Recent Articles
The Challenges and Rewards of Stepparenting a Teen
“You’re not my real parent!” Something that every stepparent dreads hearing. Words are powerful and may even make you question your worth and effectiveness as a parent. Take comfort, you’re not alone in this battle and to a large extent, statements like this are a normal by-product of adolescence.
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The Wrong Crowd: When Your Child's Friends Are A Bad Influence
What is the “wrong crowd” exactly? Are these the kids with potty mouths, bad grades or a touch of a wild side? Do they have permissive parents, delinquent siblings or pierced ears? Are you hearing gossip about loose morals, or do you have concrete information about serious infractions? Let’s face i
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Cool summer reads for tweens and teens
Summertime, and — for teens, at least — the reading is not easy. According to Hayden Bass, teen services librarian at Seattle’s Central Library, many teens’ reading habits are so constrained during the school year by assigned reading that it’s hard for them to switch gears and pick up a book for
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The teen discipline tightrope: A parental balancing act
By Patti Skelton-McGougan, executive director of Youth Eastside Services.Disciplining your teenager can be tricky and daunting at times. No doubt it’s one of the hardest struggles that parents face. We often wonder about the severity of the consequences—should they be the same for all teens and scen
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Finding a fit: Rethinking the college chase
By now, most high school seniors know where they’re going to college next year. They are winding up a long, arduous process, which in some homes, begins practically at birth. That’s because the ramped-up, increasingly aggressive college-prep process has reached new, stunning heights. There’s tha
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Online monitoring: Do you know your child's passwords?
Teens and tweens of every stripe are logging onto Buzz, Skype, email and Facebook. Should parents know their children’s passwords and monitor their communication? The debate sparks passion on both sides. Some parents believe their children have a right to privacy, as with the locked diaries and hush
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Setting limits for your multitasking teen
Jeff* feels like he barely sees his 14-year-old daughter anymore — even when she’s at home. “She’s always on the computer, saying she’s got work to do,” he says, “but I know her school isn’t assigning four to five hours of homework every night.” He suspects Rosie is actually spending a significant a
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Now what? Paying for college in a tight economy
Planning for college started early for Tori Purnell and her husband, John. They opened a mutual fund when their daughter, Nicolette, was not yet 2. But you know what they say about “best-laid plans.” “We were anticipating we would have enough when she was old enough for college,” Purnell, who liv
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