"But what if she sent them to him first?"

Devastating words from a teenager that made me shudder.

I used to visit schools and give presentations about consent and respectful relationships. At one school I learned a boy had shared nude images of a girl with his friends.

The young people wanted to know how to feel about the girl's culpability in this scenario. They were thinking out loud, working through the millennium-old problem of misogyny.

Did it make a difference if they'd been in a relationship at the time? Did it make a difference if she sent him the nudes without him even asking? In other words: did it make a difference if she was a slut?

I explained, of course, that the question was about consent and respect. He knew she didn't want the images passed on, and he did it anyway. His actions were the problem to focus on here, not hers.

These young people are products of our society, and our society has taught them that when we hear about the incorrect behaviour of a boy or man, we ricochet our focus and blame away from him and onto someone or something else.

A girl or woman, an outfit, alcohol and drugs, et cetera. What was she doing? What provoked him? What was she wearing?

It's not breaking news that schools and parents are still playing catch-up with the advent of the internet and smartphones being available to young people.

The gendered misconduct that has always existed in real life is also built into the digital realm, and the heads-in-the-sand or abstinence-style approach isn't working.

In the past six months alone I've seen countless stories of schoolboys targeting both peers and teachers with varying degrees of tech-assisted gendered bullying, harassment, and abuse.

In April, a young teacher deciding to leave the profession after too much gendered misconduct, culminating in 15- and 16-year-old boys harassing her and professing their adoration of Andrew Tate in class.

In May, students at Yarra Valley Grammar were caught after compiling the highly offensive spreadsheet rating the attractiveness of their female peers including terms like "wifey" versus "unrapeable".

Just weeks later, an Instagram post ranking girls from a Gold Coast school used categories such as "abduction material", "one night stand", "average" and "unrapeable".

In July former and current staff at Warrnambool College reportedly faced up to 20 violent and sexist attacks a day.

That same month a substitute teacher went public about the sexist behaviour she faces from students around the country, including Year 9 students projecting pornography on a whiteboard behind her while she took the roll.

And in August, members of a Pembroke School football team devised a ratings scheme using sexist and racist references to female students.

For every one of these cases that actually hits the news, I see the tip of an iceberg.

Gendered misconduct is grossly under-reported, when it is reported it often isn't dealt with properly, and even when it is dealt with, schools will seek to avoid negative press coverage where possible.

A new fear unlocked

Image-based abuse in particular is pernicious - and prevents victims from coming forward - because of the potential for slut-shaming. But the lack of victim involvement is why I've been thinking about deepfakes for a long time.

The deepfakes I'm talking about are created when someone's non-sexual photos and videos are meshed with explicit photos and videos of someone else or with AI. The results can range from clunky and obvious to absolutely seamless and convincingly genuine.

In January this year deepfakes of Taylor Swift went viral and were viewed more than 47 million times over a 17-hour period before the material was removed from social media.

Whereas a woman or girl complaining of image-based abuse would normally be grilled on why she took or sent nudes in the first place, now, with deepfakes, the only people we have to grill are the ones we always should have: the people who create or share this material without consent.

There's nowhere for the ricochet to go. Could we find a way forward, free of victim-blaming narratives, in dealing with this latest frontier?

I spoke to a few teachers about these trends and issues. One of them, Ellen*, has been a teacher for 18 years and is currently teaching high school students.

She recently watched a colleague leave the profession after "three separate sexual assault incidents across the state, Catholic, and independent sectors", and says the level and frequency of disrespect and objectification of women in school environments is definitely getting worse.

While she has not personally dealt with any instances of deepfakes being created or shared at her school, she is afraid of when they will hit. "I genuinely think that it is a matter of when not if.

The expression ‘new fear unlocked' was the very first reaction I had when deepfakes appeared in tech." She said it "feels like ratemyteacher on steroids" and the attitudes are either being reinforced or ignored at home.′

Deepfakes are becoming a much bigger problem as the industry that facilitates their creation becomes ever more lucrative.

