You probably noticed that your kid isn’t getting enough sleep, in most cases that is normal, your kid is just overloaded or likes to stay up at night. In some cases that may be because of a sleep disorder. Although it may sound normal or worrying, it is in fact a bad thing for teens, especially if it happens over a longer period of time. If the sleepless nights continue your child may develop a sleep deficit, that is when you want to sleep but can't, the body has set its own schedule because of it is used not to sleep. But that can have harmful effects, like depression, lack of concentration and many other things.

In most cases this happens because when kids get to the teen years the melatonin hormone is produced late at night, unlike with kids and adults, and that makes it harder for teens to fall asleep at night. In some cases it is insomnia, trouble falling asleep at all. Many things lead to teen insomnia, in most cases stress is the cause, but everything from emotional issues, uncomfortable space, headache or any other physical discomfort may be the reason behind insomnia.

Having insomnia for a few days or a week is nothing to be concerned about, it happens to everything from one or more reasons stated above. But, if insomnia consists over a few weeks or more that is considered as chronic insomnia and must be treated.

Another thing that stops and prevents teens and everyone else from sleeping are nightmares. Yes, nightmares over a longer period of time are considered dangerous. In most cases nightmares are caused by stress, alcohol, medication, even sleep deprivation, so having nightmares on a regular basis means you are doing something wrong and need to revise that.

And we also have the famous narcolepsy, sometimes narcolepsy is caused simply by the fact that teens are not sleeping at night. Over exhausting themselves can lead to narcolepsy, but like with insomnia that lasts for a few days or a week until the body rests. But there are cases when people suffer from chronic narcolepsy. Narcolepsy is very dangerous as it can’t be controlled, so things like driving are out of the question, as a person may fall asleep without any warning.

If your child is having any of the symptoms that point to a sleep disorder over a longer period of time you should immediately take him to the doctor. Sleep deprivation can have many of unwanted side effects on the brain, growth, healing, attention, and learning, even weigh gain and weight loss and severe medical conditions such as diabetes. So getting your child to a doctor before it comes to some of these consequences is a must, sleep deprivation and sleep disorders can be very serious and are not to be underestimated.
 

Over the years our looks have been emphasized and pushed to the limits, it is not enough that we have to deal with teen and child obesity, but we also have to worry if all that pressure coming from the media will make our children the total opposite. We have the right to be worried, after all that is exactly what is happening. From one side we have experts telling us that our children are obese and they are explaining consequences of obesity from both health and social perspective. On the other side we have tabloids, news magazines, health magazines, TV shows and about everything else showing us pictures of extremely well built men. So when you think about it, it is not unnatural for our teenage boys to want to look like a poster guy with mighty abs and great muscles, which is the part where we talk about the Adonis Complex.

Adonis Complex is basically an eating disorder for boys, which is the same as anorexia is for girls. Although they are too different types and Adonis Complex covers much more problems than anorexia, they both appear because of the same reasons; teenagers wanting to look good, teenager not satisfied with how they look at the moment and want to look better. As for girls the standard is to lose weight and look like models, for boys it’s a bit different, the current golden standard is have muscles like a gladiator, and you can see more and more teenager built like they came out of a Terminator movie. When you look at teen starts like Taylor Lautner it is no wonder that other teen boys want to look like him. But the fact is that not all of us can achieve that with exercise, so most teens that are obsessing with their looks end up using steroids.

Adonis Complex is not only associated with steroids, in fact it describes the whole unhealthy process of teen boys wanting to be like some of their unrealistic role models. That simply can’t be achieved with workout, so they go on unhealthy diets; they use excessive exercise methods and end up feeling depressed because they realize it will not happen for them. That is when they start taking steroids and start destroying their health completely. In recent studies was shown that teen boys actively practicing any sport are less likely to use steroids than an average teen boy who isn’t much in contact with sport. That is simply because athlete teenagers have been told countless of times the consequences of using steroids, so it’s all about early education.

Which leads to helping your child if you notice that he has some of the symptoms mentioned above, like overly exercising, unhealthy eating, preoccupation with his appearance and of course using dietary supplements and steroids? There are two steps, first is to educate your child about the negative effects of such behavior and steroids, which is something you need to start early. The second is to try and get your boys confidence up, his self worth is all that ties him to the normal life. Once teenagers start having low self worth they will go to these desperate measures for people to like them and recognize them as men.
 

