DR. F. FELICIA FERRARA: Hello. I'm Dr. Felicia, the parent coach, and I'm going to talk to you today about how to raise teenage boys. Yes. Someone once said they're the roughest group of children to raise in all of history, so it's nothing new if you're having some trouble with your teen and it's--don't forget, these are supposed to be the turbulent years. Now if you have a high energy teenager, what you want to do is make sure you get him involved in sports. That's great, a way to learn a lot of things. A lot of people think a little league or the midget football is like a waste of time if they're busy working and they don't want to be driving their children to all these meets. But the truth is when children are involved in teen sports, they learn a lot more than just the sport itself. They learn teamwork; they learn to share and take; they learn to win and lose; and they learn self-confidence in themselves just to be part of a group. That sense of belonging is very important. So let's say your teen is not a physically-active person, maybe they are more into intellectual pursuits, well, I strongly advise and recommend persons to get their children involve in the theater. We have a lot of acting classes for small children. They do wonderful things in building confidence and it gets the shy child to be able to talk out in a different role, so theater, acting lessons are very good. And of course if your child is artistic and needs to draw or perhaps play a musical instrument, you can get lessons. Now you may say: Well, I don't have the money for lessons. We don't have that kind of finances. The truth is a lot of these schools have scholarships. But unless you go there and ask about it, you're not going to know. So I would strongly recommend that for teenage boys keep them very busy, sports, activities or theaters, acting, drama, music and anything that they have as a personal hobby is really important to keep them busy. And by all means, foster that creative ability, compliment them and participate in their activities with them. It's a strong confidence builder and it keeps them off the streets. That's the main objective here. It teaches responsibility as well. So remember if you have an active teen, keep him busy, so busy that he'll be tired when he comes home at night and that's the best kind of teen to have. So good luck with that.
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