A report by social media analytics firm Graphika found a 2,000 per cent increase in the number of links promoting websites that use AI to create non-consensual intimate images on Reddit and X since the beginning of 2023.

They've moved "from niche pornography discussion forums to a scaled and monetised online business".

In July eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant addressed the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs and quoted from the description of a popular open-source AI "nudifying app": "Nudify any girl with the power of AI.

Just choose a body type and get a result in a few seconds." And another: "Undress anyone instantly. Just upload a photo and the undress AI will remove the clothes within seconds. We are the best deepnude service."

Ellen described to me a state of what I would call "hypervigilance", trying to keep photos and videos of herself private, lest a spiteful or just-plain-reckless student get hold of them. Read more

• Bri Lee is the multi-award-winning and best-selling author of Eggshell Skull (2018), Beauty (2019), Who Gets to Be Smart (2021) and The Work (2024). Her journalism, essays and short stories have been published widely. She is also the creator and editor of the weekly newsletter News & Reviews.

But in the smartphone age, clergy need to realise that the odds of making a spiritual connection have changed — radically.

Young people who spend as many as 10 or more hours a day focusing on digital screens will find it all but impossible to listen to an adult talk about anything, especially in a religious sanctuary.

"As long as children have a phone-based childhood, there is very little hope for their spiritual education," said Jonathan Haidt.

He's the author of a bestseller — "The Anxious Generation" — that has raised the heat in public debates about controlling or banning smartphones in schools.

"An essential precondition is to delay the phone-based life until the age of 18, I would say.

"Don't let them fall off into cyberspace, because once they do, it's going to be so spiritually degrading for the rest of their lives," he said in a Zoom interview.

"There's not much you can do in church if they are spending 10 hours a day outside of church on their phones."

High stakes

It would be hard for the cultural stakes to be higher, argued Haidt, the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University.

Thus, his book's weighty subtitle: "How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness."

While Haidt's work has ignited debates among politicians, academics and high-tech entrepreneurs, reactions have been muted among religious leaders who are usually quick to spot threats to children.

Then again, clergy may not be used to a self-avowed atheist issuing warnings about the "spiritual degradation" of young people.

It would be a big step forward, he said, if "the leaders of various denominations could make a clear statement about how the phone-based childhood is a threat, not only to their mental health, but to their spiritual health. ...

"We can only save our kids from this if we have the churches, families and schools all working together."

Local religious congregations are "natural settings for the kind of collective action Haidt proposes," noted Keith Plummer, dean of the School of Divinity at Cairn University in Langhorne, Pennsylvania.

But there is a problem.

Predators lurk online

"Far too many Christians ignore the relationship between technology, media theory and spiritual formation for every believer," he noted on The Gospel Coalition website.

"We have been prone to assess digital technologies primarily, if not exclusively, on the basis of the content they provide access to. ... But simply avoiding sexually explicit content is not enough, we have to question the formative power of our technologies."

Meanwhile, parents often insist that smartphones can promote safety, especially during emergencies, noted Haidt.

At the same time, many parents fear allowing their children to play in parks and neighbours' yards, activities that were perfectly normal in the recent past.

Truth is, modern "sexual predators are not going to find kids in the front yard or on the playground. The sexual predators have moved on to Instagram and Snapchat," said Haidt.

Thus, "The Anxious Generation" thesis: "We over-protect our children in the real world and under-protect them online."

Raising healthy children

Believers also need to know that researchers have found evidence that religious communities and families play a crucial role in raising healthy children.

"The kids who made it through are especially those who are locked into binding communities and religious communities," said Haidt.

Meanwhile, it is the "secular kids and the kids in progressive families" who tend to be "the ones who got washed out to sea."

This doesn't mean that children in religious families are not affected if their parents plug them into what many activists call "screen culture."

Haidt stressed that lives built on smartphones, tablets and computers will change their minds and hearts.

"Half of American teenagers say that they are online ‘almost all the time.'

