Skin Care Know How

Keeping your skin clear, healthy, and protected has to start early in life.  If you are an adult with children and you don’t take care of your own skin, now is the time to begin.

Your skin is the largest organ in your body,  is essential to good health and hygiene and good habits should begin in childhood so they will continue throughout life.  If you encourage and model good cleansing behaviors for your children, you are giving them the gift of health.  Because childhood progresses  into the teen years when the body is changing rapidly, knowing which cleansers, toners, and moisturizers to use, how to apply sunscreen and develop good routines is something parents can promote.

Emotional health can be affected when a teen is faced with skin problems. Support and encouragement in good hygiene for the entire body can give your child confidence and a higher self-esteem.  Teens don’t automatically know how to care for their changing bodies and learning from other teens is not very effective, so parents should play an important role in guiding their children towards an early start in body care.  Both boys and girls need to understand how to maintain clean skin and hair, what products that are appropriate to use, and they should be aware of their own personal attributes such as dry or oily skin.

Socially, all children want to be around others who are clean, smell fresh, and are well kept physcially.  Parents want to give their child every tool required for success in life.  If children learn from an early age how to take care of themselves, they will have an easier time when they are teens and there is a natural tendency for an increase in skin care.  For some parents, there is a feeling of inadequacy in this area.  If that is the case then find classes for yourself or your child or teen that promote health and hygiene, help them discover products to use and learn other ways to get through the teenage years successfully.

 

Don’t think this is not important, because it is and for many reasons.  Healthy skin and healthy hygiene will reduce many barriers to any person’s daily life at school, work and play.  Give your child the advantage with knowledge, insight, and training for a step up toward finding success.



 

The Teenager Technology Talk

Both parents and kids have come to depend upon technology to function in daily life.  It is amazing in so many ways.  We can stay in touch with each other, communicate with photos and images and find information quickly.  There are, however, negative aspects that teens whose brains are yet to fully develop, must choose to avoid.  It is similar to a tight wire act for parents.

 
Balancing giving your teen independence but promoting healthy technology behaviors is tricky.  To be perfectly frank, balancing any issue with a teen is tricky and here’s why.  A study at the McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, researchers studied a teen’s and adult’s ability to identify emotions using images.  They used M.R.I.’s to watch the parts of the brain that worked during these tests.  The part of the brain that reacted in adults was the frontal cortex often called the CEO of the brain.  The part of the brain that activated in teens was the amygdala, which is more instinctable and reflexive.  The teen brain reacted more often without thought.  No parent is surprised by this information.

What it does indicate is that teens have to be given more instruction in how they react to their environment.  With technology a mere flick of the thumb, an off the wall comment, or a slight push from peers can create an action with technology that creates a huge problem for the teen.  Teens are so focused on being part of the crowd, included, accepted, and doing what is cool that they tend to be impulsive to make those choices.  Sending an inappropriate image or text can result in unintended consequences, leave teens open to what they feel is an anonymous communication, and cross the line between legal and illegal actions unknowingly.

With that in mind here are some things parents should do and discuss with their teens that will support appropriate techy behavior and cell phone etiquette:

#1.  Do only those things you would like done to yourself.

#2.  Don’t text when angry.

#3.  Put your privacy before anything else.

#4.  Remember that whatever you put on line, stays on line.

#5.  Anything can go viral.

#6.  Don’t communicate anything you don’t want your parents to see because they will.

#7.  Don’t talk so loudly that others can hear your conversations.

#8.  Don’t allow phones in the bedroom when your teen should be sleeping

#9.  For every hour on line spend one hour off line.

#10. Don’t allow phones during meal times – talk to each other.