Raising a Successful Teenager Today: Parenting Made Easy – How to Have a New Teen in Thirty Days

Why Parenting Has Gotten More Difficult

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How much time a child spends online is a thorny issue, as there are no official guidelines. Try to keep screen use in a public place as far as possible, and watch for more general signs of distress. I recommend focusing on times of day; for example no screens before school, no screens at mealtimes, no screens at bedtime. U ltimately experts agree that what parents are facing is a matter of damage limitation. Less time on screens is going to mean less time absorbing inappropriate content, advertising messages, inane celebrity gossip, bullying and sexualisation.

Of course teenagers have always wanted make-up, but in the past you only saw the adverts on TV, or in teen magazines. Again, less time online equals less exposure.

T he simple answer is to put in place a screen curfew, and be bold enough to stick to it. Everyone agrees that one of the biggest issues with phone use is their ability to disrupt sleep. S ocial media channels are designed to keep us engaged, to fight for our attention in a crowded media landscape. An hour before that time, parents should remove all screens.

Sleep is vital to health and well-being.

Stay cool and stay strong. The worst thing to do is lose your temper. If the row is hotting up, take a five-second break.

Let them sleep in

M andy Saligari, addiction expert and founder of the treatment centre Charter Harley Street , says: I hear stories of parents wrestling with kids to get phones, and all that does is make the situation worse. I t helps to give a warning. Tell the child they have half an hour of screen time left, then you will be taking the phone away. Or allow screen time as a reward for homework. The more you talk to your children about your reasons for limiting their phone and computer use, the easier it will be.

And try to do it early; the older they are, the harder it is to enforce limits. That the beautiful photos they see on Instagram might look real, but have often been doctored. Explain that nobody posts a sad, lonely or unflattering picture, and that one picture never tells the whole story.

S oon after her son Oskar joined Year 7 in secondary school, Anna Golawski, a coach at Parent Gym, was shocked to get a call from the head teacher. Up to this point the chat had been friendly, it was a large group of them in Year 7, and they chatted about football and the like.

I n the playground those sorts of comments might be laughed off, or sorted out at the time, but post them on giant messaging groups, facilitated by social media platforms like WhatsApp, and the taunts feel far more humiliating because they reach so many so quickly and are written down in black and white. We confiscated his phone for a month, and I noticed he was suddenly more engaged in football and board games. W hen I gave my daughter Louisa my old iPhone in Year 6, with no sim, I naively thought she would just play a few games.

It’s never been easy being a teenager. But is this now a generation in crisis?

When she started Year 7, the chat groups became less benign, with girls calling each other unpleasant names and ranking each other. It started as a joke, but ended up being very upsetting for those who found themselves placed at the bottom. Dr Richard Graham says this kind of behaviour can crop up at stressful moments for children: Schools have an opportunity here to smoke this out, and to talk to them about what is right. S chools are doing a good job of educating children about online safety, but as yet there seems to be little advice given on how to behave as a good digital citizen.

If you can, try to avoid giving your child a phone until secondary school. Streaks are the darkly ingenious way the platform keeps your teen engaged. Snapchat like all social media channels is addictive. Being a teenager is difficult enough without worrying about your social standing. News, MailOnline and more without subscribing, which might explain the skew in interest towards the Kardashians rather than, say, North Korea. S napchat and Instagram is also how young people communicate. It can also spread bad information, not to mention product placement.

This is a moment for setting limits and a discussion to encourage critical thinking. Teens are savvy and once you explain to them that they are a consumer pawn for internet giants to make money out of advertising and data, and that many of the influenc-ers they follow are paid to promote products, they start to wise up.

L ast week a head teacher at a London primary school told me he had observed that boys who were playing online games brought increased aggression into the playground. Her son is now 21, but his gaming addiction started in primary school, and by the time he was 14 he was gaming for up to five hours a day. But they told us it was normal, so after our meeting we thought we were maybe overreacting.

We tried to understand what he was getting out of it.

Highlights

Well, he was rather good at it, it was giving him street cred with his friends, and playground recognition. Y et the addiction got worse and he became increasingly withdrawn and aggressive. Desperate, Amber and her husband tried turning their Wi-Fi off at But their son would sneak in when they were asleep, and by the morning it was back on. Our most popular products based on sales. Best Sellers in Parenting Teenagers. Eating Well When You're Expecting. The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Miracle Morning for Parents and Families: How to Raise an Adult: Parenting Teens with Love and Logic: Preparing Adolescents for Responsible Adulthood.

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