Dear Teens,

First, let me congratulate you for graduating High School. I’m sure that every single one of you is glad you’re finished with it. I know it’s been a long four years. We’ve all been there, and I know it wasn’t easy.

But now you’re done, and ready to start the next stage of your life.

The world we’re living in right now, for all of its flaws and tragedies, is very amazing. The best time to be alive is right here, right now. So much of what we know about how the world works is changing very quickly.

And because of this, you can pick almost any career path you want, and succeed at it. Traditional barriers are starting to break down. A college degree isn’t the only path you can take for success, and many people your age are succeeding both with one and without one.

If you want to be an author, an artist, a cook, or own a business, all the information to *be those things* is right in front of you… With just a few keystrokes and clicks. The only thing that’s required of you is the work, the passion, the determination to find an interest and work on it until it’s not just an interest, it’s a skill. A skill that people will find valuable.

A lot of the teens I work with and mentor find this very empowering, but it can also be a little daunting. Especially if our families, friends or community have expectations that we feel compelled to meet.

But now you’re an adult, and *you* are the one in charge of your own life. You can set your own expectations, and you should never let anyone make you feel bad for doing it.

So go out, experiment! Make new friends, try new things, and demand the best from yourself!

What we get out of life is what we put into it, and if you respect and love yourself, you will live a very full life.

Don’t be scared of mistakes… Mistakes help us become successful and happy! As you weather through mistakes, you’ll find you can handle those mistakes with grace and learn from them.

When you make a mistake, own it, make it yours, don’t try to pass it off or minimize it. People will respect you if they know you’re someone who takes responsibility for their actions. Failure is a stepping stone to success, but try not to slip and fall into the river—don’t let failures drown you or your dreams.

And when you’re out in the world going on these new adventures, remember to check in with your family now and then. They’re going to miss you very much because they love you, and nobody is more scared and excited for you than they will be.

They’ve raised you and now they have to let you go and be a little less involved in your life. It’s a scary thing for a parent to let go of a child. So talk to them, let them know how you’re doing. Do it face-to-face as much as possible.

No one is going to live your life for you, it’s up to you to do that. All the choices you make, good and bad, are yours. Try to choose wisely. And above all else, love yourself!

-Debra Beck

Need to talk to someone about your teen? Take a moment to speak with me personally on a 100% FREE Personal Discovery Session.

Debra Beck is a devoted mother, sought-after presenter, author, and has spent over 20 years working with teens and their parents. She’s helped thousands of teen girls develop their self-esteem through her blog, one-on-one mentoring sessions, and mother-daughter retreats.

Her award-winning book My Feet Aren’t Ugly: A Girl’s Guide to Loving Herself was revised and updated for re-release in September 2011 with Beaufort Books.

The post 2012 Commencement Speech for Teens appeared first on Empowered Teens and Parents.

The subject of sexual assault is difficult for a lot of people. If this subject makes you uncomfortable, please don’t go any further, this link will take you back to my blog.

Boys are the silent victims of sexual assault.

Female victims of sexual assault are lucky in one very specific way: their stories of suffering get covered far and wide in our media, many people sympathize, and they want to help these girls find justice and peace.

Yet there isn’t usually a similar outcry for boys.

How many times have we seen the headline about a female teacher having sex with one of her young male students?

Instead of treating it as rape, sexual assault, or sexual manipulation, a lot of people ask: “Was the teacher attractive?” and if the answer is yes: “Good for him!”

It’s common to see this reaction coming from both genders. On the occasion that some brave soul steps forward and says “No, he wasn’t ‘lucky,’ this is a case of sexual assault,” the reply is dismissive. In cases where men are raped by other men, people laugh and treat it as if it was nothing.

But if the gender of the victim is female, the reaction is outrage and possibly national news coverage.

In June of 2011, two girls held down an 11 year old boy in Fort Meyers, Florida, and stripped him naked while he screamed for help, another girl videotaped it.

WARNING: This is a disturbing video.

If the genders were reversed here… If it was 3 boys holding down an 11 year old girl, and stripping HER naked against her will… Would it simply be called a “controversial” video? Would those 3 boys just receive misdemeanor battery charges?