That means that they are never fully present — never, ever," he said.

"They are always partly living in terms of what is happening with their posts, what's happening online. ...

"There is a degradation effect that is overwhelming, but most people haven't noticed. ... I am hoping that religious communities will both notice it and be able to counteract it.

"But you can't counteract it if the kid still has the phone in a pocket. The phone is that powerful."

• First published by Religion Unplugged
• Terry Mattingly is Senior Fellow on Communications and Culture at Saint Constantine College in Houston.

A 2019 Pew Research Center Survey of Americans aged 13 to 17 found that only 50 per cent believed religion was an important part of their lives, as opposed to 73 percent of their parents.

This trend has caught the attention of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which published on its website an article titled "Confronting Secularism Today" by Robert Spitzer, S.J., who posits four causes for this trend:

• A perceived contradiction between God and science.
• A lack of evidence for God from science and logic.
• An implicit belief in materialism.
• A general disbelief in the historicity and divinity of Jesus.

While all these factors may indeed cause some young people to abandon their faith, the list feels incomplete to me. After all, the same Pew survey found approximately 85 percent of teens believed in a higher power.

As a 17-year-old Catholic, I know many people my age who are abandoning their churches and their faith.

I spoke to a few to understand why. (I've used pseudonyms, due to the personal nature of their comments.)

The institutional church, to many of my peers, is seen as antiquated and corrupted by greed, paedophilia and bigotry.

They place the blame for these things on the shoulders of church leaders.

Still, many also feel personal dissatisfaction with the church.

While the answers my friends provided are anecdotal, a common theme emerged: The most prevalent issue that is widening the gap between young people and the church is the institution itself.

Stigmas and suffering

The tone and emphasis of catechesis, especially in preparation for the sacraments, can have a real impact on how young people perceive the church as a whole.

One of of my friends, Jo, talked about an abstinence and pro-life lecture she was required to attend in preparation for the Sacrament of Confirmation, a lecture she found deeply uncomfortable.

She felt the presenters left no room for genuine questions from those who doubted the church's teachings and focused too much on shame.

Jo told me she became concerned that people would assume that she would be similarly closed to the discussion around her politics or personal beliefs based on her religious affiliation.

"I would just [tell people] I'm a Christian, but I wouldn't say Catholic," she said.

The idea that somebody can be turned off by the church because of the church can be tough to grasp.

One of the people I spoke with is a friend of mine named Dominic, who has a strong faith in God and attends church every Sunday.

When I asked him if he thought the church was driving people away, he told me, "I think it is impractical to believe in God in the 21st century because people want to believe in what they see, not something that requires faith alone… They aren't used to the idea that something that cannot be seen can be real."

Dominic's answer also resonates strongly with the belief that people are leaving the institution because of a growing sense of materialism and a feeling that God doesn't have any room in daily life.

Another friend decided to walk away from religion because of a perceived separation between themselves and God.

James, who was raised Catholic and attended Mass every Sunday as a child, is now an agnostic.

While preparing for his confirmation, he began feeling that relying on an invisible God to help him out when times were tough wasn't enough.

Witnessing the long and painful deaths of his aunt and uncle, who were both very religious, also frustrated him.

James reflected on this experience by saying, "I guess it kind of set me back from religion just to realize what God can do to such kind people who also believed in him."

Today, James has abandoned the church and, for the most part, his faith.

James says he only entertains the idea of God existing when someone he knows is religious is going through a sad or painful ordeal.

In those situations, he says that he does pray for that person on the off chance that there is a God listening.

Confronting a secular trend

My friend Andrew is an atheist, raised by Catholic parents, who rarely attended Mass growing up.

For as long as I have known him, he has been vocal about his stance on religion as an unnecessary institution that sets unnecessary rules.

He says he is not against the church; rather, he simply feels no desire to attend. He also says the lack of exposure to religion has made him question its validity.

For Andrew, the concept of faith itself is challenging.

