Here’s a decidedly 21st-century sleep issue: “Sleep-texting” is apparently a growing phenomenon among teens. That’s right: Teens are reaching for their phones during the night, firing off messages, and waking up with no recollection of their actions.

Social media and technology are part of daily life for everyone today, but especially for young people. One study suggests that U.S. teens send an average of 100 texts per day! If that activity extends to their sleep time, we’ve got a serious health issue on our hands.

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Lying to Your Kids

By Marissa Cohen

Read the Lying to Your Kids article > >

Teen Sleep Needs

Even without sleep-texting, teens have their own particular set of shut-eye needs and challenges. For one, teens generally need at least nine hours of sleep per night. Unfortunately, most don’t get it. Biological changes associated with puberty make it harder for teens to fall asleep and stay asleep. And their lifestyles — increased academic and social pressure, late nights, and sleep-in Saturday mornings — also make it harder for them to maintain regular sleep schedules. 

Unhealthy sleep habits can lead to serious sleep deprivation, posing a threat to teens’ academic success and also to their physical and mental health. Sleep problems among this age group are linked to obesity, high blood pressure, depression, behavioral problems, and drug abuse. Some evidence suggests that sleep problems during adolescence can affect health well into adulthood.

Research already shows that social media can interfere with teens’ sleep habits. Teens spend 53 hours per week engaged with some form of electronic media, according to a large-scale study by the Kaiser Family Foundation. That’s more than seven hours per day. 

The study also found that teens’ daily consumption of social media is on the rise, with their use of mobile media increasing at the fastest rate. Another study indicates that teens who text and use the Internet are more likely to have trouble getting to sleep and staying asleep. And more than half of kids and teenagers who text or surf the Internet at bedtime have mood, behavior, memory, and thinking problems during the day. 

Let’s not forget that texting during sleep is disruptive not only to the texting teen, but also to the teen who receives a message — a beeping cell phone in the middle of the night is not exactly restful.

Teen Texting De-tox

Here’s how parents can help keep teenagers from overusing technology:

Set limits. Self-discipline and time management are hard enough for adults, much less teenagers, but you can establish boundaries. The Kaiser Family Foundation reports that only three in 10 teens have rules at home about electronic media use. It also says that such rules do help decrease teens’ overall tech time.

Get them outside. Whether it’s organized sports or regular family hikes, physical activity has many benefits, including time away from online distractions. Regular exercise and exposure to sunlight also improve sleep quality.

Keep the bedroom tech-free. This one’s a no-brainer. The easiest way to prevent technology from interfering with your teenager’s sleep is to keep cell phones, computers, and other electronic devices out of the bedroom.

Find more articles, browse back issues, and read the current issue of WebMD the Magazine.

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The pleasant temperatures of this past winter may be giving way to unpleasant consequences, as the warmer weather has encouraged the early emergence of ticks. That means greater chances of contracting Lyme disease, particularly in the Northeastern, mid-Atlantic, and North-Central U.S., where it’s spread by Ixodes scapularis, often called deer tick or blacklegged tick. (Western blacklegged ticks, Ixodes pacificus, spread the disease in California and the Pacific Northwest.) Ticks can also transmit other diseases such as anaplasmosis, babesiosis, ehrlichiosis, and Rocky Mountain spotted fever.

WebMD talked with Todd Barton, MD, an infectious diseases specialist and Lyme disease expert at the University of Pennsylvania, about the possible uptick in health risks from these bloodsuckers and how you can protect yourself.

Identifying Bugs and Their Bites

What does the warm weather mean for the tick threat?

“One would expect to see them earlier this year, but in theory there won’t be more ticks than usual,” Barton says. “However, given the warm weather, people will be outdoors more frequently and therefore more often exposed to ticks, and the number of opportunities for infection is more important than the number of ticks.”

How will I know if I have been bitten by a tick?

“Ticks have some sort of anesthetic in their spit, so you are not going to feel it when it bites you,” Barton says. “That means you have to check yourself thoroughly. They can be hard to spot. Nymphs, which are the size of a poppy seed, spread the most infection to humans because they are harder to spot and less picky about what they eat — they are teenagers, desperate and hungry — while larger adult ticks tend to favor smaller mammals.”

What should I do if I find a tick on me?

