January 1998

'Twas the Night After Christmas

With all the excitement of the holidays, a case of the post-holiday blues may be inevitable, even for preschoolers. The more your child's routines change during the holidays, the harder the transition back to everyday life will be. But there are ways to minimize your child's distress:

Promote consistency during exciting times. For example, don't allow your child endless treats or let bedtime get too late, even if the tree lights are twinkling and friends are over.

Set a time frame for special events. When you tell your child about a holiday happening, make the end of the event part of your description. You put a definite limit on the occasion when you say, "Grandma is coming for two nights. She is going home the day after Christmas." This prepares your child for the beginning as well as the end of the celebration." The goodbyes_and a return to normal_become an anticipated part of the holiday.

Make fun plans for the future. Discuss an upcoming trip or a birthday party a few months down the road. This will help take the focus off what's over and place it on the good things to come.

Teens Want and Need Guidance

When you bring up the subject of adolescence in a room full of parents, there's usually a collective groan. People roll their eyes and laugh nervously. It seems as if almost everyone anticipates this stage with fear and trepidation as if World War III were about to begin.

It's true that the stakes are higher for adolescents; what kids do and the choices they make at this stage have a big impact on their lives. There is also the knowledge that the dangers today are more virulent than in other eras. And, of course, there are some inevitable tensions between parents and their adolescent kids. But research is showing us that we need to rethink our negative attitudes about teenagers because, in many ways, these attitudes can become self-fulfilling prophesies. In fact, adolescents do not hate their parents; they are not unpleasant, heartless creatures. Here are some suggestions for parents:

Stay involved with your kids. Experts who have studied adolescents all say the same thing: Teenagers want their parents' guidance. They do not require the same kind of supervision they needed when they were younger, but children still need to know that their parents are paying attention and that they will act as a safety net when things go wrong. As with most things, it's a matter of balance: parents have to hold on but not too tightly. Even when their kids are ignoring them, parents need to stay involved. Knowing more about how adolescents develop is helpful to parents. When we become aware of what it is that makes adolescents behave in certain ways, we realize that our kids aren't just "out to get us" and we can avoid many power struggles.

Teenagers think differently. And you should know that it's not just kids' bodies that are changing, it's their minds as well. As children enter adolescence, they develop an increased capacity for abstract reasoning. This new ability makes them think about the "big" issues that affect society such as violence, disease, poverty and environmental problems. On the one hand, this can make them feel frustrated and angry. On the other hand, as early teens develop a social conscience they become willing to support a worthy cause or do voluntary work.

Closer to home, the ability to reason abstractly makes adolescents more aware of the hypocrisy they see around them; they become critical when their parents and other adults say one thing and do another. Similarly, kids' increased capacity for relative thinking makes them test limits and challenge parental authority. The idea that everything is relative suddenly makes every rule subject to debate.

Parents are changing too. A lot of what goes on at this age is obviously happening within kids, but a lot of what goes wrong at this time is a result of changes within parents when their children reach adolescence. Seeing kids grow up makes parents re-examine their own lives_to have a sort of midlife crisis, no matter what their age. In fact, all along we've thought that a midlife crisis happens to some adults around the age of 40. But it turns out that midlife crisis has nothing to do with the age of the adult and everything to do with the age of the oldest child in the family. It is set off by the entry of a family's firstborn into adolescence.

Parents' attitudes toward teenagers also change and often become more negative. It's not easy to accept kids' growing independence. Dads who have been less involved in their kids lives may feel a sense of loss, regretting the time they have not spent together. Moms who were more involved with kids on a day-to-day basis may feel shut out as they turn more to their friends. The result of these factors is that parents often pull away from their children, which in turn makes their kids withdraw from them. They assume that they can't influence their kids anymore and don't put in the extra effort to maintain contact with them. Parental withdrawal is the prime characteristic of families where adolescents get in trouble.

