagnosed disorder (such as bipolar disorder) — or not. That’s not the point.
Making excuses is shifting the blame onto something or someone else. No matter the diagnosis or underlying issue, by making excuses you’re giving your teen permission not to be accountable for his/her actions and allowing your teen to continue harmful and hurtful behavior.Teens need to understand that their behavior has consequences. That’s the way people learn and grow in maturity. That’s the way teens grow up.
The character of a person is shown through his or her personality — by the way an individual thinks, feels, and behaves. When the behavior is inflexible, maladaptive, and antisocial, then that individual is diagnosed with a personality disorder.
Most personality disorders begin as problems in personal development and character which peak during adolescence and then are defined as personality disorders.
Personality disorders are not illnesses in a strict sense as they do not disrupt emotional, intellectual, or perceptual functioning. However, those with personality disorders suffer a life that is not positive, proactive, or fulfilling. Not surprisingly, personality disorders are also associated with failures to reach potential.
Many teens experience a time when keeping up with school work is difficult. These periods may last several weeks and may include social problems as well as a slide in academic performance.
Research suggests that problems are more likely to occur during a transitional year, such as moving from elementary to middle school, or middle school to high school.
In a famous experiment, students were asked to take a lemon home and to get used to it. Three days later, they were able to single out “their” lemon from a pile of rather similar ones. They seemed to have bonded.
Is this the true meaning of love, bonding, coupling?
Do we simply get used to other human beings, pets, or objects?
SIMPLY LISTEN
Helping Others Cope With Grief
It’s part of life. Someone special died today. Someone’s father or mother, husband or wife, son or daughter. A family, a lifetime of memories and a lot of pain are left behind. And, for the survivors, the pain is just beginning. Working through that pain and sadness is often a long and grueling process called mourning.
Almost everyone worries about what to say to the survivors. You don’t want to hurt their feelings or upset them. But more important than knowing what to say is knowing how to listen. You cannot take away the pain that friends or co-workers are suffering from the loss of a loved one, but you can listen to their stories. Storytelling is a very common and effective way for the grieving person to keep the memory of a loved one alive. The biggest fear for someone in mourning is that those around them will forget the loved one now that they are gone. Read more…
Your Teen’s Friends
Peer Influence & Peer Relationships
Teens want to be with people their own age — their peers. During adolescence, teens spend more time with their peers and without parental supervision. With peers, teens can be both connected and independent, as they break away from their parents’ images of them and develop identities of their own.
While many families help teens in feeling proud and confident of their unique traits, backgrounds, and abilities, peers are often more accepting of the feelings, thoughts, and actions associated with the teen’s search for self-identity. Read more…
Emotional Health
What Should I Know About My Teenager’s Emotional Health?
The teenage years are a time of transition from childhood into adulthood. Teens often struggle with being dependent on their parents while having a strong desire to be independent. Ideally, they are maturing from the one-sided self-centeredness of childhood to a self-identity that balances responsible self-interest with care and love for others.
Alcohol and Teen Drinking
A child who reaches age 21 without
smoking, abusing alcohol or using drugs
is virtually certain never to do so.
- Joseph A. Califano, Jr., Chairman and President,
The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University
Alcohol abuse and alcohol dependence are not only adult problems — they also affect a significant number of adolescents and young adults between the ages of 12 and 20, even though drinking under the age of 21 is illegal.
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