December 2008 Archives

One of my friends recently discovered that her teenage daughter had set up a meeting with a 'boy' she had befriended on one of those internet chat sites. It transpired, when my friend intervened and rang the 'boy' that he was in fact a 35 year old man who was then insisted that he had done nothing wrong and that it was the girl who had 'done all the chasing'.

Many parents who have no choice but to work fulltime hours, millions of teenage children head home each day at the end of school and may be spending upto three hours alone until one or both parents are home; even then most are then too busy cooking, helping younger ones with home work and generally too busy to give undivided attention or to fully supervise their teenagers.

Most parents do not question that firstly their child needs their internet for homework and secondly that they then have these in their bedrooms. What this create is a sense of ease in parents' mind that their children are doing 'homework' and also keeping off the streets. Unbeknown to them their children may be more in danger in their own bedrooms than they ever were hanging round street corners.

Well, here comes Christmas and the New Year festivities and for families, a time of joy, high expectations and celebration but also for many a time of upheaval and strife; often a culmination of held in tensions and angst over the year, unleashed often on Boxing Day or a day or so into the New Year.

Relationships are often pushed to their limits, with solicitors reporting the post Christmas period as their busiest as the enforced togetherness creates the 'cabin fever' necessary to tear apart even the cosiest of pairings.

So what can we start doing now to initiate a more meaningful connection with our beloved?