Unfortunately, this odd bias against male victims of sexual assault goes even further. In my previous post I talked about the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, or NIPSVS. It has numbers that describe both male and female victims of sexual assault, but it does something strange with the male numbers.

Their charts on page 19, file male-victim sexual assault away under “Other Sexual Violence.”

So if all you do is look at the executive summary of the report, or the charts highlighting a lot of the relevant information, you would miss this entirely.

However, if you keep in mind that all definitions on the page actually means rape (as outlined for females), and you compare the twelve month numbers, guess what you find?

Men & Women were sexually assaulted at almost equal rates.

“For three of the other forms of sexual violence, a majority of male victims reported only female perpetrators: being made to penetrate (79.2%), sexual coercion (83.6%), and unwanted sexual contact (53.1%).”

These are the 3 surprising truths about men and sexual assault:

-That men are victimized almost as frequently as women.
-That male victims are frequently assaulted by women.
-That there is a bias in surveys that cover up this fact.

This is why it’s important to empower your teens, boys and girls, to let them know that they have the right to say no. That if they become victims of sexual assault, it isn’t their fault, that they are, in fact, victims.

Empowering your Teens against Sexual Assault

What are some steps to reversing this trend?

Educate your sons about the definition of rape. That ANY non-consensual sexual act is inappropriate, no matter who initiates it.

That your sons should not be embarrassed, ashamed, or try to cover up if someone has sexually assaulted them, at any age. They need to talk to someone they trust, and report it immediately.

Sex with a much older woman, before you are of the age of consent, is manipulative and wrong. That the “cougar” perspective that is played in the media is grossly romanticized and brushed over. A child and young adolescent should never feel pressured to have sex with someone older than them, no matter how “cool” it is, and no matter how the adult tries to push the act.

Sex should be a fully conscious and explicitly consensual act. It’s ALWAYS okay to tell a your partner no, and it’s ALWAYS okay to ask, as many times as you need, if your partner is okay and complicit in having sex with you.

We can’t prevent bad things from happening to us. The best we can do is take steps to prevent them. For teens, that means staying away from drugs, alcohol, and choosing our friends wisely.

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Debra Beck is a devoted mother, sought-after presenter, author, and has spent over 20 years working with teens and their parents. She’s helped thousands of teen girls develop their self-esteem through her blog, one-on-one mentoring sessions, and mother-daughter retreats.

Her award-winning book My Feet Aren’t Ugly: A Girl’s Guide to Loving Herself was revised and updated for re-release in September 2011 with Beaufort Books.

The post Boys: The Silenced Victims of Sexual Assault appeared first on Empowered Teens and Parents.

The subject of sexual assault is difficult for a lot of people. If this subject makes you uncomfortable, please don’t go any further, this link will take you back to my blog.

There have been a great many high-profile sexual assault cases in the news over the past few months, three come to my mind. The girl from Steubenville*, Audrie Potts, and Rehtaeh Parsons. Audrie and Rehtaeh both committed suicide as a result of their experiences.

*I will be talking about the Steubenville case throughout my post. From here on out I’ll simply refer to the victim as “Jane Doe” to respect and preserve her anonymity.

Reading about these kinds of incidents can make you feel sick, especially if you have teen girls, or boys. They make you want to pray that this never happens to one of your girls, and that if your son was ever in a situation like this, that he would do the right thing.

The questions I want to answer, over the next couple of posts are:

How common are sexual assaults like these?
How can our girls (and boys) reduce the risk of being sexually assaulted?
How can we more effectively teach our children the concept of consent?

In my experience with sexual assault, there are many confusing and downright incorrect resources floating around out there. I hope what I’ve found through years mentoring should prove enlightening for my audience.

According to the CDC’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, which is designed to measure sexual violence against men and women, most girls who are raped are under twenty-five years old, with 29.9% happening between ages 11-17, and 37.4% happening between ages 18-24.

According to recorded figures, 1 in 300 women was raped sometime in 2010. It’s also shown that the most likely rapist is going to be a friend or acquaintance. The numbers for boys, which I’ll discuss in Part 2 of this series, are extremely similar.

If you’re the kind of parent who becomes obsessed with numbers like these, shake the fear off. Your kids aren’t numbers, they’re people. And as we’ll see soon enough, there are things they can do to reduce the likelihood of them becoming a victim of sexual assault. It’s time to empower them.

