Teenage girls are most at risk for developing eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia. Both boys and girls can be at risk for compulsive overeating and obesity. Being even more specific, who are the teenagers most at risk for eating disorders? • First, perfectionistic teens are at high risk for anorexia nervosa and […]
There are an estimated one million teen pregnancies each year in this country and not all of them are accidental. Many children have children to have someone to love, to be important, to prove love, or for a host of other reasons. Most don’t realize what parenthood really means. Communicating a realistic view of parenthood
Babies spend most of the first year in ignorance of the fact that they’re individual people separate from their parents. As they learn that objects and people do have an existence of their own, separate from themselves (as they learn what psychologists call object competency), so they discover that separateness. It’s a huge intellectual leap
New babies don’t cry to be picked up, but they often cry because they’ve been put down. The living warmth, support, and gentle movement of your body, with the sound of your heart and breathing, are much closer to what your baby is used to than the solitude of the crib. For a while, your
If a therapist has recommended psychiatric hospitalization or other in-patient therapy for your teen, The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry recommends asking the following questions: 1. Why is this treatment being recommended? 2. How will it help? 3. What are the alternatives and how do they compare? 4. What does the treatment program
There are ads in most magazines and newspapers exhorting parents of difficult, rebellious and obstinate teens to bring their kids to one or another residential treatment facility. But treating a teen residentially isn’t always the most appropriate choice. A teenager who is trying to withdraw from an alcohol or drug addiction may find a residential
If your teenager is shy, he has lots of company. Studies show that some 40% of Americans consider themselves shy. Why is your teenager shy? Some people have an inherited tendency to be shy. Others have low self esteem and feel unworthy unless they can be perfect. Some are plagued with anxious thoughts about whether
How can you raise your teenager to be mentally healthy as well as physically fit? The following are guidelines you can encourage in your teen: • First, make and keep connections with others. We all need love and trust in our lives. In the give and take of relationships you can grow as a mentally
It’s sometimes sad that the only life experience as difficult as being a teenager is being the parent of a teenager. Much of this difficulty comes as the result of a teenager’s ambivalence toward his parents. One minute he may be loving, fun and affectionate and the next, uncommunicative, unreachable and impossible. He may alternate
Many parents dismiss teen love as love that’s not real, but all feelings are real. Some feelings of love are infatuation, some are immature and some signal a mature love. People of all ages can feel any of the above, and teens especially need to know the difference. Infatuation means being in love with love,
