I have a column I write for and I receive E-mail from parents and teens asking me questions to respond to and this was one I really thought needed attention.  Teen Sex is it Wrong or Right? A teenager is asking me this very important questions. Now if you’re a parent you might scream WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! If you’re the teen you might say it depends.

So first lets look at wrong and right. What does this mean, wrong being bad and right being good. Isn’t this what we think?  Does it have to be wrong or right, good or bad?  Can it just be a lesson learned?  Now parents don’t go all crazy on me with “some lesson- a pregnant daughter”, I get it. This is what we need to look at.  Not telling our kids not to have sex because it’s wrong or bad but allowing them the space to explore their options and then make a decision that makes sense for them. Usually if we allow them the space, they make good decisions.

We want our teens to ask themselves questions about the decisions they are making, and if their not, we should ask them questions.  If we ask them questions it teaches them how to make decisions for themselves, and teaches them to ask themselves questions. This girl that asked this question,   “Is Sex Wrong or Right”?  The questions you would ask her might be or the questions she should ask herself should be:

1) How do you feel about him?
2) Is he someone you see yourself with in the future?
3) Do you love him?
4) Does he love you?
5) Why would you have sex with him? This is a big one.
6) How do you think you would feel if you had sex with him and he talked about it to others?
7) How would you feel if you had sex with him and you broke up a couple of weeks later?
How do you think your next partner will feel if you have slept with other guys?
9) Is he someone that you trust?
10) Are you okay with multiple sexual partners
11) Are you okay with having a boyfriend who has had multiple partners?

All of these questions makes them think about what they are doing or contemplating doing. If you are a teen asking these questions of yourself, BE HONEST! Be real with yourself. If you are having sex with this guy because you want him to like you, that’s okay. Then you can deal with the real issue. If a teen has to answer these questions there is a good chance they will not have sex with their boyfriend.

What I want to stress more than anything is that these are the questions teens want to ask. They want to ask their parents, but because a lot of parents react so strongly to the questions, they stop asking. Promote them asking questions from you and of themselves. When we ask and answer questions of ourselves it helps us make better decisions.  So Parents, instead of getting stocked, relaxed and ask questions and let them figure things out.

Parents, let me know what you think of this, and teens too.

I found this News Release about cigarette marketing campaign targeting teen girls from UC San Diego Medical Center, and thought it needed to be sent through to my audience.  After reading this I realized that it is really important to talk to your kids about smoking, not just one conversation, but many.  If you aren’t opening up the communication to discuss issues like this, your teens will be left to their own means to make decisions.  The media is very powerful, don’t under estimate it. Our teen listen to the TV, magazines, radio, and internet and it is influencing them to a large degree.

Self-Esteem is critical to teens doing what is good for them, not what others think they should be doing, including the media.

I am actually in the process of another blog about fashion and what a hold it has on our teens. It’s important to talk to our teens about issues and empower them to be able to make good decisions for themselves.  Let me know what you think…I’m pretty sure you don’t want your teenagers smoking.

Date: March 15, 2010 News Release from UC San Diego Medical Center

Recent Cigarette Marketing Campaign Targeted Teen Girls, Study Reveals

The 1998 Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) prohibits tobacco industry advertising practices that encourage underage teenagers to smoke, yet new research out of the Moores Cancer Center at the University of California, San Diego has found that a 2007 marketing campaign for Camel brand cigarettes was effective in encouraging young girls to start smoking.

The study, led by John P. Pierce, PhD, professor of Family and Preventive Medicine and director of the Cancer Center’s Cancer Prevention and Control Program, will be published March 15 in an early online edition of the scientific journal Pediatrics.

The research, part of a national study on parenting practices, involved 1,036 males and females who were 10 to 13 years old when enrolled onto the study. Between 2003 and 2008, scientists conducted five telephone interviews, which included questions about smoking. The fifth interview was conducted after the start of RJ Reynolds’ “Camel No. 9″ advertising campaign in 2007.

Consistent with earlier research, the new study showed that youth who had never smoked but who reported having a “favorite” cigarette ad at the beginning were 50 percent more likely to initiate smoking. The number of boys with a favorite ad was stable across all five surveys. For girls, however, it was stable across the first four surveys, but by the fifth survey, which took place after the start of the Camel No. 9 campaign, the proportion of girls who reported a favorite ad jumped by 10 percentage points, to 44 percent. The Camel brand accounted almost entirely for this increase.

“In 1998, the Tobacco Industry signed an agreement with State Attorneys General which included a commitment not to target adolescents with advertising.  Congressional leaders and others have complained to RJ Reynolds that the Camel #9 campaign violated that agreement,” said Pierce. “This national study demonstrated that the Camel No. 9 campaign had a huge impact on young adolescent girls across the country, effectively encouraging them to smoke.”

