Australia’s Leading Experts on Children & Teenagers in one Event

By Angie Wilcock.

We all learn (and teach!) in a way that suits us – we might never have thought too much about it, and most of us may never have ‘labelled’ it! If someone were to ask you about your ’style’, you may be aware that you are not a good listener, or that you like to read information to understand it, or that you are a ‘hands-on’ person. We all go about our daily lives, thinking, communicating and learning in our own unique way.

How do YOU learn? If we stop and think about how we learn, process and understand new information we may not only become more efficient in the work place, we may also become better learners. Imagine how much easier it would be if, as parents, we can ‘tap’ into what makes our children tick and help them to become more effective learners and less effective time wasters!!

Gone are (and should be!) the days of chalk and talk in the classroom. Typically, a classroom would be quiet while the teacher spoke, with limited discussion and few interactive activities. Often, notes were written on the chalkboard and duly copied into workbooks by the students. When exams rolled around, those notes were read and re-read, and often re-copied or summarised as well. Education was fairly ‘generic’, and not too stimulating, consisting of a lot of talking by the teacher and a lot of note-taking by the student. The least catered to was the kinaesthetic, or ‘hands-on’ learner, who generally found themselves on detention for fiddling or disruptive behaviour!

Education and the whole learning process is now viewed quite differently. Some of us are good listeners, others are visual, whilst others like to be ‘hands on’ with their learning. We all have our own ‘style’, and the sooner we are familiar with what works for us, the more effectively we approach our school and professional lives. How devastating it is for parents to watch their son or daughter slave away endlessly over assignments and exams only to gain less than flattering results. Imagine how frustrating this is for the student!

Some research suggests that we don’t lock into our preferred style till mid-teens, whilst other experts provide anecdotal evidence to suggest that the earlier we recognise our ‘style’, the better we can develop techniques to enhance our learning.

When I run workshops on learning styles, parents I speak with may complain about their child ‘never sitting still’, finding it almost impossible to concentrate on a task for very long and always ‘fiddling ‘with something. It may not be that their child is ADD or ADHD – he or she may be a kinaesthetic (‘hands-on’) learner.

Other parents may be frustrated that their child doesn’t seem to listen to instructions – no, not just parents of teenagers! It may well be that their child is not a strong auditory learner, but is visual, meaning that they need to read the material or see it in graph or diagram form to process and remember it.

Finally, there are those parents who say that their child doesn’t remember information when they read or study it – it just doesn’t ‘stick’. They may like to talk about it and ask lots of questions, but they don’t seem to want to write it down or take notes. This may be an indication of auditory learning as the preferred style.

There are numerous indicators for learning styles – and once you are aware of specific indicators, you may well recognise your child as being stronger in one style than another.

We may have a dominant ‘style’ or we may be a blend of ‘styles’ – the important issue is that, as parents, the more we understand about the ‘style’ of our children, the better equipped we are to support them in their learning habits at home. It’s all about working SMARTER, not HARDER – which certainly makes more sense!

Writer Angie Wilcock, educator and speaker. Editor Dr Ramesh Manocha.

In a recent post, Paul Dillon discussed the provision of alcohol to minors. A young reader named Kate responded to the article with a very well considered and thought provoking question:

I am a 17 year-old girl going on 18 and I have been to parties where alcohol has been served and there have been a number of parents around making sure that the minors don’t drink too much.
There have been other parties that I have gone to where everyone is over the age of 18 and their drinking yet none of them are drunk until about midnight.
What I would like to know is how you would handle underage drinkers and what you would do to “stop” minors from drinking before the legal age?
I would like you to remember the first time you had alcohol and how old you were, then tell me that putting the drinking up to say 21 years old is going to stop these people from drinking, you mustn’t be thinking right.
It is all well and good that there are all these arguments about drinking and at the age of 16 the brain is at a critical time and of cause everyone knows the laws about drinking in their own states. However, has anyone considered teaching kids at school about alcohol and how to drink it responsibly? They haven’t and you want to know why kids drink at 16. Well maybe we “kids” should be taught how to have a good time and not drink so much that we get smashed.
I think there are some “kids” out there that have had some alcohol at family events and as they grow older they understand that it’s okay to drink a little but at the same time you don’t need to get drunk to have a good time.
Although some people just like to get drunk because maybe that’s how they deal with things or that’s how they think they will have a good time and in the morning they’re the ones who will wake up with a massive hang over and not remember much about the night before.
So when you say that parents shouldn’t give alcohol to minors, you think about those other kids who have been taught how to drink a little but also have a good time because instead of being taught at school they were taught by their parents.
So unless you have some way of teaching kids about alcohol and how to drink it responsibly, you really aren’t doing much now are you?

