Parenting Teens

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. It’s the perfect time to talk with your teen about the dangers of finding themselves involved in a relationship with violence or the potential for violence. According to the website Choose Respect, 1 in 11 high school students report being the victim of physical dating abuse, and about one in four teens reports verbal, physical, emotional, or sexual abuse each year.

Following is the text of the Teen Dating Bill of Rights:

Accept responsibility for myself and my actions.
*********************************************************************************

Be sure to talk with your teenager (whether male or female), about violence in relationships. Have them be watchful about any treatment or attitudes which make them uncomfortable from a boyfriend or girlfriend. Getting into inappropriate relationships can become a pattern. Help your teens know how to set boundaries, and be aware of the behavior of those with whom they have relationships.

For more on emotional issues, visit

Mental and Emotional Health

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CosmoGirl! has included a wonderful booklet inside their latest print issue that includes many great tips for teens entering college. Although geared toward girls, most of the tips apply to guys as well. Several of my daughter’s friends found them helpful. Here’s five of the best:

1. Clean up your online profile. Those inside jokes posted on your Facebook or MySpace page won’t seem nearly as funny to your new friends at school. Plus, a simple profile lets you reveal your personality to the new people you meet at your own pace.

2. Make nice with Mom and Dad. Leave a handwritten note, or frame a picture of the three of you to show how much you love and appreciate them. College will be fun and exciting, but you’re going to miss your parents (and need their support), so give good old Mom and Dad some TLC before you leave.

3. Learn to do laundry. Ask your parents for pointers, and test your skills. Keep it simple and buy just one detergent and a color-safe bleach for both light and dark loads.

4. Get on a budget. Write down every dollar you spend for a month. Then talk to your parents about what costs you’ll be responsible for in college. Plan two weekly trips to the ATM: one on Monday for the school week, and one on Friday for the weekend’s expenses.

5. Mind your p’s and q’s. Write thank-you notes to your favorite teachers and bosses. Personalize your message and describe how each one has influenced your life. You’ll make their year, plus you’ll kick off your new life at school with some good karma.

Pass these tips off to your college-bound teens! Especially the one about the TLC for Mom and Dad!

teens, teenagers, college life, college tips, college freshmen, entering college, CosmoGirl

This may not be the Sixties, but war protests are alive and well! Ashley Casale, 19, of Clinton Corners, N.Y., and Michael Israel, 18, of Jackson, CA are marching across the country to protest the war in Iraq. Newsday reports that the two teens headed for Washington, D.C. from San Francisco on May 21.

Casale planned the “March For Peace” by starting a website and sending flyers to colleges nationwide. She had expected more walkers to join the 3000-mile walk. “Although it’s always nice to have as many people as possible, it’s more about the message and we haven’t been disappointed there aren’t tons of people walking,” Casale said.

The two said that most people have been receptive to them, even if they didn’t agree with them about the war. One World War II veteran met them with a welcome sign and had dinner with them. However, some have greeted them with obscene gestures and yells.

In spite of what they have gone through, Israel said he feels proud of what he and Casale have accomplished. “I hope it inspires people to be more vocal and politically active and become more aware of what’s going on around them,” he said.

I think these two teens can be very proud. They have stood up for what they believe at a time when most teens (and adults) have been staying at home enjoying their vacation time and doing as little as possible. It’s great to hear about teens being interested in politics and current events!

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I’ve been tagged by Bryan over at Sympathy Pain to inform all you readers of seven strange things about myself. This could be difficult. I mean, I’m used to all the quirks about me, so what seems strange any more?! Anyway, I’ll give it a shot.

1. I’m a big fan of science fiction and horror. Most people think I’m this typical suburban mom of a
teenager, but in my own home I like nothing better than sitting down watching the entire “Planet of
the Apes” or “Nightmare On Elm Street” series!

2. I have a quick temper-in cerain situations! Most of the time I keep my cool, but when I get on the
phone with insurance companies, government officials, or some other entity that wants to talk rules
and regulations, rather than give me answers, I can really get hot under the collar.

3. I never grew up in some respects. I can still eat ketchup on almost anything, including my
mashed potatoes!

4. My best friend in the world is my younger (by ten years) brother. We both love movies, science
fiction, and collecting things.

