If Facebook really just a stalking ground for sexual predators?

The links used in the video

http://www.switched.com/2010/03/12/peeved-facebook-might-sue-brit-tabloid-over-14-year-old-girl-h/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/mar/08/peter-chapman-facebook-ashleigh-hall

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1257088/Sarahs-mother-thought-shed-12-year-old-safe-online-She-wrong.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1239268/One-mothers-devastating-revenge-52-year-old-paedophile-groomed-child-Facebook.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1211786/Former-child-abuse-detective-pleads-guilty-grooming-teenager-Facebook.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1256793/I-posed-girl-14-Facebook-What-followed-sicken-you.html

I  was inmtrigued by this latest post on the brain considering that this info has been around for years.

Jensen says scientists used to think human brain development was pretty complete by age 10. Or as she puts it, that “a teenage brain is just an adult brain with fewer miles on it.”

But it’s not. To begin with, she says, a crucial part of the brain — the frontal lobes — are not fully connected. Really.

“It’s the part of the brain that says: ‘Is this a good idea? What is the consequence of this action?’ ” Jensen says. “It’s not that they don’t have a frontal lobe. And they can use it. But they’re going to access it more slowly.”

That’s because the nerve cells that connect teenagers’ frontal lobes with the rest of their brains are sluggish. Teenagers don’t have as much of the fatty coating called myelin, or “white matter,” that adults have in this area.

Think of it as insulation on an electrical wire. Nerves need myelin for nerve signals to flow freely. Spotty or thin myelin leads to inefficient communication between one part of the brain and another.

More Vulnerable To Addiction

But that’s not the only big difference in teenagers’ brains. Nature made the brains of children and adolescents excitable. Their brain chemistry is tuned to be responsive to everything in their environment. After all, that’s what makes kids learn so easily.

But this can work in ways that are not so good. Take alcohol, for example. Or nicotine, cannabis, cocaine, ecstasy …

“Addiction has been shown to be essentially a form of ‘learning,’ ” Jensen says. After all, if the brain is wired to form new connections in response to the environment, and potent psychoactive drugs suddenly enter that environment, those substances are “tapping into a much more robust habit-forming ability that adolescents have, compared to adults.”

So studies have shown that a teenager who smokes pot will still show cognitive deficits days later. An adult who smokes the same dose will return to cognitive baseline much faster.

This bit of knowledge came in handy in Jensen’s own household.

“Most parents, they’ll say, ‘Don’t drink, don’t do drugs,’” says Will, son number two. “And I’m the type of kid who’d say ‘why?’ ”

When Will asked why, his mom could give him chapter and verse on drugs and teen brains. So they would know, she says, “that if I smoke pot tonight and I have an exam in two days’ time, I’m going to do worse. It’s a fact.”

There were other advantages to having a neuroscientist mom, Will says. Like when he was tempted to pull an all-nighter.

“She would say, ‘read it tonight and then go to sleep,’” he says. “And what she explained to me is that it will take [what you've been reading] from your short-term memory and while you sleep you will consolidate it. And actually you will know it better in the morning than right before you went to sleep.”

I could not agree more and here are my podcasts on the Teenage Brain

Edge challenges the politicans to think differently.

The world is changing rapidly but our education system is failing to keep pace. Edge wants to see practical and vocational learning at the heart of education alongside academic study to enable every young person to fulfil their individual talents and have access to many paths to success.

Over the last seven months Edge have been collecting people’s views and opinions through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, TESConnect, blogs and via emails, online messages and at face-to-face events . Thousands  have voiced your support for our campaign to change education and help secure a better future for young people. The outcome of all of these messages is the first ever election broadcast generated completely by the public.

The broadcast (below)  was screened at the Houses of Parliament yesterday with key politicians from the three main political parties in
attendance.  Still time to have your say go to Edge and give them your thoughts.

When it comes to supporting children through exams, many parents could do with a helping hand.

I am pleased to have been included in the Tesco Magazine’s panalof experts . Download the guide here

Or visit the site

How to wake your little darling up without a slanging match.

Missed the first article read it here Teenagers and Sleep

Here are my suggestions for getting them up.

• Go in at least an hour before they have to get up and open their curtains – natural light is a gentle way to bring someone around from a deep slumber.
• Get a very loud alarm clock in their room and set it for thirty minutes before they have to get up. Put it somewhere where they have to get up to switch it off.Then, if they are not up, go in five minutes before they are due to get up and in a stern authoritative voice, tell them it is time to get up.Do this two more times and then leave them to it.

  On the last occasion tell them that you will not be coming in anymore.

  A side note here is that making them go to bed early to get up early may not be a solution. Melatonin levels (which induce sleep) kick in much later with adolescents and sometimes will not peak until one or two in the morning. So even though they may go to bed, their pleas of, “I can’t get to sleep!” may actually be true. They are just not wired the same as we are when it comes to sleep.

   

First mind shift change to improve your relationship with your teenager.

I was asked to write some tips for parents surrounding my manifesto and, since there is so much in my manifesto I though I would take one point at a time and give parents some tips. My manifesto is designed to change not only the way we act towards young people, but the way we think about them and our relationships with them. To read the rest of the manifesto, go here. In the meantime, here is the first point.

First mind shift change to improve your relationship with your teenager.

Quick fixes will not fix the problem.

So many of the problems with our young people are systemic, yet we think that a quick intervention will “fix them”. We see a problem and we rush to fix the young person with a quick solution. People are so much more complicated than “quick fixes”.

For busy parents this is more so….we want the behaviour to change and we want it to change now. We don’t often think why it has got the way it has, how we may have contributed to it or how we can work together to fix it. We automatically blame the child and think of an intervention that will fix them.

The first question we need to ask is, actually does that young person need fixing? For that matter, what gives us the right to say anyone needs fixing? If we want to improve the situation then we must realise that it may take as long to improve as it did to break down in the first place.

People only change when they are ready to and most of the time, this is not quick!

Our children are not appliances, something cannot just break and you cannot call in someone to repair them. It is like any exercise programme, it is painful and it takes time to achieve results.

A lot of these quick-fix methods assume that we can control another and force them into change and most importantly, they only look at one aspect it takes to be human.

I can work with a young person and do everything and really change their view on life, their attitude and behaviour, but if that young person sits on the couch all day eating chocolate, the improvement in their behaviour will be minute.

We need to be brave and really take these problems by the horns, implementing long-term solutions that take an integrated approach to supporting our young people. We need to look at diet, nutrition andenvironment as well as the traditional talking therapies and interventions if we want to produce long terms success.

Long term solutions that integrate all the different aspects to produce long term success should be our only option.

So next time you feel like you want to step in and fix your children ask yourself,

1. Is the solution I am trying to implement going to move me closer to or further away from my child? In other words, will it harm and improve the relationship? If it will harm, then don’t do it.

2. Ask yourself if putting a quick fix in will teach your teen anything. Will it make them learn something about responsibility, for example, or is it just a quick fix punishment?

3. Look at the situation in a holistic way., Could what they are eating affect their behaviour, do they need to get out more, what is their environment like, could that be having an impact?

Remember, quick fixes may seem like a good idea, but they rarely fix the long term problem.