Teens
Girl Talk and Atlanta Dream Sleepover
As a special treat right before the school season's start, Girl Talk and the WNBA's Atlanta Dream team held a sleepover sponsored by The Century Council for 300 middle school girls.
After the basketball game, the girls were invited to spend the night and take part in lots of fun activities meant to inspire and empower the girls to believe in themselves enough to make the good choices needed to live a healthy and active lifestyle. Included in the activities were meet and greets with the Atlanta Dream players and cheerleaders, as well as our very own Choices and Consequences of Underage Drinking lesson plan and Ask, Listen, Learn interactive activity.
It was a fun night for all involved!
Social host laws, keeping teens safe
One of the issues we’re passionate about here is the role that parents play in preventing underage drinking. Time after time, studies have shown that underage drinking can impair a teen’s physical and mental health, even making the teen more prone to future problems with alcohol.
Parents can play a critical role in curbing a teen’s access to alcohol, and social-host laws reinforce that fact.
65% of teens obtain alcohol via family and friends. Parents then are the first and most important barrier between teens and alcohol. Many towns and counties have social-host ordinances, prosecuting those who are 21+ for providing alcohol at underage drinking parties.
By holding parents and older friends accountable for providing alcohol, social host laws reinforce the idea that parents should never encourage underage alcohol abuse. Furthermore, social-host laws have been found to reduce drunk-driving fatality rates among those 18-20 years old by 9%.
A person’s teen years are some of the most important, formative years of their life. Alcohol hinders this development. By following social host laws, parents remove a big obstacle in a teen’s path to adulthood.
Your teen home alone: not the horror show you might fear
Originally posted in The Globe and Mail
If you don’t leave alcohol, money or prescription drugs lying around, chances are the worst they’ll get up to is sleeping and playing video games all day
“Oh boy. Oh boy. Oh boy. Home alone. This is so cool. Now I get to do anything I want and there’s nobody here to stop me or even know that I’m doing it. Am I going to have a good time.”
“Yes, that is exactly what I worry about. Now that it’s summer, and he has no school; and I have to work and he hasn’t been able to get a job, he’s going to be home alone for these big chunks of time with zero supervision. It would be great if I could afford to get him into a good summer program. But I can’t. It’s my nightmare. All the trouble he’s going to get into at the house.”
Oh boy.
In a world where most parents work, and have little ability to dictate their hours, summer with young teenagers presents a problem. Can they, if necessary, be left for hours with no adult at home?
10 ways to make your family vacation a pleasant one
Originally published in The Globe and Mail
1. If they have a good time, that’s great. But don’t spend too much effort trying to make them have a good time. Don’t be too disappointed if the vacation does not work out for them. You can’t force someone to enjoy themselves. Also, teens often get a lot more out of a vacation than you think. You just don’t get to see it: “Like I’m going to say, ‘Oh. Wow. This is great.’ to my parents. I don’t think so.”
2. Electronic devices are good. During the year, you may cut back and limit their use, but on family vacations – especially for long car trips – they’re a blessing. You’ll definitely get less of this: “I’m bored. There’s nothing to do.” There’s always something to do when you have the electronic world at your finger tips.
Girl Talk at Julie Foudy Leadership Academy Today!
Girl Talk: Choices and Consequences of Underage Drinking is making an appearance today at the New Jersey Julie Foudy Leadership Academy.
Julie Foudy, former USA Women's Soccer Team Captain, two-time Gold Medalist, and two-time World Cup Champion, launched the Julie Foudy Leadership Academy (JFLA) to spread the ideals she embodies. Students learn soccer from some of the best women's players in the world, and they are exposed to a multitude of leadership concepts they can cultivate for life.
Recognizing that female soccer players are role models to many teen girls, our Girl Talk program, developed in 2005, has been speaking at Julie's Leadership camps for five years and was even the sponsor of the 2007 Induction of the National Soccer Hall of Fame – the year when Mia Hamm and Julie Foudy were inducted.
Julie is such a star that she is also one of our famous Ask, Listen, Learn SuperStars. Be sure to check her SuperStar profile out.
We'll be posting picture from the event soon so be sure to check back!
Work, study or relax? The perfect summer is what your kid wants it to be
Originally published in The Globe and Mail
Summer is a funny time for teenagers. It’s so different from the school year, when everything is scheduled and accounted for, filled with what needs to be done. But summer is this big chunk of time that can be like a block of unformed clay. It sits there and you can make of it what you want. Or you can let it just sit there.
“Yeah, that’s my vote. Let me just have it sit there. The perfect summer. Nothing.”
Parents may not have quite the same perspective. “That’s exactly what I worry about. I don’t want him to just waste a summer. The summer is an opportunity for him to make something out of it, to have some kind of valuable experience. Not spend two months as a vegetable. And then any opportunity is gone.” So what is best for a teen to do with the summer? There are a number of rather different possibilities. Kids with an eye on university and career have the constant pressure of building their résumé, which, with each new entry, increases their chances of having a better future. Everything counts. No time can be wasted. No unspoken periods that were not somehow creatively utilized. Tutoring underprivileged school children. Taking a course in Western philosophy as it pertains to a more globalized world. Volunteering in a wildlife study that tracks the moose population during the summer months.