Every parent is worried about his child, that is how parenting goes, and we are never sure if we are worrying enough as there is always something new we learn about. One of the most common worries of a parent is his child’s eating, is he eating enough, is he eating too much, does he have a disorder, maybe anorexia, obesity, or something else.

Parents today are mostly well informed about eating disorders and most of the parents know what eating disorders are, what symptoms are for each one and how to help their child in such a situation. Most of you probably know about Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa, Binge Eating or some of you may know even about Anorexia Athletica and Night Eating, but the truth is that media covered all of that and for some reason forgot about other, equally spread, types of eating disorder you can see anywhere.

You all heard about people who simply can’t help themselves and try to chew on anything, starting from chalk, paint, starch, glue and even cigarette ashes, that is also one type of eating disorders and it is called Pica. In most cases this is a mentally inherited disorder, but in some cases people can develop it, mostly poor families where children are neglected and basically have nothing to eat, with no supervision from the parents kids will put just about anything in their mouth.

One of the most feared types of eating disorders that has many bad effects on a person is Prader-Willi Syndrome. Prader-Willi Syndrome is developed at birth; the problem is with the brain, actually it is caused by a defect in the hypothalamus, which is the part that regulates hunger and in this case it makes a person never feel full, so they will eat and eat and eat every chance they get, they will eat anything they can get, starting from dog food to spoiled food.

Also, did you know that there is the total opposite of Anorexia called Bigorexia? In most cases people will Bigorexia can be found in bodybuilding circles, but that is because they are drawn to it. This is an eating disorder where a person needs; it has a need to gain more weight and always feels little, no matter how big the person is. Besides obesity which is common with this disorder most of the people suffer kidney failure and hormonal imbalances, which is all due to the steroids and additives they are taking in order to gain more muscle and more weight.

These are all severe eating disorders but you will most likely not hear about them because anorexia is somehow popular to talk about, so people forget about disorders that are as threatening as Anorexia or even more. Maybe it is the fact that those skinny models on TV constantly remind us of Anorexia so we talk about it so much. You need to understand that there are dozens of eating disorders, and before you jump to any conclusion by yourself and try to treat your kid at home you should take your child to a doctor that will establish a diagnose, after all, doctors do know best when it comes to medicine. Don’t try to be the smart guy by saying I know what it is and how to cure it, some things should be left to professionals, understand that you are responsible for your child. By not taking him to a doctor you are playing with his health and his life, which is not a gamble you can afford.
 

It is a common fact that if we do something too much and too often, no matter how bad it is, people will sooner or later start ignoring it, or as some will say, we got used to it. Well, there are some things we can never, we should never, get used to, like child abuse or abuse in general. There is more to abuse than just physical abuse, hitting someone, there are plenty more forms of abuse that children go through today. Anything from physical abuse, emotional abuse, verbal abuse, sexual abuse and even neglect is considered as abuse, and all of this can scar a child for life. A child that is neglected by his parents or guardians will never develop properly, so it is considered as abuse, and it should be, because in most cases neglect means not caring for the child, not providing basic needs like food, clothes and many other things.

We did start this with physical abuse so let’s talk about it for a while. It is the most common type of abuse and it is the easiest one to notice. We all know what falls under physical abuse so we won’t get into that, but do you know the effects of physical abuse on a person, besides physical damage? Kids that are abused physically mostly end up in two ways, they themselves become violent and abuse others, so it’s like a virus disease in some cases, or the total opposite, they become afraid, emotionally scarred and spend their life in fear and paranoia.

We also mentioned emotional abuse; this type of abuse is hard to notice. This type of abuse mostly comes from parents, but it can also come from other family members, friends and even teachers. The cause and effect of emotional abuse is a low self esteem and low self respect, such children are often scarred for life and this type of abuse can damage a child greatly, more than physical abuse.

Another form of abuse is sexual abuse, the most common type is rape, but there are other forms of sexual abuse, any case where a person is forced to have sex or engage in a sexual behavior is sexual abuse. Other forms of sexual abuse are sex between an adult and a minor and incest, sex between family members. This is one of the most feared types of abuse, as the consequences are many and each of them is terrible. Each type of sexual abuse carries it’s own weight and a person that has been through such an experience is very hard to work with, so the chances of going back to normal are very slim for some.

We also mentioned neglect, one of the most neglected types of abuse. It is very hard to notice this type of abuse, even harder to define it. Everything that you think is neglect of a child can be considered as neglect abuse if it goes on for a longer period of time. The worst type of neglect abuse is emotional neglect.

