Dr. Kastner provides practical, realistic, and ultimately reassuring guidance to help us navigate one of the most challenging aspects of parenting today:
    staying calm and clear-headed
    during hot-button situations that arise during teen years, such as:

    - When your teen is rude and sarcastic
    - When your smart teen does something really dumb
    - When teen problems drive a wedge between you and your spouse
    - When your teen acts like a spoiled brat
    - When you’re worried that you’re losing your teen
    - When teens are mean

    Dr. Laura Kastner Is psychologist specializing in adolescent behavior, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington, and author of The Seven Year Stretch: How Families Work Together to Grow Through Adolecence; Launching Years: Strategies for Parenting from Senior Year to College Life; and the recently published Getting to Calm: 14 Cool-Headed Strategies for Parenting Tweens and Teens

     

    DAVID SHEFF

    David Sheff, Bay Area journalist and New York Times best selling author of
    Beautiful Boy: A father's journey through his son's meth addiction shares his and his family's story of pain, hope, and healing. Although extraordinary, Mr. Sheff's compelling journey will resonate with all of us who have struggled with the tough issues we face as parents – guilt, second guessing parenting ability, anger,denial, recovery, steadfastness, reconciliation, and letting go of what we as parents cannot fix in our children’s lives. His discussion will raise questions that reflect the fears of every parent: How, and when, should a parent know whether his or her child is substance-abusing? What is the extent of one’s responsibility to a loved one? Don’t miss this opportunity for an evening of enlightening discussion,
    .

    David Sheff ’s work has appeared in the New York Times, Outside, Rolling Stone,
    Wired, Fortune,
    and elsewhere. His piece for the New York Times Magazine,
    “My Addicted Son,” generated hundreds of letters from readers and won an award
    as “Outstanding Contribution to Advancing the Understanding of Addiction” from
    the American Psychological Association. He has been interviewed extensively and
    has spoken nationally on the subject of addiction.

     

    DENISE POPE, Ph.D.


    What is success? Our teens live in a high-stakes, high-pressure world where success is often measured by easily-observed symbols: trophies, grades, test scores, and acceptance into prestigious schools. Teens are, however, experiencing unacceptably high levels of anxiety disorders, depression, substance abuse, suicide, poor physical health, and disengagement from learning. Educators, mental health professionals, and business leaders agree that the pursuit of this narrow vision of success often leaves young people lacking the skills most needed to thrive in a rapidly changing world--adaptability, interpersonal and collaborative skills, and the ingenuity and creativity to solve complex problems.


    As parents we need to accept a broader vision of success for our teens. Dr. Pope proposes a definition of success that encompasses character, health, independence, connection, creativity, enthusiasm and achievement, and outlines steps we can take to help reduce pressure in our teens’ lives.


    Denise Pope, Ph.D., is a senior lecturer at the Stanford University School of Education. In 2003, she founded SOS: Stressed-Out Students project, a research and intervention effort to help K-12 schools counter the causes of academic stress. In 2007 she co-founded Challenge Success. She authored "Doing School": How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students. Please visit challengesuccess.org for more information.

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    LINDA BURCH

    SPEAKING ABOUT:


    RAISING TEENS WITH COMMON SENSE IN A 24/7 DIGITAL WORLD


    iTunes. Twitter. Gossip Girl. YouTube. Facebook. The media and technology that runs through the middle of our teen’s lives is evolving at a dizzying pace. As parents, many of us struggle with how to guide our kids through the positives and negatives of this 24/7 media world. How do we engage our teens to discuss media images and messages? How do we encourage them to have a healthy skepticism of the media influences that they are bombarded with on a daily basis? How do we teach them to self-reflect before they self-reveal in a cut and paste culture where words and photos can travel the Internet at the speed of light? Linda will explore these issues and answer our questions as to how we can help our teens to be savvy media users and interpreters – we can’t cover their eyes but we can teach them to see.


    Linda is the Chief Education and Strategy officer and a co-founder of Common Sense Media, a non-profit dedicated to improving the media and entertainment lives of families. For more information, visit www.commonsensemedia.org.



    Elizabeth Scott

    POSITIVE BODY IMAGE

    From eating disorders and steroid use to the influence of the media, Elizabeth Scott, LCSW, will speak about the issues teenage boys and girls face regarding body image. This talk will provide insight as to what we can do to help create an environment free of body perfection obsession in a society full of unhealthy media influence, and promote a mentally and physically healthy lifestyle for our teens.


    Elizabeth is a practicing psychotherapist in San Rafael, California, treating women and girls with eating disorders. She co-founded The Body Positive and co-authored the BodyAloud! guidebook to encourage girls to resist eating disorders and to focus on what they want to express in their lives. Elizabeth trains mental health professionals, community leaders and school personnel nationwide to implement the BodyAloud! program model. For more information, visit TheBodyPositive.org.

    A $5.00 donation is requested at the door for each event.

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    "THE ADOLESCENT BRAIN: REACHING FOR AUTONOMY." Robert Sylwester


    Speaker and author of over 20 books, Robert Sylwester, will discuss his latest book "THE ADOLESCENT BRAIN: REACHING FOR AUTONOMY." Recent developments in the cognitive neurosciences are providing important new information regarding the brains continued development through adolescence into young adulthood. This talk will explore brain development in our teenagers, just at the time that are getting the literal and figurative “keys to the car” -- and how it affects moral and ethical growth. For more information, view Dr. Sylwester’s monthly column for the Internet journal "Brain Connection" at

    www.brainconnection.com.

10.19.2009

Dr. Kastner



03.02.2009

Annual
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