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How to Help Your Adolescent Think About the Last Year

Hint: It’s not a “lost year.” Also, the screen time with friends? It’s good for their mental health. Featured Article by Judith Warner, The New York Times 2020 was a hard year to get through. With remote learning, unemployment, losses of loved ones, and many other stressors, families have been struggling to juggle all of […]

New study shows how family closeness can foster natural mentoring relationships among Black youth

Billingsley, J. T., Rivens, A. J., & Hurd, N. M. (2021). Family Closeness and Mentor Formation among Black Youth. Journal of Child and Family Studies.  https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-020-01895-y Summarized by Ariel Ervin Notes of Interest:  Many studies on formal mentoring acknowledge the important influence parents have on their children’s mentoring relationships. However, there’s still a lack of research […]

So you support your gay teen, great: You still have to parent (and mentor) them

By Terri Peters When gay teens come out to their parents, it’s an experience often rife with emotion and candor that can’t help but change the kid–parent dynamic. But experts say that processing a child’s proclamation of their sexuality is only the beginning of the journey for moms and dads. And while there are an […]

Two new studies explore how teens decide when to disclose to parents

Editor’s note: Two new studies explore the topic teen disclosure to their parents. The implications for mentors are clear. Mentors need to consider the role of culture, autonomy, and the context that give rise to spontaneous disclosure  Yau, J. (2015). Adolescent nondisclosure in cultural context: Voices of Chinese American adolescents and parents. Journal of Adolescent […]

Talk about problems? Boys say why bother.

U. MISSOURI (US) — Boys avoid discussing problems not because of some sense of embarrassment, but because they believe that doing so is a waste of time, according to a new study. “For years, popular psychologists have insisted that boys and men would like to talk about their problems but are held back by fears […]

Two Days Later: Adolescents’ Conflicts With Family Spill Over to School, Vice Versa

Summarized from Child Development, Family Conflict, Mood, and Adolescents’ Daily School Problems: Moderating Roles of Internalizing and Externalizing Symptoms by Timmons, AC, and Margolin, G (University of Southern California). Copyright 2014 The Society for Research in Child Development, Inc. All rights reserved. The lives of adolescents at home and at school may seem quite separate, […]

Teens Whose Parents Exert More Psychological Control Have Trouble With Closeness, Independence in Relationships

by Hannah Klein, SRCD For teenagers, learning to establish a healthy degree of autonomy and closeness in relationships (rather than easily giving in to peer pressure) is an important task. A new longitudinal study has found one reason adolescents struggle with balancing autonomy and closeness in relationships: parents’ psychological control. Teens whose parents exerted more psychological control over […]