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August 15, 2010
By Lori Lite
 Me? Stressed?! Does it show? Lori Lite is the founder of Stress Free Kids. Her books, CDs and curriculums help children, teens, and adults manage anxiety, stress, and anger while promoting self-esteem and peaceful sleep. A 2009 contestant on ABC’s Shark Tank, Lori successfully negotiated a deal which enabled her to quickly expand her brand. Now Lori’s award-winning line of CDs introduces teens to relaxation techniques and music. Indigo Teen Dreams and Indigo Dreams: Teen Relaxation Music have been embraced by parents, psychologists, educators, therapists and doctors around the world. A mother of three, she has some valuable tips for parents to help their teens overcome their stress.
Most parents recognize and remember that the teenage years are a volatile time marked by the struggle for independence, the forging of identity, the painful process of emotional maturation, and the learning of societal norms. Yet parents often underestimate the toll that the stress from these years can take on a teen.
Teenage stress has never been more prevalent. Teenagers are living ever-more complex lives in a society that increasingly treats them as younger adults. It is as important as it’s ever been, then, for parents to recognize the causes of teen stress and to take measures to relieve or combat it.
Teens are worried about grades, sports achievements, peers, relationships. Many teens are dealing with divorcing or single parents. The recession has also increased stress for teens. Many are working to help make ends meet. Others are in fear of their parents losing their jobs and the roof over their head.
Tips for Helping Teens Manage Stress
1. Remember that stress is contagious, but so is calm. Demonstrate relaxation and positive statements in your parenting routine.
2. Talk to your teen. Figure out when their guard is most likely to be down and use that time to communicate.
3. Stay up and have a late night snack with your teen. Teens may be more talkative at night and in the kitchen .
4. Tell stories about challenges you have had as a teen and how you handled it. Make sure to share the mistakes you made. Teens are more likely to share their challenges after a story than a direct question.
5. Give your teens more freedom, but keep clear boundaries. A teen without rules is a teen with much stress.
6. Schedule downtime with your teen. Go for a walk. A bike ride. Shoot baskets together. Take them out of their usual environment. You’ll be surprised how your teen will let his/her walls down doing something outdoors.
7. Pay attention to what you say to your teen. Take a break from criticizing and correcting. Make a choice to give a compliment every day.
8. Expose your teen to relaxation techniques like diaphragmatic breathing, visualization, progressive muscular relaxation, and positive statements. Empower you teen to feel good!
Parents sometimes make the mistake of interpreting legitimate stress as the typical emotional volatility associated with being a teenager. Labeling stress as ‘just being a teen’ both unfairly discounts the difficulty of the teenage years and can obscure the telltale signs of damaging teen stress. Parents might notice their teen is stressed if they see that their teen is easily agitated, overactive, confused, afraid, angry, sad, anxious or withdrawn. A preoccupation with a traumatic event, withdrawal from family and friends, sleep disturbances and physical complaints can all be indicators of stress. Lite encourages parents to trust their instinct.
Teens can also help manage their own stress levels, by making a homework plan, scheduling downtime, exercising regularly, eating healthy, not over scheduling, and getting plenty of sleep. Parents should encourage this behavior whenever possible.
Teen stress is a very real, potentially damaging condition. Parents should take whatever steps possible to help their teenagers relieve their stress during this challenging period of life. And they should start today.
July 1, 2010
 Summer rocks! by Lisa Gundlach
Lisa Gundlach is a parent of two teens, a blogger, and the community manager for SchoolFamily.com. as well as for PTOToday.com blog. SchoolFamily.com provides expert insight, information and resources to help parents set their school-age children up for year-round school success.
Yippee. School’s out. I have always been one of those mothers who prefers the unstructured nature of summer over the frenetic pace of the school year. That is, until my kids became tweens. Never is the term tween more apt than in the summer time. They often have outgrown their summer camps but they are too young for jobs. Our kids are so in between, that sometimes they just don’t know what to do with themselves. Seems that their fall back is anything technology-based. Which is why my recent quest has been to come up with activity alternatives to Facebook and Xbox. Since I know I am not the only mean mom who limits screen time, I thought I would share my plan with you. I am hoping that people will add to these ideas and together we’ll come up with an awesome summer bucket list for our middle school and high school “kids.”
