Renewing a Relationship With Your Teen/Adult Child – Five Activities You Can Share

You’ve reconciled, begun the process of reconciliation or maybe just hope to see it one day. In the meantime you have a desire to renew that relationship with your teen or adult child. It’s a tricky process at times. Sharing in activity can begin the warming process in a non-threatening way. I’m always on the lookout for ideas that are easy and neutral.

There are things that I do with my kids that might interest you.

- Texting – a good way to connect without being intrusive. I’ve used texts to send invites to family gatherings and to just ‘check in’.
- Reading together – read the same book as your kid and then chat about it. This can be formal or not. I’ve been gifted with books my kids have read. Our library has an Everybody Reads program – free books and discussion groups – a great connecting possibility.
- Writing – some of my kids are story tellers, just like me. I’ve put one story on a blog for them to read. One son and I have an improve story that we write together. It’s goofy and fun. It could be serious and thought provoking.
- Sharing meals – getting together for a lunch or coffee date – keep it short with light conversation at first.
- Work outs – a couple of us chat about our workout routines whenever we connect up with one another. How’s the running going? Getting to the gym? I’ve played tennis with one child (okay, chased a tennis ball). It was fun and got us talking.

These are five activities that have worked for me, over time. Have you got some that you can share with us? Are there activities that you aspire to with your child?
Email me at marimberta@gmail.com and I’ll post your great offerings!

New Drug in Town

It has actually been around since 2006. An import from China and Korea, it is legally available over the internet and at a head shop near you.
It is known as K2, Spice, Genie and Zohai.
At the beginning of April, one of our StandUp Reps from Kansas mentioned their state and Missouri have moved to consider new legislation concerning the herb - a shock to those of us who had never heard of it before. but before the month was out, police officers were on the news in Oregon warning of the adverse effects they have been seeing with the use of K2/Spice - seizures and heart palpitations so severe as to require hospitalization.
K2 is advertised as an entirely natural mix of herbs and spices (in many scents/flavors) and a nicotine-free, legal high. It is often called an 'aromatic potpourri'. But, in reality, the marijuana-type high that users get comes from a synthetic cannabinoid four or five times as potent as THC, the main psychoactive substance in cannabis, which is sprayed on the mix of plants.
Batches have been seized in Sweden and Switzerland. Germany, Austria and France banned the drug earlier this year. The United Kingdom is considering a similar ban.
As it currently stands in most of the United States, a person of any age could walk into a shop and buy this product. So parents, pay attention!
What to look for: sold in 3 gram packets for $20-$50 (in some of the pix they look like foil condom packets), used like traditional marijuana (joints and pipes), undetectable in drug tests.
What users are saying about the downside of K2/Spice:
...Think about the chemicals you're inhaling!
...I had a horrible experience! Extreme paranoia, sadness, guilt and fear. It lasted for hours and I thought it would never end.
...Yep, really paranoid and felt like throwing up.
(Edited for content/length.)

Moving On In StandUp Parenting

The introduction process for StandUp Parenting usually takes two weeks. Why? We want our parents to get a focused start. We want them to be successful!
The first week we cover the topics presented below in Getting Started. The second week, Moving On, covers the essentials of successful StandUp Parenting in more depth.
With your Guide you’ll work on formulating a strategy for change in your family. This strategy will include learning how to motivate change in your child. Once again, we use assessment sheets. You’ll get ideas for consequences and rewards for specific age groups (pre/mid/late teen, adult).
Taking action to influence a change in behavior - both in yourself and your child is the next step. Once we cover these bases, it’s time to make a Plan for Moving On. We assess our past behavior and construct a plan for the week to come. We get support from group members (and give support, as well) to enhance our success.
The next step? Come back the next week – report, assess our progress and make a new plan.
Are you interested? Come join us!

Getting Started With StandUp Parenting

What can you expect the first time you attend a StandUp Parenting Support Group?
First, once you find a group, please visit at any time – no reservation is necessary. And your first visit is free.
A Getting Started Guide will take all new parents into a separate room for an introduction to our organization’s guiding principles and an overview of our program and practices. You’ll have the opportunity to fill out assessments that will aid you in focusing in on the needs of your family and allow you to leave the group with a plan to begin putting into practice.
Specifically, you’ll take a look at the behaviors of your adolescent, teen or adult child that brought you to the program. Further, you’ll take a look at your own parenting practices. You’ll examine the need for change and how it can take place.
Of course, change is difficult without all interested adult parties being on the same page. We’ll explore how you might facilitate this process in your life.
Finally, we’ll look at how to motivate the young person in your life.
By the end of the meeting you will have a good idea if StandUp Parenting is the place for you!
The bonus? You’ll leave with a plan for the week and support to carry out that plan.
Come join us!

Congratulations, Pegi!