And indeed, Father Spitzer's four reasons do apply in Andrew's case, too, as he believes science and God contradict each other, and that there is little to no appreciable scientific evidence of a creator.

Andrew isn't opposed to going to Mass, but doesn't see himself as the type of person who would join the church.

He told me, "Maybe if the opportunity ever arose, I'd be open to it. But as of now, I don't really see a reason to attend Mass or attend church regularly."

While an intellectual approach may be able to answer some of the questions my secular-leaning friends have—like Andrew's questions on God in relation to science and James's questions on suffering—I believe the church leaders need to approach the issue from another angle, as well. Continue reading

But ask a teenager themselves about religion, rather than the parent or guardian filling in the census form, and the picture is slightly different.

According to our new national survey, at least half of teens say they are "religious nones" - those who do not identify with a religion or religious group.

Digging deeper, we found a more complicated picture of faith and spirituality among young Australians.

Most Gen Z teens have little to do with organised religion in their personal lives, while a significant proportion are interested in different ways of being spiritual.

Migration, diversity, secularisation and a burgeoning spiritual marketplace challenge the notion that we are a "Christian" country.

More than any other group, teenagers are at the forefront of this remaking of Australian religion.

Their daily experience of secondary school and social media sees them bumping into all kinds of difference.

Teens are forming their own strong views about existential matters.

Our national study by scholars from ANU, Deakin and Monash - the AGZ Study - comprises 11 focus groups with students in Years 9 and 10 (ages 15-16) in three states, a nationally representative telephone survey of 1,200 people aged 13-18, and 30 in-depth, follow-up interviews.

So what do we know about the religious and spiritual lives of Generation Z teens?

We deployed a powerful form of statistical analysis to identify six different "types" that move beyond conventional understandings of religious or nonreligious identity.

The categories take into account religious and spiritual beliefs and practices, self-understandings and attitudes to the universe.

To ensure the types were more than computer-generated assumptions, we interviewed at least five teens from each group, checking that it all made sense.

The six spirituality types found are

• This-worldly
• Religiously committed
• Seekers
• Spiritual but not religious
• Indifferent
• Nominally religious Continue reading

• Image: The Conversation

The results were swift and shocking, raising the question of just what is happening to the selfie generation and whether we have more to fear than just a bad Snapchat Story or a wasted day bingeing on Netflix.

It was out of desperation that I instructed my teenagers to go cold turkey from screen time for a term - thanks in part to the advice of our tutor who said they needed to study more to catch up in maths - and save up the things they wanted to do, even "go crazy", after their exams.

Social media apps were deleted but I had to concede my children could keep their mobiles to text the tutor and use their laptops as part of the school's Bring Your Own Device policy for homework and "research".

The depth of the problem revealed itself almost immediately one bedtime when I sent an article to my kids via Facebook (for them to read later); and immediately one of their mobiles buzzed via the Messenger app I didn't even know was there.

Further investigation revealed a folder set up in the phone that one daughter had ambitiously named "Do not look" and in there were the apps I had previously deleted.

I caught my other daughter once in her room offline, looking through the photo stream on her mobile - she explained she just wanted to go through the action of swiping.

I had long had the feeling that the fact we all seem increasingly stuck to the screen was no accident.

And just days ago, Facebook's ex-president Sean Parker admitted that in developing their ubiquitous social media products the creators of Facebook and Instagram consciously strived to manipulate people's vulnerabilities so that their creations "consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible", aiming to give users a little dopamine hit every time someone likes or comments on a photo.

Facebook, he said, "literally changes your relationship with society, with each other ... It probably interferes with productivity in weird ways. God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains." Continue reading

• Vivienne Reiner has teenage children and works in public relations.

Anyway on this particular day I found myself in the midst of hundreds of teenage boys in matching kit being made to run around, disconsolately.

It must have been the cross country or something.

They were being bossed about like they were in the army. It looked so miserable, poor luvvies.

