I’m in the build-up stretch of summer break. The stage that comes before your college student returns home. The time period when you miss your kid and can’t wait to reunite. Ask me how I feel in a couple of weeks. Having a teenager return home for the summer after spending time on his or her own is not easy for anyone involved. The minute my son walks in the door, the entire dynamic of our household shifts. This summer in particular I am bracing for negotiation and compromise. Just to start out, I have to rethink how I am going to handle curfew and whether I will wait up for my son to come hom ..read more

My son has his first girlfriend and anytime I try to offer advice, he tells me I don’t understand how relationships work now. I am experienced in love and life… but maybe my son is right. The teen dating world today is not the same teen dating world I grew up in. The “terms” of relationships are foreign to me. Is texting someone all day enough to qualify as being in a relationship? Does hanging out together a lot mean you’re “together”? What’s a teen relationship? Last summer, my son and his girlfriend were inseparable. He told me she wasn’t his “official” girlfriend. “But you guys are togethe ..read more

One day in middle school my son’s anxiety was so bad I had to go to school and get him because the teacher thought he was having a seizure. I had no clue myself about what was going on. Years later, I now recognize that teen anxiety is extremely prevalent and most parents are still trying to figure out how to help our teen manage it. Knowing that, we are particularly thrilled to have psychologist Melanie McNally as our guest blogger to offer some guidance on how to help our teens manage anxiety and stress. Here are her thoughts: Teens have a lot on their plates. Between school, friends, family ..read more

Is there a secret sauce for raising teenagers? This morning I attended service at my local church and the pastor spoke about the secret sauce to life. Actually, he said there really isn’t a secret sauce to life. I got to thinking about what he said and how there really isn’t a secret sauce to raising teens either — but what if there was? Like any recipe, it would be all about the ingredients, measurements, the right temperature, and the details. If you didn’t follow the directions, the recipe wouldn’t come out like you expected. Of course, like anything else in life, you could follow all direc ..read more

2020 will be a year no one will forget. So many lives will be forever affected by COVID-19 in more ways than from contracting the virus. Lives also are affected because many families have become broken in 2020, including my own (Raquel). It feels like this year, more than in other years, couples are getting divorced. I am stunned and shocked when I learn some of my friends or people I thought had strong, wonderful marriages are divorcing. In my circle, it’s not just one or two friends but more like six or seven! At first, I thought it was a coincidence, but then month after month I keep l ..read more

Have you ever had a teen refuse to go to school because of a large pimple on her chin? I have experienced that very scene more than once. Acne is a HUGE issue for most teens. In my house, we have tried all kinds of lotions, potions and gadgets to make teen acne go away. As if oil and hormones aren’t enough, here comes another thing to aggravate our teens’ skin — face masks. Schools that have gone back to in-person learning during the coronavirus pandemic require students to wear face masks — often for the entire day. What we are seeing is a bad combination: Acne generally is caused by excessiv ..read more

For some parents, online learning has completely removed the morning battle to get our teens to wake up and get out the door for the 7:30 a.m. start time. But at the same time, online learning also has taken away the entire social aspect of middle school and high school and some teenagers are struggling to deal with that. Our guest blogger today, Jenna Sherman of Parent-leaders.com, offers some much-needed guidance for helping our teenagers cope with school life during a pandemic. Here’s Jenna’s advice: The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in school closures that affected over 1 billion stude ..read more

Last weekend, a friend drove her son two hours to take the SAT in another county. This madness came about because in many counties test dates have been cancelled or postponed. With fewer opportunities to take college admissions tests, teens need to be completely prepared to get the best SAT or ACT score possible when the test is offered. Today, we are happy to promote a company that helps high school students with college admissions test preparation, tutoring and college counseling. While some teens take the SAT or ACT unprepared, we have seen firsthand how putting in the work ahead of time ca ..read more

As many of us move our college students into dorms or apartments, there are the obvious things to send them with, and then there are the less obvious. Seasoned college moms, Raquel and I are using our prior experience to create a college shopping list as we both move our sons into their dorms in the next week. Raquel bought most of her son’s shopping list through Amazon. I used the Bed, Bath & Beyond Pack and Hold, ordering online and picking up when we arrived. While both places sell items like bedding, a rug, a desk lamp and wall decor, those are items on the obvious college shopping lis ..read more

When COVID hit, I prayed and hoped it wouldn’t affect my son’s high school graduation. But as weeks went by, I could tell we were heading in the direction of a virtual graduation. I soon discovered that sometimes, because things don’t go as planned, doesn’t mean all is lost. The Class of 2020 will go down in history thanks to COVID19. What other class can say they had a graduation parade in their hometown where they were celebrated? What other class can say they were adopted  via Facebook for the Class of 2020 “Adopt A Senior” ? (a community member randomly adopts a high school senior and ..read more