There are many factors which contribute to the Deadly Driving Season. Although teen drinking remains a major contributor to crashes, peer pressure, distraction, speeding and driving mistakes are even more deadly.

It is recommended that parents have a series of conversations with their youngster about safe driving and crash prevention. These conversations should begin early, even before the teen receives a driving permit and should be ongoing after he or she becomes a licensed driver.

Parents can add to the effectiveness of these safe driving talks by helping their teens develop a healthy sense of self-esteem and a strong resistance to peer pressure. It is essential that the teen driver be able to feel comfortable saying NO to friends who may be more interested in excitement than safety. Adolescents can be risk takers, and many can encourage their driving friends to speed up, weave in and out of high speed highways, not wear seat belts, or allow more kids in a car than is safe. Groups of adolescents are known to act more impulsively than individuals. Each additional passenger can increase the risk of unsafe driving.

Encourage your teen to understand that nothing is more important than safety. It’s OK to be different than your friends if you are keeping yourself and your passengers safe. Teens need to know that it really isn’t cool to put themselves or others at risk and that terrible things could happen if they don’t give their driving 100% responsible attention at all times.

Talking to your child is so important…If you are interested in more information on helping you teen develop a strong resistance to peer pressure, look at the Charge Up Your Confidence® Tool Kit, in which young people learn to recognize how they think and feel and learn to be comfortable with themselves, even if their views are different than their friends. Help make this driving season a safe and healthy one.

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Performance anxiety doesn’t just affect professional actors, musicians, athletes or scholars. Persistent worry and fear about performance and competence affects children and teens too. The fears are not always based in reality: oftentimes the young person is well-prepared. The girl with Broadway dreams knows her lines for the play, and the young music student has been practicing Mozart for months. Nonetheless kids with performance anxiety can experience mounting dread as their event approaches. Even though it may not be initially based in reality, performance anxiety can negatively affect performance. The child freezes, the mind goes blank, and the youngster feels as if he blew his big chance.

Without question, practice, rehearsal and study can help minimize performance fears. Reassurance and encouragement from parents, teachers and coaches are also unquestionably helpful.

Learning a set of skills to manage anxiety can be a valuable tool and can protect young people from escalating performance anxiety. For example, relaxation methods, imagery techniques, accurate thinking and positive self-statements can soothe the young actor, musician, athlete and serious student. In addition, self-esteem boosting skills such as handling self-criticism and mistakes, as well as self-reward and focusing on one’s strengths provide a real boost to confidence, keeping performance anxiety at manageable levels.

Powerful anxiety management skills and confidence building strategies can be quickly learned and mastered in the Charge Up Your Confidence® and the Outsmart Your Worry Tool Kit for Kids®. The tools are effective, but not time-consuming, so learning them doesn’t take time away from play practice, music lessons, practice games or studying. Worry management and confidence skills are a great adjunct to managing performance anxiety, enabling children to focus on their passion, not their fear.

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Some teens may wonder if they can handle being on their own because it’s a brand new experience. They may worry if it’s normal to have concerns about leaving home.

It’s understandable for middle school or even high school students to question their capabilities at handling independence. Ultimately, the decision to leave home for the first time should be up to the adolescent.

Some teens may not like to admit that the safety of home provides comfort and security. But it does for many teens, and being on one’s own even for brief periods of time can be threatening. If a teen has lingering doubts about leaving home, confidence-building skills plus anxiety management skills can prepare them. Self-esteem skills such as dealing with self-doubts, criticism, mistakes, embarrassment and imperfection can help adolescents feel stronger before taking that first big step. Similarly, they can acquire tools to minimize anxiety by practicing accurate thinking and calming behavior skills prior to leaving.

Teens today are masters at a wide range of skills, from test-taking skills, time management skills, complex math and writing skills, athletic skills and creative skills. Emotional life skills can be learned and perfected too. The High School/Middle School Edition of Charge Up Your Confidence® Tool Kit for Kids and Outsmart Your Worry Tool Kit for Kids® helps teens learn emotional skills to successfully handle being away from home.

