High School students pursuing the International Baccalaureate certification are expected to participate in CAS (Creativity, Action, Service) activities. The goal of these activities is to help children develop a holistic well-rounded perspective to learning and becoming a member of the community.  The activities are mandatory. Outside of CAS, should students (of all ages) be encouraged to participate in volunteering activities?

One benefit of volunteering is to build a CV, and consequently to improve your”chance” to gain entry to an elite university. I am not encouraging you to push your child into volunteering as part of a helicopter parent or over-parenting agenda, but rather to help them explore volunteering as a means to develop independence, resilience and empathy. These traits are predictors of success in life, not just at university.

Psychological benefits of volunteering:

World-centered vs self-centred

Exploring the plight of others helps teens see that other people experience significant challenges, helping them see the world outside of their secure and (frequently) privileged  lifestyle. Regular voluntary work increases the development of empathetic and altruistic behaviour. The voluntary action of giving your time and energy to help others aids in the development of compassion and gratitude.

Improved psychological functioning

Volunteering helps in reducing stress and anxiety, as connecting with others encourages proactiveness, wards off loneliness, and helps to combat the growing psychological culture of individualism and self-absorption.

Gain a sense of satisfaction

One of the primary psychological benefits of volunteering is the sense of accomplishment and self-satisfaction that accompanies working to make a positive difference.

Health Benefits 

For both adults and teenagers, research from the United States by Federal Government’s Corporation for National and Community Service and The University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Education and Department of Psychology, indicates that people who volunteer regularly experience better cardiovascular and mental health, including happiness and resiliency. Your child will live longer and be happier.

Create positively disruptive internal dialogue

Helping others provides teens with a valuable sense of purpose and meaning, allowing them to identify the morals and principles that they hold in high regard and then act upon them. Being aware of one’s priorities becomes rewarding once you are able to live those values and believe that you are channelling your time and efforts to make a difference. Therefore, instead of internalizing what you ‘should’ and ‘would’ do, start tackling what you ‘can’ and ‘will’ do to make a change.

For young people today, working for a charity is generally not seen to be a serious career option or even a legitimate tool for progress. However, the mental health benefits, although still a novel concept, far outweigh the overly simplistic view that volunteering is only a stepping stone to other career options. Despite this, there are a huge variety of ways for someone to serve and help others, whether you sort donations for a local charity or assist caring for children in an orphanage, both big and small acts reap psychological benefits.

You will often find that you will get more out of it than you give.

Teenagers Are Not Aliens

While it may sometimes feel like your teen is from another planet, adolescents are not, in fact, an alien species. They are, more simply, a misunderstood one.

If your teen is under 18, legally, they are still a child, and you are responsible for guiding them. As uncomfortable as it might be, take the lead, take control, and help them navigate this challenging stage until their brains are fully developed and capable of independent reasoning.

Understanding the Teen Brain

To truly understand teenagers, it’s essential to understand their developing brains. Until recently, society considered teens as “little adults,” but as detailed in The Teen Brain by Frances Jensen and Amy Ellis Nutt, this is far from the truth.

From a neurological perspective, the teen brain is only about 80% mature. The finely tuned connections in the brain’s wiring are still forming. During this period, their brains are highly receptive to learning and excitement. The neurons at the back of the brain, responsible for sex and excitement, are well-connected, but the frontal lobes—crucial for rational thought, self-awareness, risk assessment, abstract thinking, and planning—are still developing. Jensen likens the teen brain to a sports car that’s revved up but has nowhere to go.

Teens are also expanding their knowledge base, in a phase characterized by great plasticity, offering significant opportunities for growth and learning. However, this open brain is also more responsive to dopamine—the neurotransmitter that makes us feel good and fuels desire, often leading teens to seek out stimuli that boost dopamine levels, like alcohol and drugs.

The Teen Personality: Excited, Curious, and Irrational

Putting it all together, a typical teenage personality can be described as highly excited, often learning easily but struggling to articulate themselves, resist stopping an activity, or see things from another person’s point of view. It’s like a second “terrible toddler” stage.

One memorable example from a recent event involved a parent, an early childhood educator, who said, “I suddenly realized that my teen daughter, who was acting rude and obnoxious, wasn’t looking for a fight. Like a toddler, she was seeking comfort. When I offered a hug, she collapsed into my arms like she did when she was little.”

Tips for Navigating the Teen Brain

Here are some recommendations to consider when communicating with and supporting your teen:

1. Create a Time to Talk

Don’t assume your teen is ready to engage just because you are. Set a specific time for conversations and give them space for silence—remember, “Silence is never silence,” as Irvin Yalom notes.

