Your Story

Tell us your story. Whatever your reason, whether it be to encourage, instruct, reflect, grow, or just to vent. Share your story here. Feel free to post anonymously so there's nothing to lose... but maybe some frustration.

DRUGS- everybody's doing it

Need I say more? What's a little pot gonna hurt? OK, personally I'm past the 'not my kid' thinking. Every child is susceptible, and nearly every child knows someone who can get them whatever the drug of choice might be. The question here is, how do you get your teens to make their own decision to stay away from drugs?

SEX- What to do when preaching abstinence doesn't work

I absolutely hate this topic- but it's real and it happens more often than most parents care to admit. I have been talking to my kids about sex since well before they were teenagers. Sometimes it seems that simply suggesting abstinence from something stimulates more desire (in people of all ages). How do you win when that is the case? Obviously the next step is to teach responsibility- the goal being proactively preventing unwanted pregnancy. Somehow, that seems like failure to me. Is it?

What ever happened to respect?

I have pondered this topic many times. I try to remember how my parents taught me to respect my elders. I can't remember any specific thing that they did- it's as if I was just instinctively mindful that you show respect to adults. In reality, that probably isn't the case at all. But it's been a part of me so long that I don't know where or how it started. How do I transfer that to my children? They didn't get it instinctively and it drives me nuts when they sass or backtalk. I have heard many many times that children mimic what they see and hear at home. If that's the case then I should have a couple extremely respectful teenagers- but I don't. What went wrong?

How do you deal with troubled teens?

Anymore it seems that all teens are troubled. There's so much pressure and it's coming at them from every direction....teachers expect them to excel in school, coaches expect them to excel in athletics, friends expect them to go along with the latest trends- whether that be drugs, clothes, tattoos or whatever. What should parents expect? It would be unrealistic to think that parents don't pressure their teens as well. It almost seems as if pressure is used as a means of teaching children. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I know I do it...but is there a better way?