by Monica K

Created on: April 06, 2007   Last Updated: April 25, 2007

The question should be, why SHOULD teens take parental advice? Because as parents, we automatically know better? Or is it because we have "been there, done that." It amazes me that generation after generation, parents say "I didn't listen to my parents and I should have," but don't evaluate what their parents could have done differently to grasp their teen's attention. Honestly, we could tell our children all day long what we did and how it impacted our lives. But, our children are every bit as human as we are. When someone tells us not to pick up a hot plate, we just assume that it would be OK to pick it up with an oven mitt on. "Telling" just doesn't always do the trick. They don't take our advice, because we only "tell" them why they should take it, we don't "show" them the consequences of not taking our advice.

I have recently stumbled across a website which has helped me communicate to my daughter and support the reasoning for the advice I give her. This page can be found at www.mydeathspace.com. This is a website that lists articles related to reported deaths. Along with the article is a link, which is normally to the deceased myspace.com page. Although there is a diverse range of ages of those featured on this website, an extremely large volume are people ages 21 and younger. In some instances, the link to the myspace profile might be that of the person responsible for the death of the person in the article. My 13 year old daughter and I have literally spent hours reading the articles and browsing the profiles of the young victims and perpetrators. It has had an astounding impact on my daughter because she can relate to many of these kids. As she browses the profiles, she can often go back to view comments to the person before the death occurred and comments following the death as well. She sees many kids acting, talking, and dressing just like herself and her friends. She reads stories of drunken driving accidents, hate crimes, teen depression and suicide, and numerous other careless accidents as well as crimes and soon realizes the reality of making poor decisions as a teen when she sees these things happening to kids just like herself.

Parents, its all about taking action these days. We can't just continue to tell stories of the past, we need to listen to our children and what they are doing and find ways to impact them via use of present day situations. Bottom line, we need to "SHOW" them! There will continue to be incidents where our teens will learn things the hard way. However, if we become more active in "their" lives, they will become more interested in listening to us!

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