The limited technology plan starts with having teens and tweens make their own list of what they’d like to do this summer. If they are invested or if it is their idea, they are more likely to follow through – the story of our lives, right?Ask your kids to break their list out by:
- stuff to do with friends (that doesn’t involve mom or dad driving)
- stuff to do with friends (where parents need to be involved)
- activities & events to do with family
- things to do on your own or “things to do when I am bored.”
This exercise will mean never having to hear, “Mom, I am bored.” My dad always said that admitting to boredom was admitting lack of intelligence and creativity! Can’t have that.
Once they have come up with their list, offer a few suggestions, based on personality and interests. Here’s a list that I came up with for suggested summer boredom busters:
- Volunteer in the community. Volunteer Match is a great way to find opportunities that range from a one-time event to a weekly gig. The benefits of this experience goes without saying.
- Get outside. In my estimation, there are no excuses not to get outside. The possibilities are endless: bicycling, playing laser tag in the woods, fishing, gardening, geo-caching… just to name a few.
- Get creative. OK, don’t use the word ‘crafts’ but inspire your kids to channel their inner artist, engineer, or chef. One of my favorite websites, Instructables.com, has endless fodder for creativity. For budding writers and artists, summer is a great time to work towards getting published.
- Get active. For the kids that start their own business there’s paint balling, mini golf, and water parks. For the rest of the gang, there are plenty of ideas that cost little or no money: organize a tournament (volleyball, whiffle ball, dodge ball, etc.), get friends together for beach Olympics. Or, for the planning-challenged, start jogging and chart your personal bests.
I also thought this list of 101 fun things for teens to do this summer had some great suggestions.
OK, let’s hear it: what can you add to my teen and tween summer fun list?
April 19, 2010
 Woah! I didn't know people could do that!
If you give a kid a computer, at some time or another, he’ll probably Google “Sex” or “Porn” or god knows what else. If you find out what he’s been looking at what do you do? What prepares a parent for this one? How do you discuss this with your child… or with another adult for that matter?
Recently a very brave and caring dad emailed me when he faced this challenge. Even if you’re beyond certain that your son/daughter would never check out an X rated site, read on anyway… :
Hello Annie,
I just discovered some pretty hardcore porn on my 12 year old son’s MP3/video player that I was trying to fix. I do not know how to handle this. I have not confronted him yet. I want to have a plan. I want to know where/who he got it from. He does spend time on My Space and he sometimes closes the door but mostly he is messaging as far as I can tell. I think he had to get it from someone else but that is not what bothers me. I am a more laid back dad but I feel I am too laid back. I want to dicipline him firmly and also start supervising his online activity. Any advice would be most appreciated.
Flabbergasted Dad
__________
Dear Dad,
It’s natural for a 12 year old boy to be curious about sex. There’s no point in getting angry with him for following his curiosity. That’s not to say pornography is appropriate material for him to be viewing. It isn’t! And that is a clear message he needs to hear from you.
You say you are “too laid back” which indicates that maybe you’ve never had a conversation with him about your rules for his internet use and other media consumption. Maybe you’ve never directly told him that pornography isn’t appropriate for 12 year olds. While you’re at it, you should definitely tell your son WHY you personally believe that is the case. He needs to know what your family values are when it comes to sexually explicit “entertainment.” And your expectations for his behavior on and offline when it comes to girls. Kids who think their parents “don’t care” what they do are often the ones who lack a strong sense of what is right. They are much more likely to be swayed by peer pressure.
So, take some slow deep breaths, then calmly and respectfully talk to your son. Tell him what you know about what he’s been doing. Tell him why this material is against your family values and make it clear that he is not to view it any more. Talk as openly as you can about sex and how exposure to pornography hurts kids by giving them a unhealthy perspective of adult relationships.
