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Welcome
to May, 2006 "News of
Hope"
2005-2006 School Year END IS
APPROACHING!
The 2005-2006 school year will
soon be over, and the STRESS of
another year behind you. All
those long, luxurious days of
summer to look forward to... AND
all the projects that have been
on hold until June! In truth,
life will always have its share
of stress from deadlines,
relationships, expectations of
ourselves and others.
May is a good time to make that
list of SELF-NURTURE goals for
the summer, for yourself and
your family!
A stand-out statistic from
hundreds of conversations with
teens this past year,
substantiated by several
thousand Post-Assembly Surveys
filled out by middle and high
school students -
70% of teens feel excessively
stressed. Their biggest stressor
- meeting the expectations of
parents and school.
Stress is serious business and
always amongst us, so let's get
serious about fighting back.
Make a PERSONAL POLICY to take
responsibility for recognizing
and relieving the stress in your
and your children's lives on a
DAILY basis before it becomes a
motivator to dangerous habits
and escapes.
Our THRIVE, DON'T JUST SURVIVE
aka DE-STRESS FOR SUCCESS
workshops can help and make a
great combo with LEGACY OF HOPE
to create awareness of our needs
and the tools to meet them in a
healthier way.
PHOTOS BELOW:
1) Ever felt like you have a
"monkey on your back"
- How about a Kinkajou - from
Panama, no less?!?!? Here I am
in the Minneapolis Airport,
kinkajou on my back as I dash to
my gate - EMAIL if you want
DETAILS!! Susie@legacyofhope.com
2) I had the honor of speaking
at the Hazelden Women Healing
Conference in Minneapolis, MN in
April. Incredible event!
Pictured: Patricia Broat, Public
Education Manager, Hazelden;
Francine Ward, Author of
"52 Weeks of Esteemable
Acts: A Guide to Right
Living", Susie, and Judy
Rud, Administrative Assistant,
Hazelden
3) Always a pleasure to work
with Youth to Youth students -
here club members from Pierre,
So.Dakota area schools
participate in a Thrive, Don't
Just Survive (stress mgmt)
workshop.
3) MANY thanks to the Villa Park
Rotary for their ever-present
support to the LEGACY message in
local schools! Here Jill Kuli of
the Villa Park Rotary receives
their purchase of books to place
in Villa Park libraries and
schools.
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MAY 2006 NEWSLETTER OF HOPE
CONTENTS
•
Stress in Children and Teenagers
• Helping Reduce the Stress of
Communicating with Teens -
Article by Susie in
Orthodontic
Products Magazine Article
• More Stress than Ever for
SAT-Takers
• Coping with Stress is a
Tough Lesson
• 10 Ways to Survive 11th
Grade
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Stress
in Children and
Teenagers
Stress and anxiety in
children and teenagers
are just as prevalent as
in adults. Stressed out
and negligent parents,
high expectations in
academic or other
performances, abused or
deprived childhood,
growing up tensions and
demand for familial
responsibility are the
main causes of childhood
and teen stress.
Parents, who are not
emotionally available
for their children or
lack positive coping
mechanisms themselves,
often spur stress in
their offspring.
Stressed children show
signs of emotional
disabilities, aggressive
behavior, shyness,
social phobia and often
lack interest in
otherwise enjoyable
activities. Research
tells us that children,
who are forced to live
on prematurely adult
levels, sometimes become
oppositional to
following the parents'
rules (or those of
society). Such children
tend to respond to
stressors with
aggression and
indignation.
Growing up can be a
difficult experience for
both males and females.
During this period,
rapid physical
transitions necessitate
transition in a child's
mental make-up, its
attitude towards people
and circumstances.
Children are often ill
equipped to cope with
stress during these
transitions from a child
to pre-adolescence, and
from pre-adolescence to
adolescence phases.
For pre-adolescents and
teens, an identity
crisis, the perils of
peer interaction,
acceptance and rejection
of—situations, persons
and ideas—are a
constant source of teen
stress and teenage
depression. "Where
do I stand?" and
"How do I compare
to others?" are key
concerns for this age
group. Choices about
drinking, smoking, drugs
and sex, along with
fears about violence,
are common stressors.
How Teen
Stress Can Be Relieved:•
The first step for
parents is to be aware
of possible stressors
and to recognize signs
of stress.
• Be sensitive to
changes in your
children's behavior and
respond to them.
• Provide
opportunities for them
to learn stress
management techniques.
• Have reasonable
expectations and set
manageable goals in
academic and extra
curricular fields.
• When you are under
extra stress, be sure
that you are not passing
it along to your child.
• Physical exercise
and sports are good
stress reducers,
provided there is not a
debilitating level of
competition, pressure to
perform or fear of
failure.
