When children or teens are depressed they often have a lack of hope for the future.

Teenage suicide and suicidal ideation is a profound expression of hopelessness. It is often experienced as an overwhelming feeling that what they do is never good enough and inside, they are never good enough.

A vision board helps depressed children or adolescents to start imagining their dreams and goals for the future. The very process of making the vision board together will open a door for your child or adolescent to talk about their experiences and to start to address the negative thoughts that are in their head. Some teens may prefer to do it completely on their own, but you will have plenty of grist for the mill to talk about when you see their finished board.

Below I will share some tips on how to create vision boards for children:

The vision board can be a bulletin board or simply a white Styrofoam board. The process is to make collages of photos, magazine clippings, written affirmations, lines from poetry, and quotes which all represent their “outcomes”. They can also include special cards, letters, and certificates, written by others that say positive things.

In the centre of the vision board should be a photo or picture of your child or teen. It needs to show through their facial and body language that they are feeling happy. We suggest the most recent photo if possible. This reminds then where they were and they can be and feel happy again. Revolving around this centre-piece are visual images of goals that the child wants to achieve that will contribute to feeling happy again. For example, feeling happy at school, having a closer inner circle of friends, feeling joy and creativity, a special project they want to be involved in, or their dream job or career in the future.

It can also include other goals such as working somewhere, learning to play an instrument, getting back to playing tennis again or another sport, submitting their poems to magazines or designs to companies, showing their artwork at exhibitions. It therefore is a mixture of inner and outer manifestations that the child wants to create and new beliefs that they want to install in their brain.

Help them to set their sights high; dream a little, but also be realistic. They will need to show the visual manifestations of what they want in each of these four areas:

1. School
2. Sports/activities
3. Family life
4. Social life

Examples include making new friends, improving their sport or getting something they really want.

They think about what they want to achieve in the next five years from now. For a younger person it might be 1) obtaining GCSEs or 2) going on a special trip or adventure.

For adolescents, it might be: 1) what kind of person they want to be as an adult, such as a loyal and honest friend or a hard worker, and 2) what kind of job they would like to have.

Encourage them to imagine what sort of qualities they want to have in the next five, and then ten years. Since the dominating thoughts of a child with depression have been disempowering, hurtful, painful and negative, it is important to write very strong affirmations which will eventually eclipse the irrational destructive and toxic beliefs and gradually transform themselves into physical reality, helping the childs mood to become more on an even keel again.

The positive statements on the vision board should reflect the opposite of the negative thought patterns that they have. For instance, if your child has low self-esteem and suffers from a lack of confidence, then the statement could be something like “I am becoming more confident” or “my confidence is growing each day”. Another example is “I am” or “I am becoming” more… joyful, self-assured, positive in my thinking. These are important statements to help your child think of and write down.

It is very powerful to sit with your child and in a quiet place with beautiful peaceful music, and say “lets just try this exercise, nothing to lose. Imagine yourself already feeling as though your dreams have become a reality, your prayers are answered, or you have already reached your goals. This lifts one to a much more elevated mood.

Explain to your child that an affirmation can become even more powerful when it is turned into a song or chant. This is called an incantation because it is said with a focused purposefulness accompanied by body movement. Sometimes people proclaim this loudly when drumming, dancing or whatever movement they prefer.

Children and adolescents also can find and use quotes of their favourite person in history, current day celebrities or great role models in their life. Usually these great people have been resilient through trials, tribulations and adversity. They can choose their role models who are celebrities or famous people from both past and present who also suffered from depression (e.g. Mandela, Gandhi, Winston Churchill, Einstein, Mother Theresa, Mozart, Abraham Lincoln, and Melanie C of the Spice Girls, Princess Diana, etc.).

Using the information above will help you to create vision boards for children that they will be happy to look at and aspire to.

Be sure to visit ‘How To Help Your Child Beat Depression. is a great resource that gives practical advice on recognizing depression in children/teenagers and offers essential tips on how you can cope with the challenges.

Here is some really staggering teenage bing drinking statistics. You may want to read this article then be sure to share it with you teen and open up a conversation.