“First, it’s not a medical emergency, so you don’t need to dial 911,” Barton says. “In most cases, ticks take an hour or so to crawl somewhere dark and warm — the back of your knee, your groin, the crack of your butt — and start feeding. If it hasn’t settled in to feed, you can brush it off. If it is already feeding, it takes more than a day to pass along any infection it might be carrying.”

“To remove it, use fine-tipped tweezers to grasp the tick close to the skin and pull up with even pressure without twisting or jerking the tick. Don’t use your fingers — they are crude tools, and they can squish the tick, which can then squirt their guts, which is what carries infection, into you. If some of the tick pieces get left behind, that’s OK. You will do more harm than good to dig into your skin to look for leftovers. Your body will heal fine even if a little bit of the tick is left in you.”

“Don’t use Vaseline, matches, or alcohol — none of these things work or help.”

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Rheumatoid arthritis affects about 1% of the population worldwide, but still misunderstanding swirls around this common and severe joint condition.  

“There are so many misconceptions out there about rheumatoid arthritis,” says Paul Kremer, MD, a rheumatologist and professor of medicine at Albany Medical College in New York.

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“Arthritis is common, and rheumatoid arthritis often gets confused with the other kinds of arthritis in people’s minds,” he says. 

Plus, rheumatoid arthritis is still mysterious in many ways. Research and new treatments are constantly changing the understanding of the disease.

Even the experts still have a lot to learn about rheumatoid arthritis. WebMD teamed up with Kremer to explode a few common myths about this “commonly unusual” disease.

Myth No. 1: Rheumatoid arthritis is just like ‘regular arthritis.’

Fact: Rheumatoid arthritis is not “regular arthritis.” What we think of as “regular arthritis” is osteoarthritis, caused by injury or normal wear-and-tear on aging joints. Osteoarthritis is the most common joint disease in middle age to older people.

By contrast, rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic, progressive autoimmune disorder. In response to an unknown trigger, the body makes antibodies that attack its own tissues. The self-attacks mostly affect the joints, although they can also affect other body parts. Disease attacks, called flare-ups, occur periodically, or can be continuous in some people.

“This is the most common confusion — between osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. It gets even more confusing, because people with RA often also have osteoarthritis,” adds Kremer.

Myth No. 2: Only old people get rheumatoid arthritis.

Fact: In most people who develop RA, the disease starts between the ages of 30 and 55.

“This is the peak age group,” says Kremer, “but anyone can get rheumatoid arthritis, even teenagers.” At the same time, “older folks may have more severe RA, because it’s progressive and they’ve been living with it longer.”

Myth No. 3: Rheumatoid arthritis isn’t all that serious.

Fact: Rheumatoid arthritis can threaten your health and independence, especially if it’s inadequately treated.

“A lot of people downplay RA as just ‘Grandma’s rheumatism,’ and they miss the boat completely,” says Kremer. “They delay seeing a physician, often for months or years, and a lot of joint damage can happen during that time.”

Rheumatoid arthritis needs prompt diagnosis and regular treatment to protect joints from harm. In turn, this can protect your independence and long-term function.

Having rheumatoid arthritis also increases the risk for certain other conditions, says Kremer. “Cardiovascular diseases, infections, and lung disease are all more common in people with RA.”

webmd.com

April 10, 2012 — The number of babies born to U.S. teens has reached a historic low.

New statistics from the CDC show the teen birth rate in 2010 dropped by 9% from 2009 to a new low of 34.3 births per 1,000 women aged 15-19.

That sets several records:

It’s the lowest point since record-keeping began in 1946.It’s 44% lower than the most recent peak in 1991.It’s 64% lower than the all-time high set in 1957.

“If the 1991 rates had prevailed through the years 1992-2010, there would have been an estimated 3.4 million additional births to teenagers during that period,” CDC researchers Brady Hamilton, PhD, and Stephanie Ventura write in their report.

Researchers say the public health impact of this decline is substantial because of the increased health risks faced by teen mothers and their infants. Public health costs associated with teen childbearing are estimated at $10.9 billion each year.

They credit the drop in teen birth rates to more teens using contraceptives when they have sex for the first time, and also teens using dual methods of birth control, such as condoms and birth control pills.

Teen Births Down, Disparities Remain

The drop in the teen birth rate from 2009-2010 included teens from all ages and ethnic groups. But there are still some gaps.

Teen birth rates dropped in all but three states: Montana, North Dakota, and West Virginia.

Overall, teen birth rates tended to be highest in the South and Southwest and lowest in the Northwest and upper Midwest.