• Encourage
relationships with
extended family members,
friends and helpful
neighbors. Just knowing
there is someone else to
turn to share their
feelings can be
relieving for children.
• Spending time
together or having a few
good laughs together
goes a long way in
reducing stress and in
building solid family
relationships.
Stress in Student
Life
Student-life coincides
with adolescence, and
stress can manifest in
children as a reaction
to the changes in life
in addition to academic
pressures. Children
become more self-aware
and self-conscious, and
their thinking becomes
more critical and
complex. At the same
time, children often
lack in academic
motivation and
performance, as their
attention is divided
among a lot many things,
especially creating an
identity for themselves.
Points
that cause Stress in
Students:•
Stress is created by
parental pressure to
perform and to stand out
among other children.
When they can't rise up
to that expectation, or
during the process of
meeting it, children may
suffer from frustration,
physical stress,
aggression, undesirable
complexes, and
depression.
• Students who are
under-performers,
develop negative traits
such as shyness,
unfriendliness,
jealousy, and may
retreat into their own
world to become loners.
• Over scheduling a
student's life can put
them under stress. A
child's in school and
after school activities
should be carefully
arranged to give them
some breathing space.
Parents may want him to
learn music, painting,
or be outstanding in a
particular sport. So
many things are crammed
in to their schedule,
unmindful (often) of the
children's choices and
capabilities that it
puts a lot of mental
pressure on them in an
effort to fulfill their
parents' wishes.
• School systems cram
students with a
tremendous amount of
homework, which they
usually have to complete
spending their evenings,
weekends and most of the
vacations. Unable to
find enough time of
their own, students
often lose interest in
studies and under
perform. They often feel
stress by being asked to
do too much in too
little a time.
•Teenage depression or
growing up tensions add
to the academic
pressures. If unable to
adapt to the transition
and change, students
often carry enormous
amount of anxiety,
negative personal traits
and can suffer from
massive attention
problems.
• When 'effortless'
learning does not take
place, these students
lose confidence,
motivation and interest,
and this creates more
stress.
What Can
Help:•
Encourage students to
try new things, learn
new skills
• Tell them that it is
OK to fail
• Teach them that
learning takes effort,
time and practice
Many psychologists, who
research on 'childhood
and education', believe
that an important cause
of stress is how
children think about
their own intelligence
and abilities. If a
child thinks of his or
her intelligence as
fixed—"I'm either
this dumb or this
smart"—he or she
will avoid tasks that
challenge their ability
or risk failure.
Instead, they choose to
work on problems that
they already know how to
solve.
About
THRIVE, DON'T JUST
SURVIVE for you and your
teens |
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More
Stress than Ever for SAT-Takers
Big
tests always are nerve-racking
but that's especially true this
year, with the high-strung world
of college admissions buzzing in
the wake of revelations that
more than 4,000 SAT exams taken
last October were given
incorrectly low scores.
The College Board, which owns
the exam, says it is taking
several new steps to ensure that
none of the problems from last
October are repeated: Among
them, each exam will be scored
twice, by different machines and
on different days.
"It's not something you
really should be anxious
about," said Cary Wagner, a
Kaplan SAT prep instructor.
"But it's going to bring up
the anxiety level, particularly
of the Type A students."
Pearson Educational Measurement,
which scores the SAT exams, has
said the mistakes may have been
caused by excessive moisture in
some answer sheets due to wet
weather. Pearson will give
answer sheets more time to
acclimate after they are
delivered to the scanning site,
and will use special software to
safeguard against errors.
Fewer than 1 percent of the
October exams were affected, and
most errors were of fewer than
100 points. Colleges say that
they were generally able to
reevaluate affected applicants'
scores before final admissions
decisions were sent out.
The bigger worry is that
affected students may have been
dissuaded from applying to
certain colleges in the first
place. That's the issue that's
more on the minds of current
juniors, who will use their
scores from Saturday's test to
help them narrow down their list
of colleges this summer.
"Some of the scores were
really, really off," said
student Emma Notis-McConarty. If
you should have received a 780
on a section of the test and got
a 600 instead "you missed
out on applying to a whole range
of schools."
-From the Sacramento Bee
TEENS
ALSO WORRY ABOUT THEIR PEERS |
| Available
now at www.52waystoprotectyourteen.com |
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| __________________________________________________________ |
| ORTHODONTIC
PRODUCTS MAGAZINE - APRIL-MAY
ISSUE
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After
keynoting the 2005 California
Assocation of Orthodontists
Conference last September, Susie
wrote and article for the trade
publication, Orthodontic
Products Magazine:
"Talking to Teens" -
because orthodontists see
teenagers as patients on a
regular basis.
Check out the article - the info
works just as well for anyone
whose clients or children or
students are teens!
