by Dennis Coates | Adolescence, Guest Blog Posts, Parenting, Peer Pressure, Self-Esteem, Teen Culture
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 children in today’s world. She is a leading parenting...
by Dennis Coates | Adolescence, Adolescent Brain, Critical Thinking, Education, Parenting, Parenting Books, Rebellion, Teen Culture, Teen Success, Work
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 with different backgrounds have written about “the teen brain.” For...
by Dennis Coates | Adolescence, Adolescent Brain, Alcohol, Critical Thinking, Drugs, Education, Encouragement, Parenting, Teen Culture, Teen Success
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 the “smart” area of the brain, and that wiring the PFC...
by Dennis Coates | Adolescence, Adolescent Brain, Critical Thinking, Education, Mentoring, Parenting, Parenting Books, Peer Pressure, Teen Culture, Teen Success
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 time I was thinking that a lot of unused brain cell connections were in the process of being “pruned”...
by Dennis Coates | Adolescence, Drugs, Education, Guest Blog Posts, Health & Nutrition, Teen Culture
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 medications in your home – a very real concern for parents of adolescents. This guest post...
by Dennis Coates | Adolescence, Adolescent Brain, Alcohol, Critical Thinking, Education, Encouragement, Parent-child Communication, Parenting Books, Teen Culture, Teen Success
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 – what I often refer to as “the smart...