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An anxious and fearful approach to life tends to run in families, due to the delicate balance between genetics and behaviors at home. Research consistently shows that an anxious child has at least one anxious parent. Excessive worry may not affect every child in the family, but it might derail the development of one of the children.

If you are a parent with worries and anxieties that may be contributing to your child’s fears, there is something you both can do to break this worry cycle. Together, you and your child can learn strategic tools to Outsmart Your Worry. Tools that focus on accurate thoughts and calming behaviors help get a grip on out of control worries.

Imagine minimizing the Worried What If’s that bother your child at bedtime or keep you up nights. You and your child can both learn to stop exaggerating worries about situations that usually never happen. Your kid can stop wondering, What if someone breaks into my house at night and takes me away? You could stop thinking, What if I’m not there when my child needs me at school or camp?

If you have a worried child ages 5 to 11, get The Outsmart Your Worry Tool Kit for Kids® (Elementary School Edition). It’s quick and fun, and learning worry management skills together can be a powerful experience. If your tween or teen worries about social pressures, failure, or something bad happening the family, the High School/Middle School Edition of the Worry Tool Kit can help. Your older child may prefer to learn worry-fighting tools independently. That’s OK too, because you can quickly get up to speed and practice the tools yourself as well.

The key is remembering that there are smart and strong ways to manage worry and prevent it from ruling your life and the happiness of your child. Here’s more information that you may find helpful:

-Mommy, Daddy Don’t Leave Me!

-A Tree is Blocking My Driveway and I’m Scared

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Many girls would never use Internet sites to assess their physical attractiveness. However, the question of their own physical appeal may loom large in their minds. When news is breaking about ugliness rating sites, parents can take this opportunity to discuss important aspects of beauty with their daughters.

For example, helping your daughter set realistic goals about her body, such as healthy eating and healthy physical activity is a great topic of conversation. This should also be paired with conversations about inner beauty, such as developing one’s passions, empathy, kindness and respect of self and others. Don’t underestimate the importance of developing a strong character along with fostering a strong body. Remember that girls are listening to you, even if they shrug off the conversation.

If you sense that your daughter’s confidence is shaky, this may be a good time for her to learn self-esteem boosting skills. Girls can learn smarter strategies to deal with criticism from others, negative self-criticism, imperfection and embarrassment. All of these skills are necessary to deal with the explosion of the ugliness rating craze. Girls can keep confidence steady and strong and value their own opinions, as they focus on their true strengths.

To read more about building confidence and concerns about physical attractiveness, check out these articles:
I Hate How I Look;
Rumors: Building Confidence Helps Kids Handle Them;
I Wish I Were Popular

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Cards and chocolates, romantic gifts, and emails, IMs and texts filled with love, are the hallmarks of Valentine’s Day. Young people who are the recipients of these romantic recognitions often feel good about themselves, while those who are alone or single during this romantic time can feel sad. Low self-esteem and social anxiety can follow.

Creating a healthy sense of self-esteem is an effective way to prevent damage when young people don’t receive the romantic attention they would like on a media fueled Valentine’s Day. The Charge up Your Confidence® Tool Kit for Kids (High School/Middle School Edition) can help. Using tools such as Five Great Moments, Pattern of Positives and Getting to Know Me, kids learn to enhance self-esteem and create a positive identity. Other tools in the Tool Kit teach them to think in constructive ways and develop the skills so critical in developing and maintaining social confidence.

Help your child sail through this day with a smile. Feeling good about oneself as a unique and valuable person regardless of relationship status is a wonderful goal.

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Imaginative children as well as those prone to anxiety can weave pieces of frightening stories into a terrifying scenario. They may worry, What if something bad happens to me and my family? Since worry often intensifies at nighttime, exhausted parents are at wits end to come up with a creative plan to stop their kids’ worry from escalating.

The Tool Kits for Kids team are experts in combating worry and have designed a clever approach to help children and teens become stronger and smarter than their worry. Children often worry about events that rarely happen, yet they keep thinking about it and rehearsing this negative information in their mind. The Popcorn Tool is one of twenty powerful tools from the Outsmart Your Worry Tool Kit for Kids® that helps kids stop obsessing about unlikely situations. The No More What If’s tool shows children how to stop fear from going wild. The 10 Minute Rules tool is designed to help adolescents block anxious thoughts from spreading. These tools and more help young people when they are worried and scared. They also provide parents with much needed strategies at their fingertips to short circuit their kids’ worry.