5. I love to collect science fiction toys (see #1)! I have lots of Star Trek and Star Wars figures, ships, models, etc., all over the house, including my living room,
and I love going to conventions!

6. I have a big crush on Johnny Depp. Okay, so it’s out there! Despite my longtime happy
relationship and recent engagement, I still drool over Johnny. It’s those eyes!

7. My teenage daughter and I are best of friends. Yes, we have one of those types of relationships.
And it works for us. We love going to movies and concerts, and shopping, together. Yet, she’s
never questioned my authority as her mom!

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Do you suspect that your teenager might be in an abusive relationship? Abusive relationships can take many forms, and do not necessarily involve physical abuse. A fairly new website, Love Is Respect, provides resources for teenagers, parents, friends, etc., about abusive aspects of relationships. They are also a helpline, accessible via internet or telephone. The phone number is 1-866-331-9474.

The following is a quiz they offer to see if your relationship might be abusive:

Does your boyfriend/girlfriend:

Look at you or act in ways that scare you?

Act jealous or possessive?

Put you down or criticize you?

Try to control where you go, what you wear or what you do?

Text or IM you excessively?

Blame you for the hurtful things they say and do?

Threaten to kill or hurt you or themselves if you leave them?

Try to stop you from seeing or talking to friends and family?

Try to force you to have sex before you’re ready?

Do they hit, slap, push or kick you?

This is excellent information for your teenager to have. Share the website and phone number with them. Urge them to look over the information, and to use the website or phone number if they need help. With abusive relationships on the rise, both teens and parents can use all the information and resources they can get.

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When I first started writing for 451 Press in October, 2006, I was intrigued by the title of another blog in the network. It’s called Long Relationships. It’s actually about long romantic relationships, and RA does a great job of blogging about the ups and downs, ins and outs of day to day life in a relationship. Check it out! There’s some great stuff over there and, after all, couldn’t we all use all the help we can get in that area?!

When I first saw the title, though (given that I was blogging about parenting), I thought of all the different types of long relationships a person has throughout their life-relationships with pets, friends, parents and children. After all, when you think about it, isn’t the longest relationship of your life with your parents? They’re there from the time you’re born! It may not always be a good relationship. These relationships have their ups and downs just like any other and, if we’re all honest with ourselves, we all know about the downs!

Then, as parents ourselves, there are our relationships with our own children. These, too, are very long relationships, seeing as how they begin with the births of our children and end (hopefully) when we die. Good relationships with our children don’t just happen. They are built, nurtured and worked on-just as are good long-term romantic relationships. I think, sometimes, parents forget this. Our children are separate, unique personalities. We have to get to know them, the same way we get to know a romantic partner-by talking, doing things together, sharing life experiences, etc.

Getting to know your kids, especially teenagers, can be a very unique and rewarding experience. My own daughter is 16 years old. The more time goes by, the more I grow to appreciate her as a person. She has a unique sense of style, talents I wouldn’t have dreamed of (since some of them are talents I’ve never had), and her own opinions on things like politics, social issues, etc. She’s not just a younger version of me, and, though she obeys me (for the most part!), she doesn’t always do it unquestioningly. I’ve learned to listen to her reasons for questioning me, and for disobeying me.

Working to build this relationship is sometimes different for both of us. Though there are things we have in common, there are also things we most definitely don’t have in common, so we’ve learned to have our time apart, but we’ve also learned that, sometimes, we have to endure some things just because the other enjoys it. My daughter, for example, (like lots of other teenage girls) loves to spend hours shopping at the mall. I can spend an hour or so there, but after two hours, I start to grit my teeth at the thought of going into yet another clothing store! But I do it at times, just because she loves it and watching her shop can be quite an experience!

There is music we both like (Daughtry, John Mayer, Aerosmith, and The Beatles, e.g.), and then music that one of listens to, but the other would rather hang their head out the window of the car than hear! There’s TV we both like (The Gilmore Girls, American Idol, e.g.), and then TV that makes one of us prefer to do housework while the other watches.

At this point, we both have a fairly good idea of each other’s likes and dislikes. We also have a pretty good record of listening to, and respecting, each other’s opinions. It’s a good relationship, overall, and my life is much fuller because of it. Even when there are bad times, I’m very glad that it’s here.

