Teaching teens balance

Jerry Weichman, PhD Adolescent Psychologist, shares advice for parents on the best method for improving your teenager's negative attitude and getting them to open up
How to Improve Your Teenager's Negative Attitude
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Teaching teens balance

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The biggest factor in why I'm seeing teens dealing with a lot of depression is because they have, what I call, crap goggles. They look at all the stuff that is not right. When you look, in life, at all the negative things in life; that's what you take in and that's what you feel. Initially, it starts as a habit. They start looking at what they don't like about a parent, about a teacher, about a coach; and that starts snowballing into other stuff. What they don't like about themselves and their self-esteem drops. One of the biggest factors I see in teens that are depressed, parents need to work on identify what is positive and what is good. Even searching for the positive in every negative situation. When you find your teenagers complaining, "This is lame." "This is annoying." All that stuff that comes out, simply sit back and say, "What's going well? What's good? What's right?"

Jerry Weichman, PhD Adolescent Psychologist, shares advice for parents on the best method for improving your teenager's negative attitude and getting them to open up

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Jerry Weichman, PhD

Clinical Psychologist

Dr. Jerry Weichman is a licensed psychologist and adolescent specialist as well as an author, speaker and parenting expert. His clinical practice at Hoag Hospital's Neurosciences Institute in Newport Beach, California provides a window on contemporary teen and pre-teen behavior.

“Dr. Jerry” as his adolescent patients call him, is a young PhD who really relates to teens, speaks their lingo and has felt their pain. Author of the teen survival guide, How to Deal, and noted media expert on teen issues, Dr. Jerry is focused on helping teens cope with parents, teachers, friends and academic pressure, communicating with them in a way they understand to help successfully navigate the dramas and pressures of adolescence.

Dr. Jerry's popular speeches, lectures and seminars have presented assemblies of students, teachers, parents and administrators with practical approaches on how today’s teens can overcome the trials and tribulations of growing up, from coping with bullying to meeting parental academic expectations to walking away from drugs and other self-destructive behaviors. Jerry also sits on the board of directors for the Bullying Prevention Initiative of California and just recently sat on an expert panel for a screening of the documentary Bully.

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