If you have a worried child or teen, you may be interested in the following information: Mommy, Daddy Don’t Leave Me; My Neighbor’s House Was Robbed; Do You Have A Child Who Worries About Death?

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Many children identify with Rudolph. Most kids have been laughed at or made fun of by other children at some point in their lives. Some kids are targets of chronic bullying. Roughly 10-15% of today’s kids are the victims of severe bullying. Our friend Rudolph undoubtedly falls into that category. Another 10-15% of kids today do the bullying. Many of Rudolph’s fellow reindeers taunted and teased him relentlessly.

Rudolph manged to handle the bullying, staying strong and resilient. In the famous story, something magical and deserving happens. Rudolph saves the day by steering the reindeers one stormy night. His red-nose, once the object of scorn, now saves the day.
Rudolph remains an enduring model of resilience, which is but one of the many reasons that the story is so compelling.

If you have a child who begins to doubt herself or question his strengths because of criticism from others, you can help the child be more confident and strong. The Finding Your Hidden Treasures tool from the Charge Up Your Confidence® Tool Kit for Kids is one of 20 tools that helps kids recognize and value their positive qualities. Just like Rudolph, all children have unique attributes that make them shine.

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The whole family is in turmoil when a child has died or will be dying soon. Telling the surviving child some of the truth in an age appropriate way may be the hardest conversation parents will ever have with their child. It must be done with the utmost tenderness, the utmost respect. Be prepared for questions as time goes by. Here are a few of the questions a sibling may express.

Why did this happen? How come it didn’t happen to me?
I’ve always wrestled with my brother. Who can I do that with now?
Who will I play with? Who will I fight with?
Was this my fault?
Can you have another baby? I need another sister.

While discussing the loss of a child, it’s important to stress that the child who died will always be an important part of the family. There can’t be a replacement. You could say, You can always remember and love your brother/sister forever.

Surviving siblings have a tough road ahead. Children have to integrate the loss into their lives. It’s particularly difficult because moms, dads, grandparents and extended family are grieving too. There are grieving groups, weekend grief camps and professionals who can help the child and family deal with the loss.

There is another resource to help brave siblings deal with the loss of a brother or sister. The Build Up Your Resilience Tool Kit for Kids™ helps children and teens learn strategies to heal and get stronger, while they are walking through the grief process. Very often siblings have very intense feelings after a loss such as guilt, deep sadness, anger, fear and anxiety. The resilience tools help manage these feelings carefully. Siblings learn how to keep their self-esteem intact, deal with frightening dreams and images, develop a longer term perspective about their future and retain a sense of hopefulness. Kids can keep the Tool Kit right next to them in their bedroom and review the resilience tools whenever they need to feel better.

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What do elementary school aged children from 5 to 11 think about? Here are just a few of their concerns:

I’m really bad at math.
Some kids get left back if they don’t do their work. I’m scared that could happen to me.I’m the only one in my class who can’t tell time.
I have too much homework.
I don’t want to go to school.

There are many excellent opportunities both in and outside of school to provide reinforcements for learning. Some kids get help with reading, decoding and writing. Others receive skill-building in math. Still others have organizational tutors. Some parents spend hours helping their children with homework. There may be nightly tantrums, arguments and punishments. Some kids are plain exhausted from all these interventions.

Children also need emotional strategies to manage the anxieties, worries and fears that consume their young brains. Now, kids can use effective tools to counter worried thoughts and build confidence. It won’t be another source of added stress because the tools take minutes a day to learn. Children will need a little bit of practice to make sure the anxiety-busting and confidence-boosting strategies become a natural part of their lives. That’s where you come in.

Kids can learn to block worried What If’s, replace anxious thoughts with competent and realistic thoughts, use their mind and body to stay calm, and prevent worries about situations that usually never occur. When children feel steadier and secure, they learn better. To read more about managing worries about school, check out these articles:
Afraid of Giving School Presentations
Going Back To School is an Important Transition for All Kids
Math Drives Me Crazy

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