Posts Tagged teen pressures

Effective Parenting During the Teenage Years

Posted by Drug Free in Raising Healthy Kids on April 23rd, 2010

Being the parent of a teenager can prove to be a complete and total nightmare for some. This is the stage of seeking identities, finding connections, and managing peer pressures. At this stage, they never seem to listen, they talk back, they like to annoy you with every little thing, they sometimes talk as if they know everything about the world and they tend to never look at how other people feel about them. Thankfully, parents understand this phase quite well since they have been teenagers themselves way back when. However, that doesn’t make parenting any less challenging.

teensWhile many would probably rather not go through raising a teenager, it is perhaps the most critical and most fulfilling part of parenting life. Guiding your teen properly in life may be hard to do, especially with his or her unique needs — to be acknowledged, to be accepted, to have his or her own identity, and more — but you can find lots of help from other parents and child development institutions so you can raise your teens to become healthy, happy individuals.

One helpful website that offers interesting tips on teen parenting is the Child Development Institute’s website, www.childdevelopmentinfo.com. The advice offered here is highly grounded on sociological and psychological studies. Hence, the credibility and the amount of insight that this site can offer you can possibly astound you. There’s everything from parenting 101 and sibling rivalry to socialization and the family. A lot of content and relevant researches involving raising successful teens are also found here.

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Teen Pressures: Sibling Rivalry

Posted by Drug Free in Drug Abuse Prevention, Raising Healthy Kids on February 4th, 2010

Teens go through a lot of pressure from all angles. Some teens handle it more responsibly while others resort to drug abuse, alcoholism and smoking. Not so long ago, today’s parents had to undergo similar pressures too, but the temptations and distractions may not be as strong as they are now. Today’s teens are bolder, with heavy influences from TV, movies and Internet.

sibling rivalryOne of the most common and powerful issues that teens have to face is sibling rivalry. While a little competition is always healthy as it allows our kids to learn certain relationship skills, some can’t handle the stress of being compared to a sibling who seems to often emerge as the ‘winner’.

Parents need to understand the factors that cause sibling rivalry and to ensure that these do not go overboard, which may result to intense competition over attention and jealousy.

Some kids feel that other siblings get more attention from their parents. Most parents would not admit to having favorites, but they should also not immediately dismiss their kids’ feelings as completely invalid and unfounded. Parents need to recognize these feelings and work hard to make everyone feel that there are no favorites.

Age and birth order are also factors to consider. Firstborns may feel that the younger siblings get more care and attention. On the other hand, the younger siblings may feel that the older ones are more trusted and have more freedom. The important thing to do here is to allow everyone to realize that their age and birth order do not affect how much you love each one of them.

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