Rehtaeh Parsons, Jane Doe, and Audrie Potts were all 15 years old when they were sexually assaulted. And what happened to all three of these girls was eerily similar. They went to parties where alcohol was present, they got drunk, blacked out, and inappropriate things unfolded.

Take a look at these snippets from articles reporting on the case, I’ve bolded the relevant text in each.

“At the parties, the girl had so much to drink that she was unable to recall much from that night, and nothing past midnight, the police said.” -from the case of Jane Doe, Steubenville.

“In her original statement to police, Rehtaeh identified the boy in the picture and herself as the second person, said she had had a lot to drink very quickly, and that she had sex with two of the four boys present at the house. When she leaned out the window to be sick, she told police, one of them assaulted her. She remembered almost nothing else.” -from the case of Retaeh Parsons.

“Audrie had gone to a girlfriend’s house on Sept. 2, Allard, the family’s lawyer said. The friend’s parents were out of town for the weekend, he said, and the teens had access to an unlocked liquor cabinet. The teens, including Audrie, began drinking alcohol mixed with Gatorade. At some point Audrie went to a bedroom and fell asleep.” -from the case of Audrie Potts.

When all three of these girls were sexually assaulted, their senses were impaired because they were drinking underage, and their attackers — all of them underage boys — didn’t understand the concept of consent, that what they were doing was wrong, and were probably under the influence of alcohol themselves.

If you’ve seen these cases in the news, like I have, and are scared for your girls, this is the lesson you need to take away from these experiences:

Underage drinking is not okay. And unsupervised underage drinking is a recipe for disaster. (If you think your teen might be drinking underage, or are unsure how to talk to them about it, click HERE.)

If you want your teen girl to avoid being a victim of this kind of sexual assault, your first step is knowing the state of her self-esteem and the kind of friends she has. What kind of messages is she getting about drinking? Is she aware that drinking around people she doesn’t know, even if she WAS old enough to drink, is an extremely unsafe thing to do?

These are conversations you need to have with your daughters. They need to know that this is something that can happen to them, but that it can also be avoided. That the scary incidents we see on the news are extremely unfortunate, but they can be avoided.

Talk with her about setting boundaries, whether she’s on a date with a boy, or at a party, that NO means NO, even if it started out as a yes. Clearly express the importance of letting you, her parents, know where she is.

Most importantly, harbor a relationship of trust with your daughter. If she makes the decision to drink at a friends house and doesn’t feel safe, she should feel that she is able to call you to pick her up.

How To Talk To Your Teenager About Sexual Assault

Let your daughter know that she should never feel pressured into having sex if she doesn’t want to. As I say in my book “My Feet Aren’t Ugly“

“If it takes sex to keep a boyfriend, he isn’t worth having.”

Teach both your boys and girls that having sex with someone who has been drinking is NOT okay. That when someone says that they don’t want to have sex, to respect that boundary. If you think that your daughter has been the victim of sexual assault, encourage her to report it to the police first, and help her seek counseling. Let her know that it isn’t her fault and that she has nothing to be ashamed of.

There are a lot of horrible stories in the media about sexual assault. But there are countless untold stories of couples respecting each others boundaries, sex in a consensual and loving relationship, and teens respecting other teens.

We don’t want to see our teens on the evening news, as a victim or perpetrator. All of us would much rather have their stories be the ones that don’t make the news.

Get a FREE 15 Minute Discovery Session with Debra!
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Debra Beck is a devoted mother, sought-after presenter, author, and has spent over 20 years working with teens and their parents. She’s helped thousands of teen girls develop their self-esteem through her blog, one-on-one mentoring sessions, and mother-daughter retreats.

Her award-winning book My Feet Aren’t Ugly: A Girl’s Guide to Loving Herself was revised and updated for re-release in September 2011 with Beaufort Books.

The post When Our Girls Are Victims of Sexual Assault appeared first on Empowered Teens and Parents.

In my previous post about body image, I mainly talked about the issues that teen girls face while trying to maintain a positive body image. I wanted to touch briefly on some of the difficulties that boys face, too, and how teen girls and boys can work to overcome their body negativity.