They were students from Auckland Grammar, the "prestigious" boys school.

I live in the Grammar Zone, which is supposedly an advantage, although I could no more imagine sending my son to that school than I could packing him a cheese and pickle sandwich and waving him off to Mars.

But maybe I'm being a little unfair. Because Grammar principal Tim O'Connor has introduced a "healthy relationships" programme to try to teach young men to have respect for women and be informed about consent.

(My mum used to teach sex education at Hamilton Boys High. Seemed to be the thing in the 70s - the era of the Little Red Schoolbook. We also did a lot of tie-dyeing)

I don't want to be a downer, but I wish I was as upbeat as Mr O'Connor in thinking that a school programme could have "a major effect" on how young men form relationships. I'm not sure any school lesson can teach you not to be an arsehole.

Because you don't learn about gentleness and empathy on a whiteboard.

We learn the most important lessons, not from book learnin' or even by being instructed by a teacher with an expensive PhD and a cheap suit, but by mirroring the behaviour of those we see around us.

This happens below the level of conscious awareness, so it is not easy to change even with the most well-motivated campaign. Continue reading

• Deborah Hill Cone is a NZ Herald columnist.

When I turned 15 I got my license and, with a small sum of money my dad gave me after he sold my childhood home, I bought myself a real beater of a car that you could hear coming from blocks away.

I didn't want to go home; my mother had died the year before, and my Dad had remarried and had a whole new family and a new house where I felt like a stranger.

So I was always driving.

Gas was less than a dollar a gallon then, and though I usually couldn't afford dinner, I could always scavenge enough pennies and nickels to get a few more miles.

Sometimes I'd pick up another kid I saw walking on the roadside.

My hometown was like that then; I felt like I knew everyone. Even when I didn't, if they were of a certain age and dressed a certain way, I could bet I knew someone who knew them. I made a lot of new friends that way.

My old friends—the friends I'd grown up with—were part of another universe, one from which I'd been expelled by personal tragedy. There was an awkwardness between us now, too many moments when none of us knew what to say.

I needed friends like me, I thought. Friends who didn't have to be home for dinner.

It was on one of those long, aimless nights that I ended up in the chapel of St. Margaret Mary.

Perpetual adoration was going on, but even though I'd been raised Catholic and had gone to Catholic school my whole life, I had no idea what Eucharistic adoration was.

I don't think I even knew the Eucharist was there.

But I liked that the chapel was quiet and candlelit and safe.

It felt like home.

It felt like my mom.

I remember I signed my name in the little book at the back of the church and sat in a pew. The chapel was empty and dimly lit. The only noise was the air conditioning rattling on and off. The air smelled of spent matches.

Sitting in that chapel made me feel safe.

It gave me a place to step outside of my life. And it set me on a lifelong journey toward faith and a relationship with God.

When I started writing this story about the spirituality of teenagers, I wanted to see if kids today have experiences similar to mine.

But the teens I talked to weren't traveling alone with no one waiting for them at home.

They weren't necessarily troubled or "at risk."

However, like me, they expressed a need for a place to be apart from their lives: an oasis, a time to step outside of themselves, their problems, their schedules, and their responsibilities.

For many of these teenagers, time in church—especially time spent in adoration and silent prayer—was their chance to plug into another kind of experience altogether. Continue reading

Sources:

• US Catholic
• YouTube

The 32 teenagers, ages 13-18, were told they were participating in a small social network similar to the popular photo-sharing app, Instagram.

In an experiment at UCLA's Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center, the researchers showed them 148 photographs on a computer screen for 12 minutes, including 40 photos that each teenager submitted, and analyzed their brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI.

Each photo also displayed the number of likes it had supposedly received from other teenage participants — in reality, the number of likes was assigned by the researchers. (At the end of the procedure, the participants were told that the researchers decided on the number of likes a photo received.)

"When the teens saw their own photos with a large number of likes, we saw activity across a wide variety of regions in the brain," said lead author Lauren Sherman, a researcher in the brain mapping center and the UCLA branch of the Children's Digital Media Center, Los Angeles.

