The Teenage Frenemy

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Teenage friendships are never boring.  There is rarely dull moment. It seems drama, or melodrama, is never far away. Amongst all the ups and downs have you noticed that your teenager seems to mention one or two people more than most when discussing the latest relational disturbance?  Is there always one name that seems to [...]

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The 10 Commandments for Parenting Broken Hearted Teenagers

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Most of us can remember when it happened to us! The internal anguish that we thought would never end.  There was no comfort, no solace, and no hope! No matter what anyone else said you could not be consoled.  This person, the one who had just broken your heart, was the only one you had [...]

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Should I Stalk My Teen on Facebook?

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It’s one of the questions that will define this generation of parents – “Should I friend my teen on Facebook?” This is a defining question as it encapsulates the most significant shift in parenting for a couple of generations.  The difference between parenting kids in the in the age of digital and mobile technologies compared [...]

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10 Popular Apps for Teenagers

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With smartphones rapidly becoming the most common mobile device throughout countries like Australia, UK, and the USA, an increasing number of teenagers have access to the internet via their phone.  And if they have access to the Net they have access to Apps (an App is a small program designed to run on mobile devices.) [...]

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You Can’t Make Me!

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There can’t be very many. Maybe there are a special few here and there, but they are few and far between. What is this rare specimen I speak of? The parent who hasn’t had a teenager say to them at some point “YOU CAN’T MAKE ME!” The majority of parents who will hear this at [...]

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15 Ways to Help Teenagers Feel Like They Matter.

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In the previous post I discussed how important it is for teenagers to feel like they count and what might happen when they don’t. Central to the adolescent journey is the daunting task of discovering and owning an adult identity. Our identity is made up of many facets.  Some of the most significant are; knowing [...]

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When Teenagers Don’t Count

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My lounge room and the streets of London are literally a world apart.  But this week 2 events that were a world apart reminded me about the basics of living and working of with teenagers. On Tuesday night I sat down and completed the national census form so that I could be counted amongst the [...]

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3 Ways to Kill Communication With Your Teenager: Part 3

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In this short series on how to kill communication with teenagers we have looked at how parents sabotage their own efforts to establish and maintain open and healthy communication patterns with their teenagers- sometimes without even knowing they’re doing it. So far we discussed how ‘invalidating’ a teenager and his/her feelings will damage communication, and [...]

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3 Ways to Kill Communication With Your Teenager: Part 2

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In the previous post we began a short 3 part series on how parents often make the task of communicating with their teenager much harder than it needs to be. No one does this knowingly or on purpose (at least I hope not), but still it happens, and it happens quite a lot. If you [...]

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3 Ways To Kill Communication With Your Teenager: Part 1

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It is the lament of many parents with teenage children, “They don’t talk to me. I don’t know what is going on.” Teenagers drive their parents to despair as the steady stream of information about what has happening in their life slows to a discouraging trickle of grunts and whatever’s. There are of course several [...]

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