A surprising number of boys and men deal with body image problems, and many of them struggle with eating disorders. While girls obsess about being sexy, pretty, or fit, boys struggle with looking masculine or muscular. The role models that a lot of teen boys cling to are superheroes and video game characters.

And if you think supermodels set impossible standards for teen girls, take a really close look at superheroes in comic books or video games. They all look like they’re on steroids.

Whether you have a daughter or a son, both are going to struggle with body image issues. Like I talked about in Part 1 of this blog series, the first step is removing what negative influences you can from your lives.

The second step is learning to respect and love your bodies as they are and questioning our inner negative voice when it tries to interrupt.

Have your teen(or yourself) try this exercise:

Look at yourself in a full length mirror. Focus on the parts about yourself that you don’t like. Then, slowly, widen your focus, and look at all of you, your whole body. If you feel a voice in your mind begin to say negative things about your body, counter with a positive thing. Think about yourself as more than the sum of your parts.

***

Helping Your Teen Achieve Positive Body Image

Encourage your them to practice daily affirmations about their body. Looking in the mirror and saying something positive to each body part. Or writing them down in a journal that they use daily.

You can also set up positive body image rules that apply to all discussions within the house, like forbidding any kind of negative language connected with a body part, no matter who it belongs to.

Having a positive body image also means respecting your body and what you do to it. If you start developing a positive body image, one of the side effects is that you’ll start to treat it better. And you’ll be more likely to pick up a piece of fruit than a candy bar.

Because we live in a culture that compels people to look at themselves negatively, we have to take steps to view ourselves positively. It’s not something we can ignore and hope it will turn out okay. You need to take steps to make sure your family’s body image stays positive.

Need to talk to someone about your teen? Take a moment to speak with me personally on a 100% FREE Personal Discovery Session.

Debra Beck is a devoted mother, sought-after presenter, author, and has spent over 20 years working with teens and their parents. She’s helped thousands of teen girls develop their self-esteem through her blog, one-on-one mentoring sessions, and mother-daughter retreats.

Her award-winning book My Feet Aren’t Ugly: A Girl’s Guide to Loving Herself was revised and updated for re-release in September 2011 with Beaufort Books.

The post Helping Your Teen (and Family) Have A Positive Body Image appeared first on Empowered Teens and Parents.

We live in a culture where feeling positive about your body image and comfortable in your own skin is a really hard thing to do. And the entertainment and media aimed at our teen girls feels as if it’s designed to make them insecure.

It sets a standard of fabricated and false beauty so high that they can’t ever hope to meet it.

And if they try, they’ll quickly fall into the trap that a lot of us fall into, the trap of “never enough.”

Never pretty enough.
Never skinny/thin enough.
Never sexy enough.
Never good enough.
Never anything enough.

They’ll make themselves promises of “if I lose 10 lbs. then I’ll be pretty *enough*, then I will be satisfied and happy with my body.”

And of course those promises are never kept! They’ll achieve their goal weight and then they’ll just pick a new one. It’s a never-ending cycle which can lead to having a negative body image, depression, anxiety, an eating disorder, or all of the above.

To help your daugher avoid these, you need to start paying attention to three things:

1. How you view *your* body.
Is your family a “body positive” family? Do you feel comfortable in your own skin? When you’re talking about your body, are you using negative or positive words to describe it? Your daughter will take her cues from how you view yourself, make sure you don’t pass on anything you’ll regret.

2. The media your daughter consumes.
Keep an eye on what your daughter watches and listens to. If she’s looking through a magazine of hyper-glamorized models, be sure to tell her that all of the women in there are underweight (because they are) and the pictures have been altered with a computer so these women look better than they really are. If she wants to be a teen idol, like Selena Gomez, remind her that Selena has an army of personal assistants, helpers, and spends lots and lots of time to look as good as she does.

3. How her friends and peers talk about their body image.
Are her friends helping or hurting her body image? Is it a group of friends that talks positively about their bodies, and what they like about them, or are they a “never enough” kind of group?