Researchers say some of the variation in teen birth rates between states may reflect racial and ethnic differences.

For example, 2010 teen birth rates ranged from:

Asian or Pacific Islanders: 10.9 births per 1,000 teensWhites: 23.5 per 1,000 teensAmerican Indian or Alaska native: 38.7 per 1,000 teensAfrican-Americans: 51.5 per 1,000 teensHispanic: 55.7 per 1,000 teens

teens.webmd.com

As the parent of a teen, you know that it’s not easy for teens growing up in today’s media-saturated world. Although kids share the same concerns about school, friends, and fitting in as you did at the same age — today’s teens are never far from their cell phone, computer, TV, or video game console. And that adds up to a lot of distractions that take time away from important things like being physically active and finishing homework.

In fact, according to a recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, over the past 5 years, kids aged 8 to 18 have increased the amount of time they spend plugged into media by 1 hour and 17 minutes a day — up from 6 hours and 21 minutes to 7 hours and 38 minutes. That is almost as much time as you spend at work — except that kids keep at it 7 days a week. How is all this screen time affecting our teenagers?

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How to Make Healthy Eating Easy

You already know the benefits of healthy eating, and you try to eat well. So what’s keeping your family from eating high-quality foods — a variety of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean sources of protein? And how can you help them eat better?    Here, experts suggest how you can make healthy eating a habit. Plus, they offer tips on how to make it fun for preschoolers, grade-school kids, and teens.

Read the How to Make Healthy Eating Easy article > >

“The more time kids spend in front of screens, the more inactive they are,” says Gwenn O’Keeffe, MD, a pediatrician and author of CyberSafe: Protecting and Empowering Kids in the Digital World of Texting, Gaming and Social Media (American Academy of Pediatrics, 2010). “And it’s any kind of screen — computers, TV, cell phones, or gaming.”

The bottom line, experts say, is whether your teen has weight challenges or not, activity helps children feel better, sleep better, and learn better — so you’ll want to get them away from the screen so they can get moving.

Here’s what you can do to encourage your teenager to scale back on screen time and become more active.

Reducing Kids’ TV, Computer, and Cell Phone Time — Without a Fight

Try these stress-free strategies with your teen:

Watch your own screen habits. Although your teen may not seem to pay attention to anything you do or say, you are still her most important role model. So you can’t tell her to cut back on TV time if you’re watching endless hours of TV, texting while you’re driving, or eating dinner with your Blackberry on the table.

“You have to watch what you do,” says Paul Ballas, DO, a child psychiatrist and medical director of the Green Tree School Clinic in Philadelphia. “Parents who have limited TV habits tend to raise kids who will have limited TV habits.” In short, if you set household screen-time rules, you also need to follow them.

Remind teens to limit screen usage. Banning electronics completely isn’t realistic these days, but it’s important to let your teen know you’re paying attention to how much time she’s on a screen. “Sometimes, you need to give them a gentle reminder like, ‘Hey, I think you’ve used enough technology for now — it’s time to get off and do something else,’” O’Keeffe says. “These kids were born digital, so it’s up to us to remind them that there’s an unplugged world.”

fit.webmd.com

Feb. 13, 2012 — It is a common complaint of our modern age that kids and teens don’t get enough sleep.

Video games, TV, social media, and other trappings of our increasingly tech-centric lives are often blamed, but a new study shows that long before Facebook or PlayStation 3, kids were sleeping less than experts said they should.

When researchers in Australia reviewed sleep recommendations and actual sleep times among children over the past century, they found that kids consistently slept about 37 minutes less than recommended at the time.

Each time, new technological marvels — be it the light bulb in the early 1900s, TV in the 1950s, or computer gaming systems and social networking today — were blamed for declining sleep times.

“The message that children don’t get enough sleep has been the same for over 100 years,” says researcher Tim S. Olds, PhD, of the University of South Australia.

Insomnia Slideshow: 20 Tips for Better Sleep

Sleep Recommendations Not Scientific

Olds says health policymakers have been making recommendations about how much sleep children should get each night for more than a century, with very little scientific evidence to back the recommendations up.

That is because studying optimal sleep times during childhood is very difficult.

Getting too little sleep has been linked to an increased risk for obesity, poor school performance, behavioral problems, and substance abuse.

But like adults, individual children and teens appear to have different sleep needs, Olds says.