Click
here to view the article |
_________________________________________________________
Coping with Stress is a
Tough Lesson
 If
they appear distracted,
don't take it
personally. Your kids
have a lot on their
minds.
Just ask Nicole Richards
-- that is if you can
catch her in between her
babysitting jobs,
Leadership meetings,
church volunteer work
and cram sessions for
the SAT.
"I wouldn't say
we're freaking out, but
I think people feel a
lot of stress just to
perform -- not only on
the SAT but also on a
day-to-day basis,"
said Richards, a junior
at San Ramon Valley High
who has only just begun
researching her college
prospects.
Craig Ritts, a counselor
at San Ramon Valley High
School, says anxiety
over increasingly fierce
credentials required to
break into the UC system
combined with a new,
longer SAT has made for
some heavy pressure on
his campus this year. He
points to the growing
number of expectations
being placed on
students.
"Right now there's
a lot of happy kids and
some kids who are not so
happy and are looking
for ways to appeal
(college admission
decisions)," he
said.
In the San Ramon Valley
Unified School District,
where only about four
dozen out of 22,000
students hadn't passed
the exit exam as of
November and more than
97 percent of students
on average enter into
two or four year college
programs immediately
after graduation,
failure is not a word
families look kindly on.
The result has been
disappearing "down
time" for students
who are taking on more
academic courses and
extracurricular
activities in hopes of
boosting their
desirability to
admissions officers.
"Parents are
sometimes reluctant to
let their kids take
non-college prep
electives. It's
difficult to get a child
to take something like
an auto-shop elective,
which can be very
worthwhile," said
Ritts, who warned of
depression, anxiety and
lack-of-focus he has
witnessed among kids who
have stretched
themselves too thin.
At the same time, he
admitted, competition is
a reality.
"With the sheer
numbers that are
applying (to schools) --
40,000 for 3,000
openings -- we're really
splitting hairs with a
lot of these kids,"
he said.
"I'll have a
student come in and say,
'I got in (to a school)
and my friend didn't.
Can you tell me why?' A
lot of time I don't have
an answer for
them."
One aspect of the
admissions process that
only seems to have
gotten worse is the SAT.
Always a bear, the exam
grew in length last year
to 4.5 hours, adding an
essay, grammar section
and additional reading
passages to its
contents. The changes
spawned a frenzy among
students, who are
struggling to find time
to study for it in
between their sports
practices, jobs and
mid-terms.
Richards, who already
has ruled out test prep
classes as too
expensive, is studying
for the test on her own.
Her advice to other
students?
"Just keep the
perspective that even
though the SAT is big,
it's not going to make
or break your whole
life."
- from the Contra Costa
Times
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10
Ways to Survive 11th Grade
1. Do your homework and
listen in class
That sounds dumb, simple and
parental, doesn't it. But it is
the key to a less painful junior
year. To succeed in school, you
don't have to be brilliant. You
just have to show up and do the
problems and essays and reading
you are asked to do. Give that
first priority, and everything
else falls into place.
It is best if you study at the
same time and the same place
every day. Some days may be
worse than others, but a
two-hour homework time block, if
you follow that schedule every
day, including weekends, should
keep you on track. Two thirds of
college freshman say they never
did more than a hour of homework
a day in high school, so two
hours should give you a
competitive advantage and a
sense of confidence that will
relax you. (If you think you
need a three-hour block, go for
it, but actually using the full
two-hour block every day, and
working ahead of schedule when
you run out of daily
assignments, will bring rewards
that will surprise you.)
2. Think of the SAT or the
ACT as just another test
Your parents, and the companies
that market test-prep courses
(including Kaplan Inc., a major
part of The Washington Post
Co.), have led you to believe
that the SAT or the ACT will
make or break your college
dreams. That simply isn't true.
If you do your homework, pay
attention in class (see number
1) and go over a few of the
practice tests in the school
library, you will do fine. A
score in the 2000s on the SAT or
the 30s on the ACT will give you
a shot at an admission letter to
Yale, just as drawing a 7 or a 4
will improve your Super Bowl
pool chances, but getting in
will still be a matter of
chance. If you get a lower
score, you will have plenty of
opportunities to get into good
colleges that cater to students
with your interests. There are
fine schools that are happy to
see a score over 1500 on the new
SAT and over 20 on the ACT.
3. Two extracurricular
activities are enough
Joining French club and the
debate team and Safe Rides and
the volleyball team and church
choir and Key Club and
volunteering at the hospital
every Friday is a bad idea. That
is too many activities. The
colleges don't want to see thick
resumes. They want evidence of
deep passion for some pastime.
Two activities would be fine, as
long as your commitment to them
is strong. So pick a sport you
like (see number 6 below) and
something else that you enjoy,
and focus just on them. If you
like basket-weaving, enter your
stuff in the county fair. If you
write poetry, organize a regular
Thursday afternoon reading in
the junior class corridor. And
with all extra time you have, .
