Category: Parenting

Why teenagers rebel, act stupid, and why this is a good thing

Teenagers, as a rule, are rebellious, don’t listen to their parents, do stupid, reckless, dangerous things, and are generally a huge pain for parents to deal with. An article in the National Geographic (subscription required, unauthorized PDF here), based on recent research into brain functioning, explains why all of this happens, and more importantly, explains why this is actually good for the teenager (as long as one of the reckless things does not kill him/her).

The article (PDF) is long, and parts are rather boring, but some parts, especially on the second page, are quite insightful.

I’ll summarize with very broad, simplistic strokes:

  • Yes, teenagers do take more dangerous risks than most other age groups
  • They do understand the dangers involved (so you telling them “Don’t you know what could happen?” is not particularly useful)
  • The main difference between teenagers and others is that they value the rewards (gained from taking the risks) much more than adults
  • Teenagers take more risks in the company of their friends/peers. In other words, they value “social rewards” and “peer recognition” quite a lot – much more so than adults
  • In general, this is evolution’s way of encouraging teenagers to learn new things, explore new opportunities, to boldly go where they haven’t gone before. This prepares them for leaving their parents’ home and going out into the world on their own
  • They prefer the company of young people. Parents, teenagers don’t what you as friends, they want their friends as friends. (As explained previously, they are wired to get excited about new and unknown things, and parents are neither new, nor unknown, nor exciting.) Evolutionarily speaking, this is the teenagers investing in their future rather than their past or present
  • To help, parents should “engage and guide their teens with a light but steady hand, staying connected but allowing independence.” While the teenagers should obviously benefit from your experience (and they often do – but a little later than you would like), their primary instinct is to learn from their own mistakes. Let them.

I am not the parent of a teenager, so I have no idea what I’m talking about. But I’m good at summarizing long articles into pithy blog posts.

You should probably read the full article.

Preventing child sexual abuse – What every Parent should know and do

About 15 to 20% of adults report receiving some form of sex abuse as kids. That’s right 15-20%. Which means, if you know 6 kids, there is a high probability that one of them is being, or will be sexually abused. This abuse can range from inappropriate and repeated touching, all the way to penetrative sex. And it is happening all around you. And it affects girls and boys equally (below the age of 12, after which girls are more affected).

But, most of it can very easily be prevented. All you need to do is to have a simple 15 minute chat with your children, once every six months. This chat does not involve talking about sex, does not involve talking about genitals, and is not an uncomfortable chat, and is not scary for children.

Here is a video of what this chat is like:

If you can’t see the video above, go to see it on YouTube

That is Dr. Bhooshan Shukla, a Child Psychiatrist going through one such session.

That’s it. That’s all you need to do.

For more detail on the Hows and the Whys and FAQs, see Dr. Shukla’s blog post on this subject. By the way, you should subscribe to his blog too.

Again, this is important, this is easy. Please do it.

And please spread the word.

This is not a problem that affects only western countries, or only kids in slums, or only kids from broken families. It affects everyone. That’s why you need to do this.

If you don’t have kids, I’m sure you know others who have kids. Please tell them about this.

If you would like such a session to be conducted in your society/school, but are not confident enough to do it on your own, you can contact me, or Dr. Shukla, or meetu (email), and we can figure something out.

Update: from Dr. Shukla on 11 August 2011:

This video is gathering steam. Almost 18,000 vies at the last
count. I am answering about 25 e-mils every day (since last one month!) about abuse and people’s experience when talking to kids. So far views and mails form over 20 countries (all 5 continents!)

I think we have acquired some really good karma here.

Please continue to spread the word. Thanks.

Positive psychology exercises improve students’ outlook & behavior in school

This article, reports that making school students go through positive psychology exercises helps them get a better impression of school in general, improves their behavior in classroom, and a bunch of other good stuff.

For example, one exercise in the positive psychology asked students to list 3 good things that happened to them each day for a week – then the follow-up questions asked what the event meant to them and what can increase the likelihood of this happening again (kind of connecting the dots for the students).

…

The net result: positive thinking and resiliency training improved students' school outlook and engagement, improved classroom behavior and cooperation, resulted in more self-control, and more empathy. Not bad!

That's not all – think about this:

students who believed that intelligence was a fixed entity were more likely to show no improvement in their math achievement from 7th to 8th grade, more likely to withdraw or cheat, and less likely to demonstrate mastery-reactions to setbacks. Not surprisingly, the students who believed intelligence could be 'grown' – were more likely to persevere, show resiliency behaviors to setbacks, and improve performance.

See full article.

(Via: http://twitter.com/sandygautam)

Posted via email from Navin’s posterous