How’s your long relationship with your teenager? Spend some time this weekend evaluating it and trying to make it better. It will be one of the longest relationships of your life. Make it a good one.

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With the exception of a select few, my magazine reading has fallen woefully off lately. Same old, same old. Too much to do. Too little time. However, I was browsing the online site of one of my favorite women’s magazines, Family Circle recently, and came across this letter on teenagers and lying. It has some really good advice on how to handle one particular lie, at least-teens and friends of whom you disapprove.

Q: My teenage son lies to us all the time. The other night he said he was going to one friend’s house, but he actually went to another kid’s house—a bad kid we don’t want him to hang out with. When we asked him where he had been, he lied right to our faces!

A: All teens lie, particularly when their backs are to the wall. If your son thinks he’ll get grounded by telling you the truth, he’s going to stick to his story with punishing intensity. He may even turn the tables and accuse you of never trusting him. Rather than get sucked into a discussion about who can trust whom in your family and who’s lying to whom, stay focused on the behavior behind the lie. Before you even broach the topic of good and bad friends, make it clear that you must know at all times where to find him. Explain with no equivocating that if he lies about his whereabouts again, he’ll pay the consequences. (You and your husband need to figure out what those consequences should be.)

When things have cooled off, try to find out a little more about the kid you think is bad; rather than forbid the friendship, which is guaranteed to backfire, ask your son what he admires in this young man, what they have in common. Suggest he invite him over, and then try to observe what they’re like together. Until you’ve given their relationship the benefit of the doubt, you won’t be able to reach a compromise or to teach your son that friendship is built on respect, shared values and the freedom to be oneself without fear of ridicule or criticism. Your goal is to help your son decide if this relationship fills the bill.

I pretty much agree with this wholeheartedly. Particularly with the advice about inviting the friend over and trying to get a good picture of who he is and what your teen sees in him. Sometimes, we judge our teens friends on what we hear from other teens and even parents, without making an attempt to get to know them for ourselves.

What do you think about this advice? Would you handle this problem a different way? Let me hear from some of you about your experience with your own teenagers.

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Early this morning, I sat down to clean out the Inbox on the email account that I use most often. Like everyone else, I have the best of intentions. I mean to clean out that box every two days, or when I get a certain number of items in it-whatever standard I set. Then, I get sidetracked with something else and the junk emails and the emails I saved because I planned to reread them pile up. Hundreds, sometimes thousands. This morning, when I was cleaning out that Inbox, I reminded myself that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Now, what, you may be asking in complete confusion, does all this have to do with parenting teenagers!? Good question. For some reason, doing this reminded me of all the things (both big and little) that I mean to do with my daughter, or to talk about with my daughter. I started thinking about those things like a gigantic Inbox, with all of them piling up and not being cleaned out. That got me thinking about the fact that my daughter will be going away to college in a couple of years and I’ll have a lot less time with her-a lot less time to tell her things I want her to know, and a lot less time to spend doing things with her.

Have you parents of teens out there thought about this kind of thing? When your child is young, it seems as though you have forever to do things with them, to take them places, to tell them about things. Other things-like jobs, housework, etc.-get in the way and you put off doing these things. What kinds of things, you ask.

Well, in my case, it’s a lot of little things. I’ve been meaning for the two of us to go and have a manicure and pedicure together. Silly, right? But both of us enjoy these things and I’d like, just once, for it to be a shared experience. I’d like to take at least a weekend (preferably a week) trip together. Just drive to a larger city (maybe Atlanta, since we live in Georgia) and just hang out together. Do things like go to museums, go to the zoo, shopping-anything we’d both have a good time doing. Or, conversely, maybe just drive through the countryside looking at old houses and stopping at antique shops, since we both like those. At any rate, just a length of good, quality mother-daughter time without anything else getting in the way.

As far as the talks, there are lots of things I’d like to tell her about her grandparents, great-grandparents and other family members. Family has always been very important to me. My daughter knows this and has, for the most part, inherited that importance of family from me. But I still find myself thinking of things that I mean to tell her about family members and then forgetting. I’d like to have deeper, more meaningful talks with her about what, at this point, she sees her life being like.