. .
4. See Your Friends
And when I say "see,"
I mean be in the same room with
them and talk and laugh and play
music and watch dumb DVDs and
work at being 16 years old.
Telephoning and instant
messaging don't count. You are
21st century Americans, so I
can't stop you from doing that
stuff, but I think you will be
more cheerful and less stressed
if you have regular times to
interact in person with your
friends, just as we primates
have happily done for several
million years.
5. Remember that getting into
a good college is not that
difficult
It may not be a college that
your grandmother has heard of,
but you have a better choice of
colleges and universities here
than in any other country in the
world. You might pause for a
moment and appreciate that.
Notice all those young people
moving here from China and Korea
and the Philippines and Egypt
and Nigeria and other places?
They know that you can get a
splendid education in the United
States with nothing more than a
basic understanding of English
and a willingness to work hard.
The vast majority of colleges
accept most of their applicants,
and some good ones still have
empty spaces in September.
6. Exercise Regularly
You say, "Who has time for
that?" Make time. Every
study ever done shows that
people who make a regular effort
to get their bodies moving
briskly feel better and do
better the rest of the day. If
you pick a sport that requires
some physical effort, then you
are taking care of this and half
of number 3 at the same time.
7. Go to bed an hour earlier
than you usually do
My wife suggested this one, and
I can hear what you are saying
--"That sounds like my mom.
She doesn't know anything
either." But it will cut
back on the exhaustion you
sometimes feel, and if you have
already done your two-hour block
of homework, why stay up? Rather
than going past 11 p.m. to
instant message all of your
computer-addicted friends, leave
an away message saying you are
doing your homework so they
don't think you are a total
sleep freak, and then hop into
bed with a book that you WANT to
read about something unrelated
to school.
8. Pay more attention to how
you feel about yourself then how
others feel about you
You cannot be attractive to
other people if you don't like
yourself first. To do that, just
follow all the suggestions
above.
9. Treat others as you would
want to be treated
This taps into religion and
ethics and making a world we all
want to live it. My own children
grew weary of my asking, when
they came home from school, if
they had learned the Golden
Rule. But I think they
eventually figured it out, and
that lesson still pays
dividends.
10. Remember that this will
likely be the hardest year of
your life
I don't expect anyone to follow
any of the suggestions above,
but perhaps the best defense
against stress in junior year is
to recognize that it is going to
be over soon. Senior year has
its difficulties, but your
grades won't count as much, the
SAT or ACT ordeal will be
history, and you will have more
time for friends.
In college, you will be able to
follow your own dreams and
interests more than you are able
to now. You will still be busy,
but you will be happier about
it.
The same goes for the rest of
your life. Just consider 11th
grade crazy, to use a favorite
junior year adjective. That is
usually a temporary condition.
The rest of your time on the
planet is unlikely to be so bad.
-by Jay Matews from the
Washington Post
CHECK
OUT A TYPICAL DAY WITH SUSIE ON
CAMPUS
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| Click
here for more info on stress management
for teens from LEGACY |
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LEGACY
OF HOPE SCHOOL ASSEMBLIES AND
CONFERENCE KEYNOTE
Dramatic,
thought-provoking and life-enhancing
-
Theatrical one-woman presentation
addressing emotional intelligence
and how to make good choices.
Addresses real-world teen concerns
including alcohol and drug abuse,
excess stress, teen pregnancy,
gangs, AIDS, depression, bullying,
self-harm, suicide and violence.
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Encourages
teens to get help for emotional
turmoil BEFORE it leads to
destructive alternatives.
LEGACY OF HOPE - is THIS THE
YEAR to make a lifelong
difference?
Also, please forward this
newsletter to friends,
colleagues, parents, and others
who might find this information
useful. Help us carry our
message of hope and healing.
If you are receiving this
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like to continue to receive it,
please email us at news@legacyofhope.com
with subject subscribe.
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SUSIE NOW!! |
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52
WAYS TO PROTECT YOUR TEEN - Susie's
new book for parents, grandparents,
counselors and other caring adults
as well as teens;
LEGACY OF HOPE DVD - 1 1/2 hour
verson of the full theatrical
school assembly program including
Q&A with teens;
TEEN POWER AND BEYOND - Motivational
book for teens including Susie's
chapter and those of numerous
other top youth speakers. |
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YOUR PRODUCTS NOW!! |
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"I
am not judged by the number of
times I fail, but by the number
of times I succeed: and the
number of times I succeed is in
direct proportion to the number
of times I fail and keep
trying."
-Tom Hopkins
Wishing you well,
All of us at LEGACY
Susie Vanderlip - Ken Vanderlip
- Veronica Garcia - Keiko Trias
800-707-1977 |
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