The Camel No. 9 marketing campaign included ads resembling fashion spreads that were placed in five of the top 10 U.S. teen readership magazines, such as Glamour and Vogue. The campaign also featured promotional giveaways such as berry lip balm, cell phone jewelry, purses and wristbands.

Co-authors on the paper are Karen Messer, PhD, Lisa E. James, Martha M. White, MS and Sheila Kealey, MPH, all of the Moores UCSD Cancer Center; and Donna M. Vallone, PhD, MPH, and Cheryl G. Healton, DrPH, both of the American Legacy Foundation, Washington, D.C. This study was funded by the National Cancer Institute, the American Legacy Foundation, and the Tobacco Related Disease Research Program of the University of California.

My daughter and her friends drive me crazy, they are always arguing about one thing or another.  I am always telling them to grow up and stop bickering.

This is a time when friends play an increasingly important role in their lives. Teens have developed friendships that are more intimate, exclusive, and more constant than in their earlier years. These friendships are an essential component of development. They provide a venue where your teen can explore their identities.

These interactions are very normal for teens.  This is how they learn to problem solve with individuals and in groups.  These interactions give teens a place to practice and learned how to foster the social skills necessary for future success.

Even though this behavior seems extreme and immature to you, realize that they are not adults; they are still learning how to communicate and develop healthy boundaries.  I know many adults that have yet to develop the social skills they needs to have successful interactions with their adult friends.

As a parent, you should look at two things: one- why is their behavior bothering you so badly?  Did your parents bicker? Look at what your wounding around this behavior might be. If you are triggered by her behavior, the only way you are going to be able to show up for her is to react through your own fears. If you are reacting to her, she is going to shut down and not hear any words of wisdom you might have around this subject. So, first do your inner child work around her behavior. Second, lets look at how you might be able to show up for your daughter in a different way.

The best thing you can do while they are arguing is, just allow them the freedom to do it, as long as they aren’t physically hurting each other, let them be.  If things seem to be going no-where you might let them know your available if they need you, if they say okay, you need to make sure you are not bringing your agenda into their arena.  Do not try to solve this problem for them, that’s not what they need or want. You want to ask a lot of questions and if they are not letting each other talk, ask them if they are okay with setting up a format to express their concerns.  This will be where each of them will have an opportunity to discuss their feelings around the issue, uninterrupted.

During this time you need to remain open. Do not take sides, or judge the situation, you are simply a mediator.  Let each of them express their concerns, and maybe you just keep asking questions.  All this does is help them get to the bottom of the problem with an easier format. That’s what you have provided them with, a safe place to explore their feelings and shown them a different way to communicate, by allowing others to express and be heard.

When our teens are working through their issues and we come in and judge them, maybe by saying or thinking that this is an extreme situation and they are being immature, they will shut down to us.  If they shut down to us, we are no longer able to offer assistance when they need it; we just add more emotional upset to the situation.

What we want to do for them is help them through there upset by holding a safe place for them to explore their feelings.  If we aren’t helping them, we need to know that they will be okay, and not judge they them for the way they want to work through it.

Our judgments only put more distance between our teens and us.  If we want to be available for them we have to be willing to not fix things for them and not judge the way the want to fix it.

Remember, this is normal teenage behavior and if this behavior keeps upsetting you, you have work to do.

“Listen to me, don’t talk back, what’s the matter with you? You’re grounded” Who is this Father talking to? It appears that he is talking to his daughter, but his daughter is clearly not there. His daughter is so shut down that she is no longer able to hear what her father is saying.

I felt like my parents didn’t see me, couldn’t see me, because of their own wounds that they had not worked through. Now, I don’t blame them, I know they did the best they could. All I am saying is that because they were unable to do their inner work, they were not able to show up for me.

When I first started working with teens, I noticed that for them to really shift their behaviors, I had to shift the parents behaviors too. If you as a parent are only reacting to your teen and not responding, your teen will never open up to you and allow your guidance.

When we are in our own childhood wounds, we cannot be available for our teens, because we are looking to meet our own needs.  We can only step into their reality if our wounded child has been taken care of. This is the premise of my new book “Connecting to your Teen in a Disconnected World”. taking care of our self. It is virtually impossible to be present for someone else if we are not

If you get to know your childhood wounds and how they could show up for you, you will see how it is affecting you, and your reacting to your teen through them.