***

Helping Your Teen Develop Positive Body Image

Half the struggle in having a positive body image is removing the toxic expectations from our lives. Teens are easily impressionable. Just as we need to watch what we eat, what we put into our bodies, we need to keep an eye on what we let into our minds. We should aim to empower our bodies, rather than degrade them… Both in thought, in what we consume, and in how often we incorporate healthy (and fun) movement into our lives.

In Part 2 I’ll cover the other half: what teen girls (and boys) can do to grow and maintain a positive body image.

Need to talk to someone about your teen? Take a moment to speak with me personally on a 100% FREE Personal Discovery Session.

Debra Beck is a devoted mother, sought-after presenter, author, and has spent over 20 years working with teens and their parents. She’s helped thousands of teen girls develop their self-esteem through her blog, one-on-one mentoring sessions, and mother-daughter retreats.

Her award-winning book My Feet Aren’t Ugly: A Girl’s Guide to Loving Herself was revised and updated for re-release in September 2011 with Beaufort Books.

The post Does Your Teen Have a Positive Body Image? appeared first on Empowered Teens and Parents.

Summer is here, and many teens are actively looking for a summer job. But are the jobs they’re finding worth doing? When I look at the typical jobs available to teens who have very little experience in the working world, do you know what I see?

Fast food & Retail.

There must be more options for our teens to make some extra cash and learn about work ethic!

In addition to working with teens and being an author, I’ve owned several businesses, and I’m my own boss. I love being my own boss because I get to do things my way.

Trying to build a business yourself, even if it’s something small, is always better than working for someone else.

Do you want to know what’s the best thing about running your own business? You get to keep all the money you make, minus the cost of running it.

So here are some great business ideas for teens who want to try working for themselves:

Landscaping, Gardening, or Lawn Maintenance: Does your kid have a green thumb? Mowing, weed pulling, raking leaves, hedge clippings… These could all turn into cash. Initial costs could be very low if you buy a used lawn mower, hedge trimmers, and clippers.

Nanny: Teens who are trustworthy and good with children can easily babysit during the summer while the parents of young children are at work. Take it to the next level after a few jobs, and attain your First Aid, CPR, or even Lifeguard certifications… Then charge more!

Dog Walker or Pet Sitter: Animal-loving teens can walk dogs or pet sit while their owners are on vacation. I’m always looking for someone to help me with my animals, and I pay $35 to $50 a night.

Web Consultant: Most teens have a way with computers, and a lot of older adults struggle with them. Teens could help local businesses set up social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. Or, if they’re especially web savvy and creative, teens could help businesses design their websites!

Car Detailer: With a few supplies and a little coaching, teens can wash and wax cars, clean vents, and vacuum car interiors right from their own driveway.

Errand Runner: Elderly people and small business owners often need help running errands or doing small tasks.

Cleaning Service: For the more orderly teen in your life, this is a great idea for a business. Most of the time people who need their homes or offices cleaned already have cleaning supplies on hand. All teens have to do is show up and clean.

Tutoring: Teens who excel in school and have a penchant for teaching others can offer to help younger children or their peers with subjects they’re having difficulty with. Parents love this one.

Family or Personal Assistant: Doing the grocery shopping, cooking family meals, tutoring younger siblings, cleaning the house… Parents or even family friends who need help with these things can ask their teen to help, and give them a taste for business… without having to go far from home!

Small Business Assistant: I’ve enjoyed hiring teens to help me with different jobs for my business. They’ve come in two hours a day to shred papers, organize inventory, help with mailings, make phone calls, clean, and do other odd jobs.

Once your teen finds an idea that’s right for them, their next step is to write out a business plan. This includes…

Supplies they’ll need
How many hours they want to work
Prices for their services
How they will market themselves and gain new business

Getting the word out can include making and posting a flyer, talking to their parent’s friends, asking for referrals, going directly to small businesses that you think may need help.

You can also create a Facebook page for your business with all of your contact information, and have your parents share it with their friends!

Business as Alternative Summer Job for Teens

I think working is a lot more fun when you are your own boss… And it opens the eyes of kids to the possibilities of being an innovator and business game-changer as they get older. So get out there! Have some fun! And let me know how it goes.

-Debra Beck

Need to talk to someone about your teen? Take a moment to speak with me personally on a 100% FREE Personal Discovery Session.

