Dave Nettell's Adolescent Issues Page
Page Updated: 02/17/02 07:14 AM
MEDIA ARTICLES
Please Note: Some links to articles remain valid for a limited period of time after their publication date (e.g. one week to a month). This is due to the fact that they are moved to the newspaper's or magazine's "archives." If you encounter an error message retrieving one of these articles from this site, you can usually go to their site and search for it in their archives. Most often, this is a free service although there is occasionally a small charge.
Michael
Riera Gets Cable Show
San Francisco Chronicle, 3/17/00
When her 14-year-old daughter decided she needed green hair, Randi Roberts helped her dye it.
Pink? No problem. Blue? Honey, you look cute.
But somewhere after fire-engine red, the Berkeley mom lost her hip mama status as her daughter retreated to a secret sanctum of MTV, the telephone and a closed bedroom door.
Roberts had been "fired,'' said teen guru Michael Riera, a Berkeley psychologist whose writings on surviving adolescence have catapulted him to national status as the Dr. Spock for teenagers and their parents.
His latest venture: talk show host on Oprah Winfrey's new cable/Internet channel.
Alcohol
Abuse Affects Teen's Mental Functioning
PsychPort, 2/14/00
The teen years of 15 and 16 are a time of sensitive brain development. These years are also a time when many teenagers begin to experiment with alcohol. The combination can lead to brain damage, according to a study conducted by researchers at the University of California, San Diego (www.ucsd.edu) and the University of South Florida (www.usf.edu ), Tampa Bay.
The study compared the mental functioning of teens who were heavy users of alcohol and teens who were not.
"The biggest difference we found between the alcohol-dependent and non-abusing teens had to do with memory functions,'' said Susan F. Tapert, project scientist and research fellow at the University of California, San Diego. "Mostly, the alcohol-dependent youth did a poorer job at recalling new information.''
Workshop
Takes Pulse of Sleepy Teens
Washington Post, 9/21/99
American teenagers are getting far less sleep than they need, and their health, behavior and academic performance are suffering as a result.
This conclusion represents the evolving consensus of many sleep researchers who will be gathering tomorrow at the National Academy of Science for a workshop on the sleep needs of adolescents.
Their goal is to review the growing body of research on teenage sleep deficits and to explore its policy implications. The most pressing issue involves high school starting times--whether it makes biological and psychological sense to bring middle and late teens into school as dawn is just breaking.
Study
Calls Bidi Cigarettes a Dangerous Fad for Teens
San Francisco Chronicle, 9/17/99
Warning of a worrisome new trend in youth smoking, Massachusetts health officials yesterday released the country's first official study on the prevalence among teenagers of smoking skinny, sweet-flavored and highly potent cigarettes called bidis that are hand- rolled in India and faddishly popular among young Americans.
Study
Links Age Smokers Start to Cancer -- Teens More likely to Suffer Lasting DNA
Damage
S.F. Chronicle, 4/7/99
Researchers studying the effects of smoking have found new evidence to underscore the connection between cigarettes and lung cancer.
Smokers who began as adolescents are more likely than those who started as adults to wind up with severe damage to the genetic material in their lungs and blood. And it will take longer for their cells to repair the damage even after they have given up smoking entirely, the evidence shows.
Bad
Students' Driving Penalties Burden Schools
New York Times, 10/11/99
For 10 years now, the teen-age driver's license -- that sacred piece of plastic that confers mobility on the restless -- has been the bull's-eye of every state legislature in the South.
Drop out of high school and 18 states, 12 of them in the South, will revoke a license. Many of those states will also take it away for poor grades or poor behavior. The laws have proved immensely popular with voters and politicians, who are convinced that they have found the trigger mechanism, the ultimate motivator of the American teen-ager.
Pricey
Teen Parties Signaling New Craze
Contra Costa Times, 3/7/99
Like the extravagant bar and bas mitzvahs of the 1980s(, and the return of white-gloved debutante balls a few years later, the ante for teen-aged entertainment has been raised again in New York.
The sweet 16 party, which all but disappeared for a generation, considered corny and unhip, has become the rage in the past three to six months, especially among girls who go to Manhattan private schools.
Youth to
Youth Conference -- Students Helping Students
Contra Costa Times, 3/7/99
Jo Leigh Dobbs says her son Jacob might still be alive if Youth to Youth was involved in his life six years ago. "I had a happy-go-lucky kid, always laughing and joking -- and then he killed himself," Dobbs said. "It was the peer pressure." Jacob was one of three Pine Valley Middle School students who committed suicide between August 1992 and May 1994. Dobbs said her son may not have been ready for the onslaught of peer pressure that accompanies a child's move into middle and high school.
