We recently posed a question on social media: “Hey Parents of Teens! What Do You Want to Know? What topic would be the most helpful for you? If you’ve ever thought, ‘I wish I had a guide to deal with this problem!’ Now is your chance to ask for that guide.” Members of our community replied with their most pressing questions. One concerned parent asked, “What [do you] do if
This month – April – is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. We’ve already posted one article about sexual assault: Sexual Assault Awareness Month: History, Facts, and Figures During February of this year, we posted several articles about teen dating violence. We discussed the warning signs and gave tips and advice about what to do if you think your teen is either a victim or a perpetrator of teen dating violence. Teen
What is Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM)? The first official SAAM occurred in April 2001, organized by the National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC). The roots of the movement that led to the first SAAM can be traced back generally to the social activism of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and specifically to efforts of activists in Pennsylvania and the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 1970s
The first thing to do if you’re the victim of teen dating violence – or any intimate partner violence, no matter how old you are – is this: know that violence, anger, or controlling behavior is not a sign of how much someone loves you. Rather, it’s a sign something inside the angry, violent, or controlling person needs to be addressed and healed – and it’s not your job to
It’s every parent’s worst nightmare: their child being abused. Sexually, emotionally, or physically, it doesn’t matter which – they’re all virtually unbearable to conceive. And that’s for us, the adults, thinking about it from the outside. We have life experience, we have perspective, and we have a fully developed prefrontal cortex that enables us to use reason, control our emotions, and process disturbing information and the associated emotions. We’re not
The Children of 9/11 The attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and The Pentagon outside Washington, D.C. were the largest attacks on the U.S. soil by a foreign entity since Pearl Harbor. Historians, war buffs, and armchair foreign policy experts can quibble about the details of this claim, but one thing is clear. The events of that Tuesday morning shifted world events on a scale like
Anyone who pays close attention to the news media would think the world is getting more dangerous by the minute. Local news seems to lead every broadcast with crime. A robbery here. A murder there. A kidnapping nearby. National news highlights tragically violent stories over positive stories every day. We know about the college student abducted and killed while out for a run and we know about the man who
Physical and Sexual Dating Violence Among Teens Teenagers date, have significant others, have romances, and have flings – but you know that, because you’re a teenager and you see it every day. You may not need a CDC study to confirm what you already know, but a large-scale, national report shows that just under seventy percent of high school students across the country dated or went out with someone in
Adverse Childhood Experiences and Long-Term Health In 1998, the Centers for Disease Control and Kaiser Permanente Health Systems partnered to launch an ambitious study on the effect of adverse childhood experiences on an individual’s long-term physical, mental, social and emotional health. Known today as the ACE Study, it is widely recognized that the publication of this paper marked the beginning of an approach to mental and emotional healthcare practices now