2. Get Real with Facts and Stories

Teens respond best to concrete data and relatable stories, especially when discussing sensitive topics.

3. Prioritize Sleep

Sleep is vital—teens need at least 8.5 hours nightly to support brain development and stress relief. If they need to wake at 7 am, they should be in bed by around 10 pm, with devices turned off by 10 pm.

4. Use Reinforcement and Support Memory

Since planning and memory are still developing, have your teen write down tasks and repeat instructions to reinforce learning.

5. Limit Distractions

Teens are not great multitaskers, and their easily excitable brains are prone to distraction. Limit messaging, videos, and other distractions during study time. Recent research suggests over 80% of teen driving fatalities involve some form of distraction—often their phones.

6. Help Install the OFF Switch

Teens find it hard to stop activities due to dopamine sensitivity. Teach them to turn devices off and set boundaries on screen time together—discuss and agree on appropriate limits.

7. Perspective Matters

Because self-awareness is still developing, teens may misinterpret your tone or intentions. Be mindful of how they perceive your communication, and ask whether they understand and feel understood.

8. Prioritize Safety

As outdoor activities increase, revisit safety practices with your teen, especially regarding socializing, alcohol, and drugs. Explain how their teen brains are sensitive to substances and work out safety plans. Role-play scenarios, like recognizing when a friend has had too much to drink, and encourage them to seek help when needed.

9. Discuss the X-Plan

Consider talking through options like the “X-plan”—a safety plan designed for emergencies—so your teen knows how to handle difficult situations.

Final Thoughts

I could go on about communication techniques, but I’ll save that for another time. Parenting a teen can be challenging and lonely—but also full of shared laughter and growth. In our workshops, parents often find comfort in knowing they’re not alone in the frustrations and joys of raising teenagers.

Keep striving to understand and support your “alien-teenager.” Remember, we’re all in this together.

X-Plan: Giving your kids a way out (#xplan)

I could write even more about effective communication techniques with teens but I’ll save that for another blog. Parenting a teen can be challenging and even lonely, I noticed in our regular parenting-a-teen workshops that the empathy and frustration that the parent-participants shared, and the laughter as well. Keep going in your search to understand and best support your alien-teenager, and remember, we are not alone.

#parenting

#parenthood

#parentingtips

#raisingteens

#postiveparenting

#parentingteens

#parentingadvice

#teenager

#parentofteen

#reddoorcounselling

Note – an earlier version of this article was published in 2019.

Bullying is generally defined as intentional abuse or intimidation having a component of real or perceived power imbalance and repetition over time. Bullying includes actions such as verbal name calling, physical aggression, social exclusion, psychological stalking or harassment, or through cyber platforms including social media, WhatsApp and email.

Bullying is a serious problem. The prevalence of bullying in schools varies with study place or group. In general, bullying tends to increase through the primary school years and peaks in middle and early secondary school years.

Bullying is being recognized as an important public health issue internationally. The rising phenomenon of bullying is posing enormous challenges to the school educational system in several countries worldwide causing a negative effect on academic stability, student health, well-being, and safety.

Kids bully for a variety of reasons including that they have been bullied (at school or at home); bullying has been supported in particular environments in the past (including mocking by teachers in schools), bullying is not directly addressed and this looking the other way has demonstrated that bullying can be an “effective” tool of controlling other people.

Whilst schools say they have a zero tolerance to threatening behaviour dealing with bullying is not as simple as it might first appear. Many factors make it difficult for schools to deal forcefully with incidents of bullying.

For example, often bullying occurs off campus. On campus bullying is usually regarded within the remit of the school to deal with. When bullying happens between members of a school community, but off campus, sometimes schools see this as outside their jurisdiction. This is sometimes the case with online bullying. If this happens to you, remember that schools often have a communication and technology use policy. It may be good to read the policy so that you can involve the school actively if cyber bullying is a stated infraction of their rules.  

Bullies are people too. Sometimes people who are bullying are actually quite vulnerable individuals themselves. They may be being bullied (in school or at home), they may not have strong social skills in order to better express their needs. Whilst they are dys-regulated and may have reasons for their outbursts and controlling behaviour, this doesn’t dismiss them from some accountability from their actions.  

There is a tendency to blame the victim in aggressive situations. Sometime individuals look to the victim of a crime to see how they have contributed to the situation, not only how they feel as victims of the bullying. We often do this ourselves, as a may to make sense of situations. Whilst no one may be blameless in an incident there are lines of acceptable behaviour that we need to draw and communicate what is poor behaviour, from aggressive behaviour.