Lenexa woman honored for parent-support work
By JOE LAMBE
The Kansas City Star

Make no mistake, Pegi Denton of Lenexa is against dropping off troubled teens with the state, as some parents did in Nebraska before it recently changed its safe-haven law.“We don’t have any throwaway kids,” she said.But sometimes, you do have to get their attention.After all else failed decades ago with their 16-year-old son, Denton and her husband put the teenager into a psychiatric ward for months.Today, that boy is grown up and has a good job. He thinks his parents did the right thing for him.“It takes a courageous act of love to put the relationship at risk,” the son said.Amid that turmoil 26 years ago, Denton founded her first parents’ support group, which was an effort to set firm limits for children.Now 76, Denton is national program director for another volunteer group she founded, StandUp Parenting. It has groups in nine states, including three in Johnson County and another in Liberty.If a teen refuses to get out of bed to attend school, he could awake to the clinking cups, saucers and chatter of the “breakfast club” — Denton and friends sitting in the bedroom sipping tea.They tell the offender they plan to watch him sleep, and school suddenly seems like a better option.If a child is causing trouble at home, he might be sent to the home of another member to stay for a while, she said. Typically the troublemaker is polite while in exile and often returns to be better behaved at home.“I think teenagers are delightful when they’re not your own,” she said. “They’re generally good kids. They just have a lot of growing up to do.”One disturbing trend, she said, is that more and more parents in her area groups are not there just for teens. The ages of their children range from 10 to 43 years, and about half are adults.Then you try to support the parents and help them set limits — measures and deadlines that shove older children toward jobs and independence.Denton thinks that support also helps parents in setting rules and sticking to them. When she had trouble with her son, she said, “We just couldn’t follow through with the consequences, because he would start acting good, and then we’d think we were too tough.”Now she and her husband, Mo, also serve on the Juvenile Probation and Review Board, a Johnson County group that advises courts on how to handle youths who violate probation.This woman with three sons, one grandson and one great-grandson just won a Citizen of the Year award from United Community Services of Johnson County and has proved she can help parents and children. Ask her 42-year-old son who went to the psych ward.He declined to give his name because he has a job with a prestigious international group that helps poor children. He’s also done social work with troubled youths and earned two college degrees.But back when he was bad, he said, “I was really on a course of self-destruction.”He did drugs and alcohol routinely, skipped school daily, talked back and ran away.The last time, he ran away for many days after his parents took the door off his room because they thought he smoked marijuana in it. He felt indignant, because he did not smoke pot in his room — he smoked it across the hall, under a vent fan in the bathroom.When he returned home, he and his parents cut a deal. He would go in weekly for counseling.But on the first such trip, his two older brothers rode on each side of him like guards. And when the institution doors shut behind him, he could not open them. He was in the psych ward.“I was looking out through the mesh at them, and my dad was crying,” he said. “That was the first time I saw him cry.”Three months later, he walked out and started going to school again.He still remembers his father’s tears, he said, although he never admitted seeing or caring about them back then.They may have even saved his life, he said. Three of his friends from high school died young, two from drunken-driving accidents and one from a drug overdose.At the funeral for one of them, he said, the dead youth’s mother told him, “I probably should have been tougher on him, like Pegi was with you.”

To reach Joe Lambe, call 816-234-7714 or send e-mail to jlambe@kcstar.com.

Congratulations Pegi!
We at StandUp Parenting are so proud of you – and of course you so richly deserve this outstanding award.

Do you have news about the awards, honors or exploits of Reps, Group Leaders or Members? Please send them to roberta.hegland@standupparenting.org

Cell Phone Battles

So, I’m at a local high school, it’s the end of Back to School Night and I’m putting away my StandUp Parenting display at our table. I whip out my cell phone and place a call to my husband, letting him know I’m on my way home.
Three girls with ‘Volunteer’ tee shirts rush up to me exclaiming, ‘Oooh – no cell phones at school!’ They are shocked – shocked! The crisis was averted when I explained that I wasn’t a student, it was after school, um, really, it’s okay!
In the last few years our local schools – middle and high schools in particular – have developed standards for cell phone usage to combat the cheating, bullying, drugs and porn that are just some of the distractions that cells introduce to class and campus.
And the standards, though they vary from school to school, are tough. One infraction and said cell may end up in the office. Some schools allow the student to retrieve it at the end of the day, others require a parent’s presence.
This should encourage us. Why? Remember the StandUp sheet on motivating early/mid/late teens and adults? One can motivate changes in behavior by requiring you child to earn (or suffer the loss of) a privilege or item. Cell phone rates high on most kids list of ‘wanna haves’.
The encouraging note is this – if schools can take away a student’s phone – so can we. Should you? Will it precipitate a crisis that you’re prepared to handle? Can you afford not to, in the long run? Well that’s a topic that you can explore in your StandUp Parent Support Group. Good Luck!

Making A Moving On Plan For Summer

Summer is upon us – and the wails of ‘Now what?’ can be heard from parents throughout the land. Doesn’t matter if the child in question is 10, 16, 24 or 44, the lack of regular structure can throw us and our kids into a tailspin.
What do we do when our kid is out of school? How should we plan a vacation when our out-of-control child is so disruptive and disagreeable? My kid refuses to get a summer job – now what? We discovered we are living with a vampire – wait! No, just my teen who has developed a pasty complexion from playing countless hours of video/computer games. How do we cut down on this behavior?
Let me throw some ideas your way that have been useful to me and have also been brainstormed by our StandUp Parenting group over the years.
First – I just love the resource cube that we have put together for our group. We’re all on the lookout for summer activities for kids of all ages – this includes adults! Volunteer opportunities, summer job fairs, classes, camps, youth programs at the local park or community center – these all are fair game. The activity you find might be for your StandUp child or yourself. When the behavior of your young person is off the charts taking good care of the rest of the family is just the ticket. Send the ‘other’ kids to camp. Volunteer at camp yourself where the teens actually like you!
Second – I take great comfort in the encouragement of my StandUp friends. We invite one another to family functions, we’ve walked, rode bikes, played croquet and danced together. Wow! Some of our parents have actually developed relationships with our Acting Out Kids and have invited them along on activities, taken them to college searches, invited them into their homes. Young people who have been acting out have been willing to go to the Art Museum, Public Gardens and spend time quilting with groups of StandUp parents. Kids who refuse to get a job are more than happy to do odd jobs for StandUp parents.
Third – Get together in your group and brainstorm using your resource cube, your resource parents and your combined calendars. You’ll be amazed at what you can come up with.
Have a great summer!