Helping Adolescents Grow Healthy As Their Brain is Developing

How can we help Adolescents Grow Healthy?

 

Our job as parents does not become easier as our children move into their teen years. On the contrary, as our teens grow, develop independence and gain self-confidence, our job as parents becomes more demanding and challenging.  Adolescents often engage in unpredictable, impulsive and frequently risky behaviors, including experimentation with alcohol and drugs during this critical time in their lives. Nonetheless, parents can still be a most significant influence on their teen’s life.

 

According to recent studies that follow trends and attitudes toward substance use, the quality of the relationship with parents is still the most significant influence on teens’ decision to engage in illegal drug use.  Adolescents whose parents talk to them regularly about the risks involved in drug use are fifty percent less likely to participate in a drug using life style.  As brain development continues throughout the adolescent years and well into the mid-twenties, drug and alcohol use in these critical years puts the developing brain at high risk.

 

Helping our teens make appropriate, healthy choices that will keep them safely growing and developing into their full potential can be achieved by enhancing the relational parent-child bond. By being directly involved in the teen’s life, engaging in open and effective communication patterns, establishing appropriate boundaries and effective limit setting, and by providing loving, positive and supportive home environment, children are likely to grow and develop into their full adult potential.

 

Recovery Parent-Coaching can assist and support parents in helping their teens make healthier decisions that are likely to prevent them from engaging in drug and alcohol use and allow them to grow into fully self-expressed, happy and satisfied adults.

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