Binge drinking is when males have more than 5 drinks in one sitting and females have more than four drinks in one sitting. The binge drinking statistics are scary. Binge drinking is most common in high school and college aged people. In fact nearly 51% of all college males have binged drank and nearly 40% of all female students have done it also. All in all, nearly 42% of all college students have reported that they binge drink.

Teenage binge drinking statistics also show that on nearly any college campus, 70% of the student body participates in binge drinking. That is more than half of the student body and out of that 70% nearly half of them binge more than once a week. Nearly half of the college binge drinkers have five or more alcohol-related problems on campus. They may be caught by campus security, or they may partake in vandalism and other destructive activities.

It is common to see that most binge drinkers are students under the age of 21 and a member of a fraternity or a sorority. Most college binge drinkers state that the reason they drink is due to peer pressure, social status, and academic stress. Binge drinking statistics also show that almost half of all binge drinkers do so just so they can get drunk.

The awful truth though is that nearly 1400 college students between the ages of 18 and 24 die each year from binge drinking.  The NIAAA estimates that there are nearly 500,000 injuries, 600,000 assaults, and nearly 40,000 cases of unprotected sex as a result of binge drinking. On top of that nearly 2.1 million college binge drinkers drive drunk. Imagine that. nearly 2.1 million of our college students are out there driving drunk.

When it comes to their academics, nearly 1/3 of binge drinkers fall behind in their school work due to drinking. Think your money is being well spend? How is this statistic for you, college students combined spend nearly 5.5 billion dollars on alcohol a year and a individual student usually spends close to $500 a year on alcohol.

The binge drinking statistics for high school students are even more troublesome. Almost 89% of high school senior have admitted to trying alcohol at least once, and out of that 89% nearly 30% go on to be binge drinkers. Binge drinking in high school is usually a strong indicator of who will binge drink in college. Alcohol is the third leading cause of death among people between the ages of 15-24.

These teenage binge drinking statistics as scary as they are, are real numbers. Most of the college binge drinkers go on to develop alcoholism years later. Most of us send our children off to college to educate them so they can go on to lead successive lives. Sending them off to college to turn them into alcoholics is the last thing that we want but unfortunately it is what is happening.

In many ways, parenting teenagers has changed over the years, but there are still many ways in which it has not. For example, teens have always been known for testing authority and being somewhat rebellious and argumentative. They have also been known to experiment with alcohol, as well. For many years now, alcohol has been the number one drug used by teens. This is something that hasn’t changed for many generations and there are many dangers of teenage drinking.

More than likely, you can remember going to a party or social event in high school where there was alcohol present. In fact, you may have even experimented with it yourself during your teenage years. If so, you definitely aren’t the only parent in the world to have done this. However, this doesn’t mean that experimenting with alcohol is something you want your own teens to be doing.

Most parents who drank alcohol during their teen years now understand that this wasn’t the smartest thing for them to have done and that there are many dangers of teenage drinking.  However, as teens, you don’t see the big picture and hindsight is always 20/20. Therefore, as parents of teenagers, it’s your job to look out for them and try to prevent them from abusing alcohol during their teen years. While drinking alcohol at a young age has always increased the chance of becoming an alcoholic, there are now even more reasons to try and prevent your teen from experimenting with alcohol.

Dangers Of Teenage Drinking

First of all, alcohol has been proven to be a depressant which isn’t good for anyone, but especially teens who are going through hormonal changes as well as dealing with peer pressure and stress. Take a moment to consider the high numbers of teen suicides we are beginning to see across the nation every year. Did you know that in most of these cases, alcohol is found in the blood tests that follow?

Additionally, a new trend that is beginning to appear and is gradually becoming a major issue is the amount of bullying that is going on in schools around the nation. More than likely, you’re aware that there have been many teen suicides that have occurred as a result from bullying. As if bullying isn’t bad enough, when you add alcohol to the equation, it can easily get out of control. The fact is that every teen reacts differently to alcohol and there is always an increased risk of violence when alcohol is involved – this is true for both teens and adults.

There are many more dangers of teenage drinking such as an increased chance of teenage pregnancy, becoming the victim of a sexual crime, making unwise decisions and risking losing college scholarships, a greater chance of becoming an alcoholic and many more. This is why those parenting teenagers need to become serious about preventing their kids from abusing alcohol.

