Blog
Surviving College-Bound Teens
Practical advice from two psychotherapists and recovering moms

  • Are You Going to Finish Strong?
    This question may be one we want to ask ourselves, as parents, adults, leaders...In a world where we constantly want our children to be better than us we may loose site that we first need to challenge ourselves. One of the biggest lessons I learned from my parents was to keep striving to be better than I was...work harder...set higher goals. No one actually ever said this to me. Instead they showed me in their life. I recently got emailed a great video regarding this message...you may want to visit this page too so here is the address. Are you going to finish strong? http://www.maniacworld.com/are-you-going-to-finish-strong.html


  • Cell Phone Images
    The Times had an article last week about teens casually sending semi-clothed or nude pictures of themselves through their cell phones. I have been approached by numerous parents lately who have shared their concerns about this new phenomenon. What I did not know until I read that article is that this is considered to be a criminal offense and can land a son or daughter in jail. And perhaps even worse, they can then be labeled as a sexual predator which follows them for years to come. Apparently, this practice has become popular among some of our underage tech savvy kids. And, true to form, they do not have a clue how this kind of exposing impulse can permanently change their lives. So, it is up to us as the coaching presence in their lives, to educate, monitor and even intervene before this kind of behavior takes place. Which means, we need to be a bit savvy ourselves about texting and the sending of cell phone images so we can try (notice, I used the word "try") to stay one step ahead of them. For their own good and ours...


  • Think More
    At a luncheon Barbara and I were just at today a colleague of ours recommended, "Do more time thinking?" She felt we all could benefit from thinking something through 3 times, measuring twice and cutting once...a cool reference for craftsmen out there. It really struck me as an important piece of advise, not just for me but for the next generation. It seems like sometimes I am too rushed to really think something through, and then I act before I have a clear direction. I think Gen Y is suffering from this too. They feel pressured by our fast paced world to have a plan, have direction, know what there doing...in essence be grown up before they are. Thinking time can often be viewed as slow time, time you could be getting something done. But this is more a myth than truth. When you have enough time to think a thought over, when it finally gets put to action it is usually more accurate in execution. Be careful to take away too much thinking time from yourself and your child.


  • Mick Jagger & Texting
    A recent article in the St. Pete Times, (11/23/08) cited some of the concerns a lot of parents have about the amount of time and energy their children are spending texting and online. The researchers stated that kids are actually learning a lot by spending countless hours online. "Online activities force kids to employ collaborative skills - as they share ideas and arguments with others who live worlds away." The truth is that most of us parents are just uncomfortable with the single focus our children seem to be exhibiting technologically. We feel justified in our concerns that their social skills could be lacking in some serious, life altering ways. Yet perhaps our parents felt the same way about the amount of time we spent glued to the telephone or hypnotized by the television. I can still remember my parents shock at the sight of Mick Jagger as he shrieked and strutted across out TV screen. Maybe we are just showing our age or are we?


  • "I Miss You"

    Liking your parents. This just never happened when I went to college...OK, never may be too strong a word. But even if you did like your parents, you definitely wanted to be away from them through most of the growing up part. Boy were we anxious to be away from our parents. This is not so for most of the current college bound generation. They actually like their parents and are open about it, they also are very comfortable expressing their feeling about missing their parents...I guess all those psych books paid off. I was asked in an interview today what I thought about all this? Well, it's a complicated dynamic to explain and yes, I often think it's a healthy response to a history of extreme authoritarian style parenting. But just because your teen or young adult is saying 'I don't think I can do it without you' doesn't mean the correct parental response is to swoop in and rescue. Yes, we have a group of young adults who can now correctly identify their feeling and express them, but parents be cautious, to another adult(even a young one) the helpful response is not to fix it.


  • Christmas Presents


  • Hot Chocolate


  • Advice from our Forefathers

    I had the pleasure of visiting Monticello for the Thanksgiving Holidays and picked up some of Thomas Jefferson's Wisdom to pass along to parents and Gen Y.
    Thomas Jefferson's Ten Rules

    1. Never put off tomorrow what you can do today.
    2. Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.
    3. Never spend your money before you have earned it.
    4. Never buy what you don't want because it is cheap.
    5. Pride costs more than hunger, thirst and cold.
    6. We seldom repent of having eaten too little.
    7. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.
    8. How much pain the evils have cost us that never happened.
    9. Take things always by the smooth handle.
    10. When angry, count ten before you speak, if very angry, count a hundred.


    Happy Thanksgiving


  • Gen Y - Coming Home for Turkey
    What is your experience of this Thanksgiving with Gen Y? So, they're on their way home for some of your famous turkey dinner with all the trimming. If it's the first Thanksgiving home visit, expect 10 to 20 loads of wash, sleeping in till noon, after all, they just finished midterms, they're tired. Some families won't be getting homecomings, it may be the first time they go to a significant others family, or they just can't get away, or I have heard this, they miss their flight!?! Some employers tell me they are a bit surprised when their new, fresh out of college employees think that they will be receiving time off, like their still in school, for all holidays.(yikes, some of us seasoned employees think it's our turn first) So, what is your experience of this Thanksgiving with Gen Y?


  • Grateful for my Crazy Life
    I was teaching a class on gratitude today and it struck me, "Am I really all that grateful?" One of the other teachers in the class said she had done and exercise once where she went to lunch by herself and for one hour tried to notice all that works in her life. The big and small, all that works. Even if you twist a doorknob and it opens the door. I realized how much of my time I spend simply focusing on what does not work. Maybe these are the big things, but still I have to ask,"how balanced is it if I only notice what does not work?" So, for this holiday, I have a plan to notice what works, the big and the small. (I don't need to worry about noticing the problems, I do this well) Chris Guillebeau wrote on his blog "Gratitude is a balanced response to a life filled with highs and lows". The Art of Nonconformity Happy Thanksgiving