Care for the Family offers crash course for parents on surviving teen years

At the start of the new school year parents across the UK will get the inside track on how to get their child - and them - through the teenage years.

Family expert Rob Parsons will be touring the UK this autumn to present 'Teenagers! What Every Parent Has to Know'.

Event hosts Care for the Family, ran a survey of 3,000 parents of teens in which many admitted they were not confident in their ability to parent teenagers. Only 15 per cent of the parents said that they felt confident, whilst 62 per cent said that they felt most parents did not understand what it meant to be a teenager today.

"Today's teenagers are experiencing things that previous generations didn't - like the growth of technology, an expanding debt culture, the incredible pressure to be thin if you are a girl or muscular if you are a boy," said Parsons. "These days it isn't enough to be an ace footballer - you have to be a good-looking ace footballer. All these pressures make life much harder for teens and their parents."

The surveyed parents attended 'Teenagers! What Every Parent Has to Know' and following the event, 88 per cent said they felt more confident about being a parent of a teenager, 93 per cent felt less isolated and 95 per cent had come away with a least one practical idea which would help them with their teenager.

Parsons said that many of the traumas of teenage life are part of the natural process of growing up.

"Adolescents are at a time in their lives when everything is changing: their bodies, their friends - and most importantly their brains." he said. "They are quite literally out of control with their emotions and feelings.

"So it seems that testing teens are here to stay, but there is some good news," he added. "The changes don't last and the main task for parents is to just get them through."

Teenagers! What Every Parent Has to Know will explore what goes on in the minds of teenagers, why reading your child's school report can fool you, keys for dealing with the really testing teenager, big issues like sex, drugs and self-esteem, why teenage boys sometimes act as though they hate their mothers, and danger signs for teenage high achievers

The course will take place throughout October and November in Reading, Derby, Newcastle, Carlisle, Ballymena, Stoke-on-Trent, Northampton and Brighton.

On the web: www.careforthefamily.org.uk/teens