Parenting Teens

As a parent, do you do everything possible to assist in your teen’s education? Do you participate in school activities and parent organizations? Do you attend parent/teacher conferences and accept suggestions about what you can do to help in seeing that your teen gets the best education possible?

Teachers (and many parents) have long been concerned that parents are not involved enough when it comes to their children’s education-particularly in high school. The National PTA has a list of ten things that teachers most wish parents would do to become involved.

* Be involved. Parent involvement helps students learn, improves schools, and helps teachers work with you to help your children succeed.

* Provide resources at home for learning. Utilize your local library, and have books and magazines available in your home. Read with your children each day.

* Set a good example. Show your children by your own actions that you believe reading is both enjoyable and useful. Monitor television viewing and the use of videos and game systems.

* Encourage students to do their best in school. Show your children that you believe education is important and that you want them to do their best.

* Value education and seek a balance between schoolwork and outside activities. Emphasize your children’s progress in developing the knowledge and skills they need to be successful both in school and in life.

* Recognize factors that take a toll on students’ classroom performance:
1. Consider the possible negative effects of long hours at after-school jobs or in extracurricular activities. Work with your children to help them maintain a balance between school responsibilities and outside commitments.
2. View drinking and excessive partying as serious matters. While most parents are concerned about drug abuse, many fail to recognize that alcohol, over-the-counter drugs, and common substances used as inhalants are more frequently abused than illegal drugs.

* Support school rules and goals. Take care not to undermine school rules, discipline, or goals.

* Use pressure positively. Encourage children to do their best, but don’t pressure them by setting goals too high or by scheduling too many activities.

* Call teachers early if you think there’s a problem while there is still time to solve it. Don’t wait for teachers to call you.

* Accept your responsibility as parents. Don’t expect the school and teachers to take over your obligations as parents. Teach children self-discipline and respect for others at home — don’t rely on teachers and schools to teach these basic behaviors and attitudes.

Do you do these things, or at least some of them? Do you feel you’re involved enough in your teen’s schooling and eduction? Read over these suggestions carefully and start doing at least one that you’re not doing now. Your child will benefit, and so will you!

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Is your teen one of those who likes to participate in every activity coming and going? My daughter doesn’t really participate in that many extracurricular activities, but the ones she does like are very time-consuming. With school back in session, all those activities make our schedules a lot more hectic!

To handle all those activities, and mesh them with your own schedule, you’ll need a good calendar-probably more than one! Keep And Share offers a wide variety of calendars-many of which you can print out. But the best part is that they offer free online calendars, which you can share with others and keep private via the use of passwords. These online sharing calendars are great!

If your teen finds an activity in which he/she would like to participate, they can first check your schedule on the calendar to find out if you have any conflicts. Likewise, you can easily check your schedule from work or home-or anywhere else, if you carry a PDA-to check your child’s schedule if you need to do so.

These calendars are great for keeping up with your whole family’s schedule at once, since they can be changed easily on your computer, without doing a lot of erasing or marking out, and they let anyone in the family see what’s going on, helping prevent scheduling conflicts. Great, especially, for moms, dads and busy teens! Try one!

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Recently, I ran across an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitutionwhich brought a controversial issue up again for me. Should high school athletes by randomly tested for drugs? In my opinion, yes.

The story focused on the recent death of a high school quarterback in Georgia, who died in a car accident. The 17-year-old student was legally drunk and had cocaine in his system the night of his accident.

For many parents of teenagers, this brings up the issue of who is truly responsible for their children. I understand that issue. Being the parent of a 16-year-old myself, I feel that it is, ultimately, my responsibility to regulate my daughter’s behavior. That being said, however, when a child is representing the school by taking part in school-sponsored activities, I feel they have the responsibility to make sure the students representing them are doing so in a dignified and legal manner.

My daughter is not an athlete, but she does represent the school in marching band, as well as on the math and academic teams. If the school system decided to require drug testing for these activities, I would have no problem with it. No, I’m not in favor of taking away freedoms from our teenagers or anyone else. But I am in favor of teaching kids responsibility and, in my mind, showing them the consequences of participating in an illegal activity falls directly into that category.

The consequences for positive drug tests by schools mentioned in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution article were as follows:

First offense: mandatory follow-up testing and drug counseling with the student’s parents

Second offense: suspension from activity or sports for 30-45 days

Third offense: suspension from activity or sports for a year

I can promise you that, as a parent, the consequences I would hand out would be more severe. What about the rest of you out there? Do your teens participate in sports or activities where drug testing is required? Do you feel drug testing for school sports or other activities should be mandatory? Let me know how you feel.

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I’m getting on my soapbox today, about an issue that I’ve seen discussed a lot of places, but I don’t see any results from all the discussion!

