Tips for parents with teenagers

Parenting teens is a challenge I enjoy. These days, as always, one feels a need to encourage and support positive lifestyle choices, independence and self-esteem. As a mother of three teens, I gather parenting information to help me in my parenting role.

I have found an excellent resource that I keep by my bedside and read on a regular basis. This book is called I’m On Your Side by Jane Nelson and Lynn Lott.

They have written a practical book about understanding and working with young people. They emphasize firmness with dignity and respect, as well as teaching young people the nature of authority and helping them develop their own capacities of self-discipline, judgment and responsibility so essential in life.

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Every parent is on their child’s side and wants what is best for him or her. Usually both want close to the same end result, but a lot of times the message is lost among arguing and controlling.

The major task of a teenager is to make the positive transformation from a child to an adult. We can help young people look at mistakes as opportunities to learn. The reason teens tend to rebel is an attempt to set their own set of values and beliefs for their adult life.

The authors discuss how parents often panic and take the young person’s rebellion personally, and thus feel like a failure.

They suggest that children who are raised respectfully and democratically may feel free to rebel under their parents’ noses instead of going underground. Working with teenagers can become an opportunity to relearn the meaning of mutual respect. Letting go and empowering young people to make their own decisions may avoid fighting and arguing with them. Mutual respect is parenting in a win-win way.

Suggestions to let your teen know you are on their side:

To get into your teen’s world, listen and be curious.
Respect invites closeness and co-operation; humiliation invites distance and resistance.
Make sure the message of love gets through.
Work on agreements rather than demands.
Redirect a power struggle.
Remember the difference between concerns of your world and theirs.
Build your teen’s courage; your fears can discourage.
Validate your teen’s feelings.
It’s important that you listen to rather than lecture at teens.
Remember to empathize – put yourself in their shoes.
Decide what you will do, and do it with dignity and respect.

Share a time when you might have had a similar experience.
Remember the difference between support and punishment.
Remember the grass is greener on the other side, even for teens, and discuss this with them.
Parent for the long haul – most parents agree long-term goals for their children are courage, responsibility, co-operation, self-esteem, respect of self and others, success and a sense of humor.
Don’t panic! Have faith in your teens.

A softer cookie

Dear TEAM: Perhaps you have a source or recipe for soft oatmeal cookies similar to the ones the Voortman company makes. They have jam centres and are a favorite, but are very expensive because there are not many in the package. The company calls them turn-overs. Maybe they don’t even have oatmeal in them, but a soft oatmeal cookie that I could adapt (and add jam centres to) would be great. – M.H., Emo, Ont.

Dear M.H.: This oatmeal cookie recipe can be used with a date filling or with jam. To keep them soft, do not overcook.

Oatmeal cookies

1 cup butter or 250 mL

butter and lard

1 cup brown sugar 250 mL

2 cups rolled oats 500 mL

or oatmeal

1Ú2 cup milk 125 mL

13Ú4 cups flour 450 mL

3 teaspoons baking 15 mL

powder

1 teaspoon salt 5 mL

Cream the butter and add sugar. Add milk and rolled oats. Add flour, sifted with baking powder and salt. The dough should be very soft. Chill thoroughly to stiffen the mixture. Roll thin and cut with cookie cutter. Bake 12 or 15 minutes at 325 F (160 C).

From the Canadian Cook Book by Helen Wattie and Elinor Donaldson, 1957 edition, The Ryerson Press.

Beef cooking cards

“I want to cook dinner, not take a course in beef cuts.”

“I only buy what I know how to cook.”

“Why can’t buying beef be easier?”

The Beef Information Centre says it is difficult to include cooking directions when the product comes wrapped in butcher’s paper or on a Styrofoam tray. The centre’s solution is the development of cards with instructions for seven different cooking methods including roasting, pot roasting, stewing, stir-frying, broiling, barbecuing and burgers.

“With these new cards, we have focused on basic cooking methods, not recipes, and have suggested cuts suitable for the method,” says Bonnie Jean MacDonald, the centre’s retail promotion co-ordinator. MacDonald adds the cards also provide seasoning and marinating suggestions and variations on the basic instructions.

“Our consumer research shows that new ideas for preparing meals is the most sought after information at the retail case. These cards emphasize techniques in the belief that once people learn the method, they can apply this knowledge to many recipe variations.”

MacDonald said there is a perception that beef is difficult to cook, when in practice, beef cooking methods are simple.

“After taste, beef’s greatest asset is its variety,” said MacDonald. “But consumers who only know how to cook one or two cuts of beef limit their menu options.”

Prototype cooking instruction cards and labels were consumer tested in a research project last summer. Respondents wanted cards with a few simple, easy-to-follow instructions accompanied by helpful graphic illustrations. The resulting cards use a step-by-step approach, with no more than three steps for any method. Seasoning ideas, marinating methods, purchasing, storage and nutrition tips on the reverse provide additional helpful hints.

The centre is making the recipe cards available to all retailers this spring and will develop labels to be part of the program at a later date. The beef cooking instructions will be displayed in special card holders at meat cases in participating retail stores. They are also available free-of-charge from a provincial Beef Information Centre office (listed below) or by writing to the Beef Information Centre, 2233 Argentia Rd., Suite 100, Mississauga, Ont., L5N 2X7.

For further information, contact: