Learn how even busy parents can help out their kids' schools -- whether you have 3 hours a day, a week or month or a year. When parents are involved in their children's education, children succeed at higher rates.
It's the last thing any parent wants to hear her child say. "Mom, I didn't make the basketball team." Or "Dad, NYU rejected me." Even the incredulous "She invited everyone but me!" is enough to make your stomach churn. "Rejection is like breathing-an unavoidable, important part of life," says Harlan Cohen, founder of the International Risk-Taking Project.
If your child has a learning disability, or performance or behavior problems, this issue becomes magnified. Your child might feel as if he's fallen into a hole and doesn't know how to climb back out. (That hole can be caused by missed work, not understanding certain concepts at school, or social problems, among other things.)
Every morning, Brittany Geldert stepped off the bus and bolted through the double doors of Fred Moore Middle School, her nerves already on high alert, bracing for the inevitable. "Dyke." Pretending not to hear, Brittany would walk briskly to her locker, past the sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders who loitered in menacing packs.
Substance abuse among young people is a much bigger problem than many parents realize. How big? One in 10 kids 12 to 17 years of age are current users of illicit drugs, according to a 2009 government survey.The good news? Parents can also do a lot more than some realize to help protect teens from drugs or alcohol.
Unemployed high school dropout Tremain Hutchinson spent a lot of time talking to young girls on Tagged.com, a teen chat site. Sometimes he was "Mario," sometimes "Quan" or "Money," but Hutchinson, 28, always pretended to be a cute 16-year-old Georgia boy. He used a photo of a younger cousin in the profiles.
[PDF] from researchgate.net ... Research on adolescents' relationships with parents, siblings, other relatives, peers, and romantic partners, and adolescents' involvement in community and society is reviewed