The most effective thing those parenting teenagers can do is to play an active role in your teen’s life. Keep the lines of communication open and discuss the consequences of drinking alcohol. Also, make it a point to know what is going on with your teen at school and with his or her friends. And, finally, you need to keep a close eye on your teen’s activities between the hours of 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. on weekdays, as these are the hours when teens drink alcohol the most.

As you can see there are many dangers of teenage drinking. Be sure to talk to your teens openly and honestly about alcohol and the affect it can have on them and others.

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Anyone who has been a parent knows how hard the job is and how much you have to learn on the job without any real training. Honest Parenting is an e-book by Daniel Craven that shows you some of the best methods to use when dealing with the difficult task of parenting.

Honest Parenting is designed as a helpful guide in how to relate to your child positively. This should produce an outcome where you raise your child to be a well adjusted adult able to cope with the pressures of life and relate successfully to those around them. Craven doesn’t believe in notions like reverse psychology and instead advocates a relationship with your child that is at all times based on honesty.

In the e-book, advice is given on what to say to your child as well as what not to say and do. The e-book reminds people that there are no magic solutions for relating to a difficult child and no magic pills to give your child. It is believed that tactics and psychological strategies when used on a child simply cause that child to grow up as a manipulative adult and don’t result in any long term solutions.

The objective of Honest Parenting is to build a positive relationship with your child where none may have existed before. The e-book can be used on all children including those with difficult conditions such as attention deficit disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, bi-polar disorder, post traumatic stress disorder and many others. It is also said to be suitable for professional and non-professional people who deal with children on a day to day basis. Others who can benefit as well as parents are: grand-parents, step-parents, uncles, aunts, foster parents, school teachers and principals.

Obviously no guarantee of success can be given, but many appear to have benefited from using the advice in the e-book. It can currently be purchased with a money back guarantee if you are not satisfied.

Teenage lying can be a huge problem, because it is the one behavior that can very quickly erode trust between the teen and his or her parents. Because teen lying can feel like such a personal offense, most parents respond emotionally to the discovery they have been lied to. This is because parents really do want to trust their teens, and when a teen lies, it makes parents feel like the behavior goes to their very character.

One thing that is important to understand about teenage lying is that teens seem to lie for two basic reasons; they want to cover up for something they have done that they are afraid they will be in trouble for, or they are trying to create an alternate reality for themselves. Both types of lies need to be addressed, but the place to start is in establishing an honesty only policy for your household.

Teens who are lying because they are trying to impress someone at school or are embarrassed about their circumstances often have self-esteem problems that need to be addressed. It’s important that you help your teen learn to happy with himself or herself and not feel the need to be anything more or less than themselves.

While the honesty only policy can be successfully introduced when your children are young, teens are perfectly capable of understanding and absorbing the importance of honesty. As parents, you can help your teen place a higher value on honesty by making it clear that nothing will have more dire consequences than lying. When teenage lying is lifted to the level of the worst choice a teen can possibly make, it makes it more difficult to make that choice.

When teens lie to cover up something they have done wrong, it is important to remind your teen that lying will only cause the consequences to be more severe. If your teen is truthful, even if there have to be consequences, you can let your teen know that they are less severe because of how honest he or she was. On the other hand, if your teen lies about an incident and you discover the lie, it is critically important that you address it.

You do not have to worry about catching your teen lying. It will happen. The important thing to do is address it when it occurs. It’s not good for you or your teen to go through life wondering if and when the lie will occur. It’s most important to continually communicate to your teen how much you value honesty.

Many parents forget that they truly are their own teen’s best teacher. Setting the right example about honesty is difficult but necessary. Small things like getting too much change from the cashier and big things like fudging on your tax return both have the same impact on your teen: the actions make it ok to lie because you do it when it is convenient for you.

Teaching your teen about honesty is one of the ways you raise responsible, self-reliant adults who take personal responsibility for their actions. It’s never too late to start.

To get help with teenage lying and other concerns, run to No-Nonsense Parenting For Today’s Teenager and learn how to feel like a good parent even when your teenager hates you. Also learn how get your disrespectful Teenager to LISTEN to what you say & RESPECT you as their parent while getting peace back in your home. Risk Free for 60 Days! No Obligation!”