A region that was especially active is a part of the striatum called the nucleus accumbens, which is part of the brain's reward circuitry, she said. This reward circuitry is thought to be particularly sensitive during adolescence.

When the teenagers saw their photos with a large number of likes, the researchers also observed activation in regions that are known as the social brain and regions linked to visual attention.

In deciding whether to click that they liked a photo, the teenagers were highly influenced by the number of likes the photo had. Continue reading

Sources

• MercatorNet, from an article by Stuart Wolpert, a media contact at UCLA.
• Image: DNA

She had been poring over the mountains of data generated by a three-generation study of depressed women and their children and grandchildren.

The biological trend was clear: Women with severe—and particularly with recurrent—depression had daughters at equally high risk for the psychological disorder.

At puberty, the risk was two to three times greater than for other girls. But the data seemed to show that the onset and, even more so, the incidence of recurring bouts with depression, varied widely.

Miller couldn't discern why. Raised in a close-knit Midwestern Jewish community, she had already looked for what she says psychologists rarely bothered to seek—religious belief and practice—and found some mild benefit for both mothers and children, but nothing that stood out among the other variants, such as socio-economic status.

Then came the subway ride.

"There I was, on a Sunday—quite invested in this question, wasn't I, going up to the lab on a Sunday," recalls Miller in an interview.

She was in a subway car crowded at one end and almost empty at the other, because that end was occupied by a "dirty, dishevelled man" brandishing a piece of chicken at everyone who boarded while yelling, "Hey, do you want to sit with me? You want some of this chicken?" The awkward scene continued for a few stops until an older woman and a girl of about eight—grandmother and granddaughter, Miller guessed—got on.

The man bellowed his questions, and the pair nodded at one another and said, "Thank you," in unison, and sat beside him. It astonished everyone in the car, including Miller and the man with the chicken, who grew quieter and more relaxed. Continue reading

Source and Image:

• Macleans

As a parent of teenagers myself, I feel ‘in the thick' of it every day; the emotions of their stage of life, the joy and pain, the confusion and the hormones, the importance of friends, of belonging, of boundaries, and the influence of peer pressure.

Some days my teenage kids come home with stories of friends who are involved in self-harm, disordered eating, thoughts of suicide, bullying, ‘sexting', pornography and more.

On days like these I am grateful for my training in youth ministry and experience in counselling to be able to guide my own children and provide answers in such full-on and often confusing times.

I also realise that not all parents are youth counsellors or specialists and can often feel lost with how to respond when topics like these come up.

Below are two key principles that will put the power back in your court as the parent of a teenager.

1) Stay engaged!
If there is anything we can do as parents, it is to not disengage!

There is often a strong temptation around the ages of 8-12 to start to disengage. This is because now that they can feed themselves, dress themselves and go to the toilet by themselves, it seems like they don't need us as much.

This couldn't be further from the truth. They still need you! Just not in the same way as a toddler or pre-schooler. They now need you more emotionally, to help them make sense of the world, to interpret what happens to them at school, to tell them it's going to be OK.

This is a crucial time when our voices as parents are still louder than that of the media and society, so don't lose this opportunity to speak to them about all you value and believe. Continue reading

• Kym Keady in Restless Press

Kym Keady shares from her own personal experience and draws upon Church teaching to speak to young people about God's amazing plan for their lives.

The Ministry of Education is due to release the new blueprint in December, nine months after an advisory panel recommended teens be taught respectful attitudes as a core part of the overhaul.

The health select committee recommendations were designed to push the focus of what teens learn beyond the physical mechanics of sex and reproduction after an 18-month inquiry found "fragmented and uneven programmes", which it partly blamed for the high teenage pregnancy rate. Read More

They drive at high speeds.

They stand around outside loud parties and smoke weed in front of the cops.

They guzzle liquor. They insult their parents - or lie to them - and feel no remorse, because, of course, their parents are idiots.

