April is Alcohol Awareness Month: What You Should Know

National Alcohol Awareness Month was first started in 1987 by the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (NCADD) to create awareness about the use of alcohol and the serious consequences associated with its misuse. The NCADD reports that teens who experiment with alcohol before age 15 are four times more likely to become alcohol […]

Read More

Spring Fever or Loss of Motivation: How to Help Your Underachieving Teen

By Jennifer Jones, LCSW, Site Director, Palo Alto High School It’s that time of year; the long winter is over, trees are blossoming, the temperature is warming, and we all want to go to the beach instead of to work.  That’s why Spring Break was invented.  But what if a week of vacation doesn’t revive […]

Read More

Helping Teens as They Look into the Future

by Martha Chan, M.A., LMFT, Site Director for Terman Middle School and parent of Gunn High School graduates, class of ’99 and class of ’03 I want to carry forward some of the resilience concepts that my colleague, Chris Chiochios, wrote about in an earlier newsletter: accepting our children for who they are and helping them to […]

Read More

How to Spot the First Signs of Teen Depression

Recently About.com posted a really helpful post about the “First Signs of Teen Depression.” The post was written by About.com’s resident teen health expert Denise Witmer. Here is the beginning of Denise’s post. Many times parents of teens who have tried to or have committed suicide struggle with the idea that there were signs of […]

Read More

Upcoming Events

M-A Parent Education Series / Campus Event “Happiness Within Reach: Practicing Self-Compassion and Forgiveness” with Dr. Fred Luskin, Donnovan Yisrael, and Leah Weiss Ekstrom (CCARE), Stanford University Thursday, March 8, 2012, 7:00 – 8:30 p.m. Menlo-Atherton Center for the Performing Arts (PAC) Take a deep, cleansing breath…and mark your calendars! Everyone wants to be happy. And […]

Read More

Your Kids May Be Tweeting

In the United States alone Facebook.com has over 155 million users, with the largest percentage represented by the 25-34 age group.  This may be why more and more teens are also beginning to use Twitter.com. According to a survey conducted in July 2011 by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 12- to 17-year olds […]

Read More

After-school Alcohol Education Program for Middle School Ages Shows Positive Results

The age at which children begin drinking is surprising. According to a pamphlet distributed by the National Institute on Alcohol and Alcohol Abuse, “by 8th grade, 38.9% of American children have tried alcohol and 17.9% of 8th graders have been drunk at least once.”  To combat these percentages Elizabeth D’Amico, a psychologist who has been […]

Read More

How Can Parents Positively Affect Their Teens Self-Image

A really great website for parents and teens is Radical Parenting which has “parenting advice written by teens.” One of the resources this site provides is a licensed psychologist, Dr. Allison Agliata, who is an onsite school counselor in Florida. She writes a Q&A section for the website and from time to time provides articles. […]

Read More

How to Choose the Best Therapist for Your Teenager

According to the website About.com, a website that offers expert advice and quality content that helps users find solutions to a wide range of daily needs – from parenting, health care and technology to cooking, travel and many others, there are some things to know before choosing a therapist for your adolescent son/daughter. Expert Kathryn […]

Read More

Everything You Wanted To Say To Your Middle Schooler, But Didn’t Know How-Part V Conclusion

By: Philippe Rey, Psy.D. Executive Director of Adolescent Counseling Services Concluding our conversation about middle schoolers, and how to better prepare your child and yourself for this period of life; let us look at other topics of conversation that might be awkward or difficult to address: –        Music –        Depression and Suicide –        Tattoos –        […]

Read More