Lifestyle

Actions

Teen Talk: Teens Bad Habits

Teen Talk
Posted at 7:45 AM, Feb 15, 2016
and last updated 2016-07-04 07:16:00-04

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) -- A few weeks ago, we shared a Teen Talk about parental habits that annoy teens... so about about switching it around to talk about those bad habits that teens have that are annoying to parents.

Family therapist Jane Marks says parents need to be aware that young teens have a developing brain. The frontal lobe is not fully developed until well into young adulthood. Areas like planning, self-awareness and judgement are often compromised and we often see impulsive or spontaneous behavior. Very often parents have to act as the frontal lobe of their teens’ brain.

These are just a few of the habits Marks says may crop up:

1. Eating Habits. Most teens don’t eat breakfast. Most girls will skip breakfast often affecting blood sugar so this is a habit we certainly need to be focused on. Fast foods, snacking nonstop, lack of concern about nutrition are certainly bad habits we see.

2. Too much screen time. Screen time applies to television. Telephone, computer. It’s smart to have a discussion about what is healthy screen time for your teen. Two hours is typically a number you would like to keep it to but the reality of it is that most teens are spending more time than that. Social media can be extremely addictive and can make teens feel extremely inadequate. So be careful about spending too much time following folks on social media because it makes you feel often times too unhappy and make choices in order to gain approval but are not necessarily healthy for you

3. Spending too much time in the sun as well as tanning. Indeed, there is a link between exposure to UV rays and skin cancer and it starts in adolescence.

4. Teen girl dynamics include; apologizing when things are not their fault, allowing guys to come between them and their friends, being jealous of their friends’ lives, sleeping with makeup on which tends to hurt the skin.

5. Staying up late at night and not getting six to eight hours of sleep, sometimes it’s understandable, sometimes it’s just simply habit because of screen time.

6. Participation in risky addiction behaviors. This includes smoking, drinking, any kind of substances, particularly marijuana. Even smoking a single cigarette a day has proven to cause great health concerns.

7. Being careful about picking friends who make unhealthy choices, being in uneven relationships, not knowing where to set the boundaries and leaving a relationship behind.

8. Money management. There is a tendency to participate in impulsive spending. Teens are not always measured in their spending, so they waste money on impulse purchases putting money on a credit card unnecessarily. And this is an easier habit to change.

9. Posture and body language. One of the most annoying things to parents is teens’ posture. Research shows that we spend a lot of time staring at phones. This is terrible for posture. One could possibly teach what we now call “Power Posing”. It is better for your body and can lead to less stress and strained neck issues from constantly looking at social media.

10. Practicing Laziness is a bad habit that parents surely want to change. Often times kids promise to do lots of things and they fail to do exactly what you expect of them. One way to approach this is to say, “You know what? Oftentimes I have not been doing a good job of holding you guys accountable, so let’s talk and work out some strategies that will reinforce more productive behavior”.

11. Bad habits when it comes to online use. Constant complaining, explicit photos, private information, TMI, Too Much Information shared, controversial information discussed online, clearly a habit that needs to be continually monitored.

Marks says remember bad habits and good habits can work for you or against you. Parents, as good stewards we can help our teens shape habit forming that helps to support their dreams and their destination. This is also part of the parenting path.