When they explored sleep recommendations over the last century, Olds and colleague Lisa Anne Matricciani found 32 sets of age-specific sleep recommendations since the late 1800s and about 200 studies examining actual sleep times among children and teens.

On average, age-specific sleep recommendations declined by about 0.71 minutes per year between 1897 and 2009, and this paralleled a similar decline in sleep times.

Actual sleep times were consistently 37 minutes less than recommended over the observation period.

The study appears online today and in the March issue of the journal Pediatrics.

“The rationale for sleep recommendations was also strikingly consistent for more than 100 years: Children were overtaxed by the stimulation of modern living, although that stimulation was embodied in whatever the technological avatar of the time was,” the researchers write.

Some Kids Need More Sleep, Some Need Less

According to the National Sleep Foundation, school-aged children who are 12 and under need at least 10 to 11 hours of sleep each night, while teenagers need eight-and-a-half to nine-and-a-half hours of sleep.

Olds says parents should not be too concerned if their children or teens get a little more or a little less sleep each night, as long as they seem to be functioning well at home and school.

Pediatric sleep specialist William Kohler, MD, agrees.

Kohler is medical director of the Florida Sleep Institute at Florida Hospital in Tampa.

“A child who is alert and doing well in school with no behavioral issues is probably getting enough sleep,” he says.

But he adds that when there are issues, poor sleep quantity or quality should be one of the first suspects.

“We may not have good standards for understanding how much sleep an individual child needs, but there is plenty of good evidence that getting too little sleep or having poor-quality sleep leads to a wide range of health and behavioral problems,” he tells WebMD.

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Creating an environment where your kids can make healthy nutritional choices is one of the most important steps you can take to ensure the health of your child.

By fostering a supportive environment, you and your family can develop a positive relationship with healthy food. You can lead them by your example.

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How to Make Healthy Eating Easy

You already know the benefits of healthy eating, and you try to eat well. So what’s keeping your family from eating high-quality foods — a variety of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean sources of protein? And how can you help them eat better?    Here, experts suggest how you can make healthy eating a habit. Plus, they offer tips on how to make it fun for preschoolers, grade-school kids, and teens.

Read the How to Make Healthy Eating Easy article > >

Here are 10 tips for getting children to eat healthy food and form wise nutritional habits, offered by Melinda Sothern, PhD, co-author of Trim Kids and director of the childhood obesity prevention laboratory at Louisiana State University:

Avoid placing restrictions on food. Restricting food increases the risk your child may develop eating disorders such as anorexia or bulimia later in life. It can also have a negative effect on growth and development. Instead of banning foods, talk about all the healthy, nutritional options there are — encouraging your family to chose fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean meats, and low-fat dairy, while avoiding heavily processed, low-quality junk foods.Keep healthy food at hand. Children will eat what’s available. Keep fruit in a bowl on the counter, not buried in the crisper section of your fridge. Remember, your child can only choose foods that you stock in the house. And have an apple for your own snack. “Your actions scream louder than anything you will ever tell them,” says Sothern.Don’t label foods as “good” or “bad.” Instead, tie foods to the things your child cares about, such as sports or doing well in school. Let your child know that lean protein such as turkey and calcium in dairy products give them strength for sports. The antioxidants in fruits and vegetables add luster to skin and hair. And eating a healthy breakfast can help them keep focus in class.Praise healthy choices. Give your children a proud smile and praise when they choose healthy foods such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, or low-fat dairy.Don’t nag about unhealthy choices. When children choose fatty, fried, unhealthy foods, redirect them by suggesting a healthier option.   Instead of regular potato chips and dip, offer baked tortilla chips and salsa.  If your child wants candy, try dipping fresh strawberries in a little chocolate sauce. Too busy? Keep naturally sweet dried fruit at home for quick snacks.  Instead of buying French fries, try roasting cut up potatoes in the oven (tossed in just a bit of oil).Never use food as a reward. This could create weight problems in later life. Instead, reward your children with something physical and fun — perhaps a trip to the park or a quick game of catch.Sit down to family dinners at night. If this isn’t a tradition in your home, make it one. Research shows that children who eat dinners at the table with their parents have better nutrition and are less likely to get in serious trouble as teenagers. Start with 1 night a week, and then work up to 3 or 4, to gradually build the habit.Prepare plates in the kitchen. You can put the right portion of each item on everyone’s dinner plate, instead of offering up a food buffet or serve-yourself style. This way your children will learn to recognize healthy portion sizes. If adjusting to healthier portion sizes means smaller portions for your family, help make the switch seem less shocking by using smaller plates.Give the kids some control. Ask your children to take 3 bites of all the foods on their plate and give each one a grade, such as A, B, C, D, or F. When healthy foods — especially certain vegetables — get high marks, serve them more often. Offer the items your children don’t like less frequently. This lets your children participate in decision making. After all, dining is a family affair.Consult your pediatrician. Always talk with your child’s doctor before putting your child on a weight loss diet, trying to help your child gain weight, or making any significant changes in the type of foods your child eats. Never diagnose your child as too heavy or too thin by yourself.

