Oct 21 / Simcha

Be Curious!

Be curious rather than judgmental.

If you remember and apply this mantra regularly and consistently, you will be halfway there in improving relations with your teen.

Much negative behavior is driven by a need for attention or a need that isn’t being met.  Responding with force or ultimatum reinforces negativity and invites resistance.

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Sep 22 / Simcha

What if the Secret to Success Is Failure?

KIPP Infinity middle school in Manhattan. (Tape Installation: Stephen Doyle. Photograph: Stephen Wilkes for the NYTimes)

More than anything, kids need a little difficulty, some challenge or deprivation that they can overcome, even if just to prove to themselves that they can.  If we take that opportunity away from them, their education – both at home and at school – is “missing out on some serious parts of what it means to be a successful human.”  We also inadvertently shield them from exactly the kind of experiences that can lead to character growth.

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Aug 24 / Simcha

Sex Education for NY State Teens

The new sex education requirement for all students in public middle and high schools is “long overdue,”  writes the The New York Times (August 10, 2011).  The sex education push is part of an initiative by Mayor Michael Bloomberg to address the needs of young people in minority neighborhoods, where blacks and Latinos are most affected by the consequences of early sexual behavior and unprotected sex.

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Aug 16 / Simcha

Understanding the Adolescent Brain

Starting in 1991, Dr. Jay Giedd, chief of brain imaging at the Child Psychiatry Branch of the National Institute of Mental Health, starting taking pictures of children’s brains over a period of nine years, using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).  He and his colleagues studied some 1,000 healthy kids (including two of his own) at intervals ranging from two weeks to four years.

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Aug 15 / Simcha

Living with Teens 101

The more respected your teens feel, the more open they will be with you. The more power you share with them (without abdicating your role as a parent), the more trusted they will feel and in time, the more cooperative.

Parental coercion invites resistance. Rigid parental rules invite the breaking of those rules. How then, ask parents so often, do we get our teens “to behave”?

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Aug 10 / Simcha

How to Encourage Children

There is no need to cheer, clap and comment on everything your child does.  When we consistently rescue, fix and overprotect our children, we rob them of the opportunity to learn from their mistakes, as well as to know that they can survive disappointment.

 

Instead, learn to encourage them:

  1. Conduct family meetings where children learn to give and receive compliments and learn to brainstorm for solutions to problems;
  2. Ask “curiosity questions” that help children learn HOW to think instead of WHAT to think;
  3. Allow children opportunities to learn and grow — mistakes and all;
  4. Have faith in your children so they can develop faith in themselves;
  5. Pay greater attention to their inner worlds; take into greater consideration what they may be thinking, feeling or deciding in response to what you do or say.
  6. Help your children feel capable and independent, by offering them both chores and choices.
Aug 10 / Simcha

Encouragement vs Praise

“Encourage the deed [or effort], not the doer.”  — Rudolf Dreikurs, psychiatrist/educator, (1897-1972)

Research by Carol Dweck, Ph.D. a professor at Columbia University (now at Stanford), reinforced the notion that too much praise is, in fact, not always good for children.  For over ten years, psychologist Carol Dweck and her team studied the effect of praise on students in a dozen New York schools. Her seminal work — a series of experiments on 400 fifth-graders — found that children praised for being smart or talented when they accomplished various tasks tended to choose easier tasks in the future.

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Aug 10 / Simcha

Our Obsession with our Kids’ Happiness

Artist: Lou Brooks, The Atlantic (Summer 2011)

Do parents do their children a favor when they are present to address their every need and request?  When they are available at every moment (in person or by text or cellphone) to protect, calm, soothe, remind, help out, and help make decisions?

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