Rules provide children with a secure world and teach children about safety and limits. In her book, “Growing Up Again,” author Jean Illsley Clarke points out that consistent limits on behavior, along with teaching responsibility, can help children gain impulse control, self-regulation, and a sense of competency, responsibility and accountability.

When establishing household rules, parents can benefit from the “less is more” philosophy. The power of rules comes from there not being too many. Parents need to create a few basic rules that involve general, broad principles and virtues than to have many rules for each situation. In her book, “kids are worth it,” author Barbara Coloroso says when deciding whether or not to set a rule, parents should ask themselves, “Is it life threatening, morally threatening or unhealthy?” If not, then perhaps a rule may not be necessary or appropriate.

When setting rules, be sure the rule can be made clear to both you and your child. For instance, don’t get sidetracked. Parents can remember catch phrases, such as, “That may be…” or “That is not what we’re talking about now…” to help keep a child focused on a certain topic. Also, it’s best to avoid unassertive rhetorical questions (“Don’t you think it’s time to go to bed?”). And when discussing a rule with a child, parents can use a calm voice and lots of eye contact.

Parents should always assess whether a rule is enforceable and know how to respond if a rule is broken. Not being able to enforce a rule will cause a child to lose trust in a parent and encourage more rebellious or disrespectful behavior. Hold a discussion with your child about the rule and allow for feedback and processing.

There are negotiable and non-negotiable rules. Non-negotiable rules are commands or demands, boundaries or standards that parents insist upon (based on safety, maturity and the needs of the child). Negotiable rules are appropriate to a child’s age, but over time can be modified or adjusted as a child matures or under special circumstances some exceptions are possible.

Rules are most effective when stated in a positive “what is expected” format, rather than a “what not to do” format. A child will be more likely to comply to a rule if the positive action expected is stated, rather than leaving them to figure out what to do after being told what not to do. When a request focuses on what not to do, the child must first think about the undesired behavior, then he or she must cancel out that image and replace it with what is expected. This three step process confuses many children. It’s more effective to let a child know up front what is expected.

Rules can prevent conflict or lessen frequency of arguments and power struggles by establishing clear, consistent, guidelines for how certain things are done. The hope is that eventually certain rules will become second nature for kids and will no longer be questioned. With effective discipline, as children get older they will need less external control and will exhibit more self-control.

How serious is the problem? Some problems are minor but aggravating, and lots of annoying behavior from a teenager is normal. Parents can be in a better position to choose to ignore the situation or perhaps modify the intensity of their response. If a problem seems serious or dangerous, immediate parental intervention may be necessary.

What kind of teenager is this? By understanding a teenager’s temperament and personality, parents and caregivers can better assess how serious a problem may be for that teen. For example, a naturally slow-to-warm, cautious teen who suddenly is taking lots of risks may need a parent to step in.

What kind of relationship do I have with my teenager? When parents and caregivers are fairly confident that their relationship with their teen is authentic and healthy, they can expect that their teen will rely on them if a problem arises. If for some reason, the relationship between parent and teen has been strained or damaged, a parent may need to be more vigilant in watching for serious or dangerous behaviors.

What shape am I in? How stressed am I? When parents and caregivers of teens feel constantly stressed, overwhelmed, disengaged or distracted, they are less likely to understand their teenager. If they have unmet needs, parents and caregivers will find it difficult to have the patience and focus to effectively relate with their teen.

Knowing when to get involved and when to let go will help parents and caregivers provide their teenagers with the self esteem and relationship building that will help them endure the challenges of being a teenager.

Psychologist John Bradshaw points out that the chief component of the family as a system is the marital partnership. If the marital relationship is healthy and functional, the children have the opportunity to grow. Healthy relationships are mature, which means equal, self-responsible, and mutually supportive. In a healthy relationship, each partner has a commitment to respect and discipline within the relationship.

