ONLINE PARENTING COACH

By the time they are adolescents, your kids should have a pretty good idea of what to expect in terms of parental goals and behavior limits. But even the well-trained youngster may be tempted to push boundaries or be led astray by friends to do something he shouldn't. When that happens, a mother or father cannot afford to sit back and pretend that nothing has happened, hoping that it never occur again. Instead, you must be vigilant and take action to reinforce all that you have taught your children already from the time they were toddlers. Don't give in to their wheedling or your own time constraints. Take the necessary time now to train your adolescents properly, and that will mean issuing appropriate discipline. The art of adolescent discipline falls into three categories: The first is training or guidance. We discipline our children when we set household rules, place limits on their behavior (such as curfews), and monitor their social activities with friends...

R esearch reveals that teenagers who text 120 times a day or more (which many teens do nowadays) are more likely to have had sex or used alcohol and drugs than teens who don't send as many messages. The study is not suggesting that "hyper-texting" leads to sex, drinking or drugs, but it's shocking to see an apparent link between excessive messaging and this kind of risk-taking behavior. The study asserts that a significant number of teenagers are very susceptible to peer-pressure – and also have permissive or absent parents. The study was conducted at 20 public high schools in the Cleveland area, and is based on confidential paper surveys of more than 4,200 high school students. It found that about 1 in 5 students were hyper-texters (i.e, those who text more than 120 times a day) and about 1 in 9 are hyper-networkers (i.e., those who spend 3 or more hours a day on Facebook and other social networking websites). About 1 in 25 are both hyper-texters and hype...