teens / teenagers Tag

Posts tagged 'teens / teenagers'

Resilient Teens: Bend or Break!

“Teens today have an easy life” is a very common phrase. I tend to think that grownups say it because they have forgotten what it means to be a teenager. They say that teens need more discipline, more structure, more rules, more determination and more motivation. I say they need to be more resilient, because teens today have it tough and need to be able to bounce back quickly and very often. They need to bend, so they do not break.

It is easy to look at your own teenage years in retrospect, with the “creative dementia” that comes with age, and say that they were fun. People forget. We are programmed to forget the tough things in order to survive, but expecting our kids to perform where we have failed ourselves is a double standard. The reason I have not forgotten my teenage experiences was that I have been working with so many teens since then. Even if I would have forgotten naturally, they have reminded me that this period brings with it many challenges. The physical-hormonal part of adolescence is a myth that grownups have created to help them forget that the social-emotional side is where they failed.

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No More Disappointment: The Biggest Loser Leads the Dance

Many forms of therapy try to help the client overcome pain. One big source of pain starts during childhood, when kids, with their lack of life experience, feel that they are a disappointment to their parents. Here is the story of Simon, who believed he was the biggest loser in his parent’s eyes.

Simon was an angry and frustrated teenager when he came to sit with me on my life coaching deck. I read what he and his parents had written to me and felt frustrated to see how yet another whole family was a victim of circumstances. Parents’ love can be overwhelming sometimes and being unaware of feelings and lacking the ability to manage them sabotages the relationships at home.

Parents need courage to realize that they are the most powerful in this dysfunctional dynamic, but most of them feel helpless and send their kids to be “fixed”. A relationship with a child is a dance. Some parents do not understand that they need to lead.

This post is part 17 of 18 in the series From the Life Coaching Deck

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When Your Teen’s Friends are Bad Influence

As parents, we put all our heart and energy into raising our children to be the best they can be. We want them to be as healthy, friendly, successful and happy as possible. In their teen years, most of us are afraid that their friends will become the most important people in our teenager’s life. So we want to make sure those friends do not have bad influence over them.

Our investment in our children, both material and emotional, is tested several times during their life. Their social connections are one big test of parenting, because as parents, we try to pass our philosophy and values to our children. If they spend their time with friends who tell them the opposite, this may weaken their belief in our philosophy and our values.

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Disrespectful Behavior is a Mirror: Talk With Kids, Not At Them

“Kids today are very disrespectful” is a common phrase I have heard a lot lately. Parents and teachers are very frustrated about this issue of respect. When children exhibit disrespectful behavior, they get into lots of conflicts and trouble and their ability to learn and absorb information is limited.

Respect is a very popular topic at home and at school. Most parents and teachers demand respect and by that, they do not understand that respect is earned and works like a mirror. When your behavior is disrespectful towards children, they will have no respect for you either.

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Tips for Teens: How to Make Good Career Choices

Teens have a bad reputation. Many people believe that they generally make bad choices, misbehave and lash out in ways that hurt them (and others) later. Among other things, they think that teens do not know how to make good career choices.

I have had the honor of working with many teens. This has given me a chance to prove to many of them, and to their families, that the bad reputation teens have is wrong. There are always teens who choose well, behave well and do well. And if they can do it, so can other teens!

Many of my clients share teen horror stories, like “You know teens. They never have any money”. I do not know what they are talking about. My own teens have always had money, and it was their own money.

Another common belief is “You know teens. They don’t want to work”. No, I do not know, because my own teens have always wanted to work. My kids also have friends who started working as soon as they could and are doing very well.

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There Are No Hopeless Teens

As a teen, I faced many challenges with how the system viewed my abilities. Since then, I got a degree in Special Education and promised myself that no teen that crossed my path would ever be hopeless. Over the last 30 years, I have had the honor of working with many teens who were given up by the system and have done my best to act on my promise.

A young boy (let’s call him Aaron) came to see me 3 years ago. He was a tall and handsome young teen in a big body. He was in 10th grade and his mom was very worried about him. She raised him by herself, together with his youngest brother after a very challenging breakup.

Aaron attended one of the most prestigious private high schools, located over an hour and half’s drive from his home and his academic scores were low. He was failing in most of the subjects. He also got in trouble with every teacher possible and had no friends.