When a couple in a healthy relationship decide to become parents, they role-model strong relationship behaviors for their children. They readily accept that having children is the most responsible decision of their lives. When such a relationship forms the foundation of a family, each child will have a healthier journey in which to grow and develop. Research on the human brain strongly indicates healthy parenting leads directly to healthy brain development in children.

In addition, the more stable and secure the relationship between parents, the more a child can be different, and develop into his or her own person. As long as mom and dad are getting their needs filled from each other and from other healthy relationships, they will not use their children to fulfill these needs. This allows children to find their own “uniqueness.”

Children of functional parents in a healthy relationship have the chance to grow and have more freedom to explore the journey of self-actualization. These children are not weighed down or burdened by their parents’ frustrated or anxiety-ridden expectations or projections. Healthy marriages will help build a child’s self esteem.

But there are no perfect marital relationships. Mom and dad will inevitably run into conflicts. Handling conflicts in loving, respectful, assertive fashion will role-model for children, as well. Rather than striving for perfection, being intentional about showing respect, consideration and self-control is what building healthy relationships is about.

Susan remained calm. “Because it’s a school night,” she explained.

From there the conversation deteriorated. Jared yelled, “I hate you. I wish I had Trevor’s parents. They let him stay out as long as he wants.”

Susan couldn’t help herself and returned, “I don’t care what Trevor’s parents do, I’m the mother and as long as you live in this house you will follow my rules.”

Where did this conversation go wrong? The parent tried to remain calm, clear and direct. The teenage son reacted as many teenagers would in that situation. But somehow there was no emotional connection, no intentional effort to find a way to teach the teen to become more responsible and respectful.

In her book, “Parenting the Teenage Brain,” Professor Sheryl Feinstein points out that parents can expect and even predict that teenagers will be argumentative and perhaps even disrespectful. Understanding what is happening inside the teenage brain can help explain the sometimes uneven or inappropriate reactions of teenagers. Changes taking place in the brain during the teen years increase the likelihood of arguments between teens and parents in two ways. First, the teenager’s increased mental processing demands explanations and reasons for decisions that were just accepted at younger ages. Second, the emotional part of the brain (the limbic system) is in charge during the teenage years, so tears and yelling many times prevail over calmness.

The thinking part of the brain (pre-frontal cortex) is under construction for most of the teenage years. When a parent asks a teen, “What were you thinking?” as it turns out, he or she wasn’t thinking at all! The human brain is not properly equipped during the teen years for problem-solving and logic. The brain is expanding so rapidly during this time, that the connections inside the cortex are incomplete and still forming. In his book, “Yes, Your Teen is Crazy,” Dr. Michael Bradley states that adolescents are temporarily brain-damaged. Brain scans of teenagers indicate that at that age, the human brain looks similar to brain scans of damaged adult brains.

These explanations of teenage brain development do not excuse irresponsible or disrespectful behavior. Parents can be challenged by how much typical teenage attitude should be tolerated, what issues are really worth fighting about, and what kind of discipline is effective. Some level of arguing and challenge by teens is normal. These conflicts can involve minor issues like chores or style of dress, or major issues like sex and drugs. In teen girls, menstrual cycles are associated with increased conflict. The combination of brain development and estrogen levels many times leaves teenage girls moving back and forth between elation and edginess on a daily basis.

Unfortunately, many parents are in constant conflict with their teen. Fights occur more frequently and for longer periods of time. Normal emotional healing rituals of apology and forgiveness may seem especially difficult or even impossible with teens. A poor parent-teen relationship puts the teen at risk for unhealthy behavior or self-medication through alcohol or drugs.

There is hope for parents during the teenage years. Parents can benefit from understanding the value of not arguing with a teen. Stay calm. Teenagers are not as mentally or emotionally mature as adults and the difference is apparent when it comes to arguing. Teens are almost compelled at that age to continue and finish a fight. When an argument arises, a parent can calmly and clearly state his or her views and then just stop. Let your teenager have the last word and walk away.

