Not a Slumdog, not a millionaire

A little video from Slate V I wanted to share:

Bridging the Gap

"You can talk about anything if you go about it the right way, which is never malicious."
-Rodney Carrington

If you are feeling as though the gap between you and your child is growing wider with each passing moment, you are not alone. Since being on forced desk duty since breaking my foot, I have felt more than little out of the loop, frightened that this month in my office has caused me to lose all connection I had with the students!

I often have parents wonder how they can be closer to their children without (and that is the key word) smothering them. It seems that children are pushing their parents away at an earlier and earlier age. And no wonder, considering how much independence they are given!

Here are some easy (and cheap) ways to connect or reconnect with your children:

• Make everyday moments matter: Instead of letting your child tune you out with his iPod or returning calls while ferrying them around, use the time you spend in the car with them as "connection" time, not "task" time. While you may have 1001 things to do before 9am, knowing what your child is up to is far more important. Also, don't take "nothing" or "fine" as complete answers. Another option is to take a 30 minute walk together. This forces together time and sneaks in a healthy habit as you get to know your child.
• Watch your words: The quote above seemed very appropriate. I am often astounded at the way children speak to each other, their teachers, and their parents. But I am less shocked after listening to what they are hearing! Ensure you are modeling good behavior including clamping down on sarcasm and put downs. Try to speak respectful and cordially even when upset or not getting the same in return. The emotional damage that can occur from verbal assaults can have a lasting and devastating effect on your children. The calmer you are when you speak to your children, the more likely they will be to come to you with problems, but you will often have to be the one to open the lines of communication.
• Reach out and touch: The effect of human touch is profound, children are not able to thrive without it. Touch sends a powerful message of closeness and connection without having to say anything. Seize every opportunity to hug your child, squeeze them on the shoulder, or give them a peck on the cheek. Some words of caution with teens: you have to respect their space and reputation, if you try to touch them with friends around, they will most likely rebuff you. Wait to you are alone, or find affection alternatives.
• Slow it down: It is no small thing that children are overbooked with school, activities, sports, play dates, church and so on. There has never been a better time to push the pause button on you and your children's' lives in order to evaluate what is most important to you. This may take a little soul searching on your part, but it will be well worth it. Also, in slowing things down, you will observe many moments you will cherish that you would have missed in the non-stop schedule of before. Take time to play with your children with a game night. Camp out in the backyard, have a picnic in the living room. Teach your child something you learned as a child (like hula hooping or skating).
• Date night or day: If you have more than one child, it is important to set aside a time one on one with each child, even if it is as simple as letting the oldest go to bed a little later one night a week to sit on the couch with you and chat. You don't have to go all out on these "dates", remember they are about reconnecting, not buying love! Also, don't forget to set aside time to spend with your partner, as you two need alone time just as much.
• Lend a helping hand: A family is strengthened when each member knows that the other has their back. Enlist your children's help in household chores, and help them with school projects or studying. Another family strengthener is to do good together through volunteer work.
• Gather round: One of "easiest" ways to connect with your children is to have the family sit down to eat at the same time. This is often difficult due to full schedules and working parents, but it strengthens bonds quickly. A family that eats together grows great children! Studies have shown that families that eat together have children that eat better, get into less trouble, and get better grades.

Sources: Associated Content http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/591709/5_ways_to_get_closer_to_your_child_pg2.html?cat=25
Parents Magazine http://www.parents.com/teens-tweens/communication/talking-to-kids/get-closer-to-teens/?page=3
Women's Day Magazine http://www.womansday.com/Content/Family-Lifestyle/12-Ways-to-Bring-Your-Family-Closer

Teen Girls and Depression

Another great article from Psychology Today, and I promise some original blogging to come soon:

Teen Angst Turns Deadly

Why girls are killing themselves

By: Eilene Zimmer

Middle school years have never been easy ones for kids, but girls today are having a particularly tough time. The suicide rate for girls ages 10 to 14 increased a whopping 76 percent in 2004, according to the latest numbers available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For those between 15 and 18, the rate went up more than 30 percent.

Alan Berman, a psychologist and director of the American Association of Suicidology in Washington D.C., says although the increase is worrisome, it could be just a random fluctuation. But child and adolescent psychologists report that the prevalence of self-harming behaviors—like cutting and burning—is also rising.

Steve Hinshaw, a clinical and developmental psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, believes a combination of cultural and parental pressures is to blame. His book, The Triple Bind: Saving Our Teenage Girls from Today's Pressures, argues that girls today are subjected to unrealistic pressures from society and the media, and their once-private identity struggles are now public, thanks to the Internet. Girls are still socialized to be nurturing caregivers but are now pressured to excel academically and athletically as much as boys—all while remaining thin, sexy, and beautiful.

Female role models, Hinshaw says, are "ultra-sexy, ultra-feminized women, like the female surgeons on Grey's Anatomy or swimsuit-modeling tennis players" like Ana Ivanovic. Long gone are the days when girls revered women like Dorothy Hamill, Joan Baez, or Gloria Steinem. Now every preteen aspires to be Gabriella Montez, the lead female character in Disney's High School Musical franchise, who is not only sexy but a Broadway-caliber dancer and singer and a soon-to-be freshman at Stanford.

