Proud as a Peacock

My daughter is celebrating her 19th birthday this week. It is an exciting time for us both. Can you imagine? 19 years!

Sometimes, when I try to remember her crawling on the floor or saying her first words (which was early, very early), I have only vague memories.

She is so big now (she is taller than me, but that is easy), yet she is still young and acts like a child. She is so mature, yet she is naïve.

Our kids’ birthdays are a wonderful way for us to take stock of our parenting. Every year, they grow and mature and learn about themselves, we do too. We learn about our achievements or our challenges and it makes us better people, better parents.

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Happy Parents Raise Happy Kids

Parents and 2 little kids on a part bench

Parenting (especially teenage parenting) is undoubtedly the most challenging adventure in a person’s life. Remember the first hours of being a mother or a father? The unconditional love you had for this tiny new creature that did nothing but eat, sleep and cry, coupled with the enormous load of the new responsibility, from which there was no escape. A bit overwhelming, wasn’t it? For some parents, even a bit scary sometimes. Who can you turn to for parenting advice?

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Interview with an Author

Be Special, Be Yourself for Teenagers by Ronit Baras

Find the answers to all the good questions I was asked about my first teen book “Be Special, Be Yourself for Teenagers”.

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10 Ways to Encourage Your Kids

Researches have suggested that academic success is not a result of natural born talent but a result of persistence, encouragement and motivation to succeed.

In order to effectively use encouragement, it is good to understand that encouraging a kid to do something focuses on the good things and sends kids a message “You are OK”.

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It Won’t Happen to Me

My response to David Bogner’s post “Monsters or Victims”, following the rape of a 12 year-old girl by 13 year-old boys.

… what you can do to be your teen’s friend and you may find they want you to set the boundaries and “save them from themselves” when they make mistakes. Being afraid of parenting your teens only sends a message of insecurity. If responsibility needs to be taken, between parents and teens, who do you think should take it?

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Inspiring True Story for Parents

A couple of weeks ago, I delivered a Parenting Skills workshop for the Mullumbimby High School parents and friends. It was great fun and I was honoured to have the school principal and the mayor of Byron Shire attending. Here is an inspiring true story I told them about the important messages kids & teens need […]

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Gentle Men and Strong Women – Avoiding the Male Teacher Trap

In her article More male teachers needed, Gayle wrote about the reasons male teachers are needed in the education system. She expressed it from a mother’s point of view and described how beneficial it is for children to have male figures in their life, especially in a society where many kids do not live with mum and dad in the same house.

Now, although the education system’s purpose is to mould the habits and mindset of society, what happens when the teachers says, “Men can be whatever they want and women can be whatever they want”, but when the kids go home, they see dad fixing electrical appliances and mum cleaning. YOU, the parent, are still the most influential agent in your kids’ life. Compared to you and your thoughts, beliefs and ideas about gender, the education system stands no chance.

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“The Ten Commandments of Being the Parent of a Teen” – Revised Edition

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.

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Teens Don’t Stand a Chance Against the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Young woman at her laptop surrounded by social media icons

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?”

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Who’s Afraid of Teens Using Drugs?

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?

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