Parenting Teenagers - Help with Raising Teens

Parenting Teenagers ...

...can be the most challenging, but ultimately rewarding aspect of your journey through parenthood as you guide your child to become a mature adult. In this section of our parenting message boards, I invite you to post your questions, struggles, concerns and triumphs with your child, so your questions will get answered and so you can share your story with other caring parents. Please note: if you want your question answered by Laura Ramirez, the author of this site, then you need to make a donation to support this site. Otherwise, your concerns and questions will be answered by our visitors and members. If you need personalized help over the phone, Laura is also available as a parenting coach.

Although teens may seem difficult, especially to time-pressured parents, remember that at least some of their behavior arises out of circumstances they cannot control. For instance, did you know that during adolescence, the brain reconstructs itself, pruning little used neural pathways while building others. No wonder our teens act erractically. No wonder a child who had good judgment may turn into a teen who struggles with making simple decisions or can't summon the motivation to do his homework, but spends hours playing video games.

And then of course, there's the surge of hormones. Did you know that at certain points during his development, a male teen has 1000x more testoterone surging through his body than he did as a child? How does he learn to cope with this? We can ask ourselves the same questions when wondering how our daughters deal with the ups and downs of estrogen and progesterone. These are issues we must be aware of when parenting teenagers and dealing with emotional outbursts, aggression and erratic behavior.

Although what happens physiologically to teens is only the tip of the iceberg (there are the emotional, mental and spiritual issues as well), these are reasons that we cannot allow our teens to turn into excuses or we fail our children when they most need our loving, yet firm guidance.

Please feel free to post your questions, concerns and stories about parenting teenagers by using the form below.

Copyright © 2008 by Laura Ramirez, author of the award-winning parenting bookKeepers of the Children, which teaches parents how to raise children to develop their innate strengths so they become progressively aware of who they are and what their strengths are as they're growing up and their lives become an expression of those strengths.

Ask a question about parenting teens or share your concerns or stories of small triumphs with your teen.

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I have a 17 year old who has been drinking off and on since she has been 15. It is now a real problem. She goes to counseling, she must be "snowing" the ...

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