Girls feeling pressure to achieve often go frenetically from one activity to the next, leaving little time to develop coping skills, laments Alec Miller, chief of child and adolescent psychology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. "They don't have unstructured time to just hang out with friends," he says. "Yet this is when kids learn how to tolerate frustration, regulate emotions, and solve problems."

They also lack the privacy needed to work through the emotional struggles of adolescence because of cell phones, instant messaging, and social networking sites. "Let's say things aren't going well in middle or high school and you email someone about it," Hinshaw says. "Soon it's all over everyone else's email, text messages, MySpace, Facebook. Everyone knows what's going on in your life and they're all talking about it. You can't escape it." —Eilene Zimmerman

Parental Control

What can parents do about the increasing pressures on young girls? Miller advises cutting down extracurricular activities and turning off the computer and cell phone so kids have time just being with themselves: "They should not be continuously connected, because they need time with their own thoughts." Hinshaw says the answer may be in getting middle-schoolers to think about something other than themselves, like ecology, politics, or community service: "They need a connection to something deeper than themselves, their friends, and their appearance."

Psychology Today Magazine, Jan/Feb 2009
Last Reviewed 23 Feb 2009
Article ID: 4759

Welcome Back!

I hope you all had a safe, happy, and healthy Mardi Gras break! I know I needed the time off, though a lot of that need came from the breaking of my foot while falling down the stairs at my home (perhaps I need to blog about home safety?). While trying to get back on top of everything, I decided to share this article with you from Psychology Today:

The Wonder Years: A Parent's Toolkit
Tips on surviving the teen years—no, really.

By: Lybi Ma

There are a few things every parent needs to know. Hopefully your teen has figured out that he needs to floss, eat veggies, move his legs, sleep, sleep, and more sleep. But aside from the virtual givens, there are a few well-researched musts that can help you manage the teen years. For example: Stop hovering over your teen, do promote healthy make believe, and touch to connect. Some of you may not believe it, but you can influence your child's outcome to a good degree. And here are a few ways to get there:

Tabula Rasa?

Experts are finding that parents appear to have little effect on how their children turn out, that is of course after genes are accounted for. That's right: Genes influence our personalities more than we know. Some kids are just born cheery, and some are born moody. Don't get the idea wrong, as parents do matter. They matter in the way they enhance a child's environment; one that will fit a particular child's genes. One size does not fit all. Then there are also thinkers like Judith Rich Harris who believe that group socialization is the force to be reckoned with. In other words, your child's peers have way more sway.

Touch to Connect

Don't ever try to kiss your teen in public. You'll be sorry. When he was 16, my son walked with me down to the corner store. As soon as he saw a group of girls he knew, he sped up. His long legs carried him ahead of me. A peck on the cheek was off limits at that moment. But truthfully, a teen needs his hugs and kisses. He called me right after by cell phone and said he had to hurry: "I'll see you at home. And Mom, I love you." Kids are not stupid, they know that the familiar calms and soothes. In fact, being near a loved one triggers the release of oxytocin, the hormone that induces attachment and contentment.

Gift of Gab

Let your kids talk—and talk about tough topics. A child who shares his feelings about sadness and anger will more likely become resilient. In their study, researchers from Emory University examined conversations among families. The more kids were encouraged to share the more they were likely to have better self-esteem and better social skills—especially when discussing difficult events. Talking about a difficult event, like a death for example, gives kids a chance to hear and be heard. Such an exchange of feelings and viewpoints helps them master negotiation skills, too.

Stop Hovering

In her book, A Nation of Wimps, Hara Estroff Marano shows just how harmful a hovering parent can be. This type of parent tries to smooth the child's ride, so much so that the kid becomes wholly fragile. Now the teen does not know how to manage life and its adversities. What's more: This invasive parent wants to turn her child into a trophy, which pushes the kid to strive for perfection—and there's nothing good about perfection. Instead of being lead by their passions, they are just fearful of making mistakes.

Green Acres

Trees and shrubs and bushes and flowers do more than help your kids smell the roses. Greenery, in effect, means less obesity. A study in The Journal of Preventive Medicine shows that among 3,800 inner city children, those who lived in neighborhoods that had more green space enjoyed lower risk of obesity. This is regardless of age, race, or sex. Greenery reduces pollution, decreases the heat index, heightens aesthetics, and encourages physical activity. Another study from Cornell University showed that even houseplants have a stress-busting effect as well.

Make Believe

When you think of school curriculums, does your mind wander to tests, curves, and medians? What happened to free thought and plain old curiosity? Experts, such as those at the National Institute of Play, have found that a child who is cooped up in a classroom memorizing words on a chalkboard will be woefully unprepared. We are designed to play, run, chase, and discover. That's how we come up with creative solutions to difficult problems—yes, even us adults. And, of course, that's how we learn to think for ourselves.

Toast Your Child

We all know that beer pong as well as other fast-and-furious chugalug games are not going away anytime soon. Addiction expert and Psychology Today blogger Stanton Peele has a lot to say about drinking—especially drinking among young people. Teen binge drinking is a fact. Peele notes that 90 percent of young people drink by age 21 and that the typical youthful drinking style is bingeing; also half of 21-year-olds and a third of 18-year-olds binge at least monthly. Peele suggests that we teach our kids how to drink, and how to drink responsibly.

Psychology Today Online, 19 Jan 2009
Last Reviewed 9 Feb 2009
Article ID: 4746 Psychology Today © Copyright 1991-2009 Sussex Publishers, LLC
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