Active listening can also help connect with a teenager whose thinking brain is still under construction. Active listening is the ability to accept what a teenager is saying, while not necessarily agreeing with him or her. Giving proper time and attention to a teen through active listening will allow him or her to fully process information emotionally before considering logical ways to react. Allowing a teen to fully express emotion to a parent without fear of judgement will help reduce arguments and can help the brain grow and mature with calmness and safe emotional connection.

While the teenage brain is under construction, a parent’s support and influence can help to wire the teen’s cortex to be more responsible and respectful. Parents are still the most influential force in an adolescent’s life. Knowing how to interact and communicate with a teenager who’s brain is experiencing such major development can help parents be more effective and help strengthen the parent-teen relationship.

The importance of strong, healthy bonds between parent and child cannot be overstated, because these bonds serve as the foundation upon which all other life relationships are formed. If a child doesn’t learn how to connect emotionally with a parent or other caregiver, that child will probably encounter difficulty in connecting to people in all sorts of relationships for the rest of his or her life.

Temperament plays a significant part in a child’s efforts to reach out to other people or responding to others efforts at connection. It’s helpful for parents to understand the balance of how temperament affects emotional bonding and efforts to impact emotional connection with healthy authoritative parenting. Consciously or not, parents teach their children about relationships through interaction and example.

Teaching children about the value of healthy relationships will help them as the move into the middle school and high school years. At this age, when it comes to the complex tasks of negotiating peer relationships (friendships, cliques, dating, etc.), children will draw from what they’ve been taught to try to negotiate and survive. Not knowing how to emotionally connect may cause difficulties, ranging from fleeting feelings of sadness and/or alienation to teen depression.

It’s okay to become angry. Anger is an inevitable emotion, and must be expressed (hopefully in healthy ways), otherwise the emotion will build-up and eventually be expressed in aggressive or passive-aggressive ways. New scientific information on brain development provides parents with a special opportunity to understand how anger is processed in the brain and how to teach children to understand and manage anger in healthy ways.

Scientists have recently found using brain scans of live brains during highly emotional times, like when expressing anger, that there are amazing new insights into what’s happening in a child’s head during an angry exchange. Children can be taught at a very early age what’s happening inside them when they get angry, how to understand it and manage it more effectively.

Repeated exposure to anger as a child has long-term impact. Most chronically angry adults were exposed to excessive amounts of destructive anger in their childhoods. Role-modeling how to express anger in healthy ways is very important for parents. A child’s memory bank and the interpretations of those memories will be full of information about how the adults closest to them handle anger.

It’s important for parents to learn to remain calm and find additional healthy ways to express anger.

The human brain consists of four distinct layers, the brain stem, mid-brain, limbic system, and the cortex. The brain stem is responsible for the most primitive functions of the body like breathing, body temperature regulation, and blood pressure. The midbrain, also called diencephalon, is a bit more complex, but still mostly reflexive, and is where a person operates when he or she is in a state of alarm. This is the instinctive “fight or flight” area of the brain and is a non-thinking and non-feeling place. The limbic system is the area responsible for experiencing and expressing emotions. The cortex, especially the pre-frontal cortex, is responsible for thinking, problem-solving, showing judgement and a conscience.

Two other key parts of the brain are the hippocampus, which stores memories, and the amygdala, which is part of the limbic system and determines which part of the brain is activated in a given situation. The hippocampus and amygdala work together to determine which parts of the brain are in charge. At any given moment, one of the three upper levels (midbrain, limbic system or cortex) is in charge based on the decisions of the amygdala and hippocampus.

The brain produces powerful chemicals called hormones. Normal development sees the brain release healthy doses of hormones to help a child learn resilience. During times of fear, however, stress hormones can flood the brain, causing anxiety and panic in the child, meaning he or she is less capable of thinking. During an unhealthy “hormone dump,” a child will become hypersensitive and overly-reactive until the hormones dissipate, which may take an hour or as long as a day. Because a child’s brain is constantly being wired, high states of alarm can “over-wire” a child’s midbrain, making it denser and more dominant than it should be.

