Parents Navigating the Teen Years Ed Gerety

A former middle school English teacher and parent of two, Emily Cherkin, MEd., The Screentime Consultant, witnessed the simultaneous rise of technology use for school, and smartphone and social media use for kids. Today, Emily consults with parents, offers school presentations and professional development training, and writes about parenting and screentime to bring her tech-intentional approach to as many people as possible. Emily’s work has been featured in The New York Times, NPR, The Today Show (twice), the BBC, Good Morning America, and more. Chuck Norris has quoted her. Emily is also a co-founder of The Student Data Privacy Project, an activism group dedicated to pushing back on excessive EdTech and screens in schools. Emily's book "The Screentime Solution: A Judgment-Free Guide to Becoming a Tech-Intentional Family" is an Amazon bestseller and available everywhere books are sold.
What does it mean to be “tech-intentional”? Why don’t you recommend parental controls, and what do you recommend instead? Would you give your 11 yr. old keys to the car? To get a drivers license, it’s a process of learning, it doesn’t happen right away. It should be the same way in teaching your kids about safe and respectful social media engagement. Be careful about your teen’s use of apps and games. They are focused on hooking the watcher and keeping their attention, and on selling. Teens can feel judged about what they’re engaging in; be curious instead of judgmental when asking teen’s about what they’re plugged into. Be aware as parents of how predators seek out victims on social media and have these conversations with your teens. Parents often buy a phone for their teen to keep them safe, and yet it’s opens the teen up to other dangers like bullying, mental health concerns, predators, etc. At the end of the day, we want our kids to be safe and we want to protect them. Ask yourself: Do I know what my child is doing online? Do I have a good relationship with my child so we can keep the line of communication open? Sponsored by EdGerety.com
Resources
Website: https://www.thescreentimeconsultant.com Book Order: https://www.amazon.com/Screentime-Solution-Judgment-Free-Becoming-Tech-Intentional/dp/B0CB9JS5KB/ Instagram: @thescreentimeconsultant LinkedIn: @emily-cherkin Facebook: @thescreentimeconsultant Youtube: @thescreentimeconsultantllc6072 Twitter/X: @ScreentimeLllc

Many mental health therapists are seeing an increase in anxiety, depression, procrastination, panic and self harm in teens. Today, we will talk about ways parents can help their teenagers live happier and healthier lives regarding social media, screen time and why it is important to monitor the amount of time your child is spending on their device. 
Denise Schonwald, LMHC, is a licensed mental health counselor, mental intuitive, and public speaker specializing in holistic well-being. With 30 years of experience as an ICU nurse, she witnessed the impact of stress, anxiety, and fear on patients and families. Denise integrates mental and physical health, providing comprehensive support for anxiety, depression, trauma, and more. Her approach combines therapy, meditation, and hypnotherapy. Denise, along with her therapy dog Henry, helps clients achieve optimal health. As a sought-after public speaker, Denise educates and inspires audiences on mental health topics.
Why teens need social media & screen time rules and structure What can happen when the mind is exposed to too much screen time and how it affects our physical and mental health The mind can crave more and more screen time; it’s important as a family to set and stick to guidelines you’ve created Lead by example: model want your expect from your teens Having regularly scheduled family meetings is a great way to listen and learn how your teen is feeling It’s important to schedule rest and recovery time for teens as they work to manage their time, activities, and social media. Allowing teens to take responsibility for their choices.  Appropriate extracurricular activities for teens.  Sponsored by EdGerety.com
Denise is a published Author of three books.
Healing Your Body by Mastering Your Mind Insightful Self-Therapy Her latest is a Children’s book: Getting Back to Happy Resources
Quiz: https://deniseschonwald.com/quiz/ Website: https://deniseschonwald.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deniseschonwald/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/deniseschonwaldllc/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/denise-schonwald/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@deniseschonwald


The dangers that exist in the world of social media today and how predators use it to put your child at risk.
Lt. Kinsman has been in law enforcement for 24 years and the last 20 of those years at the Portsmouth Police Department. In 2020, Lt. Kinsman accepted an offer in the Investigations Division as the Commander of the NH Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. NH ICAC is one of 61 total ICAC Task Forces across the country and is responsible for a complex approach to investigating and prosecuting internet-based child sexual abuse cases. Lt. Kinsman is a veteran of the US Air Force and holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology and a Master’s Degree in Counseling.
Parents should start the conversation about social media when they’re children are young to create an open dialogue about use and safe practices, and not wait until they are in the height of their teenage years. Kids use social media to connect and if they’re growing friendships based on someone’s social media ranking, it’s a red flag. Because social media is an instant gratification when people like or give a thumbs up, kids can begin to crave more or more. Teens can find themselves trusting someone they don’t know while believing that it’s a real person who genuinely wants to get to know them. There are multi-billion dollar conglomerates across the world that make a living off of this. They create a false profile and send out a wide net to fish for responses. Kids can fall into being comfortable with these new connections and end up sharing personal photos and information. That can be used against them in an extortion-type method to get $ with the false promise that they won’t share the information. As parents we can let our teens know that we are here for them no matter what comes up. Keeping the door open on dialogue with your teen about social media will help keep them informed about possible dangers. Knowledge is powerful. Parents need to work WITH their children on this issue, not AGAINST them. S.M.A.R.T. acronym: be the parent who is aware of what’s going on. Sponsored by EdGerety.com
Resources
Email: kinsmane@portsmouthnhpd.gov Internet Crimes Against Children:
www.icactaskforce.org info@icactaskforce.org 

