Articles from the experts at Empowering Parents to help you manage your teen’s behavior more effectively. Is your adolescent breaking curfew, behaving defiantly or engaging in risky behavior? We offer concrete help for teen behavior problems.
I believe parents go through something similar to the stages of grief when their kids go through adolescence. The family that once had a loving and eager son or daughter, someone who would spend as much time with you as you let them, is gone now; it’s as if it has died. In its place... Read more »
Do your kids drive you crazy? If you were asked to describe them, after saying, "He's a good kid, but..." would you use words like “defiant,” “whiny,” “unmotivated,” “disrespectful,” “angry,” or “demanding,” with a few positives sprinkled in? If the negatives loom larger in your mind than the positives, the first thing to realize is... Read more »
It’s Saturday night, and kids all over North America are hanging out at their friends’ houses, watching movies, going to parties. And children as young as 11 are taking their first drink of alcohol—the average age when boys start drinking. For girls, that age is now 13. More and more kids are drinking hard liquor,... Read more »
Amber* got onto Facebook when she was 12. “It was easy," she said with a shrug. "All you have to do is lie about your age and give them your email address.” The teen, who is now 15, said, “I guess I accepted a lot of ‘Friends’ to my list without really knowing who they were.”... Read more »
I was in love with my baby before I ever met him. And when I first held him, my whole body flooded with love. He was an easy baby as long as he was with me, but any time I tried to do something without him, he cried. I thought it was a sign of... Read more »
Let’s face it, we all have things we don’t want to do, and we put them off until the last possible moment. Paperwork. House-cleaning. Those things that need to get done whether we really want to do them or not. It’s normal for grown-ups to choose fun things over required tasks –and it’s normal for... Read more »
In the first part of “How to Motivate Teenagers,” Josh Shipp, teen communication expert and author of the Identity Program, explained the secret of giving your child the “why” of doing things. In Part 2 of this series, Josh tells you what to say—and what not to say—when talking to your unmotivated teen. EP: Josh, you tell parents that it’s... Read more »
As soon as you knew you were having children, you probably began to dream about who they were going to be, how they might be like you, and hoped they would be successful in life. You may have wanted your child to be into football or academics, but then reality set in. You found that... Read more »
Whether we like it or not, kids change. Their behavior, their attitudes, their likes and dislikes: these shifts can be seen throughout childhood. But the biggest changes—and the hardest for most families to deal with—are the ones that occur when kids enter pre-adolescence and adolescence. As the old saying goes, “the only thing that is... Read more »
Note from James: A lot of the things we do to protect our children might be considered "spying" by our kids, but they are in fact measures we take to keep them safe from others, as well as from themselves. I hesitate to use the word "spying" because it has a negative, sneaky connotation. But... Read more »