It is very hard to help teenagers that are abused because most often those children will try to avoid such subjects, you can rarely see an abused teen that wants to talk about what he has been through or to admit he is being abused. So the sad truth is that abuse is often discovered too late.
 

There are a large number of teenagers dealing with addiction today; in fact over 60% of teenagers have some sort of addiction. Don’t get confused, we are not talking only about alcohol, drug or tobacco addiction, there are many more types of addictions. The biggest problem with other types of addiction is not knowing that you have one, it is much harder to notice than with drug addiction. Most of the people don’t realize that the currently most active type of addiction is internet addiction. People are addicted to social media sites like MySpace, twitter or Facebook. They are literally spending over 15 hours online looking at the monitor. Unfortunately there are many more types of addictions.

One of the most common types of addiction and what we have to worry about the most is alcohol addiction. Many experts on this subject actually consider alcoholism to be a disease, well; there are differences of opinion on this matter. Alcoholism is very unpredictable, someone may drink for years and years and realize he is addicted and someone will get addicted the first time tasting alcohol.
Of course there is the always infamous drug addiction and with each drug comes different side effects and problems so this is really a topic of its own that requires special attention. Drug addiction is the most serious one as it may lead to fatalities very fast.

But the two most widely spread addiction types are not alcohol or drug addiction, its caffeine and tobacco addiction. Caffeine addiction is not a myth as many believe; caffeine stimulates central nervous system and alters the state of the body, which makes it addictive. Tobacco on the other hand is considered as the biggest menace among addictive pleasures, it doesn’t matter if you don’t smoke, a person next to you might be smoking and ruining your health in the process.

Other less known types of addictions include food addiction. This addiction can lead to heavy and serious medical problems. There is also the previously mentioned internet addiction, in fact it seem to be very popular. When I say popular I mean the fact that no one cares, no one is worried about it, it’s like it doesn’t exist at all. The fact that it is addiction tells people that there is something wrong with it. For example, our social skills will degrade over time, real life social skills. Another thing I personally don’t like about hanging too much online is that people are destroying their language, its LOL this, BRB that or TTL, and I actually heard people saying that out loud.

Addictions are much like we said and some of them are not even being taken serious just because of how it sounds, like relationship addiction for example. Do you believe me when I say there is such a thing like a relationship addiction and that it can border with mental issues in some cases. This addiction doesn’t have to be about a single person, it’s just a thirst and hungry desire to be with someone, never to be alone. When you think about it most of us has those fears, but are we addicted?

That is not all; you have the shopping addiction, which is the one where husbands wake up in the morning to find their wallets empty. That goes for teenagers with girlfriends, be careful, this is a really serious addiction that may cost you a lot of money. There are many more types of addictions, the fact is that we don’t recognize most of them and we don’t even want to admit that some of them exist, but at the same time we are supposed to fight them? That is really hard, first educate yourself than judge, if you can that is.
 

You all know how much a divorce of parents can influence a child; you’ve heard stories or experienced it yourself for sure. This is a great change and it can bring a great deal of stress to a child, and since the rate of divorce in the US is so great, half of the marriages end in divorce, there are a lot of stressed teenagers in the Us at the moment. So you can consider that half of the teenagers in the US are dealing with this issue every day, some get through it ok, with love and support, but some don’t. Teens are most vulnerable in this period and they may feel alone even though there are millions of teens going through the same situation as they are, it can seem like they are the only ones. So how do we go about helping our teen children cope with divorce and try to provide a normal life for them?

In a very large number of cases children get into their heads that they are somehow responsible for their parent’s divorce, in reality that is not anywhere near truth. It is really hard trying to explain a simple fact like that to an emotionally unstable, stressful and insecure child. Some teens will even go to their distance to think there is something they can do to make them change their minds and they try to change, please their parents and become someone else, which is one of the worst case scenarios, a kid trying too hard to be someone he is not. At that stage child’s mind is overburdened and emotions of all sorts surface, in this situation teenager can’t handle the stress and problems and dealing with divorce become a serious issue.

There are so called “positive” ways of going through a divorce for both partners and their children. But as parents you have to consider that as you will have a grieving period so will your child, and that is normal, if there is no sign of grief you should be worried. Let’s talk about some of the things that might help your child deal with the divorce.

Children most often fear the future, what will happen to them, will your relation change, and what else will change because of the divorce. The best thing you can do is sit down with your child and talk to him about everything, what will happen in the future and how your divorce will influence your child.

You should motivate your child to do something he loves, as concentrating on other things may be helpful, not just that, you have to give your child something to look forward to each day. That can be a great stress relief for teens.

