Ideas, recommendations are welcomed, says Deathe
OPINION
By Penny Deathe, Healthy Youth Network
Flamborough Review
Thu., May 6, 2021
I dreaded my children becoming teens.
You’d think having left the corporate world to launch a youth initiative that supports positive youth development, I’d be ready, but hell no. I’d gone from being blissfully unaware to understanding what the challenges were that youth were facing, and it was scary.
I had missed the signs of depression in my daughter until her friends came to me, and here I was working closely with Public Health. When we tried to help our son choose the right university and the right program, we felt totally unprepared.
There were questions they were asking that we didn’t know the answer to, and terms they were using that we had never heard. Technology, social media, and career options were moving at such a quick pace and constantly changing. It can be overwhelming.
So for all the parents whose children will be teens soon, or are in the middle of the teenage years, Parent Place is for you.
Our Healthy Youth Network team has spent hundreds of hours taking the information we had provided for youth through the Youth Portal, and putting it through a parent lens. We’ve added additional categories, such as Building Stronger Families, and addressed the questions we thought parents would have.
As parents ourselves, some of us just out of the teen years, we could reflect on what we wished we had known.
It’s a work in progress, a starting point from where we hope parents, professionals, and our community will help us to continually shape. Raising children is not a one-size-fits-all, so we recognize that some things will resonate and some things may not.
So please, head to our newly launched Parent Place at parent.healthyouthnetwork.ca and explore the many different topics we’ve tried to cover.
If you have ideas, recommendations, information, or something you’d like to see added be sure to let us know, either through the website, or email us at info@healthyouthnetwork.ca.
— Penny Deathe is the executive director and founder of the Healthy Youth Network. She can be reached at penny@healthyouthnetwork.ca.
