Teen Tips: A Practical Survival Guide For Parents With Kids 11-19 - Softcover

McMahon, Tom

 
9780743474368: Teen Tips: A Practical Survival Guide For Parents With Kids 11-19
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0743474368 ISBN 13: 9780743474368
Verlag: Gallery Books, 2003

Inhaltsangabe

The updated and revised edition of Tom McMahon's informative collection of tips about raising teens, an age-group that shares with toddlers the distinction of being most difficult for parents.

There may not be a cure for adolescence, but there are ways for parents of teens to survive these challenging years! Parenting expert Tom McMahon has gone straight to the source—veteran moms and dads—to try and solve the mysteries of raising a happy, healthy teenager. Gathered here are hundreds of practical, creative, and proven tips that cover all aspects of parenting a teen:

-Rules and Discipline—Keep order while encouraging your child's independence, and pick your "battles" for what matters the most

-Talking and Listening—Get to know when to sympathize, when to back off, and how to deal with your teen's inevitable moodiness

-School and Learning—Free yourself from being the "homework cop," while nurturing both curiosity and enthusiasm

-Friendships and Relationships—Use role-playing to handle peer pressure, and help nurture healthy relationships

-Drugs and Alcohol—Pinpoint telltale signs of problems before they become serious, and stay involved by providing alternatives to parties with alcohol

-Responsibilities and Money—Strike a balance between chores and allowance, and make part-time jobs an introduction to money management

-Self-Esteem and Values—Enhance your teen's exposure to role models who will strengthen character and boost self-confidence.

Whatever the situation, Teen Tips is full of down-to-earth, inventive advice. It's an indispensable guide to navigating the teen years—and making the journey as rewarding for the parent as it is for the aspiring young adult.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

As an educator, Tom McMahon has experience at the elementary, junior high, senior high, and college levels, including twenty years as a professor of counseling and psychology at Ohlone College in Fremont, California. Tom McMahon writes a weekly newspaper parenting column for The Oregonian, is a frequent guest speaker on parenting, and has appeared on numerous radio and television shows including Oprah, Good Morning America, and the CNN and Fox television networks. He resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and two children.

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Chapter 1: Understanding Your Teenager

"Who are you?" said the Caterpillar. Alice replied, rather shyly, "I -- I hardly know, Sir, just at present -- at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I must have changed several times since then."

-- Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, 1865

Welcome to the exciting world of adolescence -- the teen years -- one of the most interesting and challenging phases of life. Adolescence is a time of change, a time to gradually shed one's protective childhood for a new identity and a world of new responsibilities and independence. The transition from childhood to adulthood has never been easy, but there are few times in history when the adolescent years have been more challenging than now.

Our life span, from conception to late adulthood, has distinct and somewhat predictable phases through which we pass on life's journey. Adolescence is one of the more lengthy developmental phases. Spanning approximately ten years, it usually begins at the age of eleven or twelve and ends between the ages of eighteen and twenty. Adolescence can be divided into three distinct stages: early adolescence (eleven to fourteen years old) roughly covers the junior high or middle school years; middle adolescence (fifteen to eighteen years old) includes the senior high years; and late adolescence (nineteen to twenty years old) covers the first few years of college or time when still living at home with parents. Each stage has unique issues, potential problems, and important tasks to complete. For instance, the onset of puberty is a significant issue in early adolescence, dating is of importance in middle adolescence, and career decisions play a key factor in late adolescence.

Being a teenager in the twenty-first century has the ups and downs of a roller coaster ride: it's exciting and scary -- all at the same time; and the anticipation of the next blind curve is often better than the real experience. The journey to adulthood in this decade has an unprecedented number of potential dangers -- including violence, gangs, car crashes, suicide, unwanted pregnancy, and sexually transmitted infections. Caught between childhood and adulthood, wanting to be grown-up but reluctant to give up the security of childhood, teens frequently take two steps forward and one back. In the eyes of many teenagers, the road to adulthood looks unfriendly. And in many ways it is. One fifteen-year-old girl sums up the feelings of many teens as she unleashes her frustration on past generations:

Parents should think back to when they were teenagers, then watch the evening news to see how much has changed. Parents had it easy when they were teens. They did everything they wanted to and barely had any consequences for their actions. Everything we do has a consequence, and most of them are lifelong or deadly.