The impact of positive parent/child relationships. There is agreement among all the researchers that the family remains the most important vehicle to promote values, success in school and confidence in peer relationships. At its best, "the family functions as a 'comfort zone,' a place or relationship that serves as a home base out of which to operate. Kids who have this "comfort zone" feel a lot more secure, calm and confident. One common link among all the successful adolescents he studied was that they had positive relationships with their parents. Psychologist Ron Taffel sums it up when he says, "Even as kids reach adolescence, they need more than ever for us to watch over them...Adolescence is not about letting go. It's about hanging on during a very bumpy ride."

Source: "Work & Family Life," Balancing Job and Personal Responsibilities, Vol. II, No. 11, Nov. 1997.

Memory is the Key

What's the key to good grades? Memory. If you can't remember facts, you can't begin to think, understand, reason and make decisions. Memorizing can be fun. Unfortunately, most students find it boring. That's because they're not using their imaginations to help them increase their memory skills in enjoyable ways. Students can improve their memories_and their grades_quickly. Here are the steps for students of all ages to improve memory.

When Memorizing Facts...

Create strange, funny mental pictures when you need to remember a fact. A student who can create an outlandish picture in his/her mind and associate that picture with a fact, can remember almost anything. Don't use logical, reasonable pictures. They don't work because we forget the ordinary. Example: Japan's Mount Fuji is about 12,365 feet high. Mental image: A mountain made up of millions of calendars. Calendars have 12 months, or 365 days. Thus, the fact that Mount Fuji is about 12,365 feet high is easily remembered.

Associate new facts with something already known. Everyone says, Oops, that reminds me, although we often don't know how our minds made the connection. We associate all the time without even realizing it.

Key: Learn to make these connections consciously. Example: Seeing a gigantic COW covering the western part of the US reminds us that California, Oregon, and Washington are the three westernmost states in the lower 48.

Memorize lists by linking the items together in your mind. As before, use ridiculous mental pictures to connect two things at a time. As you add on, one word should lead to the next. Example: Take the random list lamp, paper, bottle, bed, fish, telephone. Begin by imagining a lamp. Next form a ridiculous image of a lamp and paper, perhaps imagine writing on the lamp as if it were a piece of paper. Once this mental picture is formed, find a way to associate paper and bottle, such a paper pouring out of a bottle. Continue on down the list, imagining the bottle sleeping in a bed...the bed fishing...the fish talking on the phone...and so on. With practice, there is really no limit to how many things we can remember using this technique.

When Memorizing Language...

Break down big words into smaller words. Form a mental picture, and then associate it with their meanings. Example: Sycophant sounds like sick of ant. The meaning of a sycophant is a flatterer who seeks favors, overly servile. Imagine an ant that keeps flattering you and being overly servile and you're sick of it_sick of ant.

Use sound alikes (substitute words) to remember technical jargon, uncommon words and foreign languages. Often in school, students are called upon to remember things they cannot visualize. Example: A list of minerals in order of their hardness will include words such as gypsum and calcite. These are not words we can see the way we can see shoe or lamp. Think about what the words sound like. Then use this word or words to form a mental picture. Example: Gypsum sounds like gypsy. Calcite sounds like Cal's height. If gypsum is followed by calcite on the list, they can be liked by imagining a gypsy measuring the height of someone named Cal. Useful: To remember masculine and feminine articles (le and la, for example), picture la as la la la (singing). Then simply make sure that one of the items in the picture is singing. That is the cue that it's a feminine word. If nothing in the mental picture is singing, it's masculine.

Example: La manche means sleeve in French. Picture someone munching on a gigantic sleeve and singing.

Spell words correctly by finding an easy helper word within them. Examples: Never beLIEve a LIE...ALL lines are parALLel...you ERR when you intERRupt. If the troublesome word doesn't contain a helper word, use an association to help remember its spelling. Example: Dessert comes after dinner (double consonants in each word).

Source: Harry Lorayne, Bottom Line Personal. Vol. 18, No. 21, Nov. 1, 1997

Herbert G. Lingren, PhD
Extension Family Life Specialist