Parents of Teens & Preteens

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Parents of Teens & Pre-Teens

"If we want our children to be good Catholics, then we must be good Catholics.
If we want them to live and love their Catholic faith, then our children must see us
living and loving our faith. The formula is so easy, and yet so hard to apply consistently.
To always be a good example to both your young children and teens is extremely difficult,
even with God’s grace. Fortunately, there are ways to make up for our parental shortcomings.

The most effective way to keep your teens in the Catholic Church is to show them how to
fall in love with Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. The Eucharist is the secret weapon
in the war for the soul of your teenager. The combined forces of the world, the flesh and the devil are utterly powerless against it. " read more from www.familylifecenter.net

Teens & Technology

Six Quick Tips Any Parent of a Teen Should Know…
1.) Leave denial at the door.
2.) Talk with your teens about sharing their online passwords.
3.) Befriend them on social networking sites like facebook.
4.) Establish rules and limits to cell phone and internet use.
5.) Join an online parenting group.
6.) Be the example.

1.) Denial is not a river in Egypt. Denial is the most dangerous parental emotion. Kids are dating at
younger ages than ever before, and few are getting serious conversations at home about what good relationships look like.

2.) If your teen is online, you NEED to know their password. Parenting in a digital age is very difficult. There is a fine line between being parent that monitors and being controlling. Attemping to find that
balance is essential to your teen’s safety. Kids do not understand that anything they publish about themselves will exist forever. One false step or misjudgment
can affect them forever. As parents, it is important to know what children are posting and what others are trying to communicate with them. They may be having
contact with dangerous people, they may be speaking inappropriately with their friends, or they may be the victim of an abusive relationship. The truth is, we need to know.

3.) If your teen is using Social Networking sites like facebook, join the sites yourself and become their friend. Make it a family project. You will get direct access to what others can see about what your teen is posting. But a few words to the wise, do not be a constant presence. You do not have to post something on every one of their pictures, you do not need to write something on their walls everyday, you do not
need to look like a parent, look like a friend. Use facebook and myspace as a way to connect with your child’s other parents and weekly review the public
content of your child’s profiles.

4.) Set boundaries for the times and places that teens can be on the cell phones and the internet.
Teens are communicating digitally almost constantly throughout the day. Some teens report texting over 1,000 times during a typical school day. Some report messaging thru the internet until 3 or 4 in the morning. This kind of behavior has to be monitored. If they are in their room after 9pm, there is no reason they should be texting and messaging into late hours of the night.
Late night cyber activity invites mischievousness. SEXTING has become a common vocabulary word among today’s youth. Ask them what it means and use the conversation as an avenue to have your child set their own boundaries. Collect their phones at a set time, let’s say 8pm. If they need to get a hold of you, they can just walk to your door. You also need to monitor the messages and the content to ensure they are not being the victim or the perpetrator of dating abuse, harassment, or exposed to sexually provocative
content.

5.) Build an online parenting community.
You won’t be the only parent enforcing these rules. You won’t be the only parent online with your kids. You won’t be the only parent knowing your teens passwords. You are not the ‘uncool’ parent if everyone is also doing it.
Check out: www.startstrongwichita.org

6.) Be the example. The conversations are not easy, but your teen is better off unhappy than unsafe. Ultimately, violence prevention starts in the home. Parents are still the most influential part of a teens core values.

Books in Parish Library

Raising Pure Teens

Noted chastity speakers Jason Evert and Chris Stefanick
incorporate the Church's wisdom with 10 proven strategies for talking with
teens about chastity. They offer a perfect blend of humor and sobriety, real-life stories and effective metaphors, cutting edge science and undeniable logic. As your children's primary educators, it's your right and duty to make sure your children are forearmed and forewarned when it comes to dealing with the opposite sex in a Catholic way and resisting the secular world's false
vision of sexuality.

good discipline, great teens

With wit and wisdom, Dr. Ray Guarendi gives parents the tools they need not only to navigate the teen years but also to enjoy them. Teens are full of life, enthusiasm, energy and laughter, Dr. Ray writes, although our culture primes us
to expect a far darker reality. In a lively question-and-answer format, Good Discipline, Great Teens considers issues ranging from curfew to drugs to backtalk and equips parents to give their teens a safer, more stable adolescence, and character and virtues for a lifetime.

Articles on Parenting TEENS

When Teens Know One Parent Will Say Yes
by Lynda S. Madison, Ph.D.

We have been happily married for fifteen years and believe we have handled most of our parenting well, but now our fourteen year old daughter’s drive for independence often causes us to argue. When she wants to go to a party or to the mall with her friends, my husband and I react differently, in ways that surprise both of us. read more...

