Hello my students, I will have to make most of this Wi-Fi and add the article for the 18th July
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- Monitoring Your Teen OnlineShould you monitor your teen's online activity? Here are points to consider.
Your child isn't a little kid anymore. They're a teen, or a tween -- and it's time to tweak your parenting skills to keep up with them.
Yes, they're probably moodier now than when they were young. And you have new things to think about, like curfews, dating, new drivers, and friends who make you raise your eyebrows.
No doubt about it: Your teen, or tween, will test your limits, and your patience. But they're still your child. And, though they won't admit it, they still need you!
The key is knowing what efforts are worth it, and which ones backfire.
1. Expecting the Worst
Teenagers get a bad rap, says Richard Lerner, PhD, director of the Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development at Tufts University. Many parents approach raising teenagers as an ordeal, believing they can only watch helplessly as their lovable children transform into unpredictable monsters.
But that sets you -- and your teen -- up for several unhappy, unsatisfying years together.
“The message we give teenagers is that they’re only ‘good’ if they’re not doing ‘bad’ things, such as doing drugs, hanging around with the wrong crowd, or having sex,” Lerner says.
It could become a self-fulfilling prophecy: Negative expectations can actually promote the behavior you fear most. A Wake Forest University study showed that teens whose parents expected them to get involved in risky behaviors reported higher levels of these behaviors one year later.
Lerner's advide: Focus on your child's interests and hobbies, even if you don’t understand them. You could open a new path of communication, reconnect with the child you love, and learn something new.
2. Reading Too Many Parenting Books
Rather than trusting their instincts, many parents turn to outside experts for advice on how to raise teens. “Parents can tie themselves into knots trying to follow the advice they read in books,” says Robert Evans, EdD, author of Family Matters: How Schools Can Cope with the Crisis in Child Rearing.
It's not that parenting books are bad.
“Books become a problem when parents use them to replace their own innate skills,” Evans says. “If the recommendations and their personal style don’t fit, parents wind up more anxious and less confident with their own children.”
Use books to get perspective on confusing behavior -- and then put the book down and trust that you've learned what you need to learn. Get clear about what matters most to you and your family.
Rising a child is really important. Since he or she is born untill s/he reach an adult age s/he is going to depen on his /her parents.
ReplyDeleteOn the one hand, if you expect your child to behave badly, he probably will. So parents should care about that and start thinking in a different way.
On the other hand, reading books seems a good ide. In my opinion, there are too many thing we don’t know that having some extra information when raising a baby is an excelet action.
First of all, it is clear that nearly everyone changes his/her behaviour when they are teens and tweens. However, from my point of view teenagers aren´t as difficult to manage as it is said.
ReplyDeleteSome parents expect their sons/daughters to behave badly and sometimes they say not to do things that you have never thought about doing them. I mean, they think that we behave worst than we do. However, I undestand that they care about us and they say it because they want to protect us.
As far as the idea of reading books is concerned, from my point of view it can be a good idea to understand better the teenagers and to have a better relationship. Likewise, as the text mentions, it is important not to replace their your own innate skills.
To start with, everyone when s/he reach an age change her/his behaviour, and parents have to give her/him information on the basis they have lived. In my opinion, it seems to be more difficult than it actually is this years for parents. They have to protect us, but we are learning and we have to prove and to meet new things, so they shouldn´t be all the time protecting us, because this pression can make us go into another way.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, like I have said before, everyone had passed this period of time and know how it is, so let us now do wrong things, a way of learning isrealizing what we have mistaken.
The idea of reading books can be very usefull as they give you a lot of information and you can learn a lot from them.
To sum up, I agree with the article that we shouldn´t replace our own innate skills.
We all know that our parents want the best for us but sometimes they worry too much. They think they are educating us in the wrong way and that can affect us badly like the article says.
ReplyDeleteOn the one hand, it's normal that parents give us advise but if that can encourage teens to do what parents are afraid of, they should trust their childs and let them see what's good and what bad by themselves.
On the other hand, I think it's good to read books but we are all different so there isn't a rule for everybody. Parents know their children better than a book does so they should relax and do what they think its's better even though a book can help them.
It is clear that our parents try to educate us in the best way they can. When we become a teen or tween they start to worry more, to think rising their children is an ordeal and that could end in an unsatisfaying years together.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with lerner's advice. Parents should focus on their children hobbies, connect with them, learn about them and let them make mistakes to learn by themselfs.
To sum up, from my point of view reading books can be really helpful. In that way, parents are going to learn how to manage these problems. To have a successful ending, they have to mix what they have learned with their own innate skills.