The Blog of P.U.R.E. and Sue Scheff

Summer is almost here and parents are searching for summer programs to help their struggling teens.  Many hope that a good summer programs will make a difference in their negative behavior. Today parents will complain about the following issues with their teenagers: Underachieving.  Capable of getting A's yet satisfied with C's and D's. Dropping out of their favorite sport or activity. Smoking pot -- occasionally - though parents may blame it on the friends, please keep in mind, it is your child making the decision to inhale that joint or pop that pill.   Drinking - again, it may be the friends you want to blame, but are they holding the bottle to your teen's mouth? Sneaking out of the house Defiance, lying, stealing Maybe they have changed their peer group this year? Let's face it, with a combination of any of these above, you could be traveling down a negative path. Chances are very good a short-term summer program will not address a long term...

Respect.  A word that needs to come back into this generation of teenagers. As a child approaches adolescence, the natural exploration of boundaries and the need to assert his own independence often leaves his parents feeling as if all respect between them has dissipated. Arguing, defiance and even foul language are normal, though admittedly incredibly frustrating, aspects of parenting a teenager. While regaining a teen’s respect may seem like an impossible proposition, there are ways that you can restore some semblance of balance and civility to your relationship as he gets older. While patience and a refusal to reward bad behavior are the keys to maintaining a measure of order in your home as the parent of teenagers, there are some methods that can supplement your efforts along the way. Show Respect In order to maintain your teenager’s respect, you’ll need to make sure that you show the same measure of respect in return. If you resort to shouting, threat...

Parenting is probably one of the hardest jobs there is. During the holidays the added stress can cause contention as well as family disputes . However if you are dealing with an at-risk teenager, a teen that was already struggling down a negative path - maybe experimenting with drugs or hanging with a less than desirable peer group or has failed their first semester of school, holiday times can be more strenuous. Dealing with troubled teens at any time of the year is not easy, it is a challenge.  Dealing with troubled teens during the holidays can be double the trouble.  With time off from school, many families have both parents working with limited supervision at home which leaves many teens on their own.  Have you checked your medicine cabinets lately? Parents' Universal Resource Experts , founded in Broward County, has been helping families with teens in trouble for almost a decade.  One of the common threads is during the holiday...

Do you know what your teen does at the movies? Movie Etiquette - talk to your teens. As a frequent movie goer, I must say if parents could see how their teens are acting in public, they would be more than humiliated. I am not saying my teens were perfect, I am almost afraid to ask them at this point (they are young adults now). I will take it a step further and say I don’t remember my generation having this much lack of respect for others, especially those in authority. Then I was thinking, I am sure their parents don’t know and maybe if they did, they would speak with their kids about this behavior. With this, I am going to share with you some less than appropriate behaviour I have witnessed, and hoping that parents reading this will sit down and talk with their teens about what happens when they go to the theatre. At $10.00 and up now for an average movie ticket price, I am confident that most of us would like to enjoy the movie – and the parents paying for their teens to attend, I a...