fit.webmd.com

If Tom Hedrick could change one thing about teen drug use, he would reduce the time it takes between a parent’s first hunch that something is wrong and the child getting treatment. The fact that teens lie about drugs, and parents believe them, delays treatment, says Hedrick, a founding member of The Partnership for a Drug-Free America.

Brian and Julie Unwin have heard a lot of lies, both from their son and through other parents in their support group. A few examples:

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Special Report: The New Boys’ Health Scare

 By Brian Alexander   You wouldn’t know it to speak to her, because she’s cheerfully chatty, with a pronounced Chicago-land accent, but Brandie Langer is worried. She’s also a little worried about being worried. “Do you think I might be paranoid?” she asks. She has three children. The youngest, a son, is 5 years old, and Brandie has read a lot online about endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), which some scientists say can scramble male hormones. EDCs are commonly found in plastics, bug-…

Read the Special Report: The New Boys’ Health Scare article > >

“Other people were smoking marijuana. I must have inhaled some by accident.”“I was the only one at the party who wasn’t drinking, but they arrested all of us.”“I ate a poppy seed muffin. That must be why the drug test came back positive.”

The Unwins’ teenage son lied and manipulated them for four years until he got sober. And they, like many parents, had a hard time accepting that reality. “When you raise a child, when you hold him in your arms as an infant, you want to believe him. No family wants to go through this,” says Brian.

This article explores the lies teens tell about drugs and what parents can do to get over their hurt and anger to keep their child safe.

Kids Lie, and Parents Believe Them

A group of researchers wanted to know how common it is for teens to lie about drugs. They asked 400 teenagers if they used cocaine, then took hair samples to test for traces of the drug. Even though they knew their answers were private, and that the drug test would prove them right or wrong, most teens who had cocaine in their systems denied using it. The hair samples revealed drug use 52 times more often than the teens admitted.

The fact that teens lie even when they know they’ll get caught doesn’t surprise Mason Turner, MD, chief of psychiatry at Kaiser Permanente San Francisco. “Most teens don’t think about what comes next,” he tells WebMD. “Concerns about the future don’t enter into their decision making.”

6 Tips for Parents of Teens

If your child is lying about using drugs or alcohol, looking the other way is a dangerous mistake. Study after study shows that parents’ involvement plays an important role in preventing adolescent drug use. And the earlier problem is addressed, the better your chances of containing potential damage. Here are six things you can do.

1. Trust your instincts.
Turner sees many parents discount their concerns about their child’s behavior. They say things like, “I’m probably just being an obsessive parent.” Or “Maybe I’m being hypersensitive.” But parents know their children. “If a parent’s gut is telling them something is off, there has got to be a reason,” Turner tells WebMD.

webmd.com

If Tom Hedrick could change one thing about teen drug use, he would reduce the time it takes between a parent’s first hunch that something is wrong and the child getting treatment. The fact that teens lie about drugs, and parents believe them, delays treatment, says Hedrick, a founding member of The Partnership for a Drug-Free America.

Brian and Julie Unwin have heard a lot of lies, both from their son and through other parents in their support group. A few examples:

Recommended Related to Parenting

Special Report: The New Boys’ Health Scare

 By Brian Alexander   You wouldn’t know it to speak to her, because she’s cheerfully chatty, with a pronounced Chicago-land accent, but Brandie Langer is worried. She’s also a little worried about being worried. “Do you think I might be paranoid?” she asks. She has three children. The youngest, a son, is 5 years old, and Brandie has read a lot online about endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), which some scientists say can scramble male hormones. EDCs are commonly found in plastics, bug-…

Read the Special Report: The New Boys’ Health Scare article > >

“Other people were smoking marijuana. I must have inhaled some by accident.”“I was the only one at the party who wasn’t drinking, but they arrested all of us.”“I ate a poppy seed muffin. That must be why the drug test came back positive.”

