Good Evening, Everyone:

I hope that all of you had a wonderful weekend.  Mine was very nice.

This weekend I read a most interesting Internet post from a young teenager about her attitudes concerning her family, in general.

She resides in a household in which she’s loved and her physical needs are provided for; however, she does not communicate well with the adults.  She perceives them as “self-absorbed” people who don’t make good role models.  She has solid friendships with her peers and a boyfriend who are her primary means of camaraderie.  I encouraged her to make a concerted effort to talk to the adults within her household.

On the surface, she seems pretty typical.  Many teenagers don’t easily connect with adults because nobody is really taking the time to prepare them for the transitional phase from childhood to adulthood.  Parents are usually somewhat preoccupied with providing for the physical welfare of their children and as long as there are no obvious signs of trouble, they don’t worry.  As the saying goes, “no news is good news”.

Unfortunately, when you are not regularly communicating with your children, how would you know when something is wrong?  Although they may not admit it, teenagers really need the emotional and psychological support that responsible adults can offer them.  Primarily depending upon the solace of their peers can make a teenager vulnerable enough to indulge in “at risk” behaviors such as alcoholism, drug abuse and unprotected sexual intercourse.  In too many instances, parents are not discussing these issues enough with their children according to a wide variety of statistical data.

Teenagers lack the experience and maturity to accurately assess the dangers of the “at risk” behaviors listed above.  Their peers are usually not the best source for advice on these topics.  There’s usually a great deal of “monkey see, monkey do” and everyone crosses their fingers hoping that nothing bad will happen in the meantime.  We all learn a great deal from experience; however, not all of them are worth dealing with the negative repercussions.  In fact, some of them can even become “life threatening”.

Whether you’re a parent or not, please take the time to talk to the teenagers in your family.  Words of encouragement or concern may be all that’s needed to keep them happy, healthy and out of trouble.  I have four nieces and a nephew that I simply adore.  All are teenagers except two.  If anything harmful happened to them, I would simply be “heart broken”.  I’m going to talk to them more often.  What about yours?

May Peace Be With All of You,