Education is a wonderful thing, and it doesn’t stop when you graduate high school or college. Just because your formal education is over doesn’t mean you stop learning, particularly as you bring kids to this world.
Being a good parent requires taking advantage of learning opportunities. It’s a responsibility that will be essential for your children’s emotional and physical health.
Continued learning is particularly important for parents of teenagers. Whether or not you’re dealing with a troubled teen, education and care is very difficult. Their hormones and tumultuous emotions make it difficult for them to respond positively to instruction and attempts at caring.
Learning how to deal with teens is the key. Through a variety of educational resources and teaching moments, you can learn to handle even the most difficult of situations with your teens. Here are some things all parents can do to learn more about teaching their teens.
Subscribe to Blogs
The internet is an amazing source of information. Parents with kids of all ages can subscribe to blogs meant to inform and cultivate a healthy parenting style. As you read, you can learn tips and tricks, the science behind your kids reactions, and tactics for handling difficult situations.
It’s important to focus on blogs that will be of the most benefit for your teenagers. Here are some of the top blogs available to parents of teens.
- Anne Fox: Fox is an educator, award-winning author, and long-time online advisor for teenagers and their parents. Her blog specializes in both educating teens and their parents on common problems.
- Family Matters: Australian parenting expert Ronit Baras is the author of this blog offering common sense articles and tangible action plans for parents of struggling teens.
- Radical Parenting: This high profile blog uses the advice of Vanessa Van Patten who has written books about parenting teenagers for years. This is a unique blog because it focuses on parenting techniques from a teenager’s perspective.
- Shaping Youth: Amy Jussell talks about the kinds of subliminal messaging that teenagers face through media and at school. This information shows parents the kinds of pressures teenagers face on a daily basis and what parents can do to help.
- Talking Teenage: The authors, Jennifer A. Powell-Lunder and Barbara R. Greenberg, have PhDs in psychology and related fields. They’ve spent their lives studying the ins and outs of good parenting for teenagers, and their advice provides wise and sensible insights for issues that both parents and teenagers face.
- The Parent Learning Center: This is an educational based blog that offers excellent advice on parenting and handling difficult situations. It focuses on teaching parents so that they can do. The more parents learn about teenagers, the more they can help.
Be Involved
This step is integral in the education process. You can’t hope to understand your teenagers and what they’re dealing with if you aren’t involved in their lives. The more you help them in school, social settings, and extra curricular activities, the more you’ll understand the pressures they face that cause them to act in certain ways.
Anything you do to become a bigger part of your teen’s life will be a positive thing, but there are some things that are better than others. Here’s a list of ideas to help you gain more education regarding your kids’ situations.
- Volunteer at school.
- Help with extracurriculars.
- Have family dinners.
- Schedule one-on-one education sessions with your teen to learn more about their life.
- Look over their homework to get a sense of what they’re learning.
- Take teacher-parent conferences seriously.
Seek Formal Education
Learning about your teenagers and their lifestyles doesn’t have to be done informally. There are also more formal educational opportunities for parents as well. You can take parenting courses to learn more about specific problems you and they may be facing.
Here are some useful resources to help you gain a more formal education.
- Parent Learning Center: This teaching resource offers excellent courses for parents with kids of all ages. It has a large collection of courses on specified subjects to teach you skills and help you solve major problems with teens.
- Attend Seminars: Local colleges, organizations, and members of your community will often offer parenting seminars to discuss improving parenting styles. You can attend and ask any questions to further your knowledge on any subject, focusing specifically on how the information relates to your teens.
- Log-in to Webinars: A webinar is basically an online seminar that offers the same thing as a traditional seminar without the physical gathering. These are excellent because you don’t have to leave your home and you can hear from experienced professionals who understand parenting and the psychology associated with it.
- Read Books: There are hundreds of highly rated parenting books you can read, each offering unique knowledge, insights, and advice that can improve your parenting style. Some of the best include Getting to Calm by Laura Katsner, Peaceful Parents, Happy Kids by Dr. Laura Markham, and Parenting Teens with Love and Logic by Foster Cline and Jim Fay. You can find a list of top-rated parenting books with a simple search on Amazon.com.
Education can’t stop for parents who want to make a difference in their children’s lives. Teenagers have specific needs, and parents who want them to grow into happy, healthy, and productive adults will take the time to learn all they can about being a great parent.
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