Therapist Unlimited Blog

Researchers have found new evidence showing that parents play a key role in whether or not their adolescent children who experiment with tobacco progress to become daily smokers before they graduate from high school.
A study published on-line and in the September issue of journal Pediatrics shows that parents can be a positive or negative influence on their children’s future smoking habit.
"If parents really don’t want their children to smoke they need to communicate that by establishing clear guidelines in their families about not smoking and discuss them with their school-age children." said Min Jung Kim, a research scientist with the University of Washington’s Social Development Research Group and lead author of the study.
At the same time, parents can increase their children’s chances of smoking by their own use of tobacco.
"If parents smoke, teens have more access to cigarettes than teens who have non-smoking parents. A second preventive measure for smoking parents is to quit smoking themselves," said Kim.
The study included 270 adolescents who had begun smoking by the eighth grade but had not advanced to daily smoking at that time.
Daily smoking was defined as smoking one cigarette a day for the past 30 days prior to annual interviews. By the time the students were in the 12th grade, 156, or 58 percent, had become daily smokers.
The children in the study were 51 percent male and 85 percent white. They were drawn from a larger study looking at the development of healthy and problem behaviours among children at 10 suburban schools in the Pacific Northwest. Information about their smoking habits was collected during annual interviews from the seventh through 12th grades.
Aside from parenting and parental tobacco use, other factors that predicted teen smoking were having friends who smoked and involvement in other problems behaviours such as skipping school, getting into fights and engaging in vandalism.

Kim said most smoking prevention programs to not directly address the role of parental smoking or the link between anti-social behaviour and smoking, which commonly occur together.
"Parents need to know that they are still important and can make their children feel good when they do something right and also know that there are consequences when they do something wrong. Many parents think adolescence is the time for children to have their independence. But it is important to maintain good supervision of your teen. Parents who smoke also need to understand that they are modeling behavior and if they quit smoking they send a strong message to their teenager," said Kim.
She recommends that parents "should not ignore children’s experimental smoking at any age because it put them at great risk of progressing to daily smoking." To do that, parents should:
    * Set and enforce clear guideline about tobacco.
    * Monitor to ensure that your children are following your guidelines.
    * Know and monitor your children’s friends.
    * Provide clear, consistent and positive consequences for following those guidelines and appropriate, consistent negative consequences for violating them.

A recent study has shown that new parents have less knowledge on child-injury risks that could jeopardize the life of their treasured angel.
According to the study made by the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Department of Psychology new parents identified less than half of the safety hazards in a simulated home environment, and most perceived that their children were less vulnerable to injuries than other children.
UAB doctoral student Joanna Gaines, M.A., the lead author of the study, and UAB pediatric psychologist David Schwebel, Ph.D., is its co-author, explained based on their study they found out that parents recognized only 47 percent of the safety hazards placed inside a home setting.
The researchers said while there were no benchmarks to assess whether this is a good or bad rate of recognition, it is concerning if it approximates behavior in real homes.
The researchers added one would hope that parents might recognize all or almost all of the safety hazards present, since they cannot act for prevention, thus placing their children at risk of serious injury if they do not know the risks involved.

New parents need to orient themselves on possible injuries their child faces to protect them from harm from injuries inside their own home.

Gaines said surprisingly, when asked to identify hazards they considered dangerous for their own children, the parents identified only 40 percent of the hazards.
She said the results suggest that parents tend to perceive their children as being somewhat invulnerable or smarter, safer or developmentally more advanced than other children.
Earlier studies have shown that unintentional injuries are the leading cause of death for toddlers in the United States, according to the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC).
In fact, the NCIPC reports that more than 1,300 1- and 2-year-old American children died from accidental injuries in 2005.
Based on the study it was discovered that formal education was not related to hazard recognition.
The researchers explained parents with fewer years of education recognized safety hazards just as well as parents with more education.
However, the researchers revealed the study also found that more hazards were identified by adults with more parent-related education, which suggests these classes and magazine articles focused on injury prevention may benefit child safety.
Moreover, the researchers said the parents, however, recognized more hazards than the professionals who worked with children daily.
The researchers revealed the health professionals recognized only 29 percent of the hazards, and the day-care workers recognized 37 percent.
The researchers explained parents spend more time with toddlers than day-care employees and parents have more invested in safeguarding their own children.
In addition, the research team said parents have more experience watching children in a home environment than most child-care professionals.

A recent study has shown that parents who are suffering from distress could cause tooth decay among their children.
Based on the research conducted by a group of scientists from The Ohio State University it was discovered that the more stressed parents are, the more likely their children were to have decay
The researchers said they also found out that apparently having one’s child’s dental decay treated actually could decrease the stress of being a parent.
Furthermore, the researchers said through their study they found out that dental professionals need to be ready not only to repair childhood decay, but also to assist families in finding the help they need to decrease the stress of life.
The parents for its part should strive hard to avoid stress in their lives so that their children would not suffer from tooth decay.