Try making your child socialize a bit more, friends and a healthy social life will help him deal with divorce much easier. Try to make them understand that they can come up to you for help at any moment, that didn’t change with divorce, that will never change, make them understand that and show them love as you always did.

Every child will experience the divorce of his parents differently, some will change, some will experience problems, and some won’t even feel it happening. The fact is that kids can be strong, and the best benefit is that they are adaptive and they can amaze you with the speed in which they adjust to new situations. But remember one thing, as children need to recover from the divorce, so do you. Don’t postpone that or you will not be able to help your child and provide support and love.
 

Since the 80’s, teen obesity has been on the rise in the United States, and now in the 21st century we are facing serious issues when it comes to teen obesity. Even though it is a known problem talked about every day, most of the parents, in fact over 80% of parents think their children have a healthy and normal weight. The reality is different, over 35% of the teen population is obese, so that makes 20% of the parents wrong and not focused on their children.

Director of the Trust for America’s Health, Jeffrey Levi, stated that obesity is currently the biggest public health issue the United States has to face. The cat is that we are facing a serious issue, but the people of the United States somehow fail to see that truth. Whatever the reason for parents to ignore this, they will have to, because, this is an alarming issue that lead to much more complicated things.

People have to realize that obese is not chubby, and definitely not cute. The fact that a child is obese means that it has over 25% of body fat, and that is more than unhealthy. The fact is that obesity often leads to heart diseases and serious heart conditions that none of us would like to face. If that is not enough for people to worry, well obesity causes diabetes and strokes, in addition to many other life threatening problems. We need to be alarmed, every year over 300,000 people dies because of the issues and diseases caused by obesity, some wars took fewer lives than obesity in the United States alone for each year. If this didn’t frighten you then maybe the fact that children ages 10 to 13 who are obese have over 80% chances to become obese adults that will have all the problems that come with obesity!

So what can we do about it, how do we explain to our ten year old child that he needs to lose weight because his life might be at risk. We don’t, it is impossible to say that to a child and expect him to understand without giving him the fright of his life, so what you should do is play the fun card. By telling your child to go play ball and jump ropes for fun or because that way he will be able to do something he loves is the best way to motivate your kids for some physical activities that will result in losing weight.

Most of this is our fault, we allowed the computer era to crawl under our children’s skins making them uninterested into going outside like we used to. We allowed them to stay all day in the house playing games, chatting online, and doing all sorts of things that have no physical movement, as a result they got fat, unhealthy fat. This is the time to start changing all of that or we are going to face plenty of children ending up with heart conditions and other fatal diseases causes by obesity.
 

Stress is a big influence on teen behavior and it can be caused by many things ranging from moving to another place, divorce of parents, loss of a loved one, home troubles, school troubles and many other things. The biggest issue about teen stress is that it may lead to many other things such as depression, anxiety, behavior issues, drug and substance abuse, insomnia and plenty of other mental and medical issues.

There are dozens of things that cause stress for a teenager and most of them are hard to notice, so parents have a hard time dealing with this issue and helping their child. The things parents should keep a close eye on, related to stress sources, are too much homework and being over scheduled with school, sports and extracurricular activities in general. Having high standards set by parents or school for performance that may seem unrealistic and even fear of failure despite having great grades. In most cases the toughest source of stress can be a loss of a loved one, death in the family or divorce situations. Some teens can get stressed over news, natural disasters and such. Others may have a medical issue that causes stress on a daily basis, like diabetes, asthma or even a broken leg, a medical issue in the family is also a cause of stress for teens. And the last stress source is the most common one, financial trouble.

There are many ways teens can cope with stress and ways that parents can help them do that. The most common ones and the ones that bear the most importance are a good conversation, good night’s sleep and regular physical exercise, burning out energy always relieves mental issues and stress.

That is not all, other ways that can help your child relieve stress can go from more free time to relax to spending more time with your child and trying to sort things out in a calm and friendly fashion. Routines and rituals are a good way to relieve stress, regular family dinner is always a good way to relieve stress, routines can be an effective healer. As a parent you shouldn’t be the one causing stress for your child, so instead of pushing your child you should set realistic expectations for your child. At the same time you shouldn’t spare your child for the most basic things, dealing your child with responsibilities appropriate for his age will help him in the long run and it will help him develop his problem solving skills, which means less stress for small things.

