Kids These Days! aims to empower parents and other caregivers of teens and preteens to recognize and enhance their own abilities to influence their greatest treasure - their children. We are working to transform negative perceptions about parenting and adolescence, as we dignify the strengths and capabilities of each.

The parenting relationship gains special significance as a child moves into adolescence. While some of our parenting job description may be changing, we need to remain active in our teen’s lives. Kids These Days! focuses more on moving teens towards interdependence, rather than the exaggerated independence promoted by popular culture. We believe that parents are the ultimate experts on their individual teen. Having lived with them from infancy, parents know their teen's unique temperament and needs better than anyone. Having the responsibility for their teens, parents need to implement their own values as they nurture and guide their children, and parenting decisions need to be based on the parent’s own values.

There are six principles about parenting adolescents that have widespread consensus among researchers and parent educators of many different cultures. Kids These Days! co-hosts, national parenting experts, and listeners will be talking together to develop practical application of these principles throughout the series when seeking solutions to problems faced by Alaska teens and those who love them.

These six principles are organized into the following “job description” for parents of adolescents:

1. Love and Connect. Maintaining your unconditional love of your child as well as having a positive connection with your teen is the basis upon which all other parenting tasks can be successfully accomplished.


2. Monitor and Observe. This increasingly involves less direct supervision and more communication and observation of our children, and networking with other adults.


3. Guide and Limit. Teens need to rely upon a family culture that has clear (but evolving) boundaries that are based on deeply held and nurtured values.


4. Model and Consult. The parent gradually moves into the role of a “consultant” providing information and skills both by modeling and by teaching. Thus, the teen-parent relationship evolves from one of dependence to interdependence.


5. Provide and Advocate. Teens need parents who, in addition to supplying basic physical needs, are willing to work collaboratively with schools and other institutions (church, legal, health, sports etc.) to best both challenge and support them.


6. Design the “Environment.” Parents need to insure the presence of positive “authoritative communities” (i.e. churches, traditional culture, activities, extended families of birth or choice, healthy schools, etc.) in a teen’s life that supply a safety net of mentors, values and opportunities for mastery of skills and competencies. Parents who can provide a home that is welcoming to adolescents and their friends, and to their activities, offer their children a safe haven in which to explore who they are.

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Parent Chat & Information Sites

The following are some favorite parenting sites, and there are new ones daily. They are a wonderful resource for parenting tips and can help parents when they are feeling all alone as parents.

Parenttime
www.parenttime.com
Currently, there are chats in the site for a variety of different parent interests, including a teen chat. This joint venture between Colgate-Palmolive and Time Warner even has a nurse midwife, behavioral specialist (counselor), family therapist, an ob-gyn and a nutritionist.

Parent Soup
www.parentsoup.com
With its live chats and terrific selection of discussion groups, you’ll find information about special parenting situations as well as the basics. You can contact experts on discussion boards in its Q & A section or sift through the archived questions on pediatrics, family counseling, nutrition, colleges, and activities for tots. The nutritionist not only answers questions about how to eat right, but also how to handle the preferences of picky eaters. There’s also lots of information on parent self-care topics like marriage, dealing with a dysfunctional family, depression and marriage, or finding a great book to read or vacation to take.

Foster Parent Community
www.fosterparents.com
One of the most informative foster parenting sites with links, resources and information by state and country. It has adoption information too, as well as grandparents raising grandchildren. In addition to great articles, the site has a chat channel, where foster parents and others can chat with each other, live.

ParentsPlace.com
www.parentsplace.com
ParentsPlace has over 500,000 visitors a month with 250 separate discussion boards. At least four new articles added daily to the home page. A husband/wife team run the site from their home, assisted by seven other parents from around the U.S.

CD-ROM Mom
www.cd-mom.com
This site shares information about multimedia and computer activities. The site is "designed to bring the family together in activity, education and fun[.] . . . CD-ROM Mom is a place where appropriate technology and meaningful content meet—bringing us to a greater understanding of ourselves, our families, our communities, our world."

Net-mom
www.netmom.com
One of the most famous and successful Internet moms, Jean Armour Polly, also a librarian, hosts this site. She is best known as the author of the best-selling children's book The Internet Kids Yellow Pages, published by Osborne/McGraw-Hill ($19.95 ISBN 007-882-197-5). Her newly updated and expanded edition, The Internet Kids & Family Yellow Pages was recently released. Jean was one of the first two women elected to the Internet Society Board of Trustees, the most prestigious organization in the Internet industry.






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