Parents, be wary of ‘sex education’
By Christopher Stefanick
Many parents assume that classroom sex education exists to help students avoid pregnancy and STDs (sexually transmitted diseases). However, most parents would be horrified to learn the details of what is often being taught. read more....

Give Your Kids a Life: Keep Them Off Drugs
by Tim Lanigan

If your kids reach 21 without using drugs, they will have had the opportunity to spend the most important years of their lives preparing for productive work and for building the kind of character they will need to lead their own families. On the other hand, if your kids slip into drug addiction, there’s a good chance they will spend the most important years of their lives, like Nic Sheff, in and out of drug treatment, focused on merely staying clean rather than preparing for life. read more...

Babies, birth control, & what teens really want by Meg T. McDonnell
On the face of it, a campaign inviting teenagers to identify their goals is a good idea. Adolescence is a time for cultivating ideals and learning to make the
sacrifices necessary to pursue them. But when the City of Baltimore launched its Know What U Want pregnancy prevention campaign last month it missed this target by a mile. read more...

Passing on the Faith

Today's Catholic teens are hungry for finding meaning and direction in life.
These articles from Loyola Press will help to bring the Good News of Jesus to Catholic teens.

Catholic Teachings for Teens
God's Love for People of All Faiths
The Beatitudes
The Paschal Mystery in Everyday Life

Making Moral Choices
Discerning Between Good and Evil
How to Raise Kids Who Care
Living the Virtues in Everyday Life

Religious Art
Examples of How Jesus Has Been Pictured Throughout History
Icons as Religious Art
Nativity Scenes

Sacraments
Confirmation

Scripture Background for Teens
Parables and How Jesus Taught with Them
Symbols of the Holy Spirit

Social Justice
Quotes from Social Justice Leaders
What It Means to Be a Peacemaker

Communication Tips

Children often feel insecure about themselves and their social acceptability.Consequently, they are extremely vulnerable to pressure from their peers to fit in. Students who develop high self-esteem and healthy values are less likely to give in to peer pressure to drink or use other drugs. In order to build your children’s self-esteem, it is important to develop a relationship with them that is based on mutual respect.

Make time for your child. Find an activity you enjoy doing together and pursue it.

Be active with your child in school activities.

Listen, really listen. Learn to draw your child out about things that are important to him/her, and listen with your full attention.

Talk, really talk. Talk to your child about applying the catholic values and virtues of honesty, responsibility, temperance, modesty, integrity as they relate to the media, abstinence, tobacco, drugs and alcohol, personal goals, and relationships.

Share your faith and spirituality.
Teach your teen to pray about issues.

Encourage critical thinking. Your child will continue to make decisions about whether to smoke, drink, use
other drugs or be sexually active.

Teach refusal skills. Discuss lines and comebacks or role play situations that challenge the child to act.

Tolerate differences. Freely talk about topics where all people do not have the same opinion.

Give teens responsibility for their own problems. Let your child experience the consequences of his/her own behavior, even if these consequences might be embarrassing or uncomfortable.

Teach your children to accept and learn from their failures. Young people need to understand that the only failure is in not trying. Mistakes are not failures. Mistakes simply provide us with new information that can help us to succeed.

Develop a parenting style based on mutual respect, while remaining the parent.

www.parentnetworkstl.org

Parent's First

Parents have the first responsibility for the education of their children
These newsletters from the Archdiocese of Omaha are meant to be read by the parent first, than shared with their teen:
9th Grade
10th Grade
11th Grade
12th Grade

Parents have the first responsibility for the education of their children. They bear witness to this responsibility first by creating a home where tenderness, forgiveness, respect, fidelity, and disinterested service are the rule. The home is well suited for education in the virtues. This requires an apprenticeship in self-denial, sound judgment, and self-mastery -the preconditions of all true freedom. Parents should teach their children tosubordinate the "material and instinctual dimensions to interior and spiritual ones." Parents have a grave responsibility to give good example to their children. By knowing how to acknowledge their own failings to their children, parents will be better able to guide and correct them. Catechism of the Catholic Church #2223

Catholic Colleges

The late futurist Herman Kahn once said there are only two times in life when one’s ideas, attitudes and convictions are radically altered: before you are six and when you go to college.

The National Catholic College Admission Association is a non-profit organization of Catholic colleges and universities committed to promoting the value of Catholic higher education and serving students in the transition to college

Choosing a Catholic College The Cardinal Newman Society seeks to fulfill its mission by assisting and supporting education that is faithful to the teaching and tradition of the Catholic Church; producing and disseminating research and publications on developments and best practices in Catholic higher education; advising students, alumni, trustees, campus officials, faculty and others engaged in renewing and strengthening the Catholic identity of Catholic colleges and universities and Church-affiliated ministries at non-Catholic colleges and universities.