Posts tagged ‘tweens’
Hope and Healing: Supporting Your Teens Through Challenges This Holiday Season
This week, we were heartbroken by the news of a Wisconsin teen involved in a school shooting. It’s a reminder of the pressures and challenges our teens face today, pressures that often go unnoticed until tragedy strikes.
For parents of Black and Brown teens, these challenges can feel even heavier. Our youth often face unique stressors from discrimination and prejudice, which add to the already complex emotions of adolescence. As parents, we have a critical role in helping them navigate these burdens with love, understanding, and resilience.
Supporting Your Teen This Holiday Season
The holidays can still be a time of joy and connection, even in the face of challenges. Here are a few ways to encourage open communication and create moments of healing:
1. Be Present and Listen
Let your teen know they can talk to you about anything, including how societal pressures impact their mental health. Listening without judgment is one of the most powerful gifts you can give.
2. Empower Them with Affirmation
Remind your teen of their worth, resilience, and unique talents. Acknowledge the additional stress they may feel navigating a world that doesn’t always treat them fairly, and celebrate their strength.
3. Encourage Moments of Rest
The holiday season is the perfect time to slow down and recharge as a family. Create opportunities for your teen to reflect, relax, and enjoy simple, joyful moments away from external pressures.
A Message of Hope
As parents, we can’t always control what happens in the world, but we can create a safe and supportive space for our teens. This holiday season, focus on nurturing their emotional well-being, building bridges of trust, and celebrating their unique journey.
May your holiday season be filled with love, hope, and meaningful connections.
Warmly,
C. Lynn Williams
Parent Coach / Author / Speaker
clynnwilliams.com
Chickenpox Vs Coronavirus
If you’ve ever had a child with chickenpox, you know how important it is to stay in the house and how miserable your child who has the chickenpox is. Chickenpox is highly contagious. You’re usually feverish and very itchy, and like the coronavirus, you are quarantined to stay inside until you’re healed.
Coronavirus reminds me of the chickenpox, because you feel terrible if you catch it, and it’s contagious! The huge difference is that some people are dying because of the coronavirus, and that’s pretty scary. So stay inside and keep a social distance from everyone… well except your family.
As a parent, I think about all the opportunities that this quarantine is offering me:
- I get to spend more time with my family and my husband (actually as empty-nesters, my husband and I get to spend a lot of time with each other)
- I get to make memories that I’m otherwise too busy to make
- Limited take-out – we eat more often as a family
As an adult, I can:
- Stay up late
- I can binge watch TV programs I never have time to watch
- Read books I have promised I would read, as soon as I get time
You get the idea… These are benefits of this quarantine. If you are an Entrepreneur, you’re still busy trying to figure out how to stay connected with your customers or clients. You may have to change how you do business because you are now forced to communicate with people online, by social media, by phone. I know these are new challenges for me. However as a mom, I stay in touch with my children daily, and I think about how to stay engaged with them, even though we are miles apart. If we were together what board or card game would we be playing or what movie would we watch together? My kids loved board games and we would play Monopoly, Life, Uno or Phase 10. We also enjoyed cooking and eating together and then sitting around the table and talking to each other.
QuaranTeened
For those of you with teens, the biggest challenge is probably for your teenagers who are very social and used to talking to their friends instead of you. They would rather stay in their room and talk on the phone or talk to their friends on Snapchat or Instagram. This quarantine is a great opportunity to open those communication channels between the two of you and start talking. Ask their opinion on the coronavirus quarantine. It might be a little awkward, getting the conversations started. It’s okay, keep talking and finding topics that they will talk about with you.
- Cook together
- Depending where you live, ride bikes together
- Watch movies
- Have fun and enjoy each other.
I believe this time is really designed for us to get closer to the people that we love or at least learn how to love them.
In-House Spouse
Probably the next biggest challenge is how to play nice with your spouse when you are both working from home. It’s easy to forget what attracted you to each other, if you are cooped up, raising kids, working from home or trying to figure out how to pay your bills, because one of you have lost your income due to the quarantine.
The challenge is to do something fun daily together. Bring up wonderful memories from the past. Binge watch programs together. Show interest in something that your spouse or partner is interested in.
Oh, and switch up the chores with your kiddos, so that Mom (or Dad) don’t get burned out. Tweens and teens can cook and clean too!
Interested in learning more about your family’s dynamics? Contact me – Ms. Parent Guru to receive information about my inspiring parenting programs for Aging Parents, Mothers and Daughters, Mothers and their Sons, Fathers and Daughters or Fathers and their Sons.
Click Here to become a part of my parenting community.
C. Lynn Williams, #MsParentguru
Parent Coach, Author & Speaker
Staying Sane While Raising Your Teens 
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