You don’t want your teen to smoke cigarettes. You don’t want your teen smoke marijuana. There’s the danger that normal development of the prefrontal cortex will be disrupted, with permanent…
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Imagine this scenario… A well-rounded, accomplished teen boy raised in a wholesome, supportive family is asked by a girl he believes is romantically interested in him, a stranger he met…
A friend once told me a story about his older brother. My friend was a top student and multi-sport athlete in high school, and he eventually got a football scholarship…
I recently had breakfast with some friends who have a graduating high school senior. He’s a great kid who wants to be a speech therapist and has been accepted into…
Caring parents who consider the advice of experts are on a journey to “get better” at raising well-adjusted adults who succeed in life and work. But it’s not easy. It’s…
Recently I stood gazing out a street-facing window of a restaurant. A couple sat at an outdoor table on the sidewalk. Both were busy interacting with their smartphones. Across the…
First, a new word: “esports.” Makes you think that playing video games is a legitimate sport, something like poker, which is featured on ESPN and in the sports sections of…
In my posts, “Video Game Addiction and Brain Damage” and “Teen Smartphones and Social Networking – Buyer Beware” I described potential threats to normal teen brain development. If you read these…
My doctor asked me if I drink alcohol. I told her I usually have a glass of red wine with dinner and another glass later. She said, “That’s probably OK….
One of the underlying themes of my writing is that parents of teens need to be realistic. But being realistic doesn’t necessarily imply some kind of worst-case scenario. Because realistically,…
“Every year, teens are asked about their general happiness, in addition to how they spend their time. We found that teens who spent more time seeing their friends in person,…
Most people have heard about distracted driving but don’t really understand what’s going on. Give a teen a link to this post. It might help save his or her life….
About the teen brain, I have some good news and some bad news. First, the good news. Nearly every adult I talk to these days has heard about the teen brain. Fifteen…
What is self-esteem, anyway? Why is it important to a growing child? Why does it turn out to be a tough issue? What can parents do to nurture stronger self-esteem?…
How much wisdom did you have when you were 13? What did you know? More to the point, what insights about life – which could have helped you a lot…
Smartphones are an amazing window into a world of countless marvels and dangers. Since kids have a lot to learn, giving a child a smartphone needs to be done with exquisite…
If you read my post about the mixed bag of wonders/dangers of smartphones and social networking, your eyes are wide open about pornography, cyberbullying, stranger danger, sexual predators, identity theft,…
Today, most phone calls are made using wireless smartphones, relayed by Wi-Fi devices in your home or distant radio towers. What we used to call telephones are now called landlines,…
When it comes to sex education, parents need to learn more about how our culture sexualizes their kids. This guest post, which addresses this “blind spot,” comes from Elizabeth McDade-Montez,…
In the adult world, dating is like an audition. An acquaintance asks you out to dinner or an event, which will give you time together to learn more about each…
Why would a teenager do something as stupid as engaging in one of the teen challenges, such as binge-drinking, or swallowing a spoonful of cinnamon, or snorting a condom. Quite…
One evening when I was 14, I was sitting on my bed reading a novel when my mom walked past my door. Then she came back, stood in the door,…
The surveys and statistics bear it out: teens are misusing drugs and alcohol at younger and younger ages. Parents are often unaware that it’s begun, since the warning signs can…
Disconnected, a new book by Thomas Kersting, documents the horrible effects of excessive screen time on children. One of the most insidious technologies is video games, because of its ability to…
I recently spoke with a mother of three boys, ages 11, 13 and 15. She told me she and her husband plan to give all three sons video game consoles…
This guest post comes from Mercedes Samudio, LCSW, a parent coach who helps parents achieve dynamic parent/child relationships, ending the shame around parenting and giving parents the confidence to raise healthy…
Since the 1990’s, when Dr. Jay Giedd and his colleagues at the National Institute for Mental Health published their pioneering research about adolescent brain development, more than a dozen authors…
In a separate post, I quoted Dr. Jay Giedd, the pioneering brain researcher who discovered that the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is still under development during a child’s adolescence, that this is…
I have a 15-year-old nephew. The last time I saw him he was doing what most kids his age are doing: sitting on a couch browsing his smartphone. At the…
The idea that your child could be abusing alcohol or illegal drugs is scary enough. In fact, you also need to be aware that he or she could be abusing the over-the-counter…
I’ve posted before about the importance of critical thinking and the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a young person to lay down a foundation of critical thinking skills in the developing prefrontal cortex…
Most of the 50 million parents of school-aged children in the U.S. are all too aware of the gauntlet of dangers that threaten when a child becomes an adolescent:Â under-age smoking…
When they’re little you read to them, hoping they’ll learn to love books and reading and learning. Before you know it they’re in school, beginning a learning journey that will…
In this piece, I reference an interesting video. Even though you may find it shocking, watch it all the way through. Don’t click off just because you think it’s disgusting….
Studying well in school is important. Those 12 years – and university – are important. But along the way, a young person needs to learn many non-academic skills and strengths that are…
One crucial step in helping your adolescent child build a superior mind is to protect the prefrontal cortex (PFC) from damage during adolescence – the developmental period for wiring the…
In 2014Â 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…
Drinking alcohol with the expressed purpose of getting “messed up”? Believe it or not, this is an activity practiced mostly by kids. Watch this brief video… What can a parent…
A few years ago my wife and I were doing some recreational house-hunting. While viewing a beautiful home, she commented, “I like this house but we’d need to replace all the…
A new study has concluded that teenagers who smoke pot suffer a significant drop in IQ that persists even if they stop smoking it later in life. The article doesn’t…