by Childrens Hospital Boston staff on September 19, 2011
When teenagers stonewall adults, there can be many issues leading to the behavior
By Sarah Teasdale, MD, EdM pediatric hospitalist at Children’s Hospital Boston
It was near midnight about a year ago when I noticed a gaunt young man in his early twenties walking toward me in the Emergency Department. It was a young man who, about a decade earlier, had threatened to kill me.
For nearly ten years prior to becoming a physician I was a high school teacher. That particular July, I was teaching English in summer school for students who had failed the class during the regular school year. It was a group of 15 surly teenagers ages 14 to 19, beaten down by a system in which they could not—or chose not—to succeed.
The young man—I’ll call him Andre—was my student that summer. He was a gangly, thin 15-year-old who often wore the same ill-fitting clothes day after day, rarely made eye contact and showed a level of fatigue in the early morning that was extreme, even for a teenager. Whenever I tried to talk to him, he would simply say he was “a’right.” He meant: Stop asking.
So I stopped asking. In doing so, I lost a chance to help him. Full story »
Imagine you just caught your 16 year-old smoking pot. The yelling and grounding threats have quieted, but the tension in the room remains heavy.
“You just don’t understand how it is,” she mumbles without making eye contact.
“Yes I do… and that’s the problem,” you respond, almost immediately regretting it.
“Why, did you smoke pot when you were my age,” your daughter asks, looking directly at you for the first time in over an hour.
Your heart skips a beat. Suddenly the conversation has taken a whole new direction. Since she was old enough to understand the concept, you’ve strived for total honesty from your child. In return, you’ve tried to be as frank and open with her as you could. Now you’re presented with a moral dilemma you weren’t prepared for: do you lie about having smoked pot as a teenager so as to not justify her behavior, or admit to it and risk looking like a hypocrite? Full story »
A cutting-edge tool called a chromosomal microarray could help make genetic testing for disabilities more accurate and help explain their causes. David Miller, MD, PhD, clinical geneticist in the Division of Genetics at Children’s Hospital Boston talked to Thrive about the findings, and what they mean for the future of genetic testing.
Over 40% of teen drinkers age 15-17 get their alcohol directly from a parent, or parent's house
This weekend Children’s Hospital Boston’sCenter for Adolescent Substance Abuse Research (CeASAR) launched teen-safe.org, a website designed to offer parents both medical and practical information about the dangers of teen drinking and drug use, and offers tips on how to prevent drinking and substance abuse among their own teenage children.
Hosted by John Knight, MD, and Sion Harris, PhD, CPH, the program has already been adopted by the Milton public school system, which is making the website required homework… for parents.
Adults who have children graduating this year will be encouraged to visit the site, learn about the many risk factors associated with teenage drinking and substance abuse, then complete a short quiz that tests their knowledge of this very real and dangerous problem. When finished with the test parents receive a certificate of completion, which they are asked to send into school with their child as part of his or her “check-out” process for graduation.
Parents accused of hosting a teenage drinking party in North Andover were arrested late Friday evening, after police found several empty beer cans and intoxicated minors on their property.
The incident was the third case this month where North Andover police officers busted up an underage drinking party, and the second case where a parent has been arrested in connection with underage drinking.
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