Pot is more potent than ever. What does that mean? The percentage content of THC, pot’s “active ingredient,” has more than doubled since 1983, according to a White House report released last week. Just like we see with the epidemic of STDs, the dangers of risky behaviors for today’s teens are far greater than for past generations.
Pot and your teen: Teens who report being depressed in the last year are more than twice as likely to smoke pot as teens who have not been depressed.
The world wide web equals access to the world. It also means the world has access to you. And your kids. Yet children online can be sitting “safely” in your living room, so why worry about them? A new study conducted by Harris Interactive reveals that parents may be turning a blind eye to their children’s internet use. For instance, parents estimate that their children spend 2 hours a week on the internet, but children report spending 10 times that (20 hours).
Two helpful pointers for parents:
Being involved will equip you to step in as a parent should any unsafe situations arise.
A “Bleg,” if you don’t already know, is a blog with a request. This time, I am requesting your ideas for ways to spend quality time with your kids this summer. So let’s hear them! Post your ideas as comments to this entry.
The Center for Parent/Youth Understanding, which I have posted about before, came out with another great resource:
A dictionary of the most popular text and chat acronyms!
Find out what your children are saying… and post ones that you know of that might not be on the list!
An astute parent will already be familiar with the term “friend with benefits.” Being friends with benefits means sharing either a short- or long-term “agreement” to be physically intimate but to withhold any deeper social or emotional connection or commitment. The tamest version would be a “cuddle buddy”: that person you go to when you’re in the mood for affection, but you don’t want to have to go on a date with them later that weekend. You smile, you spoon, everyone goes home happy.
A friend with benefits can also be someone (a warm body) used for physical pleasure or sexual release – by mutual agreement, mind you – but with the additional agreement that, “We’re just friends. We don’t go on dates, we’re not exclusive. We are friends who are there to do favors for each other, the way friends do, but I wouldn’t tell you any more about my hopes and dreams than I would the guy I study with in homeroom.”
Sound weird? Or does it does it sound ideal? Sexual release is pleasant, and if we can just agree on its terms, why not both enjoy it? You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours.
If you can’t spot the major pitfalls yourself, let me just point out that “in a study of 6,500 sexually active adolescents, sexually active teenage girls were more than three times more likely to be depressed, and nearly three times as likely to have had a suicide attempt, than girls who were not sexually active.”*
I’ve been reading a book on communicating with teens and thought I’d pass on some of the advice:
One of the first rules of communicating with teens is validating feelings. Teens feel a million different emotions at once and one of them is usually feeling misunderstood. As a child grows up, she learns that she is different from everyone else around her. She realizes that no one will completely understand her. And on top of all that, half the time she doesn’t understand herself why she reacts the way she does!
When a teenager is facing any of a myriad of emotions, the last thing he wants is to feel stupid or feel like his emotions are invalid or ignored. A parent can go a long way towards creating a safe environment for growth and maturing by simply withholding judgment and verbally acknowledging what a teen might be feeling.
Case in point: your teen’s eyes are red and puffy and a little moist. You could gasp, “What have you been crying about?” (your gasp giving your child the idea that crying is out-of-place). Or you could simply say, “You look upset about something. I’m sorry.” The second response shows perception as well as sympathy and is much more inviting to a teenager.
A great article appeared this week from Connect with Kids.
Points of interest from the article include the fact that teenage sexuality, according to some studies from the Center for Disease Control, has actually decreased, thanks in part to abstinence programs and positive messages about self-esteem.
The article also includes some tips for parents, so scroll all the way to the bottom!
I found this helpful link in the newsletter of the Center for Parent and Youth Understanding.
The link will take you to six great tips for getting to know the media that your children are most likely already familiar with. Two things to keep in mind: today’s media can be dangerous or unhealthy when misunderstood or misused; a parent’s job is to do more than shelter a child from media. Parenting involves teaching children how to use media safely. As you learn to use different forms of media, you can guide your child to also use media wisely and safely.
Check out this post from Vanessa Van Petten, author of You’re Grounded!