Last night, I attended the annual Awards Night at my daughter’s high school (she brought home awards in Math and Band, her two favorite subjects!). The program we were handed at the door was very nicely done. You could tell that a lot of hard and thoughtful work had gone into it. The school auditorium and it’s lobby were nicely decorated. The refreshments served were delicious. The principal, teachers, administrators and invited guest speakers were articulate, friendly, and obviously enthusiastic and enjoying this program. The one thing that threw a monkey wrench into the evening was that only about half of the approximately two hundred students who were being honored with awards bothered to show up!

Now, I realize that there are emergencies and, sometimes, scheduling conflicts that people simply can’t work around. It’s impossible to attend every school event. However, I believe I lay this particular problem right where it belongs: at the feet of parents who are so apathetic and unimpressed with academic achievement that they do not encourage their kids to show up at such an important event!

I know a lot of the parents who have children at my daughter’s school. I talk with them when they do attend school events and during morning and afternoon dropoff and pickup times. I did not see quite a few parents and teens at the awards ceremony, who show up for every ball game! Even though they don’t have teens who are players, cheerleaders, or otherwise have to show up!

I have, at long last, reached some sort of breaking point when it comes to parties and sports being put before academic achievement! I have tolerated this for many years, even while fighting against it. My daughter has never been into athletics. From the start, her achievements have come in the classroom and in more academic extracurricular activities-the academic team and math team, for example.

It’s a wildly celebrated (though very rare) event when the football or basketball team makes it into the playoffs. In the past year alone, the varsity and junior varsity math teams brought home more trophies for the school than all the football and basketball teams combined have brought home in the last ten years! The school’s academic team is going to the national championship this year. Neither of these teams have been mentioned at all in our local newspaper, yet football and basketball scores are there the day after every game!

The sports teams have buses which transport them to every game all year. This year, the math teams and academic teams had bus transportation to only about half of their competitions. The rest of the time, parents provided the transportation and paid entrance fees for their kids to compete. The sports teams have their uniforms provided. The math team members and parents did two fundraisers, just to be able to buy t-shirts for the team.

It’s not like I don’t know this inequality hasn’t existed for a long time. As I said, I’ve lived with it. And I enjoy a good ball game as much as anyone. But something about people not showing up to celebrate their children’s academic achievements when they show up for sporting events finally made me snap!

I’m sure there are some out there who share my viewpoint, and some who do not. Please let me hear from you about this! If I haven’t put you off with my ravings, that is!

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This is one of those fun times when I get to use my blog as a parent to brag about my daughter! On May 25-27, the National Academic Quiz Tournaments, LLC will host the 2007 High School National Championship in Chicago, IL. My daughter, who is a sophomore (and the youngest person on her team) will be attending with her high school academic team, who will be competing in their first national event ever!

If you’d like to know how difficult this tournament is, check out the above website. They have a section titled You Gotta Know…, which is really extensive. Any of the subjects in their lists might show up in the questions. It might also be handy to study this site if you’re thinking of trying out for Jeopardy!

There’s also a packet of sample questions from a previous national tournament available in pdf format. Try reading through some of them. If you can answer more than a few, you’re doing much better than I did!

I’m really proud of my daughter for this, and all parents whose teens will be competing in this tournament, or who compete on their academic teams or quiz bowl teams, should be proud of their kids, too. So often, sports teams are given priority over academics in our public schools. This is a chance for the academic competitors to shine!

If your teen is interested in trivia (be it pop culture, history, or any other subject), suggest that they give their academic team or quiz bowl team a try. The competitions are fun and interesting. Both kids and parents learn a lot!

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Yahoo News recently posted a story regarding a club in a Miami, Florida high school which promoted tolerance of gays: Judge: School’s gay rights club can meet. A U.S. District judge ruled that the school must grant the same priveleges to the Gay Straight Alliance that it grants to other school clubs, per federal law. Following is a quote from the article.

The
American Civil Liberties Union sued the Okeechobee school board in November on behalf of the high school’s Gay-Straight Alliance after school officials said the group was a “sex-based” organization that would violate its abstinence-only education policy.

Why is it that these people would see the word “gay” in the name of a club and automatically assume that this club violates an abstinence-only policy? We see this a lot. Apparently, people have the idea that “all the sex you can get” is an integral part of the definition of the word “gay”! Apparently, the club should have begun its message of promoting tolerance of gays with the school board!

By automatically making such assumptions and by attempting to deny such clubs the right to meet, we are expressing our ignorance and intolerance in a big way. As adults and parents, we are supposed to be setting a good example for our teenagers. This is not the way to do it.

Have any of you dealt with this issue in the schools your children attend? Please let me know about it!

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