DR. F. FELICIA FERRARA: Hello. My name is Dr. Ferrara, and I am a counselor who has worked with families and children for over 25 years. And I'd like to talk to you today about how to assist your teenager. It's a very, very rough time going through the teen years. Teenagers need every extra set of guidance and assistance they can get. And quite honestly in the teens I've worked with and I've worked with hundreds over the years, maybe thousands, they're all eager for somebody to listen to them. So my first tip to you as a parent would be listen to your child. Set aside quiet time where you might be all relaxed. You might just be sitting around the living room. Or sometimes the most effective is if you go in their room just before they fall asleep and just hang around. You don't even have to bring up a topic. Just hang around. And if they have something on their mind that's really bothering them it usually comes out then, but you can't force them to talk about something at the exact minute you want to, so you have to give them some space there to process their own feelings and emotions. A teen has a lot of contradiction within themselves as to whether or not they should tell parents, whether or not it really is a problem or whether or not they're betraying a friend's confidence, so they're really hesitant to trust you as an adult. So your best defense against that is to bond early with the child from very early on. As soon as they're toddlers on to early school, make sure you spend time talking with your child because that bond gets you through the teen years which is really, really rough. It's too late when they're a teenager to try to form a new bond that wasn't there to begin with. So it's really essential to start early, form the bond, spend leisurely time where you're both relaxed and you're not necessarily doing a task, and keep that open dialogue, and do not reprimand or be judgmental when in fact they do make mistakes or they have a misjudgment. We all did and we all survived. So please, give your teen plenty of room to find who they are, to make their own choices and make, if necessary, mistakes to learn their way. So listen, spend leisure time and do not be judgmental. Just guide them. That's all they want. I assure you if you can do that with your teen, you will have an open dialogue. And if there's a major problem they are face with, they will definitely come toward you and share it with you if they have trust and confidence in your sake as a person, which is what we all want as parents. So please go on and enjoy the teenage years because it's the last few years you have with your child. And with that said, may you have the wisdom to know what's important and the wisdom to know what is not. Good luck and we'll talk to you soon.
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