Debra Beck is a devoted mother, sought-after presenter, author, and has spent over 20 years working with teens and their parents. She’s helped thousands of teen girls develop their self-esteem through her blog, one-on-one mentoring sessions, and mother-daughter retreats.

Her award-winning book My Feet Aren’t Ugly: A Girl’s Guide to Loving Herself was revised and updated for re-release in September 2011 with Beaufort Books.

The post Finding Alternative Summer Jobs for Teens appeared first on Empowered Teens and Parents.

One of the strangest conversations you’ll ever have with your teen is the one about sex, sexuality, or “where babies come from.”

It’s hard to see how talking with your teen about these things wouldn’t be a little awkward. It’s just the nature of the topic. Sex and sexuality are incredibly private and personal things no matter who you are.

In an age where anyone can log onto google and find pictures and videos of people having sex, you have to wonder: “What do they already know about sex?”

That’s a scary thought for every parent who wants to have a positive and open conversation with their teen about sexuality. But it’s not something that should deter you from doing so.

At some point you need to sit down and have an open, honest, and positive discussion about sexuality. You need to be able to be there as a real resource for your teen to glean answers from. Even if you’re afraid they’ve already gotten an “education” from the internet or sexually promiscuous friends. And in fact, it’s even more important if you believe that your teen has found sexual information from an iffy-source. Right now your teen needs the facts about sex, and the support to safely explore their sexuality–from YOU!

It’s frightening to come into your sexuality and not know what’s going on. You don’t want your teen relying on anyone or anything but you. It is frightening and exciting to discover what a person likes sexually, and it is a key piece of their identity. It can also be dangerous, frightening, or wrought with pressure rejection. Having an open dialogue with your teen will help to mitigate the overwhelming emotions and experiences that they will encounter during this time… It will also increase their chances of being safe.

This conversation will be difficult for both of you, and it won’t be the only or last conversation you’ll ever have about the subject. You need to be the person your teen comes to with questions and problems concerning sex. This is something that they absolutely need to feel comfortable talking to you about.

Besides the obvious talk about how sex between two adults actually works, you need to help them define their limits.

You need to tell them that they should never feel pressured to have sex, ever. If a boyfriend or girlfriend tell your teen that they “owe” them sex or affection, then that is not a healthy relationship to be in.

About Sexual Exploration

Sex is about openness, empathy, and giving and receiving affection positively, because it feels good and right to do so.

If you’ve read my blog posts on sexual assault you know that both boys and girls are victimized by roughly equal rates by people of the opposite gender, so this is very important.

Both boys and girls need to understand the concept of consent during sex, and if their partner says they want to stop doing something, then they need to stop. Consent must be explicit and clear… And there is nothing wrong with continually asking for clear consent before participating in a sexual act.

A healthy sexual relationship should be about mutual pleasure, not pleasure at the expense of one partner.

The most important thing you can do when you’re having these conversations with your teen is to let them know you love them absolutely and unconditionally, because they are your children. No matter what their sexual choices are, you will always love them.

Sex isn’t the single defining element of their character; it is one part of them that makes up the beautiful whole. Your teen needs to know that your love for them, that your patience, kindness, and empathy, will be there whenever they need it.

Need to talk to someone about your teen? Take a moment to speak with me personally on a 100% FREE Personal Discovery Session.

Debra Beck is a devoted mother, sought-after presenter, author, and has spent over 20 years working with teens and their parents. She’s helped thousands of teen girls develop their self-esteem through her blog, one-on-one mentoring sessions, and mother-daughter retreats.

Her award-winning book My Feet Aren’t Ugly: A Girl’s Guide to Loving Herself was revised and updated for re-release in September 2011 with Beaufort Books.

The post Supporting Your Teen in Their Sexual Exploration appeared first on Empowered Teens and Parents.

I ended my previous post on supporting your teen’s sexual exploration by talking about how you need to let your teen know that you will always love them, no matter what sexual choices they make. This is especially important if they sit you down and tell you that they’re gay or gender queer.

A lot of teens will never, ever have this talk with their parents and will live their lives in fear that they will one day find them out. There are so many teens and grown adults who are so lonely and afraid of letting their parents find out the truth about who they really are.

Because they know you love them, but they’re scared to find out if your love has limits.

