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February 13, 2004
Healthy choice for teens
Forum teaches parents how to listen to their children.
KYLE BERGER REPORTER
Last week, more than 50 parents and teenagers took a unique opportunity
to raise their awareness about how culture and mass media play a
significant role in teen development.
The Feb. 3 forum, titled Healthy Choices, Healthy Teens, was sponsored
by the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver (JCC), the Jewish
Family Service Agency, the B.C. Children's Hospital and Na'amat
Canada. It featured four presenters from the Eating Disorders Program
at Children's Hospital (EDP).
After opening with an introduction from Lisa Fields from the EDP,
the audience viewed the video Killing Us Softly 3, the newest
of a series that shows how the female body is used to sell products
and influence the minds of young people.
"When we think about media today, there are a lot of companies
out there that use technology to sell products," Fields said
after the video. "[They are] not necessarily products that
we need or that are good for us, but they want us to buy them and
they don't really care how they sell it.
"We live in a culture where so much is being said through visuals,"
she continued. "And so it's really important for parents to
be able to think critically about the media but also to be able
to have a critical conversation with their children about the media
to help them navigate through that."
Fields offered a list of questions that parents could ask their
children after seeing an advertisement that sells beauty products
or clothing using unrealistic pictures or graphics.
"Does this offer a realistic image?" she prompted the
audience gathered in the JCC's Wosk Auditorium. "Do the men
and women in this ad look like the average person we see when we
go to the mall? Will buying that product make you look like that
model? Does the model look like that because of the product?"
The next presenter, Dr. Ron Manley, the clinical director of EDP,
showed a slide presentation featuring images, graphs and statistics
that displayed how society has changed its view of women over the
past 100 years and some of the reasons why.
"Pubertal development is happening at an earlier age,"
he stated as one example of change. "The average age of puberty
now is 12.5 years compared to about 15.5 a century or more ago."
He also played a song by popular contemporary band No Doubt called,
"I'm Just a Girl," which ironically describes women as
simple creatures that offer very little to a male-dominated culture.
EDP's program manager Ellen Becker told the audience about the Eating
Disorders Resource Centre, which is located in the Shaughnessy building
of B.C. Children's Hospital.
"I encourage anyone to go there and look at the books, watch
videos and have lots of questions answered," she said, before
focusing on the importance of communication, specifically between
parents and children. She suggested that a parent should find time
on a regular basis to just listen to their children.
"Bad communication is when a child is not allowed to speak,
when the child speaks no one listens or when there's no concentration
on the part of the parents," she explained. "Take your
child to a park bench with some hot chocolate and just listen very
very quietly. Do not answer. Do not speak for the child. Let the
child talk, because as kids speak they ask themselves questions
about who they are and who they want to be when they grow up."
The final speaker was Dr. Pierre Leichner, who presented a model
that details the six stages of change that a teen might experience
when dealing with a problem. Each stage has recommendations for
what parents, or helpers, can do to help their teens overcome obstacles
and develop life skills.
The model features six different steps toward a change in behavior:
the precontemplation stage, the contemplation stage, the preparation
stage, the action stage, the maintenance stage and, sometimes, the
relapse stage. For the helpers, the one constant piece of advice
at each stage is the need for engagement with the teens and practising
active listening.
The evening concluded with a question-and-answer session. One of
the more in-depth discussions focused on the concept of creating
a place in the Jewish community where teens could get together and
discuss the changes, influences and emotional growing pains that
they face.
Kyle Berger is a freelance journalist and graphic designer
living in Richmond.
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