Every day was a challenge. In the morning, Aaron refused to go to school. In the afternoon, he refused to do his homework. The school told his mom that Aaron was hopeless. But he was just was a smart kid that was lost in the system.

This post is part 15 of 18 in the series From the Life Coaching Deck

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Distracted Drivers Kill and Die

Yes, it’s a harsh thing to say, but distracted drivers kill people and distracted drivers die unnecessarily.

My nephew is dead. He was a young man, just starting his adult life, and he did nothing wrong. He was riding his motorcycle, having had zero accidents and zero fines for 4 years, when a distracted driver in a car driver failed to stop at a stop sign, smashed into him and killed him on the spot.

Any life lost is not only lost by the person who died. This accident, caused by a tiny distraction, cost many people’s lives. My nephew is dead, but his family, and many people he was connected too, lost something that will never be returned. The pain of his close family is something that will never heal. Death and injuries due to distracted drivers leave scar that never heal.

My nephew and our family cannot change the past, even though we’ve tried. But we can prevent other families from experiencing the pain and devastation that comes with such accidents.

It is important to understand that every accident is a mistake. No one causes it intentionally. No one wants to injure or kill anyone else. No one wants to live with the massive pain and guilt on their conscience and ruin their own life. This is why it is called an accident, but many accidents happen due to some form of distraction.

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Teen Life Sucks (or Does it?)

Sometimes, when I talk to teens, they tell me that teen life sucks.

It is sad to hear them say that at a time in their lives that is supposed to be wonderful, interesting and exciting. The teenage years are when they form their identity and it is sad to hear that they came to the conclusion that teen life sucks.

It is sad because if they believe it sucks, they are more likely to feel that it sucks. If they think teen life sucks, their subconscious will create a self-fulfilling prophecy, and their life will actually “suck”. It is not the thought that makes it true, it is that subconsciously, the thought will lead to action that will make it true. Whatever you believe, this is your reality.

I love those Buddhist quotes and there is one in which the Buddha said it perfectly, “Wherever you go, there you are”

My motto is that in life, you get what you focus on. If you get up in the morning and you focus on what sucks, you will get exactly that, life that sucks!

Teen life is complicated and involves many aspects. Yes, there are components that do not work the way we want them to. Sometimes, they work to our advantage and sometimes they do not. It is still a far cry from considering teen life as sucking completely.

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Teen Sex: Not Allowed!

Recently, I saw a client who was very concerned about her teen daughter getting closer to a boy she was spending time with. She suspected they were having sex. She was completely panicked about it and started preventing her daughter from seeing her boyfriend. Her daughter was 16 years old and had been seeing this boy for over a year. I asked my client why she was worried and she didn’t really know how to answer. In her mind, teen sex was out of the question. Teens should not have sex and that’s it.

My client had many issues with sex that she never had a chance to discuss with anyone in her life, not even her husband. It was one of those things she never believed she would ever discuss with anyone. It was private, done behind closed doors, quietly, so no one would hear or know. Especially not the kids.

I told her about a story I wrote. It was about a group of teens discussing the topic of parents having sex. One of them discovered, by accident, that his parents were having sex and the story is about how they deal with this “discovery” as a group. I wrote this book (to be published yet) after listening to my then 15 year old daughter and her friends having this same discussion: do parents have sex? I was very proud of my daughter, who was the one saying, “of course they do”. Most of the other kids felt sick just imagining it.

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Do Parents Let Their Kids Play Violent Video Games?

Recently, I received a question from a mother who said her teenage kids wanted to watch violent video games and they claimed other parents allowed their kids to do so. They thought she was just being mean and ignorant of what was happening in the world. “I do not like the idea of them playing violent and sexist video games but I feel helpless”. Her idea was to design a questionnaire for parents and see if her teenagers were right. She asked me what I think of her idea. Here is what I wrote to her:

Your experience is quite normal and it is wonderful to read that there are people like you still out there, advocating for children to be engaging in healthy activities!

Feel free to set the rules in your house. Your teen is a teen. He does not set the rules. You do! He is welcome to make different rules in his house!

You don’t need a questionnaire to back up what you already know is right. You can be the captain of your own family ship, regardless of what other parents do.

Kids cannot buy their own games, computers, iPhones, etc. You have a lot more power than you think! I have clients who found amazing result when they put their kids on a technology diet for a week. Their kids were suddenly like new! If they can’t use your credit card and don’t know your PayPal password, you have nothing to worry about.

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