Unlike “right and wrong”, which are viewed as absolute and indisputable, there are cases where someone controls the situation and simply enforces his or her personal preferences. It is a subjective type of black and white thinking.
In one of the newsletters I get regularly, I received a link to the article titled “Social media…dirty word or essential skill?” I am sure most parents with Internet access and a teen or two would vote for “dirty word”, considering their kids’ obsessive texting, chatting and emailing.
Read Do As I Do »
This is a question I got from a mother:
“I have a 13-year-old son who is a forgetful kid. I ask him to bring notes from school and he forgets them. He forgets his homework, he forgets to bring messages from school, he forgets he has a test, he forgets we have plans in the family. I talked to his teachers and we agreed to communicate between us but he keeps forgetting his communication book. I feel lost and I do not understand why he is so forgetful in things that are important and remembers his computer stuff well.
What can I do?”
Read How to Cure a Forgetful Kid »
When my daughter started driving, I was scared to death. Talking to her and many of her friends, I heard some awful reasons why they did not want to wear seatbelts. I was also shocked that those who wore seatbelts were doing it just to avoid a fine!
Highway signs where I live warn, “Wear a seatbelt of wear a fine”. This makes young people think that the police are out to get people who are not wearing seatbelts so that is the best reason to wear one. In a way, I believe the authorities are promoting negative thinking about seatbelts with their choice of advertisements.
Instead of teaching people it is important to take care of themselves and wearing a seatbelt can preserve their lives, they scare them into doing it to avoid punishment. But I think that’s the wrong motivation.
Read The Seatbelt is Your Friend »
Many times, I find my self cruising through life, busy with my routine and my goals and my way of thinking. Then, something happens, which is the equivalent of getting smacked on the side of the head, and I get thrown into an emotional turmoil. I am sure this happens to you too from time to time. Recently, I was hit by the movie “Taken”.
Read Taken »
Throughout my childhood, I often heard my parents talking about “making the right decisions”. I remember wondering many times, “What are the right decisions?” I remember the strongest feeling I had from what my parents thought about the right decisions was that decisions were always a matter of life and death.
Read Matters of Life and Death »
One of most difficult things for teens to do is ask for help. Most of the time, the emotional struggles they face at that age prevent them from treating the adults in their life as resources.
Read Resourceless Teens »
Children’s behavior is the concern of many parents. Kids can be diagnosed with ADD, ADHD or ODD, when in fact, it is the various choices their parents have made throughout the course of their kids’ lives that make kids act the way they do. Yes, I know this is hard to accept, but I believe that if you were to give me a normal child – boy or girl – I could, by making a simple choice to act in a particular way, single-handedly turn this child into a problematic beast with social problems, difficulties with authority, declining academic achievement, lack of motivation, depression, anger and anxiety, just to name a few.
Read Recipe for Teen Disaster »
While on our long vacation recently, I managed to organize a reunion of my high school friends. We got together with our partners and kids for an afternoon picnic, after 25 years apart.
Occasionally, the question “Are motorcycles worth the risk?” comes up when someone wants to buy one. It’s rather topical in our family, so I wanted to share a story for the benefit of other families having this discussion.
It was Monday morning and I had just taken my 7-year-old daughter to school. On the way back, I passed my son’s high school. As usual, the high school intersection was full of parents dropping their kids off.
I turned left after a motorcycle. A parked car started making a U-turn and hit the motorcycle! The rider flew in the air over 30 meters and his motorcycle dragged on the ground after him.
Read Are Motorcycles Worth the Risk? What You Need to Consider »
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