Supporting your bullied child/ teen.

Listen to your child – They may want to ignore what has happened. There are times when you can ignore bullying, such as when a bullying person is simply trying to get a rise out of you. Remind your child that no one has the right to harm them.

Document your experience – so that you are clear about what is happening. You want to include if this is a one-time situation or has occurred on a repetitive basis. Also document the impact – was it perceived by your child as hostile or threatening. Include details of the bullying as fully as you can. 

Work collaboratively with the school. Whilst you can assert that you expect the school to take action, remember it will be more helpful to work collaboratively with them not attack them for your child.

Consider ‘retribution’. What do you consider an acceptable “correction of the bullying behaviour”? Do you know, and does your child know, what an appropriate apology looks like for their victim? For example, in a recent example I worked through with my own teen was cyber bullied by a person at her school – she detailed her desire, “he can’t just say some vague sorry on line, he needs to say what he did was wrong and that he understands why it was wrong” . These components of an apology mean, saying a sincere sorry, understanding why the person has done something careless (personal responsibility), understanding the impact on the victim. If you would like to understand more about what makes a good apology to you, I suggest you explore the apology quiz if your child is a teen. What makes an apology meaningful to them?

https://5lovelanguages.com/quizzes/apology-language

Professional support. Consider if your child will need additional help to navigate their feelings around the events.  If exclusion happened you might like to consider counselling. Many schools have school counsellors that you may have free access to. Otherwise consider private counselling. Nip any negative thought cycles or shame created by bullying in the bud. It is established that childhood bullying has a propensity to continue into adulthood and, if persistent, can leave lifelong scars. Help your child access the support to leave these incidents in the past once they leave school.   

Therapeutic exercises such as journalling and confidence building exercises can help the victim of bulling. One journalling exercise I particularly like, at the time of bullying, is one where the victim of bullying writes a letter to themselves. This helps them support themselves and, hopefully, construct a plan of how they would like to respond.

Take a break from social media. If your child has been cyberbullied encourage them to take a break from social media for a while. Cyberbullying is very difficult to contain because of Cyber bullying is different from in person bullying because it is un-boundaries, often moves faster, privacy cannot be maintained, there is no refuge for your child, the content can remain live forever if it is shared by others, and it’s harder to trace. People feel emboldened to say things online that they would rarely feel confident to express face to face. Having your child observe the speed at which gossip can spread online can be distressing. Sometimes being away from the bullying rather than observing how information can spread, can be less distressing.

Quality family time. You may like to spend more time with your child if they have been bullied. This helps to remind your child that their family is their primary source of support, and will always be there for them.

Build a bigger network of friends. Have your child spend time with friends outside of school for a little, rather than their usual school friends can sometimes help. Whilst I don’t recommend isolating from supports at school, sometimes its nice to have some distance from all the drama involved in bulling and have a nice day out where the bulling is not the only topic of conversation

Own it. Encourage your child to talk to their friends about what has happened. Bullying is, unfortunately extremely common. Sometimes your child might feel ashamed of what has happened. Encourage your child to talk openly about their experience. Their loud sharing may save another child from suffering, and possibly harming themselves, in silence.

Proactive work. Schools and counselling groups work with children to help them build some resilience to withstand bullying. Some groups, such as members of the LGBTQ+ community, and children with different educational capabilities, experience bullying at higher rates than other teens. Helping them bolster their self-esteem, learn some clever clap backs, may be of help.

Set standards. Do not accept that bullying is a normal or acceptable behaviour, at school, or at work. Check your own behaviour to see if you have been complicit in supporting the bullying of others. We can all be more aware that bullying occurs, and that we can all help to stop these behaviours.

Bullying can have long term impact. Protect and support your child.

About the author: Angela Watkins is a counsellor working with teens and adults as they navigate traumatic, or challenging events in their lives. Angela has been named the best therapist in Hong Kong. If you’d like to meet Angela for an appointment, email her on Angelaw@reddoor.hk

Useful Books on bulling:

De Lara, E.W. (2016) Bullying scars: the impact on adult life and relationships.

Lohmann, RC, and Taylor, J. V. (2013) The bullying workbook for teens.

Martocci, L (2021) My bullied past – why does it still hurt?

Mathews, J and Mathews, A. (2011) Stop the bullying.

Payne, K, J., and Llosa, L.N. (2022) Emotionally resilient tweens and teens.

