Family Matters

What is an enemy? Is it a person who wants to hurt you? Most people would agree to this description. In fact, here is what the dictionary says:
Enemy: One who feels hatred toward, intends injury to, or opposes the interests of another; a foe
But I think there is no such a thing, because no one [...]

If you are a parent of a teenager, every bit of advice is welcomed. This is what I thought before I read what Busy Mom wrote in The Ten Commandments of Being the Parent of a Teen. And I ask you, “With parents thinking like that, who needs enemies?”

Do you really, really believe that the day her kid reached his thirteenth birthday, something in his head started going wrong and turned on the “reputation” light? Or maybe her kid really gave her a crash course in parenting teens.

I think that our kids are like little mirrors of us, reflecting back everything we do and say. Parenting teens is no different than parenting younger kids. The only difference is that teens are much larger mirrors.

So I have revised the Ten Commandments of Being the Parent of a Teen.

This week, I received a post that Jennifer Satterwhite wrote called Parenting a teen and other things that make you stupid. “Catchy heading”, I said to myself, “It is about teens and it is close to my heart, so I went (well, I clicked a few clicks) to read it. It was very sad to read how terrible teens seem in some parents’ eyes. Parents interpreting everything their teens do as negative and disrespectful do not leave much room for the teen to grow and evolve.

The most famous research was done many years ago when two great teachers were given 2 classes to teach. Back then, they used to put all the “good” kids in one class and all the “not so good” kids in another class. They told the teachers with the “good” class, “Unfortunately, this is the worst class in the whole school”, and to the other teacher with the very troubled class they said, “Lucky you, you have the best class in the school”. And what do you know, at the end of year they realised that the grades in the “good” class dropped and the grade in the “not so good class” went up high. You probably ask yourself, “How could that happen?”

Kids can tell left from right as early as 3 years. Every kid has a bank of words in their brain. For every kid the bank is a different size. Some kids need to hear a word 700 hundred times before they “know” the meaning of that word and can use it. Some kids with learning difficulties [...]

For most of us, the word “judgment” has bad connotations. It is almost equivalent to criticism. We associate it with laws, trials and with sentences - with power. There are judgmental people; there is a judge in court and even a “judgment day”.

In the personal growth process, we aim to solve the puzzle of our right to judge. Are we allowed to judge? Is it good for us? How to live with the label of being “judgmental”?

When judgment is the weighing of evidence and feelings in order to make a choice, the real question is “Can we be non-judgmental”?

As part of my personal growth journey, I have been studying other personal development gurus like Steve Pavlina. I like him because he likes to write and I love to read what he writes. He is a great inspiration to me.
In his article about motivation, he talks (well, he doesn’t talk. He writes, but it [...]

Research with parent and children indicates that one of the most effective methods to prevent young people from using drugs is a devoted parent who spends time with their teens, talks with them (not to them) about their friends, their school, their sports and what interests them. The research also reports that teens appreciate parents’ advice and care a lot about what their parents think of them, their actions and their friends and consider this parental feedback a sign of caring.

But how do we get to be our teens’ friends?