Parents need to avoid stress to avoid possible tooth decay among their children.

Here is a piece of good news to parents around the world.
A latest study has revealed that children who have a great relationship with their parents have less chances of suffering from alcohol addiction.
In a research published at the Journal of Studies on Alcohol, and Drugs it was discovered that children who have close with their parents refrain themselves from the drinking habit and just drink alcohol in moderation when they are already adult.
According to Dr. Emmanuel Kuntsche, of the Swiss Institute for the Prevention of Alcohol and Drug Problems in Lausanne, Switzerland and lead author of the study revealed most often those children who started drinking early have higher tendencies of becoming an alcohol addict than those who take up the drinking habit when they already adult.
Kuntsche said parents who have close ties with their children can also offer sound advices for them to keep away from drinking at a young age.
He said the finding was based on the study they conducted on 364 teenagers they have surveyed over two years.
The lead researcher explained those children who refrain from drinking at a young age positively gain from having great relationship with their parents since they were able to discuss their problems with them and that their parents respected their feelings.

Parents need to exert effort to forge a smooth relationship with their children to keep them away from alcohol addiction.

Kuntsche said the study has also clearly shown that having close relationship with their parents could lower the risk of alcohol problems.
The medical expert urged parents to exert efforts to have a great relationship with their children so that both can freely discuss whatever problems and keep away their children from alcohol and other vices.
He said the young generation is considered as the hope of this planet so parents should make sure these people achieve their full potential by keeping them away from vices through having a smooth relationship with their children.

One of the effective means to keep children fit and away from obesity is to play with them regularly.

A recent medical study revealed that parents who play with their children at least an hour a day keep them fit and healthy.
The study shows that any form of activity such as exercises, sport and other recreational activities will do as long as it keep the children active for an hour everyday.
Robert Malina, professor emeritus of the University of Texas-Austin said parents who plays with their children do not only make them keep a normal weight but also strengthen their bond.
Malina strongly suggest that parents focus more on doing a daily exercise since most the children today are  too sedentary which lead to excess weight in one-third of children in the USA.
He said parents who play with their children would likely influence them to keep the habit in a regular basis since they have a vast influence on the latter.
It was revealed that in most occasions, children always emulate what their parent does.
To fight obesity and keep their children healthy at all times parents should not make it a point to play regularly with their children.

Parents who regularly play with their children keep them fit and away from obesity.

Prescription drug abuse has becoming the new trend among teenagers, especially when it can be purchased inside the school grounds.

Just recently, three girls were rushed to the hospitals after taking prescription drugs before lunch. This abuse has been caused when two of their classmates supplied and gave them drugs. Police even believes that two Cedar Hill students, who are the suspects for such a crime, talked the three into taking the drugs.

This incident triggered the students and the parents to react. Many of them found it hard to believe the incident since the students don’t look like they’d take drugs and that they aren’t smart enough to think things through. Parents, clearly, expressed their concerns about their kids’ welfare.

Read more about this story in:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22105926/

Teens and parents usually develop a gap that cannot be avoided easily. Parents want to protect them while teens want to explore their world. This may cause communication breakdown, lack of understanding to one another, and worse, failed parental relationship. And when you get alarmed in this thought, bear in ming that there are many ways to avoid it.

For parents:  Remember that you once had the tendency to get rebellious and might even be a real one when you were teenagers.  That you wanted privacy and to know more about life. The point is, as a parent and even as being teenagers once, you should be able to empathize with them. Understand their needs.

And be cool. Don’t approach them in an authoritative manner. Be friendly to them while you remind them about their limitations.

For teenagers: If you were in their position, you’d probably do the same thing too.  You want to protect your kids and sometimes, you do some means to do that, which can be off to them. But you have a point right? And this is what yur parents usually feel when they try to do some lectures to you.

She noticed the signs but she ignored it. She has always seen the good in him until he finds her son dead.

Karen Falck is a proud mother of a co-captain of De Pere High School wrestling team, who used to be a good student, but happened to be abused with prescription drugs, which later caused for his death. This terrible event inspired her to speak before many parents for drug awareness, encouraging them to look after their kids and talk to them about this sensitive matter.

She is not a professional speaker but a mother who lost her son named Corey McNeill. She saw some signs of his behavior, but decided to turn it down. Some of those signs were lying, skipping school, and failing classes – things that were not really part of Corey’s normal behavior.

This free seminar for parents held at Lombardi Middle School aims for parents to have ideas about prescription drugs. Dr. Jane Whitman, emergency physician at Aurora BayCare Medical Center and also a parent talked about prescription drug abuse – its history, signs, managing it, and its possible effects.

To read more, go to:

http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071205/GPG0101/712050706/1207/GPGnews