It is easy to blame peer pressure or wilfulness, but scientific studies suggest that at least some of this out-there behaviour has a physiological tie-in: brain mapping technologies show that the average teenager's brain looks slightly different from an adult's.

The biggest differences lie in the prefrontal cortex - a part of the brain associated with reasoning - and in the networks of brain cells that link the cortex to regions of the brain that are less about reasoning and thinking and more about emotion.

Using such tools as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET), scientists have peered into teen brains and found that typically, until a person hits his early to mid-20s, his prefrontal cortex is still rapidly changing.

So are the cell endings and chemical connections that link the cortex to parts of the brain associated with gut impulses.

When people are around 15 or 16 years old, many brain cells in the cortex die off while others are created, and new connections form among them.

A lot of the basic cognitive abilities - advanced reasoning, abstract thinking, self-consciousness - rapidly expand during this time, says Laurence Steinberg, a Temple University psychology professor.

"The connections within the brain don't fully branch out until age 22 or so.

"The kinds of capabilities that connectivity contributes to - emotion regulation and impulse control - probably plateau in the early to mid-20s." Continue reading

Sources

• The Guardian
• Image: Stuff

First I should be late, irked that they never told me London was so big.

Then, looking for my pad and pen, I ought to throw a hissy fit because I've lost my bag (the new one they bought me for my birthday).

Then, as they begin talking about their exciting new book Teenagers Translated, I should be texting friends under the table while picking the icing off Janey's carrot cake.

If she looks annoyed, I ought to say, "I am listening," and roll my eyes.

At the end I would need to sign off with a casual "Nice story, bro," and ask for a lift to a friend's house.

Finally, when starting this article last thing at night and realising I haven't listened to a word they've said, I'd need to sidle up to either of them brushing their teeth and demand they help me.

If the answer is "no", I should stamp off screaming, "OK, fine, make me fail!"

"I think many parents recognise facets of this behaviour," says calm, reflective Grew, when I put this scenario to her.

"Our aim is to provide a tool kit for parents to deal with the tempestuous emotions of the teenage years."

Parenting classes and manuals are a big industry these days.

But Downshire and Grew's book (subtitle: How to Raise Happy Teens) stands out due to its powerful core idea: neuroscience can explain the chaotic impulses and emotions of the evolving teenage brain. Continue reading

Sources

• Essential Kids
• Image: Marillac

How to raise happy teenagers]]> 60157 https://cathnews.co.nz/2014/04/01/choosing-believe/ Mon, 31 Mar 2014 18:10:22 +0000 http://cathnews.co.nz/?p=56143

"You believe in God? Jesus!" The irony was lost on my friend. The only funny thing he'd picked up on was that I could believe in God. I get it. As a leftie, organic pasta, and free-the-gay-whale type, people tend to think I'm atheist. At a stretch, I'm middle class enough to be a casual Buddhist Read more

The daughter of a well known policeman, to the son of a well known Catholic school principal.

The shame. The embarrassment. The scandal.

Well, that was me, the 15-year-old girl, and from the moment I snuck to the doctors to have my suspected pregnancy confirmed, my life changed forever.

For me the decision to adopt out my baby was fairly black and white.

My mother, who offered to bring up my baby for me, had already had her children (me and my sister), and the father of my baby's family, likewise.

The father of the baby and I could have gone on to bring up our baby ourselves, but seriously, how do a 15 and 17-year-old look after themselves in the world, let alone a precious wee baby?

Against some wider family's wishes, I made my decision.

And my decision was to offer this precious life, the best life I could, and for me that was to give her to a family - an amazing family.

Now it wasn't as simple as that, in fact, it was incredibly difficult and heart-wrenching, however, I knew in my heart of hearts I was doing the right thing. Continue reading.

