Raising Teens

Raising a child through their teenage years can be one of the hardest things a parent will do. Mounting pressures, physiological changes, and a hectic lifestyle means that it's also the hardest phase of life that your teen has ever known. When things don't all come together, you can end up with a troubled teenager displaying behavioral or academic issues. Because adolescence is such an important developmental period, parents need to take steps to ensure teens have a positive influence to help them get back on the right track.

All teenagers go through problems, and during their teen years, your child will be at their most unbalanced and unpredictable. There are a number of common reasons why teenagers rebel, develop issues with anger, or suffer drops in academic performance. Understanding the key factors is the first step in accepting that you have a problem teen.

Many of the undesirable traits and antisocial behaviors displayed by teens are actually coping mechanisms. Teenagers go through a long and painful transition towards adulthood, and the physiological changes are enough on their own to make things hard to cope with. As teens go through puberty they deal with unbalanced hormones, and a changing body that can be both scary and overwhelming. These changes don't justify bad behavior, but they're major contributing factors in any troubled teenagers behavioral problems.

Another major cause of troubled teens is mounting pressure from all angles. Typical pressures that teens have to deal with can come from three areas. Society, peer groups, and from within the family unit. There's pressure to perform academically, to fit in to society, to please parents and educators, and also the pressure from peers (which can sometimes be negative. As a teenager struggles to overcome these pressures, bad habits can manifest as they try to escape or remove focus from pressure.

When you understand and recognize the issues that your problem teen is facing, you can get the help and guidance that they need. Pinnacle Schools is a therapeutic care provider that offers expert care and guidance. By identifying the root problems through initial evaluation, Pinnacle Schools takes your child through a program to correct behavioral and academic issues. In addition to specialized counseling and group therapy sessions, there is a strong focus on the outdoors and physical activity. Our wilderness program aims to introduce new and positive outlets to troubled teens, allowing them to deal with issues without resorting to destructive behaviors.

Having a troubled teen doesn't mean that you can't get control back and set your child on the best path for their future. Sometimes you need extra help. That's exactly what Pinnacle Schools provides.

Parents Beware of Stress and Compassion Fatigue

Compassion fatigue is a term that refers to the state of people who become tired of taking care of others. It has become widely accepted that therapists, nurses, and first responders go through compassion fatigue. However, Jane Baker, a family counselor who works with troubled teens in a residential therapy program of The Pinnacle Schools in north Alabama, states that professional caregivers are not the only ones who experience this type of emotional exhaustion.

Parents of adolescents, particularly teens who are troubled, also get to the point where they are stressed-out, and when this happens they need to take time out for themselves and seek support. Caring for others takes its toll and results in a condition often referred to as burnout. Parents caring for troubled teens and adults caring for their parents can suffer from this.

Compassion fatigue can manifest itself in symptoms strikingly similar to depression. These symptoms can include:

• A marked change (decrease or increase) in appetite

• Irritability

• Changes in sleep patterns (sleeping too much or too little)

• Feelings that the person is developing unpleasant characteristics

Dealing with teens is in itself an often complex task, but parents who are taking care of troubled children or children with special needs have an even more stressful challenge confronting them. This applies to parents of children with autism, learning difficulties, depression, and behavioral problems. It also holds true for those whose children have issues such as self-harm. This kind of torment was once described in a blog by a tired Michigan mother who was caring for an autistic teenage daughter. Using “Status Woe”, her blog, she poured out what she referred to as her “battle fatigue” after her daughter’s failed murder-suicide attempt in 2013.

Baker states that it is essential for parents in this situation to make an impartial assessment of what they are going through and address it. Failure to do so will eventually breed resentment toward the person the caregiver is taking care of; this would be an unhealthy and undesirable state.

Baker says that one of the things parents can do is to examine their schedules to see if these are over saturated with chores and activities. According to her, it is necessary for parents and caregivers to place importance on meeting their own emotional, physical, and spiritual needs. It is also important for parents and caregivers to accept the fact that they cannot always be all things to all people.

Baker works with youth at the Elk River Treatment Program where she is family services coordinator. In her experience, she has seen that both professionals and parents often ignore their own health and rarely seek help for themselves. In the long run, this neglect makes it harder for them to take care of their children. Parents who do not take care of themselves will find it increasingly difficult to be totally and patiently engaged with their children. This is why in flight emergency instructions always caution parents to put on their own oxygen masks before seeing to the children in their care.

Parents and persons in caregiving professions can begin with small changes that will amount to taking better care themselves and eventually their children. These changes can include eating right and doing some exercises such as yoga.

Parents can also seek out support organizations for parents of children with issues; these can be productive for as long as they do more than allow members to vent. Other sources of support are relatives, friends, and church groups.

People who are providing long-term care will find that they won’t be able to indulge in activities they enjoy as often as they used to, but it is important that they do not totally abandon these or other sources of rejuvenation. People who lose sight of the pursuits that offer them enjoyment will become drained. Baker likens the danger of exhausting one’s store of energy to a paper cup with so many holes their energy is emptying far more quickly than it can be replaced.

As parents and caregivers review their own schedules, they must ask themselves what they can and cannot change; what things they can let go off in the meantime. This is essential to making even minor changes that can spell a big difference in relieving pressure from an overburdened schedule. Sometimes, schedules become crowded with so many activities because parents assumed that this is how things should be. A review of what families can let go will often lead to less hectic days when families can have dinner together and reconnect instead of being always on the go.

Parents need to look at their family’s schedule to make sure people are not so busy their lives are ruled by outside activities. People need to spend time with their families, and it is up to parents to see to it that children’s schedules are not so busy there is no time for family to simply relax and be together.

April is Stress Awareness Month, and professional counsellors say that in order to solve the problem of stress and its results, people must first see the problem and seek help. Parents and individuals in situations where long-term care is demanded of them must learn to balance their daily lives so that they can take care of themselves – even if it means letting go of some things or delegating some tasks to others.

Approximately 700 youths from all over the United States have undergone the Elk River Treatment Program of the Pinnacle Schools. The residential program is designed for adolescents from age 12 to 18.

Commissioner Bob Harrison Demanded Johnson High Be Closed in Exchange for His Vote

(Huntsville, Alabama)… Huntsville City School Board President David Blair released papers today written in 2006 by County Commissioner Bob Harrison to former Huntsville City School Superintendent and her response.  David Blair stated, “These recently found documents shows County Commissioner Harrison demanding the closing of Johnson High School in return for voting yes on the ½ cent sales tax. Mr. Harrison’s strong arm tactics and glaring inconsistencies are disturbing.”

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