Kate raised a very interesting and important question to which Paul Dillon has written a response.

Hi Kate

Thanks for your comments and your views on this extremely controversial topic. The issue of ‘underage drinking’ is not a new one but in recent times it has received a phenomenal amount of attention and everyone seems to have something to say about it …. From what I can tell from your comments, you believe that if we ‘taught’ young people to drink responsibly many of the problems that we currently see represented in the media would not exist. Here are my thoughts on that matter …

It has only been in recent years that we have started to talk about ‘teaching’ young people to drink responsibly. In the past no-one ever thought about teaching their children to drink – it was never even considered. Some parents introduced their children to alcohol with dinner and others occasionally gave their children a drink on special occasions, but no-one ever taught young people to drink. They learnt drinking behaviour by watching the adults around them. Drinking alcohol was seen as an ‘adult activity’ and it was rare to see an adult give a child alcohol.

Research shows quite clearly that the earlier a young person starts drinking the more problems they will have with alcohol in the future. There is no research that shows that ‘teaching’ a young person to drink will mean they will drink more responsibly. On the contrary, Australian research has shown that even those young people who were introduced to alcohol with a meal by their parents were found to be at more risk of having alcohol problems in the future than those young people who didn’t drink at all.

I don’t think there are any easy answers here – but the evidence is quite clear that if we want to keep our young people as safe as we can  – the best thing to do is to try to delay them drinking alcohol for as long as possible. Of course this is going to be difficult and some young people are going to go behind their parents’ backs and drink anyway. But are all of these teenagers going to go and get smashed simply because their parents wouldn’t let them have a drink? Absolutely not …. anyone who believes this has a very low opinion of Australian teenagers. However, this belief that if a parent says ‘yes’ to their child when it comes to drinking alcohol it will mean that they will drink more sensibly does not wash with me ….

I will stress again – we do not need to ‘teach’ our young people to drink responsibly – they learn by watching adults around them – this means that we have to model good behaviour. Unfortunately, we do not do this very well and as a result we are seeing some of our young people drinking in a very risky way!

Thanks again for your comment

Paul Dillon

Featuring Paul Dillon, Generation Next speaker and drug and alcohol expert. Editor Dr Ramesh Manocha.

The Australian Government earlier this week released research showing results of a study investigating a new technique to reduce bullying.

The research assessed the ‘Method of Shared Concern’, a technique which aims to reduce and eliminate bullying without directly punishing the bullies.

The technique involves non-confrontational meetings with the students involved in the bullying where the teacher emphasises concern for the bullied student. The technique aims to change the attitudes of the bullies by developing an understanding and eventually empathy towards the bullied student.

The study looked at 17 cases where the technique had been employed, with notable improvements reported in 90 per cent of those cases. The most common result reported was the complete cessation of bullying.

Education Minister Julie Gillard said that while there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution, the findings would be included in a review of the national framework in place in schools to prevent and reduce bullying and increase student safety.

The media release for the study can be found here, and you can read the full study here.

Writer Tristan Boyd, Editor Dr Ramesh Manocha.

An American study has found that couples with children have lower blood pressure then childless couples.

The counter-intuitive results were explained as resulting from the sense of meaning  parents derived from their children. The study controlled for factors such as health, age and weight.

Lead author of the study Dr Julianne Hold-Lunstad explained how the results support previous studies. “While caring for children may include daily hassles, deriving a sense of meaning and purpose from life’s stress has been shown to be associated with better health outcomes,” she said.

“This doesn’t mean the more kids you have, the better your blood pressure. The findings are simply tied to parenthood, no matter the number of children or employment status.”

From Annals of Behavioural Medicine.

Writer Tristan Boyd, Editor Dr Ramesh Manocha.

Australian Research has found a link between watching television and ill health, finding that each hour of TV per a day that people watch increases their overall risk of dying form all causes by 11 per cent.

The study, published in the journal Circulation, also found that the additional hour increases the risk of dying of cardiovascular disease by 18 per cent.

The study examined 8,800 people for more then six years, controlling for other risk factors such as smoking, diet and obesity.

Professor David Dunstan, lead author of the study, explained the results. “The human body was designed to move, not sit for extended periods of time,” he said.

“But technological, social and economic changes mean that people don’t move their muscles as much as they used to. For many people, on a daily basis they simply shift from one chair to another.”

The study also found that people who watch TV for more then four hours a day are 80 per cent more likely to die from heart disease compared to someone who only watches 2 hours per day, and 46 per cent more likely to die from all causes.

Professor Dunstan offered an easy solution: “Move more, more often.”

