“Loving your teenage son or daughter is not enough. He or she needs to feel that you appreciate them as a blossoming human being, whose talents and uniqueness require constant nurturing, support and encouragement and whose dreams are sufficiently intriguing to be worth exploring.”
This quotes the 53rd message from my new book "Enjoy Being Proud of Who You Are - 52 Inspirational Life-Skills Messages for Teenagers". It brings out the fact that no matter how much we might want to influence our teenage children in their life direction, they are going to make their own decisions.
And rightly so! Whatever our age, we are all unique individuals from birth to death. No matter how much you try to put yourself in someone else's shoes, you simply cannot do so. And just like you would with any adult, the way to help people is by focusing on increasing their sense of self-esteem, self-belief, self-confidence and sense of self-worth.
My book brings out many statements that people have learned from their parents and have successfully passed on to their children. But that is only a start. I want to run workshops and discussion groups with young people and give them the chance to discuss with each other what each statement means in their lives, what has importance to them and - let's be frank - what, to any of them, is now just so much garbage from us oldies!
Kids are smart. They want your help but they will make up their own minds. We just need to give them the best possible information on which they can base their own decisions.
Click on the pic below for information on how you can get a copy of the book to give to your teenager/s as a way of:
- telling them how much you care for and respect them as individual human beings and
- recognizing them as emerging adults who want to blossom in their own way.