Source: Stuff

Image: Stuff

Researchers from Family Planning put question boxes in sex education classes at five high schools across New Zealand last year. Students from years 9 to 12 were able to post their questions anonymously. Continue Reading

As a teenager, there were times that I would refuse to do as she asked, would stomp my feet in anger, or argue that she didn't love me. But she would always reply, "Wait until you're a mother and you'll see why I worry about you so much." After becoming a mother three times over, I practically laugh when I remember those words. I know what she means.

My parents always wanted the best for us four children. They tried their hardest to provide for us financially, keep a comfortable roof over our heads, give us the education that we deserved. We were pushed to understand the value of a dollar, the value of family, the value of hard work. We weren't allowed to talk back, we had to respect their authority at all times. I wasn't allowed to drink until I turned 18, and I wasn't allowed to date until I was out of high school.

At the time, I hated it. I hated the power they had over me. I hated the restrictions they had over my life. I hated the fact that they wouldn't let me 'have fun'. I thought all they wanted to do was control me.

I longed to have the lifestyle my friends had: going out on school nights, drinking alcohol at birthday parties, dabbling in dating, doing what typical teenagers did.

But I grew up and my outlook on life started to change. I turned 18, had a party with a few friends, had a couple drinks to celebrate, and that was basically it. I was busy studying at university, and having recently met my future husband, I didn't wish for that life any more. I still haven't changed, and it doesn't bother me one bit.

However, I know that not everyone feels the way I do. Continue reading

Sources

• Thuy Yau in The Sydney Morning Herald
• Image: Everyday Feminism

Thuy Yau is a freelance writer.

The problem of cyberbullying was brought to national attention several years ago by the passing of 13-year-old Megan Meier, who committed suicide subsequent to cyberbullying by Lori Drew, the mother of another girl.

Despite years of public campaigns and passage of laws against cyberbullying, the phenomenon is becoming increasingly common and children continue to suffer, with too may of them tragically taking their own lives.

After studying in India Kannan came to Rotorua in 1986 and worked at John Paul College in Rotorua, where he later became deputy principal. He has spent the last 18 months at Verdon College in Invercargill.

He is a former military man, with a masters degree in chemistry and the author of a doctorate on the development of spiritual intelligence in New Zealand students.

Kannan has written three books on the subject which are with an American publisher for wider publication.

He says his books were also not to be confused with the populist spiritual self-help kind of books which have flooded the market over the past 20 years.

Source

• Wanganui Chronicle
• Manawatu Standard
• Image: Manawatu Standard

Eating disorders are characterised by unhealthy or extreme views of one's weight and/or shape, which leads the young person to engage in severe, restrictive and dangerous eating and/or exercise behaviours. These behaviours in turn impact on the child's life in a such a pervasive and significant way that it impacts on their ability to function in their daily lives.

Eating disorders are most common among females and while they can start at any age, teenagers between 13-18 years seem to be most at risk (TPTPR). An important question for parents is then, how do you identify and eating disorder and how to do you go about helping your child?

What are the types eating disorders?

There are several types of eating disorders, with the most recognised being Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa.

Anorexia Nervosa is characterised by significant weight loss with an accompanying intense fear of gaining weight or becoming ‘fat'. People with Anorexia Nervosa see their bodies in a distorted way, typically believing they are fat even when they are extremely underweight.

Bulimia Nervosa is characterised by seemingly uncontrollable episodes of eating to excess, followed by behaviours aimed to rid the body of the calories ingested, such as undertaking excessive exercise, taking laxatives and vomiting.

Even if your child does not quite fulfill the symptoms of Anorexia Nervosa or Bulimia Nervosa, two significant risk factors for developing a more serious eating disorder are:

● Disordered eating: For example, restrictive dieting, fasting, self-induced vomiting, avoiding food groups, use of diet pills. Australian and New Zealand research indicates that engaging in moderate dieting behaviour puts young people at a six-fold risk of developing an eating disorder. Disordered eating is in fact the most significant indicator that your child could be developing an eating disorder. Continue reading

Sources

• Sydney Morning Herald
• Image: The Telegraph