I’ve had talks with my older sister where we mentioned questions that we would have liked to ask our mother before she passed away, or things we wish she had told us. I know my mom had the best of intentions for things like this too but, just as it does with us, other things get in the way and time just seems to slip away.

Anyway, I’ve resolved this morning that I’m going to do something about all this. I’m going to make a list of things that I’d like to do with my daughter. When I think of some little thing related to family that I’d like to tell her about, I’m going to write it down, rather than relying on my memory. And I’m going to make time, at least once a week, to either do something extra with her, or to just sit down and talk with her.

In the past, I’ve visited a website called 43 Things. You can create an account there and make a list of things you want to accomplish in your life. It’s a neat little site where they give you tips on getting started making your list (if you’re having trouble coming up with ideas) and where you can compare your lists with those of others. I’ve decided it’s also a good place to make a list of things I’d like to do with my daughter. Check it out and start your own list. Point your teen to it as well and urge them to begin making a list and setting goals for themselves.

If you’d rather not do it online, do it on paper. Think about all those things you’ve wanted to do with your children and make some time to actually do them. They grow up so fast.

teens, teenagers, email, goals, plans, parents, parenting, parenting teenagers

My 16-year-old daughter, S, had a party this past weekend. Normally, when she has people over, it’s only one or two at a time-which is how mom prefers it! However, she has redecorated her room, and she got a Wii for Christmas, and all sorts of things were going on at school. She was feeling the urge to have one of those gatherings where a lot of people come over and hang out. She has these very infrequently mind you, because I usually end up exhausted and with a headache the next morning-sort of like a hangover, but without the benefit of a drink.

Anyway, including S, there were twelve teenagers ranging in age from 15-17 at our house on Saturday night. They took over three rooms-the den (where the gaming was going on), the living room (which served as the movie viewing room), and the dining room (food and music). I’m a veteran of several of these get-togethers by now, and I know what to expect-fairly subdued muttering and comments from the movie room, loud talk and noise from the food and music room, and an absolute din from the den (gaming room), where people are yelling about the cool graphics, “wow, did you see that” or complaining at the top of their lungs that someone else is cheating.

My fiance (R) and I bear up well under all this knowing that, at least, the next day will be fairly quiet all day. We get along with S’s friends pretty well. We even get brownie points as cool parents for our geeky hobbies-R for his Lego collection and his love of video games, me for my Star Trek and Star Wars collection and for listening to groups like The Fray, Nickelback, and Hinder. There are some of her friends, though, that just bug me!

There’s E, who talks endlessly about boys and who she’d like to go out with next and what she’s going to wear. These kinds of girls are common among teens, I suppose, but really-can’t she think about anything else at all?! Or maybe it’s just that I’m getting older and have less tolerance for this kind of thing. Or, maybe, if I want to delve deeply into my psyche, it’s that I’m jealous that I can no longer wear junior size jeans and talk about who I’m going to go out with next?

Then there’s S’s friend, K, who has every video game system ever released, and a seemingly endless collection of games. Everyone in the crowd considers him the authority on all things gaming. But, really, does he have to be so overbearing about it? Interrupting other people’s games to tell them what they’ve just done wrong, telling someone who’s just been killed by a drug overlord how he could have avoided being ambushed, grabbing the phone to call tech support when he wants to prove a point and win an argument.

There’s T, who’s the sports fanatic of the group. He only wants to play sports-related video games and keeps tuning the radio or the TV to ball games over the loud objections of everyone else. By the end of the evening, he’s usually somewhere with headphones on, listening to the latest scores, and eating an entire bag of Tostitos and two jars of salsa.

Then, there’s my own personal favorite, M, who’s the reader of the group. She starts out the evening talking, eating and playing games. Then, before the evening’s half over, she has managed to find some relatively quiet corner and is absorbed in the book that she takes everywhere.

As you’ve probably figured out by now, I know my daughter’s friends pretty well. Most of them she’s had since elementary or, at least, middle school. I try to make it a point to get to know them a little. Aside from making these get-togethers go a little more smoothly, it’s comforting to know who she’s spending her time with when she’s away from me.

I won’t have that luxury a lot longer. When she goes away, I won’t always be able to meet her friends. It helps that I at least know the kinds of people that she’s drawn to as friends.

teens, teenagers, parents, parenting, friendships, Wii, The Fray, Nickelback, Hinder, school