Teen Life
Teen life can be hard. Experts claim the best years of your life are the teen years. However, 9 out of 10 teens would not agree with that “expert” statement. Growing up is the hardest thing a person has to do and if they survive those tumultuous teen years unscathed, then they are lucky. Teen life today is harder than it used to be. Today’s teenagers have more “issues” to deal with than those of 20 years ago; each generation is faced with a new set of obstacles to get around or overcome. Teens will always have their hearts broken at least once; it's a fact of teen life and there is no way around that. As parents “we have been there done that” and are still here to tell about it. However, trying to convince a brokenhearted teenager that their heart will mend isn’t much of a consolation to them. A more serious problem of teen life is peer pressure; this is the one parents need to pay the closest attention to. Every teen strives to be popular among their peers and deciding how far they are willing to go to reach their popular status is where parents need to be concerned. Some teens know their “safe” limits while others don’t. This is not to suggest that the parents have done a poor job in raising them it simply means what one teen is willing to do for popularity, another is not. It’s all about their self-esteem and level of adventure. Binge drinking is another serious problem for teens and parents in this day and age. This problem is a lot more common than many parents want to believe. Ask yourself this one question has your teen ever drunk alcohol? Think about it for a minute. Most of us would instantly answer no! They are too young to buy it and they don’t hang with an older crowd so there is no way they could get it. WRONG! Unless every set of parents are non drinkers and every teen has siblings that are younger than them and your teen doesn’t have one single friend, cousin, friend of a cousin then your teen has had alcohol. It’s part of growing up and most likely; they will survive their encounter with the booze. It’s a normal part of being a teen but it doesn’t make it right. The most important thing parents can do to encourage their teens to grow up happy and healthy is to allow them room to grow as an individual. Privacy is another big issue with teens. With the Internet, it’s hard! Parents need to monitor their teen’s online activity while not allowing the teen to be aware of this because teen’s biggest “thing” is privacy. If you snoop through there online conversations or read their diaries there is no doubt they are going to be mad! To bad! If you have (which I hope all parents do) have a strong bond and open relationship with their teenagers then the teen will understand to some level that you are doing your job as a parent. The most important thing a parent can do when raising a teenager is allow them some privacy and respect them. They learn from our actions as parents!
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