Researchers believe the brain goes on maturing and is not fully developed until at least the age of 24. Puberty catapults adolescents into a period of risky behaviour powered by their raging hormones, their brains are ill-equipped to exert control and vulnerable to the effects of activities such as drinking and drug taking. Despite its […]
Continue readingCigarette Packaging Targetting Teenagers
Cancer Research UK has reviewed industry documents from the last 50 years and claimed that some described how packaging had been developed to appeal to new smokers, notably teenagers, through its size, colour and design. See news report summary here. Full report available here
Continue readingUsing Computer Games to Deal With Depression
A 3D computer fantasy game that teaches good thinking habits as effectively as biological therapist units can. The game, designed for children and adolescents, is called SPARX . SPARX stands for Smart, Positive, Active, Realistic, X-factor thoughts. Full Article providing a basic explanation and overview of research on SPARX. Actual Abstract The effectiveness of SPARX, […]
Continue reading10 Popular Apps for Teenagers
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.) […]
Continue readingYou Can’t Make Me! Dealing With a Defiant Teenager
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 […]
Continue reading15 Ways to Help Teenagers Feel Like They Matter.
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 […]
Continue readingWhen Teenagers Don’t Count
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 […]
Continue reading3 Ways to Kill Communication With Your Teenager: Part 3
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. You can read previous posts here and here. So far we discussed how ‘invalidating’ a […]
Continue reading3 Ways to Kill Communication With Your Teenager: Part 2
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 […]
Continue readingConfusing Teenager’s Character With Their Development
Part of the complexity of living and working with adolescents is learning to distinguish the nature of the changes occurring in your teenager’s life. Are the developments in behaviour or temperament a temporary phase or are they permanent fixtures of an emerging adult identity? One of the reasons it is important to distinguish what is […]
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