If your teen does something, lets say she stays out later than her curfew and immediately you go into panic mode, and slip into your fears.  She comes home and you start in right away with “Where were you, what were you doing, your thirty minutes past your curfew, your grounded”. Geez, she didn’t even have a moment to tell her mother what happened. So the daughter gets upset and starts yelling and it goes back and forth and ends with the mother saying you’re grounded and walking out. Total Reaction.

The mother was clearly triggered by her daughter coming in late because she has an unresolved childhood wound, maybe her own mother not respecting her and not following through on things she said she would do. If this is the case, she would react to her teen instead of respond.

If the mother would have responded instead of reacted, this is what it might have looked like. Mother says “Are you okay, I noticed you are thirty minutes late?” “Yes, mom I am okay, Jeannie saw Mr. Walker her English teacher at the concert and they were talking”.  “I totally understand that things like this happen and what I would like you to do in the future is call me and see if it’s okay if you stay out later. This is our agreement and for your father and I to continue to trust you, you have to make sure your actions are trustworthy”.

This is your opportunity to explain integrity, and trust and its importance. If we react, the learning is missed because they are thinking about how unreasonable you are instead of learning a deeper level of integrity. Reacting has no purpose and only does damage.  We have to learn to move through our own woundedness so we can show up for our teens with compassion and clarity. It’s hard to respond to our teens is we are in reaction mode. So, it’s time to do your work around your childhood wounds and do some healing, so you can start showing up for your teen in a whole new way.

Lets me know if you have a situation that you have dealt with regarding responding or reacting and what you did. It’s a tough journey to be working on your childhood wounds and still be showing up for your teens.

It’s your teen’s birthday and your scrabbling for the perfect gift.  Every year you see the disappointment in your teens face when he or she opens the gift that you spent months looking for.

After a few years of gift disappointments for both my kids and myself, I decided that it was time to remove my ego and get them what they want.  At first I thought, I’d just give them cash, and wound up feeling as disappointed.  Cash seemed to take the fun completely out of the gift all together.

The first gift I gave them was explaining that it’s no fun to give a gift to an ingrate, and that no matter what you received you are to appear excited because it’s not about the gift at all, it’s about the thought that went into the gift from a person that loves you very much.  Now, even thought we know that this is a great gift to our teens, the gift of wisdom, maybe we are still looking for special gift that really excite them.  So here they are, as simple as they can be.

Ten Top Gifts for Teens:
1) Gift Certificate to their favorite clothing store, not yours-  Teens don’t want to be dressed by their parents, they are becoming more independent.  Give them the Gift Certificate and let them go shopping and pick out their own cloths.  I was at a store shopping and I heard a mother and daughter about 13 years old arguing about what her mother would let her buy. Occasionally I would pop my head out of my dressing room and check out what the teen was wearing to see if it was inappropriate and it was fine, maybe not the style I would wear, but there was a 37-year age gap between us.  Parents stop it; if it’s not inappropriate let them develop their own style.

2) Gift Certificate to a music store- Are you getting the picture yet?  Unless you know their music taste and know exactly what they are looking for, give it up to a gift certificate. It really feels different than cash.

3) An Art Class- Pick a class that you know will excite them. This is a great gift because it may open their eyes to a new talent that they might enjoy for many years.  Get them all of the materials to keep up the hobby.

4) Special Package for their cell phones- Maybe it’s a sight to down load special rings, that they can’t afford themselves.

5) Electronics- Even though I’m into monitoring how much kids are on the computer, or in front of video games and TV, it’s a gift the will love.  Just because you buy it doesn’t mean you can’t monitor the use.

6) A Bike- a mountain or street bike is a great gift because again it opens them up to a new hobby.

7) Movie Passes- Most kids love going to the movies and this is like having free passes to good entertainment.

Bookstore Gift Card- It’s like a credit card to a book store, so they can go buy a book on their time, and not have to be with you.

9) Meditation or Yoga Class- Only if they have shown interest in either of these, or maybe it can be a second gift that you give for both of you to go together.  Use it as an added bonus gift, with something else they love.  I have been noticing a lot of teens getting into both Yoga and Meditation these days.

10) Something for their bedroom- A cool retro chair, beanbags, couch if it will fit, posters, new comforter, or go shopping together and look for cool decorations for the room.  Their bedrooms are their own special places and we need to honor that and let them decorate it the way they want.  Teens need one room in the house to express their individuality in and a space that is only theirs.

So, hopefully I have given you some ideas about great gifts to give your teens.  To end cap the first gift, not in the top ten, which was wisdom about gift giving, the best gift you can give your teen is unconditional love, and that is shown by simply allowing them to be themselves and still accepting them and loving them.

Happy shopping and enjoy your teen for being themselves in all of their uniqueness.