Contrary to what a lot of parents unfortunately think, being gay isn’t a choice that your teen makes. It’s a part of their psychological and physical biology. Was there a moment in your life where you made a conscious choice to become heterosexual? No, of course not.

In the same way, your teen never made a choice to become gay, it’s just a part of who they are. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people in this world who are not okay with that.

There are homophobic crimes committed all over the world, including murder. There are even some countries where it’s legally punishable by death. If being gay was a choice, why would someone embrace the threat of persecution for something they conduct in their private lives — the very real threat of possibly being hurt or killed — if they could choose to be something else?

It doesn’t make sense.

For a lot of people, coming out to their parents is one of the worst experiences of their lives. They’re told to leave the house and never come back, they’re disowned.

And even if that doesn’t happen, even if they come out to you and you are the supportive, loving, and empathetic parents I know you are, they’re still going to face persecution. There will be bullies and co-workers and classmates who will act out of cruelty and ignorance.

There is only one thing you can do if your child comes out to you: respond with love and acceptance.

Be honest if you feel uncomfortable at the thought of having a gay son or daughter. Explore that uncomfortable feeling, find the source of it, understand it, dismantle it. Ask questions if you have them, don’t make assumptions. Find resources that both of you can utilize in this often confusing journey of a teen’s life.

Accepting Your Teen’s Sexual Choice

Raising your child is the most important thing you will ever do with your life, and if your child comes out to you as gay, that moment is one of the bravest things they’ll ever do as people. It’s a moment where they’ll find out how much you love and care for them. Remember, you are the person who has been with them since the beginning, and losing something as valuable and invested as a parental relationship is terrifying and harbors great malevolence to the mind of anyone. You don’t want to disappoint them, and you don’t want to lose one of the greatest loves of your life—your precious child—over something they personally struggle with already.

They deserve your love and acceptance. I can’t stress that enough. Accept your kids for who they are, no matter what. Knowing that their parents love and accept them is crucial for your kids, no matter their sexual orientation.

Need to talk to someone about your teen? Take a moment to speak with me personally on a 100% FREE Personal Discovery Session.

Debra Beck is a devoted mother, sought-after presenter, author, and has spent over 20 years working with teens and their parents. She’s helped thousands of teen girls develop their self-esteem through her blog, one-on-one mentoring sessions, and mother-daughter retreats.

Her award-winning book My Feet Aren’t Ugly: A Girl’s Guide to Loving Herself was revised and updated for re-release in September 2011 with Beaufort Books.

The post A Brief Guide For When Your Teen Comes Out To You appeared first on Empowered Teens and Parents.

The single best thing you can do to treat eating disorders is seek out a psychotherapist or counselor who specializes in treating them.

Eating disorders aren’t conditions you can treat by reading a book, blog post, or wikipedia page. It’s a condition that can have fatal consequences, it’s complicated to treat, and requires the expertise of a knowledgeable professional.

If you think you have an eating disorder, or know someone who does, researching a psychotherapist or group therapy sessions should be your very first step.

And the number one thing you shouldn’t do is try and solve it by yourself. That’s a recipe for failure. It is a serious condition that requires serious treatments. It can’t be dealt with in a vacuum.

A lot of psychotherapists also recommend that you see a nutritionist to help give them a baseline for healthy eating habits and routines. Anyone who’s dealing with  eating disorders has lost what it means to eat healthily.

The goal of treating eating disorders is to help the person suffering from it develop a positive body-image of themselves. To undo the handcuffs that bind their self-esteem to their body-image, and then tell their inner negative voice — who’s so “concerned” with how your body looks — to take a hike.

For some, the recovery process takes years to finally reach a place of body positivity and well-being. But the good news is: thousands of people have lived through it before. They’ve sought help, gone through treatment, and come out on the other side okay.

Eating disorders completely destroy any kind of normal positive body image, and prevents it from being built up. Battling against it requires love, patience acceptance, and above all else, professional help.

Treatment for Eating Disorders

If you think you have an eating disorder, please, talk to someone you trust. Tell them how you’re feeling, what you’re going through. Sharing your experience with an empathetic person can do a world of good.

