Written By: Monica Ippolito, ACS Clinical Intern, Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment and Community Counseling Programs If any parents of teenagers happen to be of Generation X, then you can reminisce with me about the cartoons we grew up watching. Cartoons like G.I. Joe, She-Ra, He-Man, The Care Bears, The Smurfs, and Inspector Gadget all had […]
Written By: Charlotte Villemoes, ACS Site Supervisor, On-Campus Counseling Program I have the privilege and the pleasure of listening to teens every day. They tell me stories about their lives, stories that often move and inspire me. Many of them describe hardship that seems close to unbearable, yet the vast majority somehow perseveres and moves forward. […]
Written By: Mayra Vargas, MFTI, Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment Program Parental instinct is key to supporting their teens with their drug use/abuse. Parents sometimes ignore their “gut instinct” that lets them know something is happening with their adolescent. Often a parent will tentatively ask about these issues, and the teen will say ‘everything is fine’ — […]
Written By: JoAnn Kukulus, MFTI | ACS’ Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment Program & Community Counseling Program Recently I had the opportunity to become trained and certified to implement a group and individual curriculum called “Mindfulness-Based Substance Abuse Treatment for Adolescents,” which the ACS programs are beginning to utilize. This relatively new evidence-based curriculum, founded by Sam Himelstein […]
Written By: Alex Basche, ACS Clinical Intern, Community Counseling Program and Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment Program Love: it can make your heart skip a beat, spawn butterflies in your stomach and has been called by some as the “ultimate drug”. We’ve seen it on TV, heard it lauded in songs and read about it […]
Written By: Dafne Luna, Outlet Program Coordinator and Group Facilitator We live in this society where the second part of the December is intended to be spent in a happy coexistence with family, friends, and everyone else in the world. However, this time of the year can be really hard for a lot […]
Written By: Kelly Sumner, LMFT, ACS On-Campus Counseling Program Site Supervisor I need to start here by acknowledging that I am not a parent and thus do not understand first hand the pressure parents face to raise their children into well-adjusted, successful, happy, moralistic, responsible members of society in today’s world. It’s a […]
By: Katie Luce, LMFT, ACS School Site Supervisor Image: Placid Children and adolescents may have fewer responsibilities than their parents, but childhood and the teen years can still be one of the most stressful periods in life. The demands of school, homework, extracurricular activities, and even daily family living can make children and adolescents feel overwhelmed […]
By: Mayra Vargas, ACS Intern, Community Counseling Program Communication between adolescents and parents is one of the most difficult things in the realm of family relationships. Adolescents in the teen stage begin to explore and experiment with their own identities, and that can sometimes cause a shift in the parent-adolescent relationship. Sometimes, parents don’t know how to communicate with […]
Written By: German Cheung, Psy D. | ACS Site Supervisor, Terman Middle School “Tiger Mother,” a term that was hugely popularized by Amy Chua’s article in the Wall Street Journal in 2011, titled, “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior,” describes how parents hold suffocatingly high expectations for their child that often lead to conflicts in […]