Even though your son knew intuitively that you wouldn’t be thrilled with what he was doing, don’t punish him. He didn’t know the rules. Now he will. Let him know that you will periodically and randomly be checking his computer and MP3 player to make sure that he is in compliance with your rules.
Fyi there are ways to turn on “parental controls” on most computers and MP3 players that will prevent the access of objectionable material. There are also ways to get around those safeguards, most easily “I’ll go to my friend’s house and view it there.” but then this becomes a trust issue. Bottom line: You want to trust your son and he wants to be trustworthy in your eyes.
I hope this helps.
In friendship,
Annie
__________
Hi Annie,
Thanks for the advice. I will talk to him tomorrow evening. I am glad I have taken the time to think more about how this can be a learning experience for both of us. I do need to talk more about our family values.
Thanks,
Dad
__________
Hi Dad,
You’re more than welcome. You might want to create an “objectives” list before your talk, ie., “What messages do I want my son to take away from our discussion in the short-term and for the rest of his life?”
Good luck with the conversation.
In friendship,
Annie
March 3, 2010
 What's the plan, Dad? I do a fair amount of parent education seminars. If you’ve ever caught my act you know my presentation style is very casual. But while it may look like all I’m doing is leading discussions based on teen email from the likes of “Invisible Loser” and “Stuck and Lonely” plus sharing war stories about discovering our daughter on the phone with her boyfriend at 2:37 AM (on a school night!) and morphing into Godzilla in the doorway of our son’s absurdly cluttered room… I actually prepare for every parenting workshop. Seriously. I’m a teacher. Educational objectives and lesson plans and are in my DNA.
All parents are teachers. At 18 your kids will graduate from your private school of human development and race into the world with a bunch of lessons learned… from you.
What will your exit exam measure? Not sure? You’re not alone. In the first 5 years of a child’s life parents have a packed curriculum for their little ones to master (walking, talking, potty training, toy sharing, nose-blowing, etc.). But beyond 1st or 2nd grade parenting objectives start getting fuzzy.
As parents of teens your days of close-at-hand parenting are numbered. So if you are currently a bit unclear about some of your parenting goals maybe I can help. Here’s a question I often ask at my workshops: What are your top 5 parenting objectives? That is, by the time your kid graduates high school and begins the first chapter of adult life, what kind of person would you like him/her to be?
Usual responses include:
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· Self-sufficient
· Independent
· Caring
· Responsible
· A good friend
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· Productive
· Honest
· Self-confident
· Healthy life style
· Able to make good decisions
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It’s a great starter list, but listing goals is obviously easier than working to achieve them so here’s my next question: What are you consciously doing to support the development of the skills and character traits you say you want for your kids? I realize that’s a tough one because we’re all so busy. But if you buy into the premise that parents are teachers and have some accountability for the way their kids turn out then you need a strategic parenting plan.
That means you’ve got to figure out a) what your plan is and b) how to put it into action. How else will your kids get to the place you say you want them to reach by the time their packing for college? Most of us don’t usually think about parenting in such concrete ways. But Mom, Dad, with all due respect, if you’ve got no game plan, your list of parenting objectives are just of bunch of words. Granted, raising kids is an art and not a science, but still, if you’ve got things you want them to learn from you, then you have to teach them.
Here’s my final question for today: What might you be doing (consciously or unconsciously) to undermine your own stated objectives? Maybe you say that you want your child to be self-sufficient, but you’re still dragging your 15 year old out of bed every morning, making him lunch and checking his homework. Maybe you say you want your 14 year old to be self-confident, but you also routinely tell her she’s lazy, rude, self-centered and can’t do anything right.
You get the idea. You need to be aware of your parenting objectives and you need to be the kind of teacher that supports your own curriculum every single day.
One more thing to keep in mind… if you’re not personally modeling what you teach, then you’re teaching something else. Simply put, you can’t expect your kids to treat you with respect if you are routinely rude to them as well as to waiters, cashiers, etc. Your kids are watching, listening and learning.
Class dismissed. See you next time.
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