The Unwins’ teenage son lied and manipulated them for four years until he got sober. And they, like many parents, had a hard time accepting that reality. “When you raise a child, when you hold him in your arms as an infant, you want to believe him. No family wants to go through this,” says Brian.

This article explores the lies teens tell about drugs and what parents can do to get over their hurt and anger to keep their child safe.

Kids Lie, and Parents Believe Them

A group of researchers wanted to know how common it is for teens to lie about drugs. They asked 400 teenagers if they used cocaine, then took hair samples to test for traces of the drug. Even though they knew their answers were private, and that the drug test would prove them right or wrong, most teens who had cocaine in their systems denied using it. The hair samples revealed drug use 52 times more often than the teens admitted.

The fact that teens lie even when they know they’ll get caught doesn’t surprise Mason Turner, MD, chief of psychiatry at Kaiser Permanente San Francisco. “Most teens don’t think about what comes next,” he tells WebMD. “Concerns about the future don’t enter into their decision making.”

6 Tips for Parents of Teens

If your child is lying about using drugs or alcohol, looking the other way is a dangerous mistake. Study after study shows that parents’ involvement plays an important role in preventing adolescent drug use. And the earlier problem is addressed, the better your chances of containing potential damage. Here are six things you can do.

1. Trust your instincts.
Turner sees many parents discount their concerns about their child’s behavior. They say things like, “I’m probably just being an obsessive parent.” Or “Maybe I’m being hypersensitive.” But parents know their children. “If a parent’s gut is telling them something is off, there has got to be a reason,” Turner tells WebMD.

webmd.com

Breaking up is hard to do. Divorce and its complications are the themes of Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s hit Emmy award-winning sitcom, The New Adventures of Old Christine, in which she plays a newly single mom facing the challenges of dating again, a host of custody and parenting issues, and an ex-husband who is still very much in her life.

Although her own marriage — with two kids — to writer-producer Brad Hall is still going strong at 21 years, the actress is mining emotions she is familiar with. Her parents divorced when she was a child, and she was shuffled back and forth between their homes in Washington, D.C., and New York City. While her parents kept it civil and Louis-Dreyfus remains close to her mother, father, and their respective “new” spouses, many kids of divorce have it much tougher. Some are asked to broker peace between warring exes, even as they are grieving the loss of a parent who has abruptly moved out. Others must deal with parents who suddenly can’t cope with everyday tasks, like making dinner or helping with homework.

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By Kate CoyneTough-talking newswoman Nancy Grace lets down her guard about the man she finally married, her struggle to become a mom, and why these babies are her miracles. Television journalist Nancy Grace is holding her infant twins, and it’s getting hard to stop the crying. As she sits in a rocking chair in her Manhattan apartment, she cradles little John David in her right arm and Lucy Elizabeth in her left. Luckily, both babies seem oblivious to the waterworks; they’re still soundly sleeping…

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Many children take the battle scars of divorce well into adulthood — wounds that never needed to be inflicted in the first place. But broken-up spouses can help stop the damage done by managing their own behavior before the ink dries on the divorce papers. WebMD spoke with family and divorce expert M. Gary Neuman, LMHC, who gives exes pointers on how to split up without emotionally destroying their kids long term.

1. Don’t make your child the messenger …

“Too many parents attempt to communicate through their children, which causes undue emotional stress on them and forces them to negotiate a situation their own parents could not handle,” says Neuman. “Email is an excellent tool nowadays to communicate with your ex-spouse. It allows you to specifically discuss the practicalities of raising your child without detouring into negative areas and opening old wounds. It also provides a recorded message, admissible into court, so parents tend to be more careful when using it.

If you want or need to speak with your ex over the phone or in person, be focused and stay on task, and most important, don’t swallow the bait if he or she descends into anger. Simply say, ‘I appreciate your feelings, but I am here to discuss our child’s school assignment.’ Take the high road. Your child’s emotional health depends on it.”

2. … or your therapist.

“Teenagers like to feel in control, and divorce turns their worlds upside down,” Neuman says. “Don’t fall into the trap of sharing divorce details or your angry feelings about your ex with your older kids. Their own anxiety and need for control causes them to be ‘understanding’ of what you’re going through, but you need to be the parent. Get outside help for yourself, get therapy if necessary, and maintain those boundaries. Making your child your cohort is wrong and does them damage.”

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