Why You Should Give Your Teen More Independance

Dear parents,

I am here to tell you why you should give your child more independence and space while in their teenage years. Child independence is very important in a teen’s life during their transition into adulthood. Teens need to learn important life skills/lessons such as decision making, money saving and time management.

I have no experience in giving children independence because I don't have a child but I can just imagine how hard it must be letting them go. This is an important and difficult time in all parents lives, but for the teen it is a lot harder. They will feel happy and sad, excited but scared and most of all they will miss you being their ‘protector’. You as their parent and guardian have to help and guide them along the way.

Firstly, between the ages of 10 to 15 your child will be going through many mental changes. Your child is almost definitely going to make many mistakes as they grow up and start to discover/understand their true self. Making mistakes is definitely ok, actually, research shows that making mistakes is the best way to learn in life. A Raising Kids and Independence article says that, “Your child needs to make some mistakes, to explore and have new experiences. This will help him learn life’s lessons and continue to shape his brain’s development.” This shows how important it is to let your child be independant and discover things themselves, even if that means making mistakes along the way. It is Important to show you teen that you do not expect perfectness from them.

Secondly, teen’s need to learn important life skills such as decision making. A teen can not depend on their parents to make all their important decisions for them, because in their later life when they are in university or a job, they will have to make many important life changing decisions. It is very important that they learnt how to do these skills in their early life, where if they make a mad decision it won’t affect their life drastically, this comes with independence.

Thirdly, teen’s need to learn the skills of money saving. An interesting Investopedia article shows just one of the many reasons why it is important to save money. “If you get sick and need expensive health care that your insurance doesn’t cover, you’ll have a way to pay for it even though you can’t work while you’re getting treatment. And knowing that you have options because of the money you’ve socked away can give you even more peace of mind.” Other reasons for teens to save money, is to cover insurance, college funds, saving for housing, loans to be paid off and there are many more. Just think about this, do you really want your child to be depending on you for money, do you want your child to be living off bank loans or in debt.

My final reason why teens need to be given independance id for them to learn how to manage their time and not procrastinate. Encourage your teen to be responsible for his or her own time. Ask questions like, “How much time do you need for homework?” “How long to do you need to unwind after school?” If the answers to the question is “None” and “Until midnight”, you need to sit down with your teen and have a conversation about how to fit everything into an orderly time table. I am pretty sure you don’t want your child to be running around to classes late or have forgotten to finish important essays and not handing things in on time. A suggestion for helping your child from a Teenagers Independance article is, “You may want to let her try out her schedule through, say, one grading period. If grades go down, the schedule needs work and maybe more supervision from you.” There are many ways you can help your child manage time but sometimes you need to let them figure out a way themselves, something that works for them.

In conclusion, all though letting your child go and giving them more independence may be a scary and worrying time, it will greatly help them in the future. They will need to learn important life skills such as time management, money saving , and decision making. You can help them learn these but at some point they need to discover these things on their own but all the time with your encouragement and support, especially when they make mistakes. Always be there as their parent and protector in the hard times, have their back and support them when times get really though. But most importantly, don’t be afraid to sit down and talk with your child about how everything is going.

Thank you for reading,

From Nadia

Bibliography:

"Raising Independance in Teens." Raisingchild.net.au. N.p., 05 Nov. 2012. Web. 19 Mar. 2016. <http://raisingchildren.net.au/articles/independence_teenagers.html>.

Fontinelle, Amy. "Why Saving Money Is Important | Investopedia."Investopedia. N.p., 18 Mar. 2015. Web. 19 Mar. 2016. <http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/031215/why-saving-money-important.asp#ixzz43KviW66F>.

"Huckleberry House." Teenagers and Independence. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Mar. 2016. <http://huckhouse.org/parents/teenagers-and-independence/>.

More Sporting Opportunities

Kids in our school, and schools around the world, have a common problem. They are so caught up by their studies, that they don’t have enough time, or permission to play sports, and keep healthy. Sports give children another seed in life as it could be a way to have fun, keep fit, or stay healthy and also another thing to be good whether you are good or not at studies. People get more and more concerned about their studies, and school as you get older, and in higher grades in school. If the school hosts more sporting events for the kids in the school, will give them a time to get away, and take a break from the books, and get the heart pumping again.

Currently our school has three sporting events every year. These are the two community days, and the one sports day, that we have when school is almost over. Many people in grade seven, and my class have taken longer to get together, and in some of the classes, they haven’t even got together as a class yet, and still are in small groups from their last classes, in their new mentor group. This is something that is really big, because bonding people together takes time and effort, not only from the students themselves getting to know each other better, but also the teachers, who are also involved with the bonding that the class is doing. Having more sporting events along the course of the year, will ensure that kids will have to time to get to know each other, and be happier, which is what everyone wants.

Now-a-days, people are so caught up in their futures. In most cases, kids who just leave middle school, and enter high school, they will be looking to getting into the best of the best universities, so that they can be the best job that they can get later on in life. This is something that people all around the world are doing, and as they are doing that, they have to sacrifice something else, and what gets sacrificed is your fitness. You will spend most of you free time studying, so that you can become the best you can, and in the end, after years and years, you will look at yourself, and realise that you have lost all of your fitness, and you cant get that back, as it is easier to loose fitness, than gain it, as is most things in the world.

Having sports days will make you keep fit, and even though it is not that often, it will be just enough, to make you realise that you can do everything on your desk, get the grades and the results that you want, and keep yourself fit, and become what ever you want to be, from philosopher, to professional football player.

People in our school and many other schools want to become a professional sports man when they grow up, but as they get older, they will not have enough time to become what they want, and they will probably never become what they wanted to become, because they were never given the opportunity to become what they wanted, and this is a common problem in schools around the world. Having more sports days or sporting events will give those students that chance to become what they what to when they grow up.

From the article “10 Reasons Kids Should Play Sports” it quotes “Involving your kid in sports at a young age does not mean that they are going to be taken out of your home and moved across the country to train to be a world-class athlete at the age of five.” This is telling you that playing sports, even if it takes up most of your time, children will not get consumed by the sport, and only be able to do that. WRONG! This will only make them become more active not only on that sport, but also in their studies, and in school. This is something that kids and adults alike enjoy, and it gets people and groups together, and that is something that is really good, and is something that people can’t live without. Playing sports may seem bad to some, or a waste of time, but it is not. Anything that bonds people together is something that is good for everyone.

Another important outcome of having more sporting events at school is by giving teenagers more sporting opportunities will allow them to be recognised as an “athlete” to everyone and may help them be something in the future.

Take Michael Jordan for example, arguably the best basketball player of all time. He was dropped from his high school basket ball team, and his coach told him that he would amount to nothing. If we had more sporting events in our school, it would give those people who were dropped from the team, even though they had the potential to become something amazing, and give them the opportunity to prove their coach wrong for dropping them, and they will have been given a second chance at a future at whatever they were going to be, or wanted to be.

Basically what I am trying to say, is that If we had more sporting events in our school, it would help way more people then it would hurt. From talking to Mr.Dunn and other people who organise the sports days, I know how hard it is, but at the end of the day, they are always so happy to see all of the laughs, and fun times that we all share during that day, and that repays them for all of their hard work. Having more sporting events will make our school a better place, with more smiles, and laughs, that is fun to be in, and all hard work pays off, and where the rewards are worth all of the time and effort you put into your work, what ever it might be, from our principal, to our cleaning staff.