Love and Parenting

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 […]

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The Importance of Family Support of LGBTQQ+ Youth

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 […]

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Dear Parents: Being a “Good” Parent is Not About Being Perfect!

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 […]

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How Mindfulness Meditation Can Help Relieve Stress

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 […]

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Positive Communication between Teens and Parents

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 […]

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Revisiting the “Tiger Mother” Phenomenon

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 […]

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Conscious Parenting

by Roni Gillenson, LMFT Program Director, On Campus Counseling Program   It has been said time and time again that parenting is one of the most challenging jobs.  As we think about how we were raised, what we want to do the same or different in parenting and examine the role models we want to be […]

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The Art of Saying “No”

Image: Heather Wiliams JoAnn Kukulus, ACS Outpatient Counseling Services Intern During adolescence, a great deal of communication that is initiated from teens toward their parents entails a request for permission to engage in an activity (sleepover, concert, party, use the car, etc.) or acquire a desired object (new clothes, athletic equipment, video game, etc.). Responsible […]

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What is the Choking Game?

By Beverly Reyes ACS Outpatient Counseling Services Intern Source: http://tweenparenting.about.com/od/healthfitness/f/ChokingGame.htm Question: What is the Choking Game? Answer: The choking game is a dangerous practice of tweens and teens in which they self-strangulate in order to achieve a brief high. The high is the result of oxygen rushing back to the brain after it’s cut off by the practice of strangulation. […]

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A Parent’s Guide to Teen Depression

Source: http://www.pamfblog.org/ Meg Durbin, M.D. a board-certified internist and pediatrician at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation Although being moody and irritable is often normal for teenagers, depression is not simply a side effect of growing up. Depression is a serious medical condition that affects approximately one in five teens before they reach adulthood and is the leading […]

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