Trails Carolina
We know that teens have a reputation for engaging in risky behavior. But when is it typical healthy risk-taking and when does the risky behavior become a larger concern? Why Do Teens Take Risks? Teen’s brains are wired to seek out stimulation. It is one of the reasons that social media and technology can be…
Committing Your Teen to a Healthy Sleep Schedule Have you gotten used to seeing the glow of screens from beneath your teen’s door late into the night? Or maybe you’ve noticed how hard it is to wake them up in the morning for school. Sleep is such an integral part of our lives that we…
Many parents can pinpoint the exact year that their child changed from wanting to sit in their lap and read stories to wanting nothing to do with them. And it is not surprising that it is usually in the pre-teen and teen years. Conflict with your teenager may seem inevitable. The fact that teens can…
When you say the word “yoga”, most people’s thoughts go straight to green juice, leggings, and the pretzel body shapes that grace yoga magazine covers. Yoga is often touted as a workout, with a dazzling amount of options from hot yoga to goat yoga. But yoga can be an incredibly powerful tool for teens struggling…
Adoption can be one of the most rewarding experiences of a parent’s life. After months or years of waiting for your family to feel complete, you finally get to bring home your child. And while adoption is incredibly rewarding, it can also come with it’s own set of challenges. One of the biggest challenges are…
There is evidence that humans have been using fire as a survival tool for as long as a million years, but it took several hundred thousand years for us to perfect the skill of building and controlling fires. Over time, we have learned to skip steps along the way and focus more on the size…
We need to rethink how we conceptualize school refusal, particularly in younger children. We tend to think that it does not make a difference for an elementary school child to be pulled from class for an extra day of vacation or a doctor’s appointment followed by an afternoon of personal errands. However, by the time…
People tend to talk more about the “freeze response” in teens who have experienced trauma than to accept the reality of what “fight or flight” can look like. According to research recently published in JNeurosci., traumatic stress can cause aggression by strengthening two brain pathways involved in emotion. Understanding how traumatic experiences may lead to…
Outdoor therapy programs take a different approach than boot camps for teens with behavior problems by using nature as a guide to making healthier choices and empowering teens to gain insight into how their actions affect others. As many teens with behavior problems struggle with taking advice from authority figures and lack self-awareness necessary for…
Anxiety looks different for everyone that experiences it. While it may be one of the most common and most talked about mental health struggles among teenagers, not everyone responds to anxiety treatment in the same way. Recognizing how attachment styles are influenced by anxiety and vice versa helps loved ones and professionals identify more effective…