Peer pressure is one of a slew of teen problems organizers of the Youth to Youth conference are trying to solve. San Ramon Valley Community Against Substance Abuse is hosting the event Saturday for middle school students, with high school students doing most of the work, acting as mentors and relaying their own experiences.
Teens
Confront their Intolerance in TV Documentary
S.F. Examiner, 3/5/99
"I haven't beat up a gay guy - yet," says one 16-year-old, a boy.
"It's just wrong to be gay. It's nasty to me," says another 16-year-old, this one a girl.
"If a gay girl tried to touch me, I'd hit her," said a third, also a girl.
For people who think hate or intolerance exist only in places like Wyoming and Texas, think again: these three, plus a fourth, are San Francisco's own - students at Downtown High School.
Teens Use of Pot, Booze, and Cigarettes Down Slightly
S.F. Chronicle, 12/19/98
Teenagers' use of marijuana, alcohol and cigarettes dropped slightly across all age groups and most adolescents reported a greater awareness of the risks associated with those activities, according to an annual federal survey of high school students released yesterday.
Students
Mobilize for Change
S.F. Chronicle, 12/17/98
The youth group C-Beyond has spurred teenagers to become political activists since it came to Concord last year. They marched out of school in support of bilingual education and increased funding. Inspired by Berkeley's police watchdog group Copwatch, they created a pamphlet about youth rights in dealing with police and school administrators. They produced a newspaper that raised the hackles of school officials. They marched in Watsonville for the rights of strawberry workers.
Teen
parties today: "Cigarettes, beer, weed'
S.F. Examiner, 12/7/98
Teenagers can be a wild and woolly bunch. However, the recent news that a male stripper entertained a Halloween party of Pleasanton high school girls - perhaps at the behest of the 15-year-old host's mother - has created a worldwide media frenzy.
It's
All About Losing It (Joan Ryan)
S.F. Chronicle, 11/8/98
I read in the Daily Cal about a girl who had been her high school's top athlete. She excelled at four sports, and Cal recruited her for its softball team. After she underwent surgery to remove her appendix, she lost about 15 pounds. She liked her new look so much she began throwing up whatever she ate to keep her weight down. She threw up so often that eventually she lost strength and could no longer finish her usual run around the lake by her house. Then she could no longer run at all.
CENTERING
ON TEENS -- Trying to curtail juvenile crimes, cities create places for young people to
gather
S.F. Chronicle, 10/19/98
The number of centers for teenagers in California has soared by about 30 percent in the past five years as cities try to stem juvenile crime and appeal to growing teenager populations, said Jane Adams, executive director of the 3,011- member California Park and Recreation Society.
It's
Business as Usual for Teens Downtown
Contra Costa Times, 8/30/98
Teen-agers hanging out at night on North Main Street have been part of downtown since President Kennedy was in the White House, but some store owners and neighbors say they're fed up with the growing noise and mischief. The new surge of teens is louder and wilder than in years past, they say.
Stockton Teens
Forced to Keep Clear of Friends
Sa. Jose Mercury News, 8/30/98
Thyda Bun says all he wants is the freedom to walk down the street with his friends, to play volleyball and hang out at the park. But the police say he and his ``friends'' are members of the Original Bloods, a gang that has terrorized a west Stockton neighborhood by firing shots in the air, marking turf with graffiti and robbing cars and homes.
BOOKS (with links to Amazon.com)
Riera, Michael. Uncommon Sense for Parents with Teenagers. Celestial Arts, Berkeley, CA, 1995.
Michael Riera is the high school counselor many of us wish we'd had: he's smart, non-judgmental, and respectful of kids. This excellent book is chock full o' advice for parents that sometimes goes against the established grain but makes utter sense. For example, don't give advice even when asked, embrace estrangement (it's part of your teenager's development), and take a demotion and move from "manager" to "consultant." Uncommon Sense is an excellent book for any parent of an older child or teenager.
Riera, Michael. Surviving High School. Celestial Arts, Berkeley, CA, 1997.
"Becoming familiar with yourself is no easy task. In fact, it's going to take many courageous acts, some brutal, some ecstatic." This companion workbook to Uncommon Sense for Parents with Teenagers is directed at the kids themselves. With subjects ranging from "Getting Your Driver's License" to "Romance" to "Being Gay," Michael Riera's non-judgmental tone and good advice make this a book that teenagers might actually like their parents to give to them.
Written in a lively dialog format, with a decidedly hip-but-responsible tone, this book strikes the balance between guidance and choice. Mike Riera covers all the hot topics and gives teenagers the information they need to make good decisions for themselves. Ten years of experience as a high school counselor have perfected the author's approachable, interactive style.
Elium, Jeanne, and Don. Raising a Teenager -- Parents and the Nurturing of a Responsible Teen. Celestial Arts, 1999.
At a recent "Raising A Daughter" workshop focusing on the teen years, a mother in the audience raised her hand and asked, "How do I get my daughter to tell me about her thoughts and experiences of drugs and sex?" Jeanne asked, "How old is your daughter?" The mother paused, then responded, "Well, only three." Was her fear premature? Yes. Unusual? Not at all. In fact, just the idea of adolescence provokes more dread, more worry, and more confusion than any other stage of childhood--which is why we are so excited about the Elium's newest parenting book. This is not a cynical "survival guide." Raising A Teenager is an honest, beautifully written, exploration of the issues facing parents of teens today, with practical, realistic solutions.
Walter, Virginia. Making Up Megaboy. DK Publishing, 1998.
With a series of shocked responses to an apparently random murder, Walter (Hi, Pizza Man, 1995) challenges readers to make sense of a senseless act. On his 13th birthday, Robbie Jones takes his father's handgun, shoots an elderly Korean store owner, then crouches numbly in a tree until apprehended. Why? Robbie's teacher ("He was never a behavior problem''), classmates ("a geeky little guy''), parents ("He wasn't a bad boy''), witnesses, lawyer, and police officers are all mystified. Robbie disappears into prison without offering an explanation, and only a few enigmatic clues emerge: his infatuation with a classmate; his tough-talking, utterly clueless father; the superhero he and a friend create whose specialty is helping children in trouble. The book is obtrusively designed; using an array of typefaces, blocks of text clipped and pasted at an angle, and dark, distorted, computer- manipulated photo-montages, Roeckelein creates an ominous, sometimes disorienting atmosphere that suggests a turmoil in Robbie that never shows up in the text. Only near the end does he make a statement, and that indirectly, with a comic-book scenario in which Megaboy, sensitive to ``unspoken cries for help,'' makes ``a human child born on the wrong planet'' his sidekick. An eerie, disturbing puzzle that leaves readers to identify and assemble the pieces themselves, with results that may not be satisfying. (Fiction. 11-13)
Rubin, Nancy. Ask Me If I Care -- Voices from an American High School. Ten Speed Press, 1994.
Want to know what your sullen teenager is really thinking? Nancy Rubin has been teaching Social Living classes at a large, urban public high school for over 17 years. This book is based on her students' in-class journals. Sex, drugs, AIDS, racial identity, self-image--the students pull no punches, and neither does Rubin. Many of the journal entries are in letter form--to a parent, a body part, drugs, a romantic interest, a dead friend. This is an uncensored and consistently moving look at life in contemporary America from the teen perspective. And the news is not all bad.
Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice -- Psychological Theory and Women's Development. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1982.
Carol Gilligan believes that psychology has persistently and systematically misunderstood women. Repeatedly, developmental theories have been built on observations of men's lives. Here, Gilligan attempts to correct psychology's misperceptions and refocus its view of female personality. The result reshapes our understanding of human experience.
Gilligan, Carol & Brown, Lyn Mikel. Meeting at the Crossroads : Women's Psychology and Girl's Development. Ballantine, New York, 1994.
Lyn Mike Brown and Carol Gilligan ask "What, on the way to womanhood, does a girl give up?" One hundred girls gave voice to what is rarely spoken and often ignored: that the passage out of girlhood is a journey into silence and disconnection, a troubled crossing when a girl loses a firm sense of self and becomes tentative and unsure. These changes mark the endge of adolescence as a watershed in women's psychological development and the stories the girls tell are by turns heartrending and courageous. Listening to these girls provides us with the means of reaching out to them at this critical time, and of better understanding what we as women and men may have left behind at our own crossroads.
Males, Mike A. The Scapegoat Generation -- America's War on Adolescents. Courage Press, Monroe, ME, 1996.
Orenstein, Peggy. School Girls -- Young Women, Self-Esteem, and the Confidence Gap. Doubleday, New York, 1994.
Pipher, Mary. Reviving Ophelia -- Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls. Random House, New York, 1994.
Ponton, Lynn E., M.D. The Romance of Risk -- Why Teenagers Do the Things They Do. HarperCollins, New York, 1997.
|DAVE NETTELL'S HOMEPAGE | WEB PAGES DIRECTORY |