If you’re on the receiving end of that conversation, take their confession seriously, and help them however you can. Refrain from making statements of judgement, or trying to minimize or brush aside the concerns your loved one has with their body image.

This is the time, more than ever, you can help your teen begin the healing process of a very scared, lonely, and confused self. Help them learn to love themselves… And of course, start by being an example and loving yourself.

Recommended reading: Life Without Ed: How One Woman Declared Independence From Her Eating Disorder and How You Can Too

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Debra Beck is a devoted mother, sought-after presenter, author, and has spent over 20 years working with teens and their parents. She’s helped thousands of teen girls develop their self-esteem through her blog, one-on-one mentoring sessions, and mother-daughter retreats.

Her award-winning book My Feet Aren’t Ugly: A Girl’s Guide to Loving Herself was revised and updated for re-release in September 2011 with Beaufort Books.

The post Eating Disorders, Part 2 appeared first on Empowered Teens and Parents.

If you’re the parent of a young girl, there’s a good chance she’s started struggling with her self-esteem and body-image. All women (and many men) struggle with accepting their bodies and feeling positive about them.

But teen girls in particular seem to have trouble with it. Movies, TV, magazines, their peers and theirs parents can contribute to this feeling of never being “Good Enough”. Never being “Pretty Enough”, “Thin Enough”, or “Smart Enough”.

Whatever they do to make themselves better, it’s never enough. A void opens within them that they try to fill. This is where eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia typically start.

At the heart of every disorder is a distinct lack of self-esteem.

People who suffer from an eating disorder have gone through events that have changed the fundamental way their mind words. Their self-esteem has been handcuffed to their body-image, and their inner negative voice has taken the body-image hostage.

And nothing they can do will ever please that inner negative voice. It’s there to reinforce that whatever you do, it’s never “Good Enough”.

An eating disorder can have profound, sometimes even deadly effects on the human body.

Anorexia can lead to reduced bone density and a higher risk of osteoporosis, low heart rate and blood pressure and an increased risk of heart failure, severe dehydration, and muscle loss.

Bulimia can lead to irregular heartbeat, dehydration, tooth decay, rupturing the stomach or esophagus, electrolyte imbalances that can have long-term health effects, and peptic ulcers and pancreatitis.

Depriving your body of nutrients — whether you’re skipping meals, not eating, or bingeing and purging — has awful, awful consequences.

A lot of people are unaware of the dangers that come with having an eating disorder. And because they aren’t aware, they’ll try and minimize it. They’ll throw out useless suggestions like “Why don’t you just go on a diet?” or “Try not to eat so much,” as if that will solve all your problems. They treat your eating disorder like it’s some kind of “diet,” a strange personal choice that’s giving you indigestion.

Admitting you have a problem to someone you love is one of the hardest things in the world to do. Having that problem mocked or minimized can be devastating, and prevent them from getting help.

Because eating disorders are mental conditions, sometimes it’s hard for people to understand that the people who suffer from it are going through something serious. The outward effects of anorexia or bulimia aren’t always obvious.

Understanding Eating Disorders

If your child, friend, or spouse comes to you and tells you that they are suffering from an eating disorder, please, take them seriously.

Eating disorders can and do kill thousands of people every year. And the people who suffer from it deserve our help.

Autism, Schizophrenia, and Alzheimer’s get almost 900 million dollars in research funding every year, while eating disorders receive 30 million. But there are more people who suffer from eating disorders than all three of those other diseases combined.

Eating disorders are definitely not being taken as seriously as they need to be.

The way you can help eating disorders become a serious concern for professional consideration, is by understanding and empathizing with anyone in your life who might be suffering from one.

In Part 2 I’ll be talking about treatment options for Eating Disorders.

Get a FREE 15 Minute Discovery Session with Debra!
Sign Up Below:

Debra Beck is a devoted mother, sought-after presenter, author, and has spent over 20 years working with teens and their parents. She’s helped thousands of teen girls develop their self-esteem through her blog, one-on-one mentoring sessions, and mother-daughter retreats.

Her award-winning book My Feet Aren’t Ugly: A Girl’s Guide to Loving Herself was revised and updated for re-release in September 2011 with Beaufort Books.

The post What Every Parent Needs to Know About Eating Disorders appeared first on Empowered Teens and Parents.