If you’re the parent of a teen interested in improving your teen’s social skills, you probably spend time reading up on teen psychology. Here’s a theme, or trope, you likely see all the time: Life is about experiences. The more new, diverse experiences you have, the more you learn and grow. The more you learn and grow, the happier you become. Variety is the spice of life. It makes perfect
Nothing compares to getting lost in the pages of a fantastic book. Talented authors can keep you engaged for hours at a time, turning page after page as you anticipate what comes next. Summer reading programs at local libraries and Scholastic book fairs were a large part of childhood for many adults today. The advent of the Internet changed how frequently people read for pleasure now. The rise of the
Banning books is not a new practice. Attempts to keep adolescents from reading material unsuitable for their age range have been around for over a century. Historians usually consider Uncle Tom’s Cabin as the first nationally banned book in the United States toward the end of the 1800s. We’d like to think limiting access to literature is a thing of the past, something reserved for scenarios like those in famous
News stations have spent the last few years stoking debates about transgender individuals. From transgender people enlisting in the military to whether transgender people should be allowed to play sports to which restroom transgender people should use, the small but substantial portion of the population has faced intense public scrutiny from every direction. An estimated 1.6 million people in the United States ages 13 and older identify as transgender. This
Teen mental health is a primary concern in our society right now. The pandemic significantly disrupted the end of the 2019-2020 school year and the entire 2020-2021 school year. So far, the 2021-2022 school year – fingers crossed – appears to be a return to our regularly scheduled programming. Or, at very least, most high school students across the country right now are at school, in-person. If the current combination
Tips on Building Trust With Your Teen A funny thing happens during pre-adolescence. This isn’t true for all kids, but for most. One day they’re all talk. Chitter-chatter about this, that, and the other thing. From the moment you pick them up from school or they get home from the bus stop to the moment they go to bed. They talk about their friends, their hobbies, the things they love,
There’s one thing we know about mental health that applies to people of any age, from children to teenagers to full-grown adults: people who are actively engaged in life report high levels of life satisfaction and overall wellbeing. That’s not only true for their mental health, but also true for their physical health. For the purposes of this article, though, we’ll focus on mental health. What do we mean by
If you’re the parent of a teenager in 2022, the past two years have most likely been challenging for everyone in your family. You and your teen faced new circumstances. Some were no big deal, while others may have caused significant stress. In some cases, the stress and disruption led to the development of mental health issues. As a parent you wonder if your teen needs professional support – and
If you follow the news online, in print, or on television, you know that over the past two years, teen mental health has become a common topic across all these platforms. Most of us notice them more, now, because of the well-documented negative effect of the coronavirus pandemic on teen mental health in the U.S. and around the world. However, articles about the precarious state of teen mental health in
We Believe in You In August of 1994, the U.S. Congress passed a bill called “The Parents’ Day Resolution.” Within two months, President Bill Clinton signed the bill into law. Here’s the text of Public Law 103-62: “The fourth Sunday of every July shall be established as “Parents’ Day” to be recognized as a recurring, perennial day of commemoration. All private citizens, organizations, and governmental and legislative bodies at the
