I pointed out in Part 1 that our culture harbors a common, dangerous misconception about teens — that they need us to drop the reins and let them “do their thing.” But in terms of their brain and social development, they are as tender as they were as infants. So, we need to remain their active guides and examples. Adults staying actively, enthusiastically involved in the lives of their children and students is one of the best teen addiction prevention measures. In addition to the 3 guidelines offered in Part 1, what else do teens need from us during this time when our window of potent influence is so soon to close? (more…)
Archive for the ‘Parenting for Peace’ Category
What Teens Need From Us
A common misconception is that teens need us to drop the reins. But neurodevelopmentally, they are as tender as infants, so teens need us still, very much. One of the most important books I’ve encountered about parenting during early adolescence is poignantly and aptly titled Our Last Best Shot. Author Laura Sessions Stepp spent two years finding out what teens need for future psychosocial wellbeing and success. She admits in the book that she “wanted to minimize the significance of parents and emphasize the importance of other adults.”
While she discovered the important role other adults do indeed play in the healthiest outcomes for adolescents, Stepp’s conclusion was clear about what teens need: (more…)
Fairy Tales: Soul Food for Children
“But they’re so awful!” This is a response I often hear from parents when I recommend Grimms’ fairy tales as reading fare for their children. While Grimms’ is all the rage these days for adults, parents often recoil at the idea of regaling their young children with stories of orphans and witches, kidnappings and murders — at bedtime no less. Understandable. But savvy parents understand that fairy tales are soul food for children. They nourish the developing psyche in complex ways. But the real ones, not the prettied-up, pasteurized ones.
The Brothers Grimm have been getting lots of press lately, and not just because they turned 200 last month. Popular culture has been plundering them with varying degrees of success — and so their names and their twisty story lines are on our minds more than ever. But many people assume, Oooh, not for our kids! (more…)
How A Coach Helps
A coach helps by holding a vision of success when you, for whatever reason, cannot. A coach sees the powers inside you and guides their unfolding. In singing, soccer, life in general — and in parenting.
A coach helps by seeing the desired result, knowing the steps for getting you there, and patiently reminding you of those steps. A coach helps as you take those steps, which may feel awkward or unnatural at first. A coach patiently encourages you along what can feel like an interminably long road, sometimes to what feels like an unreachable mountaintop, even when (especially when) you can’t see the destination.
This is especially true when the steps to get to your goal aren’t self-evident. (more…)
A Special Joy: Parenting Adult Children
Post-performance at the 92nd St. Y, after Ian had already taken off his tux (still had 4 performances to go in it!). On the left is my step-father John Lindstrom, who himself sang lead roles in many Gilbert & Sullivan productions, and so particularly enjoyed the evening.
If I’ve been a bit incommunicado lately it’s because I’ve been busy reaping delicious fruits of parenting for peace: enjoying some of the delights of parenting adult children! Between visiting New York to catch my son in a fabulous show at the 92nd St. Y and spending time with my daughter as she is about to begin her last college semester before embarking on The World, it’s been a couple weeks of juicy mothering life and no blogging life.
It’s been a time to deeply savor the lived reality of what I wrote about somewhat wistfully in the conclusion of my book Parenting for Peace — that parenting adult children brings a special joy when you know you have raised a creative innovator, a peacemaker poised to make a difference in a challenged world: (more…)
Mental Health Begins in the Womb
Gone are the days when we could consider pregnancy a 9-month “grace period” before the job of parenting begins. Mounting research tells us that lifelong wellbeing, including mental health, begins in the womb, and everything parents do – beginning even before conception — shapes their children in critical, life-altering ways.
I began 2013 by writing about the power of beginnings. This applies to virtually everything, from baking a pie to building a company to developing a human: the beginning contains within it the seeds of the project’s ultimate success…or less-than-success. (more…)
New Year’s: Harness the Power of Beginnings
New Year’s is the most famous (infamous??) time to make positive changes to our lives. We can turbo-charge that process — and perhaps avoid the dreaded syndrome of NYRE (New Year’s Resolution Extinction) — when we harness the power of beginnings: the beginning of anything contains within it the seeds of its final flowering.
In every phenomenon the beginning remains always
the most notable moment. — Thomas Carlyle (more…)
Protecting Our Children from the Violence of Media
As we all anguish over Newtown’s murdered children, parents understandably worry about their own children’s safety. Realistically and statistically, there is a miniscule chance of your child being assaulted by a deranged shooter. But how often do we worry about protecting our children from the violence of media?
Picking up from my last post’s discussion of television as a neuro-violent experience, a topic of eternal concern and seemingly endless research is the effect of certain kinds of screened content on children’s wellbeing — particularly violence. (And keep in mind that violence doesn’t necessarily assume bullets, blood and gore, but refers to any act of aggression; think Power Rangers, Superman, Charlie’s Angels, Dragonball Z, Pokemon, in which the lauded hero uses physical or mental force, coercion or intimidation.) (more…)
How Television Violence Affects Children
So many questions in the wake of Newtown, and an excellent one is about how television violence affects children. As some of the wiser commentators have said, there is no one single reason (not just guns, not just mental illness, not just family dynamics) for a tragedy of such heinous proportions. The question of how television violence affects children is just one thread of the complex tapestry of causes in such tragedies as the Newtown massacre.
This tapestry surely finds its warp threads in the early days of a child’s life as the social brain is wiring up — during pregnancy, in infancy, toddlerhood and childhood. Important weaving also takes place in the equally tender developmental stages around adolescence. (more…)
