Easy New Years Resolution

This year make a resolution that works by doing three easy things:

1. Make certain your resolution is what you truly want. Don’t be forced into trying to stick to a change in your life because others want it for you, or because others have decided to change their behavior so you feel you need to as well.  Make your resolution something you want for yourself.

2. Think of your resolution in broad terms. If you want to lose weight, don’t just focus on the numbers on the scale. Think of your resolution in terms of bettering your health, not just being able to get back into your “thin” clothes again.

3. Think of your resolution in terms of a goal. You have a whole year ahead of you to change. Take your time, explore ways to stay on target with your goal. Break down your goal into small, obtainable steps. If you get off track, don’t throw in the towel. Start with renewed energy as soon as you can. 

I encourage my clients to make just one resolution. Often, simply changing one thing, ripples out into other areas of our lives and creates positive changes in places you least expect it.

As we head into a new decade, my want for you is for you to discover more peace, love, understanding  and forgiveness within yourself, and within your relationships.

To a new decade.
To your family.

All best,

Dr. Jenn

Sex Talk Too Late

A study reveals parents wait too long to talk about sex. I agree. Our children are exposed to sex much younger these days, and they are engaging in various forms of sexual activity at younger ages. What can a parent do?  One study suggests parents knock off two years from when they think they should talk about sex.  That may be a good rule of thumb, but you may want to talk even sooner than that.

I suggest parents  use what is in the environment around them to talk about sex. One doesn’t have to look very far. An ad showing a sexy woman sitting next to a dog prompted one very young boy to ask his mother, “Will the lady sex the dog?” He understood sexy and sex went together, even if he was unclear on the whole concept.  That little boy’s question was a wonderful teaching moment.

Begin paying attention for those teachable moments!

Most of you reading this blog have teen daughters. I hope you have had the sex talk with them by now. If not, please start today!

Remember to use the COAL technique for listening: Curious, Openness, Acceptance and Love. You don’t want to shame your daughter in any way when you have a conversation about sex. Ask her opinions. Ask what she wants to know. Be as open and honest as you can. 

Knowledge is power. Teens are getting a lot of their knowledge from the Internet. (Google free porn and see for yourself…. go ahead.. I’ll wait) Kids who watch free porn, (and the percentage of teens who do are staggering) aren’t getting a great education about sex. They are only getting an education about porn!

Sex on TV usually shows the excitement, it rarely shows the buying of contraception, the doctor visits sex requires when one become sexually active, or the consequences of an unwanted pregnancy, or even the emotional aftermath of sex. Kids aren’t learning the full truth about sex from TV.  They need to learn it from you!

Many of you have asked me if you should supply your teen with condoms. Does it encourage sex?

I believe that contraception stops teens from getting pregnant. It doesn’t lead them to having sex. They are already biologically primed for the “urge to merge.” With teen pregnancies on the rise, available condoms and the knowledge of their proper use, are desperately needed.

Every family needs to decide  for themselves how they want to handle their teens budding sexuality. But putting your head in the sand and not talking openly and honestly about sex isn’t the way to go. You do your child a big disservice.

Casual Sex Not Harmful

A new study claims casual sex isn’t emotionally harmful. I disagree. Here’s why: Read more

“Bexting” the New Teen Trend?

A high school in New Jersey reveals a new passtime for its students: “bexting:” placing bets with their bookies via a text message. Is online betting the new rage in schools across the nation? No word out yet that indicates it is, however, the New Jersey students were placing bets with kids in Florida.

Why the need to discuss this issue? First it is illegal, although authorities say that enforcement isn’t their top priority.

Second, the concern is that this type of betting, starting at a young age, will lead to a serious gambling addiction later in life. 

A state hot-line reported that last year it received over 400 calls from students under the age of 21. Their total amount of bets owed pushed $40,000.

What can a you do as a parent?

1. Calmly open the discussion with your teen about gambling. You may want to ask if they ever gamble, or do they know teens who do?  Find out what is true for you teen.

2. Keep the conversation open about respectful use of cell phones and other technology. The whole world is now available to your teen, make sure the two of you are talking about what they are encountering.

3. Use “COAL” as a guideline for having a conversation: Curiousness, Openness, Acceptance and Love. Use COAL to  create a relationship of trust so your teen can tell you the truth about their life.

Any questions? email me at jennifer@parentingteengirls.com

The Teen Porn Brain

Popular search engines logged more than ten billion searches last June. Two and a half billion of those searches were for pornography. With the invention of the Internet and devises to log onto it, including that smart phone your teen may own, anyone, at any time, can watch porn. There are approximately 420 million adult web pages online to excite viewers, some of it free to a child of any age.