Of course if you have trouble helping your child and you feel that his problem is getting out of hand it would be wise to seek professional help. Talking to the counselor or a pediatrician may do the trick, whatever you do you should do with a simple thought, will that affect my child and how. Once you figure that out try doing everything keeping in mind the best possible outcome and always setting some time aside for talking with your teen child.
 

Kids that run away are increasing each year, and runaway kids have become a very serious problem in the US. One out of seven kids ages 10 to 18 will run away from home at some point. That is an alarming fact, even more alarming is the fact that there are somewhere in between one and three million kids living on the streets in the United States. So you have to ask yourself, where are we heading, why is that happening, why do kids run away from home?

The fact is that kids that run away from home are not bad kids; most of the kids that run away have had a fight with their parents, or are ashamed of something they’ve done. Most of the kids run away because of a problem at home. Here is the list of the most common reasons why teens run away from home:

-    Divorce of parents or the arrival of a new stepparent
-    Abuse
-    Death situation in the family
-    New baby in the family
-    Family financial problems
-    Kids with substance abuse problems, alcohol or drugs
-    Kids of parents who have substance abuse problems
-    School trouble
-    Peer pressure
-    Failing at school or dropping out of school

The fact is that most kids have to deal with one or more of these problems, but not all of them manage to deal with it in a positive manner or in some other way, some of the kids feel like they have no other solution than to run away from home.

Most of the kids who think about running away think that all of their problems will be solved, there will be no one to bully them, no one to tell them what to do, they think of it as freedom. The fact is that those kids are going to face new kind of problems like not having money, a place to sleep or food to eat. In those situations people become desperate, so most kids will turn to crime, violence or just about anything so they can survive.

A big number of teens that run away from home get hooked on drugs and alcohol and some even get infected with severe diseases like AIDS. Kids who run away have to deal with much more problems than they did at home, although in some cases it may not seem like it. Thinking about the problem and a way to solve it is always the best solution, running away will most definitely get you in trouble, so think about the alternative.

Talking to a friend, a counselor or even your parents may change your situation significantly. But first and foremost, whenever you get the thought of running away, think long and hard about what is written here and what troubles and hardships await you if you do so. There is always another solution, you just have to find it, and the best way to find that solution is to reach for help.
 

If you go around the house all the time telling your teen child to do his homework, clean up his room, or now to get a summer job, you have a problem and the problem is that your teen child is not motivated enough. Just going around the house telling them what to do brings no effect, so you should already know better and stop repeating yourself and try some new things that will end up benefiting both you and your teen child.

First of all, don’t look at other teenagers and nag your teen child how they are all better than he is, some kids are just naturally more motivated than other, it’s normal. You need to understand better your kid, his moods and his personality, which may shed light on what to do. Some kids simply won’t do what you tell them when you tell them, they have their own timetable and there is nothing you can do to make them obey. The bottom line is that you shouldn’t expect of your teen child to listen all the time and be motivated all the time, which is simply impossible.
If you ever wondered why your teen child is sometimes unmotivated here are a few examples that might shed some light on this issue.

Some teen kids simply have a low self esteem and they don’t have big expectations of themselves. Maybe your child is surrounded by kids and peers with lack of ambition, which may influence his behavior and motivation. In some situations teen kids can’t see their true potential and they set low goals for themselves. Most teens simply don’t care and have their mind set on something else, so whatever you tell them won’t even reach them. Or your child is simply a rebel and does not respect authority.

So what should you do to change all of this? To get the idea you have to realize that there are two types of motivation, the one when you are about to do something enjoyable and fun and the one when you are looking forward to a reward. The first type of reward is something that has a longer life expectancy, in other words it will last longer while the second type of motivation usually flies out the window as soon as the reward is received. Let’s go over few things you need to implement in your kids raising in order for them to have the first type of motivation.

You need to teach your kids that whatever they do they need to finish it and see it to the end, quitting can easily become a habit. The next step is learning, they need to develop the tools needed for self education, they need to want to learn, and you can do so by providing them with things that will interest them and keep them asking questions, like computers, books and even travel when necessary. The next part is to try and influence who your child is friends with, we said that unmotivated people around your child may make him unmotivated, the same goes for the alternative. The most important part about motivation learning is to teach them how to set goals, let them start with small goals in order to achieve larger goals in life. Always try to interest your kids in things they are good at, that will get their self confidence and motivation up.

All of these things will help your teen child motivate himself in such ways that you won’t have to tell them to do something ever again. But you need to understand that pushing a kid too hard has its negative effects, kids will have to give up some things, be sure they give up the wrong things and not the right ones.