During these episodes of fear, the hippocampus stores memories for the purpose of protecting and preparing the child for future incidences. For the rest of the child’s life, the memories stored in the hippocampus can trigger the same responses that activates the reflexive midbrain.

Whenever a child is highly fearful or alarmed because a parent or other caregiver is inflicting physical pain (like spanking) combined with unhealthy and out of control emotion, his or her brain development is being adversely impacted. A child with a brain that has been developed in healthy ways can function relatively smoothly, allowing the child calmness to think, emotionally connect, pay attention and grow intellectually.

Withholding discipline is not the answer. Finding healthy ways of effective discipline (limit setting, healthy consequences, making amends, etc.) will help develop a child’s brain in healthy fashion.

Worrying is the heart of all anxiety. But not all worrying is necessarily bad. Mild worrying may actually help in problem-solving. By employing constructive reflection, which may look like worrying, a solution to a problem may appear. Out of control worrying is what then may trigger anxiety. When fear triggers processing in the emotional part of the brain, the mind is forced to focus on how to handle the problem. Many times the brain may obsess on how to view and handle a problem, which intensifies the worrying and, hence, the anxiety. In his book, “Emotional Intelligence,” author Daniel Goleman points out that worry is, in a sense, a rehearsal of what might go wrong and how to deal with it. Productive worrying comes up with positive solutions to life’s challenges, while destructive worrying causes an “emotional hijacking” and tends to paralyze the problem-solving process.

Out of control worrying is repetitive and recycles on and on, without getting any nearer to a solution to the problem. Part of the emotional hijacking is that the worries seem to come from nowhere, generate increasing anxiety, are impervious to reason, and lock the worrier into a single, inflexible view of the problem being worried about. This level of worry can lead to full-blown anxiety disorders, phobias, obsessions, compulsions and panic attacks, although worry looks different in each of these disorders. But in all of these conditions, worry has run amok.

Penn State researcher Thomas Borkovec and his colleagues have done extensive research on anxiety and worry. Borkovec discovered through his studies that anxiety, as it turns out, comes in two forms: cognitive, or worrisome thoughts, and somatic, the physiological symptoms of anxiety, such as sweating, a racing heart, or muscle tension. The two are very different. Most insomniacs, for instance, suffer from cognitive anxiety. Amazingly, though, there are residual benefits of worrying, like cognitive anxiety may soothe the potential accompanying somatic reactions.

During his research, Borkovec found that worrying can be identified and controlled. There are three (3) steps to help even the most chronic worriers control their habit.

1. The first step is self-awareness. Being able to catch the worrisome reaction to a situation as early as possible is important. Understanding what may be happening soon after thoughts trigger the worry-anxiety cycle, is vital to controlling the thoughts before they begin to gain power. Monitor personal cues for worry, especially identifying situations or thoughts that trigger worry. With practice, people can identify worries at an earlier and earlier point in the out of control cycle.

2. Next is find relaxation techniques. Applying relaxation methods at the moment that worry begins, will help slow down the anxiety spiral. Practicing the relaxation method daily will help it feel more natural and effective, and will enable it to be called upon when needed most.

3. The final step is to actively challenge the worrisome thoughts. Take a critical stance toward the worry assumptions that are triggering the anxiety. Is it probable the dreaded event will occur? Is it really the case that there is only one answer or no answer at all to a particular problem? Are there constructive steps to be taken? Is it helpful to have these same thoughts over and over again? Moving the thought process from the emotional part of the brain into the thinking part of the brain will halt the emotional hijacking.

These three strategies establish a train of mental control that is incompatible with worry. Renee learned what she needed to train her brain not to worry. The methods sometimes made her tired, but surely helped her get some more sleep.