Many thirteen to sixteen year olds spend almost two hours a week viewing pornography, claims a 2009 CyberSentinel poll. Mothers have reported finding their children as young as eight watching. With more tweens and teens announcing that they watch porn, why aren’t more parents talking about it? Because whether we are pro-porn or anti-porn, the conversation is usually emotionally charged. We do not have as much neural connectivity to our more rational prefrontals when that happens.  However, our challenge with the topic robs us of the opportunity to help our teens deal with the impact porn has on their lives, and ultimately, on their brains.

Teen pregnancy rates are climbing. So are the number of teen girls committing violent crimes, acts that were once committed mainly by males. Teen dating violence is on the rise as is teen suicides. Could porn be adding to our teens’ woes? Yes, according to Wendy Maltz, a sex therapist and notable researcher. She believes porn is creating a national health problem that harms our emotional and sexual relationships.

Research has yet to prove conclusively that viewing of pornography leads to sexism, misogyny, the increase in teen dating violence and the other problems listed above. However, a 2008 study linked the listening to lyrics of rap and hip-hop to sexism. It is not much of a stretch to think that watching women degraded, as opposed to simply hearing about it, would have the same effect. The brain reacts to viewing images as intensely as it does to reality.

More than seventy percent of porn users claim their porn viewing is a secret, according to an MSNBC study.  Porn appears to bathe our brains in neurochemicals that lead to shame. Perhaps in part due to our innate sense of humanity.  In Michael Tomasello’s book, Why We Cooperate, he claims babies are born to be social and to help others. Could it be that watching women used for the pleasure of men, and often roughly or degradingly used at that, triggers our innate desire to help the woman? Yet, watching porn for our own titillation, are we not using her as well? Our brain circuits are attempting to deal with two opposite needs: Our erotic need, and our more humanitarian need. That is confusing enough for an adult. A teen’s brain may not be mature enough to understand all the nuances of porn’s impact.

By now most of us know that teen brains are less mature than adult brains. Teens use their limbic system more often for making decisions. That is the area of the brain used for feeding, fleeing, fighting and sexual reproduction. Growth and connectivity to the prefrontals takes decades. Without a more mature brain to help teens sort out the intense emotional arousal of porn,   watching it could leave a teen feeling that porn is a true representation of what sex, relationships, and intimacy should look like in real life.

A teen who replicates porn-style relationships in their own life could suffer from lack of intimacy and the needed feel-good neurochemicals that go hand in hand with such a relationship. Teens need connections with others who have organized brains in order for their brains to grow properly. A brain “on porn: is not an organized brain. It is a highly aroused brain, not a “thinking clearly” brain. 

Can we make an argument that porn is leading to neurological poverty in our teens and adding to their woes?  While the researchers ponder the question, parents may want to ponder these ideas:

Be open to the fact that pornography may be harming your teen. Whether or not they watch it, forty-five percent of teens surveyed said their friends do.

Be willing to listen to your teen about how they feel about porn. That means you have to ask calm questions. The majority of the boys interviewed about how the media affects their relationship with girls claimed porn had a negative effect on our culture. How does your teen feel? Ask.

Find ways to think about, and talk about pornography with less emotional charge. Your teenager will instinctively know how to push your buttons and get you worked up so that conversations about the topic will become fruitless.

Examine the rationalization that porn stars know what they are doing, and get paid so there is no harm done. That rationale does not disclose the fact that studies reveal many workers in the sex industry were abused as children. Abuse reduces neurogenesis (the growth of new neurons) and synaptogenesis (the integrated connectivity of neurons) so it stands to reason that the neural networks for growing up to be teachers, doctors, engineers, etc. did not get a chance to form.  Add that victims often reenact their abuse, and it does not take much to understand why some porn stars trade sex for money.

Compassionately study your own use of pornography. In order to help our teens, we often have to help ourselves first. If you feel you have a problem with porn, please seek help.

Teen Girls: COAL Burns The Brightest Relationships

Giving your daughter a lump of COAL this Christmas may be the best gift you ever give her! The acronym COAL stands for Curiosity, Openness, Acceptance and Love. It was coined by Dr. Dan Siegel to refer to a state of mind in the way you relate to you “inner child.” However, it is also a wonderful way to relate to your flesh and blood child!

