Search Results for: Paige clingenpeel

Your son just informed you that after the big holiday dance at school all the guys and girls are going to the twins Julia and Jacob’s house and spending the night. He explains that everyone going are just friends and the parents will be at home to supervise. He also describes the sleepover as a solution for your worries about him being out late and making risky decisions. So you are left with the question, “Is this a coed sleepover, and do I let my child go?” Here are some of the teen rationales when asking for permission to attend a coed sleepover:

Surprises are fun unless that surprise is accidentally discovering that your teen is sexually active. Here’s an all too familiar scenario and what we as parents can do next if it happens to us: You and your daughter just got home from grocery shopping. She says she needs to use the restroom before she helps unload the groceries. She dashes off, leaving her phone on the counter. As you start putting the produce away, you hear the chime of a text notification. When you instinctively glance in the direction of the sound, you realize that it is your daughter’s phone, and you see it’s from her friend—the one who practically lives at your house during the summer. You yell to your daughter that her friend texted when you happen to read the first few lines on the home screen: “OMG!!! U n Dan did it? How was it? Did it hurt? Tell me everything!” OK, it doesn’t take a Ph.D. to figure out what this is about. You have discovered that your teen is sexually active. Now what? Here are suggestions for how to handle this conversation.

We have all been there, where we overhear our kids talking to their friends nonstop about their day, and yet when we ask but 5 minutes later the only thing they say about their day is, ‘Good.’ One word answers can be infuriating. We have spent years trying to get our little ones to quit talking so much and eat their dinner, to now be in a place where they are not even willing to complete a sentence can be frustrating, even hurtful. Here are some tips to walk through with your children when they get to that place where they seem to be allergic to talking to their parents.

High school is the time to experiment, to try out different personalities, appearances, friends, passions, and making drugs and alcohol so enticing. The school systems have been doing a great job of educating the students in health class about the dangers of drugs

As a Student Assistant Program Therapist at a public high school of 2,300 students as well as a licensed mental health counselor specializing in adolescents, one of the workshops I offer for parents of teens is called Technology and Teens. I go over all the present apps that the majority of adolescents use to educate parents about the potential emotional, relational, and psychological struggles kids could have using these apps. Sexting is always a big topic parents want addressed. And while sexting isn’t an app, there are plenty of apps that are conducive to producing and sharing sexts. And though we can probably guess the negative consequences, legally and socially, let’s talk about 3 dangers of sexting parents need to know about.