At every stage of a child’s life, self esteem is the foundation of personal growth, learning, creativity, personal accountability and responsibility, and personal relations. A child’s self esteem determines the degree to which he or she may maximize the resources and personal tools he or she was born with. High self esteem is when a child feels important, accepted, in control and purposeful. Having healthy self esteem is to feel lovable and capable. A child with high self esteem will be proud of his or her accomplishments, assume responsibility and accountability, tolerate frustration well, be brave and confident enough to try new things, and exhibit a wide range of emotion.

A child’s self esteem influences what he or she does and how it’s done. Self esteem is how a child feels about him- or herself. These feelings will then impact self-image and beliefs about one’s self. A child will act in ways that increase a sense of self worth and satisfaction, seeking praise and approval, for instance. A child will also act in ways that confirm self-image by others, behaving in congruence with that self-image. Also, a child will act to maintain consistence in that self image, regardless of changing surroundings.

The ways in which a child handles and experiences a wide range of school activities is directly affected by self esteem. In the book, “How to Raise Children’s Self Esteem,” Dr. Harris Clemes, PhD. points out a child with superior intelligence and low self esteem can do poorly in school, while a child with average intelligence and high self esteem can be unusually successful. A child with low self esteem loses focus and motivation easily, and spends a lot of time distracted. High self esteem helps a child deal with daily challenges and adversity.

For Five (5) Ways to Raise Your Child’s Self Esteem” please visit: http://Responsible-Kids.net/raisingselfesteem.html

FREE parenting books and articles to download: http://Responsible-Kids.net/freeparentingstuff.html

The dangers of sexting are clear. The practice has become popular in a relatively short period of time and the reaction to the cultural explosion has been mixed, and sometimes extreme. In some cases, children who have been caught sexting have been charged under child pornography laws. In other cases, the teenage humiliation of enduring naked pictures being spread around has led to violence and suicide. Children who have access to a cell phone or computer must understand the consequences of what seems to them to be private and innocuous communication.

Talking about sexting with a child may be more challenging than talking about sex, drugs or any other difficult topic. Many times parents may be unaware of what sexting actually is and how prevalent it may be. As teenagers are generally more knowledgeable and savvy than adults about cell phones and computers, it adds an additional challenge for parents just to keep up with the latest technology and uses. And it’s certainly not something a child will be eager to discuss.

Just like with other difficult conversations, the time to talk with your child about sexting is way before you suspect he or she may be exposed to it. Many times a child will hear of someone else who has done it first and values can begin to be formed early as an outside observer. Or a child may be pulled into it unexpectedly, as perhaps it begins as an innocent cell phone or computer exchange, or private “joke,” and escalates from there. A child needs to hear the consequences of sexting, and be given the opportunity to process some feelings about it.

Using the “indirect” approach may be effective for the initial conversation. Citing a news story about sexting from TV, the Internet or the newspaper may be the best way to “break the ice.” Using this vicarious experience will allow both parent and child to comment on the story without “personalizing” it. Directly asking a child whether he or she has ever done this or know someone who has, only puts the child in a position to lie or get secretive (even subversive) with this topic and possibly others. The indirect approach will hopefully keep the lines of communication open.

If a child is ready to talk about sexting with a parent, then healthy active listening skills will help provide the safety for the child to process. Despite the surprise and confusion about this new phenomenon, a parent can accept what a child is saying (“everyone does it” or “it was supposed to be just her belly button”) without expressing judgement or disagreement. After a child has had the chance to emote without judgement, then a parent can begin to explain consequences of sexting, perhaps again using indirect examples to help explain. Ultimately, loss of cell phone or computer privileges may need to be discussed, as a consequence of misuse.

Parents should learn about sexting (try Googling it, for example) and then devise a plan to talk about it. Provide the information early to a child; that way, there’s a much better chance of seeing responsible behavior.