Teenagers also feel misunderstood and maligned by our society. The media and a small percentage of troubled teens have caused the image of teens to be seriously tarnished. Teens are frequently portrayed in news reports and depicted in movies as being lazy, deviant, promiscuous, self-centered, disturbed, and delinquent. One large metropolitan newspaper uncovered through its own investigation that teenagers were depicted more negatively than any other group in their newspaper, resulting in an effort to portray a more balanced coverage of teens.

Although there has been an increase in delinquent behavior by teens, the negative stereotype still represents only a small percentage of all teens. Research findings clearly demonstrate that the vast majority of adolescents are not as troubled and disturbed as their stereotype suggests. Researcher Daniel Offer and his colleagues found that almost three-quarters of the adolescents they studied had a healthy self-image. They perceived themselves as able to exercise self-control, they valued work and school, they expressed positive feelings toward their families, they felt they had the capability to cope with life's stresses, and they reported enjoying life.

One issue that many teens do worry about is their future. They know that adulthood will not meet them with open arms. They will face significant increases in college tuition, extraordinary competition for jobs, a struggling economy, continuing changes in the family structure, high divorce rates, and a future full of problems left over from previous generations. For teens living in poverty, especially those in the inner cities, the outlook is much bleaker and, in their eyes, almost hopeless.

Adolescence is also a time of extraordinary changes. Your teen is changing in many ways: physically, cognitively, socially, and emotionally. The specific purpose of this chapter and many other parts of this book is to help you understand and anticipate these changes, and, most important, to help you and your teen cope with these changes. This chapter describes three of the most important aspects of adolescent development -- physical changes, including puberty and its emotional aspects; cognitive (intellectual) changes; and the process of identity development.

Physical Development

One of the biggest milestones of adolescence is the onset of puberty, a series of events lasting an average of two to five years that gradually transform an adolescent's physical characteristics into those of an adult. The onset, rate, and ending of puberty are controlled by the central nervous system, which commands various glands to begin secreting hormones. The hormones travel through the bloodstream to certain organs and tissues causing specific changes to take place. Although most teens begin puberty in early adolescence, there is considerable individual variation in both the timing and tempo of puberty, depending on factors such as genetics, health, nutrition, and body mass. There is such a wide normal range for individuals to start puberty (see below), that it is possible for some teens to complete the pubertal sequence before others their same age even begin.

When asked to describe puberty, one teen replied, "It's when your body goes crazy." In many ways, that's close to the truth, especially from a teen's perspective. There are changes in the genitals; further development of the sex glands; growth of facial, pubic, and body hair; changes in the quantity and distribution of fat and muscle; and increased strength and stamina. There is also a rapid growth and weight gain called the adolescent growth spurt, which typically lasts for two years. During this period, both boys and girls can grow three to five inches in a given year. Girls begin their growth spurt around the age of ten or eleven, two years before boys. This helps to explain why many girls tower over their male counterparts in sixth and seventh grades.

Girls usually begin puberty between the ages of eight and thirteen, with the entire cycle lasting from one and a half to six years. It is widely believed that menarche, the first menstrual period, marks the onset of puberty for girls, but, in fact, it occurs relatively late in the pubertal cycle. It typically occurs between her twelfth and thirteenth birthdays, but with a wide normal range from nine to fifteen.

The first sign of puberty for girls is either the slight elevation of the breasts (typically called breast buds) or the appearance of pubic hair. As puberty progresses, the pubic hair becomes coarser and darker, and the breasts continue to develop through a series of five distinct stages. Regardless of breast size, the final stages of breast growth are marked by the areola (the nipple and area around it) receding to the contour of the breast with only the nipple elevated. Internal changes include growth and development of the uterus, vagina, and other aspects of the reproductive system.

Boys usually begin puberty between...

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Verlag
Gallery Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2003
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0743474368
ISBN 13 
9780743474368
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
272
Kontakt zum Hersteller
River House
mail@indigo.de

Schlachthofstr. 36 A
Hamburg
21079
Deutschland

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