Jack Blackwell is a leader in the field of family constellation work. He has 15 years of experience leading lineage and family healing events and training facilitators. As the founder of Healing Family Trauma, Jack offers resources and guidance to those seeking healing and resolution in their lives. His work emphasizes the role of ancestry and generational patterns in shaping our lives, and how these patterns can be addressed and transformed through family constellation work. Through his facilitation, Jack helps individuals and families unravel the complex patterns and dynamics that have been passed down through the generations, enabling them to move towards greater harmony and connection.
With his expertise and compassionate approach, Jack has helped hundreds of clients overcome the challenges of family trauma and find greater peace and fulfillment. As a mentor and trainer, Jack is dedicated to empowering others to share in the benefits of family constellation work, spreading healing and transformation to communities across the globe.
Childhood trauma can be impacted by the imprint of what happened to our ancestors. Children inherit the unresolved trauma that happened to their ancestors. Children can manifest a reoccurring pattern of behavior and not understand why, and they may be unable to break the cycle, even though they have family love and support. The trauma our ancestors were unable to heal can be passed down and cause generational behavior issues. The child can pick up the unresolved pain of their ancestors and act it out and recreate it. The trauma pattern begins to heal when parents honor the experiences their ancestors had and raise their children without resistance to that trauma. Family constellation work is based in love and as we open up to the trauma our ancestors faced, we can do it with love and respect for their experience knowing that they did their best. Jack shares his own powerful experience of family generational trauma and how love healed the past. Jack shares ways to begin to discover family history to uncover and heal from generational trauma. Sponsored by EdGerety.com
Resources
To Experience a Family Constellation event for FREE - Email me. Events happen weekly.
Email: Jack@HealingFamilyTrauma.com Website: HealingFamilyTrauma.com YouTube: @JackBlackwellConstellations

Elizabeth Keating is a professor of anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin who specializes in culture and communication. She recently published her third book, which reached #1 on Amazon’s Movers & Shakers in Books in the first week of publication, and was #1 in cultural anthropology the week after. The book, The Essential Questions: Interview Your Family to Uncover Stories and Bridge Generations, takes an anthropological approach to finding out about your own family history, and the Essential Questions help you to uncover new sides of family members you’ve known all your life.
Elizabeth’s academic research and writing focuses on culture and communication. She’s done fieldwork on the small island of Pohnpei (Micronesia), in the Austin Deaf Community, in Romania, India, Brazil, Germany and the U.S. She has presented talks and papers in 15 countries on a variety of topics in language and culture, and authored or co-authored over 50 academic articles. She has given talks about her research on communication in global teams at Google and in other business settings. She’s been a professor in the department of anthropology at UT Austin for over 25 years.
Key Takeaways
In family conversations, the focus and excitement is generally on what the children and grandchildren are up to. Questions about what it was like for parents and grandparents when they were growing up is uncommon. It’s hard for young people to picture their parents and grandparents as kids and ask what their life was like at that time. Elizabeth shares her own personal story about interviewing her mom about the family, and then realizing after her mom had passed, that there was so much she didn’t know about her mom and wished she had the foresight to have had those conversations. How is focusing on the stories of our elders important in raising our teens? What lessons do they learn? Teens feel a sense of belonging as family stories are shared and they feel a deeper connection and conversation with their older family members. Often teenagers ask themselves why they do what they do, and in interviewing older family members, they often find a correlation to their family history and way of being. What challenges did older family members have with their parents and the hardships they faced that may have been passed down through the generations This offers a greater understanding for teens to know why their parents/grandparents respond/behave the way they do in certain situations. Teens can learn to become more open and compassionate as they learn about the difficult stories in their family history. Sponsored by EdGerety.com
Resources
Website: Elizabeth-keating.com Email Elizabeth: Click Here Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/talktofamily

Teenage years can be difficult transitional years. Most people, including teenagers themselves, have little to no idea how much worse processed foods can make those years. As teenagers prepare to leave high school and join the complicated world of adulthood, it is tragic to think that they are doing so with the consequences of processed foods. Surprising consequences can include depression, anxiety, irritability, fatigue, disrupted sleep, racing thoughts, brain fog, weight gain, eating disorders, and illnesses. Find out how to support teenagers to develop their own desire to avoid processed foods.
Dr. Ifland is the lead author of the first scholarly description of processed food addiction and definition of addictive foods. She earned her PhD in addictive nutrition at Union Institute and University (2010); her MBA at Stanford Business School (1978) and her BA in Economics and Political Science at Oberlin College (1974).
Dr. Ifland has been creating breakthroughs in recovery from food addiction from 1999 with her first popular book to 2018 when her textbook, Processed Food Addiction: Foundations, Assessment, and Recovery was released by CRC Press. She has been selected for her expertise by Oprah Winfrey Network, Martha Stewart Wedding Magazine, Fortune Magazine, and US News and World Report.
Key Takeaways
How parents can model healthy eating choices to help their teens create good habits. The human brain is wired to fit in and belong. If your teen associates with people who have poor eating habits, it is likely they will be influenced by those habits. Your teens are being inundated with messages that drive their motivation to eat unhealthy food. When you keep food in your home that contains poor quality nutrients such as processed food, sugar, flour, preservatives, additives, etc. your kids will learn to crave those unhealthy foods. Limiting the availability of poor-quality food in your home can help shift your teens eating behavior. Create a list of clean eating foods and have a family meeting to talk about which foods your family enjoys so you can keep them on hand. Make healthy food readily prepared and available so your teen can grab a healthy snack or meal when time is limited. Get your family involved in preparing and cooking by scheduling family cooking sessions once a week. This will set them up for life-long success. As your teens begin to make healthy food choices, keep track of improvements you see in their sleep, behavior, grades, outlook, health, motivations, sports, etc. Sponsored by EdGerety.com
Resources
Website: FoodAddictionReset.com Website: ProcessedFoodAddiction.com Self-Quiz to see how you are experiencing food addiction in your own life: Take the Quiz