When you listen to your daughter with a curious mind as to who she really is, or what she really wants you to know,  you will hear more of her truth. When you listen with an open heart that is not judgemental, you will build more trust in your relationship so she will feel she can share her truth.

When you listen with a sense of acceptance, and you don’t give unasked for advice, or tell her what she “should” do, or “should be,” you build a strong bridge between the two of you.

When you listen with love, you give your daughter your full attention, you don’t interrupt, or steal the conversation. You turn off all distractions and you give her what she needs in order to say what she wants and needs to say.

COAL is what will make your relationship burn bright, and warm for a lifetime.

I hope you’ll consider giving your daughter COAL for Christmas!

My newest book for mothers and mentors of teen girls will be available after the first of the year.

True Listening: The Essential Parenting Skill For Mothers* of Teen Girls. (*and Mentors!)  There are 52 short skills that teach you the art of True Listening with COAL in mind. You won’t have to learn all the skills,  even learning just a few will improve your relationship with your daughter. Added bonus: You will build a better relationship with yourself as well!

Happy Holidays to all the faiths. Let us each celebrate our own beliefs with open and grateful hearts this season.

All the best,

Dr. Jenn

Dangerous Colleges

Most girls going to college have sent in their applications, waiting to hear if they were accepted. Parents ponder how to pay for college and what life will be like without their daughter at home. Girls begin thumbing through Pottery Barn and other catalogs, daydreaming about decorating their dorm room. What most parents and girls aren’t thinking about is sexual assault. But they should be.

College campuses are a breeding ground for sexual crimes committed against girls. Here are the stats:

65%	of attacks are unreported, making sexual assault the “silent epidemic.” Sexual assault remains the most drastically under-reported crime.
20–25%	of women will be raped during their college career.
3%	of college women nationally have experienced rape or attempted rape during the academic year. This means, for example, that a campus with 6,000 coeds will have an average of one rape per day during the school year.
13%	of women are stalked during the academic year, and each stalking episode lasts an average of 60 days.
90%	of women know the person who sexually assaulted or raped them.
75%	of the time, the offender, the victim, or both have been drinking.
42%	of college women who are raped tell no one about the assault.
5%	of rape incidents are reported to the police.
10	times more rapes are reported to crisis lines than are reported to the police.
42%	of raped women expect to be raped again.

Debunking Myths
Both college women and men harbor misconceptions about sexual assault. Getting the facts is essential to combating sexual assault on campus.

71%	of rapes are planned in advance.
80%	of women who are raped try to physically resist.
48.8%	of the women did not consider what happened to them to be rape even though researchers considered the incidents to be rape.
43%	of college-aged men conceded to using coercive behavior to have sex (including ignoring a woman’s protest, using physical aggression, and forcing intercourse) but did not admit that it was rape.

The Impact on Victims
Physical and emotional

40%	of rape survivors develop sexually transmitted diseases as a result of sexual assault.
80%	of rape victims suffer chronic physical or psychological problems over time.
13	times as many rape survivors are more likely to attempt suicide than are people who are not victims of crime. Rape survivors are six times more likely to attempt suicide than are victims of other crimes.
25–50%	of sexual assault victims seek mental health treatment as a result of the assault.

Academics and achievement
In addition to physical and emotional damage, college students who have been victims of sexual assault suffer from a host of problems that impede their academic achievement.

• In nearly every case, victims cannot perform at the same academic levels that they did prior to the attack.
• Sexual assault sometimes causes students to be unable to carry a normal class load, and they miss classes more frequently. (This is often a result of social withdrawal or a way to avoid seeing the perpetrator.)
• Student victims regularly withdraw from courses altogether.
• In more traumatic incidents, victims leave the school until they recover, sometimes transferring to another college.

While you plan ahead for college, plan to talk and listen to your daughter about the dangers she faces on campus. Help her decide how she will keep herself safe.  Talk to an advisor on her campus and ask about their stats on sexual assaults. Get the facts! Arm yourself with information.

Tuck a copy of The Secrets Guys Wish Girls Knew About Love in your daughter’s Christmas stocking.  It’s filled with quizzes and ways to increase self-respect and self-confidence, reduce binge drinking, gossiping, and a whole lot of other behaviors that disrupt girls lives, on and off campus.  The book will be ready for shipment in two weeks. Email me if you’d like to pre-order a copy. Jennifer@parentingteengirls.com

For more information on the stats quoted, please read http://www.aauw.org/advocacy/laf/lafnetwork/library/assault_stats.cfm

All best,

Dr. Jenn