The article can be found at Circulation.

Writer Tristan Boyd, Editor Dr Ramesh Manocha.

An Australian study has found that girls are hitting puberty earlier. The study also found evidence to suggest that girls are just as aggressive as boys while in puberty.

The study attributed the decrease in the age of onset of puberty to an increase in obesity in young women, which also resulted in the girls becoming more aggressive earlier on.

Study lead author Jake Najman explained the significance of the study. “The most important finding we have is that when we look at the overall level of aggressive and/or delinquent behaviour by boys and girls at 14 years of age, the girls were just as aggressive as the boys, they were just as likely to be delinquent,” Professor Najman said.

“What we’re seeing, I think for the first time, is that many of the more common aggressive or delinquent types of behaviours that exist in society are now being exhibited by females in much the same way they were exhibited by males.”

The study can be found at the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology.

Writer Tristan Boyd, Editor Dr Ramesh Manocha.

Almost half of under four-year-old Australian children suffer from untreated tooth decay while thousands of dollars are spent to treat the problem, the Australian Dental Association (ADA) has reported.

ADA president Dr Neil Hewsen noted that while there was a steady decline in childhood dental problems over the last 20 years, the most recent figures show an upwards spike. The jump in tooth decay in children has been largely blamed on sugary and acidic drinks and sugary snacks being marketed towards children.

ADA Oral Health chair Dr Philippa Sawyer described the situation. “If that many children had some other sort of disease, and remember that tooth decay is a disease, then it would be called an epidemic.”

From www.news.com.au

Writer Tristan Boyd, Editor Dr Ramesh Manocha.

A South Australian study has linked bullying to mental and psychosomatic health problems including headaches, anxiety and abdominal pain.

The study of over 2,800 adults found that nearly 20% reported having experienced bullying at school, and those who reported being bullied reported poorer physical and mental health then those who had not been bullied.

The study reported, “The results from the present study indicate that reports of early exposure to bullying were associated with an increased risk of emotional and psychosomatic disorders.”

“They reported more anxiety and depressive symptoms such as feeling nervous, downhearted and depressed, together with low vitality and poorer functioning due to emotional problems.”

Bullying experts noted that the study supports past research. The paper concluded that bullying needs to be further investigated and prevented to reduce the health risks of those involved.

The study can be found at the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry.

Writer Tristan Boyd, Editor Dr Ramesh Manocha.

You are sending a very strong message to your child when you agree to provide alcohol to minors. Most importantly, you are telling them to ignore the law – alcohol is an illegal drug for those under the age of eighteen. The laws are different across the country with New South Wales having the strictest laws in this area, but what you are saying to your child when you provide alcohol at an underage party is that although you want them to obey other laws, this one they can ignore!

If you allow your child to drink alcohol in your home with a family meal or even at a family get-together, that is your choice as a parent. But providing alcohol to young people at a party is very different. There are very few parents who want their children to drink alcohol to excess. Almost every parent who gives their teenager alcohol to take to a party or provides it to those attending a party they are hosting does it for the right reasons. Often parents will say to me that they make it very clear to their child that they don’t want them to drink alcohol as they’re handing over bottles or giving them money to buy it, somehow thinking that this is going to have some sort of positive outcome. In fact the only message the child picks up is ‘my parents gave me alcohol’. This tacit approval plays an important role in how your child views alcohol.

I can definitely understand some of the arguments that parents use when they agree to provide alcohol to teenage parties, particularly if they are hosting events for young adults who are close to the legal drinking age. However, many of the arguments put forward simply don’t hold up under scrutiny. Possibly one of the most ridiculous is when parents say that they are providing a ‘safe environment’ in which their teenager can drink and that if they didn’t their child would simply go off and drink somewhere else unsupervised.

I challenge any parent hosting a party where alcohol is being supplied to underage teenagers to prove that they are providing a ‘safe environment’. Even in licensed premises where alcohol is kept behind a bar and strict rules around responsible service govern how it is provided to patrons, it can be extremely difficult for staff to keep track of how much people have been drinking. However, then, can a parent hosting a party really supervise a number of teenagers and ensure that they are drinking responsibly?

There is no handbook on how to be the perfect parent, nor is there one on holding an incident-free teenage party. Without doubt, the best thing you can do to reduce the risks is to make the event alcohol-free. If you believe that this is not an option for your child at their stage of development, make sure you take every precaution to make the party as safe as possible for all concerned.

Discussion on this topic has continued in a more recent post, continue reading here.

Writer Paul Dillon, Generation Next speaker and drug and alcohol expert. Excerpt from “Teenagers, Alcohol and Drugs”. Editor Dr Ramesh Manocha.