by Dennis Coates | Aug 11, 2015 | Adolescence, Personal Strength, Teen Success, Work
I’m recalling a moderately adverse experience that started with a phone call. My wife was about to return home from a shopping excursion at a mall about 30 miles away when her car wouldn’t start. She asked me to drive to the mall to give her a jump-start...
by Dennis Coates | Aug 6, 2015 | Adolescence, Adolescent Brain, Behavior Change, Critical Thinking, Parent-child Communication, Parenting
Kids can learn a lot from experience. But that doesn’t mean they will, just because something happened to them. Most of the time young people go from one life event to another without learning a thing. The same thing is true of adults! What makes the difference?...
by Dennis Coates | Aug 3, 2015 | Adolescence, Adolescent Brain, Critical Thinking, Parenting, Teen Culture, Teen Suicide
In 2014 a huge tornado devastated a small town in Oklahoma, killing 24 people. Stories and images of the destruction were all over the Internet, the newspapers and television news. The coverage reminded me of when in early June, 1966, I walked among the ruins in...
by Dennis Coates | Jul 24, 2015 | Adolescence, Parent-child Communication
Listening is the most powerful skill a parent can have. It has the potential to “change the game” with regard to your relationship with your child. In my writing about this skill, I refer to it as “listening to understand,” a phrase I borrowed...
by Dennis Coates | Jul 3, 2015 | Adolescence, Adolescent Brain, Critical Thinking
Often when I write about adolescence, I make reference to a part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex. To help you appreciate where that part of the brain is and what it does, I’ll give you a quick guided tour of your brain. I’ll do my best here, even...
by Dennis Coates | Jun 25, 2015 | Adolescence, Adolescent Brain, Critical Thinking, Education, Parenting
I accidentally help wire my boys’ teen brains for critical thinking. It was Christmas 1982, and like all parents at the time, I knew nothing about the teen brain. But I didn’t think twice about what to give them for Christmas. It just seemed like a great...