#teens #teenmentalhealth #reddoorcounselling #bullying #redddoorcounselling

Many adults still experience the pain and anxiety associated with bullying incidents from their past. Why can’t they just get over it.?

The effects of bullying are not left behind at school:

When we explore books on bullying (see the end of a few that I recommend) these long-term effects can include Trauma (Adult post bullying syndrome), considering self-harm and suicide, continued feelings of rejection, becoming a people-pleaser, depression, remaining extremely self-conscious, remaining indecisive and anxious, feeling anger, maintaining revenge fantasies, living in denial, having difficulty trusting people, and even bullying others yourself.

The reason that bullying remains important is that the incidents themselves tend to echo a longing for acceptance and belonging, and these incidents remind us that there are threats to our sense of acceptance and belonging – feeling powerless, feeling humiliated, feeling insecure, feeling ashamed. The script we may say to ourselves is “ I want to believe that I am xxx but my experience indicated that I am yyy”

What is bullying?

Bullying is a challenging concept to define. In academic literature many aspects of bullying are argued, for example academics debate aspects such as if a threat needs to be clear, if exclusion is a different or the same as bullying, if a person who has been bullied can also be considered a bully.

In simple terms bullying can involve ongoing actions that are deliberate violations of one’s dignity. (Martocci, 2021). Many people when recounting stories of their personal experiences are reminded how powerless and humiliated, they felt

when they recount their personal historieis of being bullied

Bullying is different from geopolitical atrocities, where people are under physical and deep psychological threat. That doesn’t mean that we should dismiss bullying as it is not as severe as living under threat of war etc.

How can we recover?

When bad events happen to us we can sometimes blame ourselves for what happened, instead of placing bad behaviour at the feet of the people who are not behaving nicely. We can become ashamed of the events, and ourselves.

Individuals can remain obsessed thinking about the bullying incidents, can deny the impact of the actions on them, live in an escapist fantasy where they bullying never happened, or remain angry about what happened. We need to work through these feelings.

If you are still hurting from those events of the past, you might like to consider journalling your feelings around those incidents and responding to specific prompts that we have outlined that can help you work through the impact that those incidents had on you, and may continue to shape your experience. If journalling is not your thing, then consider talking to a counsellor. You will be asked to reflect on those events, and whilst that might feel a little uncomfortable at first, we use these reflections to help understand how bullying has shaped your world view, self-concept, and reactions to conflict. When we explore and understand how these incidents have impacted you, and continue to drive your reactions, we can start to rewire your thoughts, feelings and fears.

Start to heal – reflection exercises

Prompts you might use to help you constructively reflect on your bullying experiences. Journalling is an important process within the counselling realm. For more about the benefits of journalling see our articles on this topic.

Troubled by your thoughts? Start a journal.

Reflective questions that could work as journal prompts.  These prompts will also be helpful if you experienced bullying at work as an adult, not only if you are looking to overcome bullying experiences from your youth.

* What do I let my bullying incident[s] tell me about my value and my sense of belonging?  What is your narrative around what happened. What do you tell yourself about how you were feeling int the moments around being bullied. Did you feel powerless? Humiliated?

• How did you respond to being bullied? Did you act in denial? Has it made you become depressed? Have you escaped into another world?  Did your shame around these events render you mute to talk about them? What has been good/bad for you about the way you chose to respond?

  * What was unfair about that situation?
  * How has this incident affected your self-confidence?
  * Approaching yourself from a perspective of self-compassion. Can you tell yourself for the components that you might be responsible VERSUS the parts that you are definitely not responsible for. Think about what you would have wanted to happened during an incident of bullying. Maybe you wanted someone to accept you, instead of their perceived rejection of you. How can you give yourself the acceptance you did not receive in that moment?

• * Do you hold yourself responsible for what happened? Is this a kind way for you to treat yourself?

   

  About the author: Angela Watkins is a counsellor at RED DOOR counselling in HOng Kong. Angela works with adults and teens exllporing their experience of trauma. For appointments with Angela contact her via email on Angelaw@reddoor.hk

Books on bulling

De Lara, E.W. (2016) Bullying scars: the impact on adult life and relationships.

Lohmann, RC, and Taylor, J. V. (2013) The bullying workbook for teens.

Martocci, L (2021) My bullied past – why does it still hurt?

Mathews, J and Mathews, A. (2011) Stop the bullying.

Payne, K, J., and Llosa, L.N. (2022) Emotionally resilient tweens and teens.

#teens #teenmentalhealth #reddoorcounselling #bullying