Focus on the Family Malaysia

Have you ever noticed that it's much easier to handle stress if you have some warning that it's coming?  This is Dr. James Dobson for Focus on the Family.  There's something about knowing a tough experience lies ahead that helps us to get ready for the difficulty.  To gear up and mobilize our resources for a challenge to come.  It's for this reason that I recommend to parents that they begin talking to their children long before the teen years about the joys and discomforts of the adolescence experience.  Begin discussing self-confidence in the elementary years, pointing out those people who have it and those who don't.  Then in the period immediately before puberty, make it known that the teen years are often accompanied by a massive assault on self-worth; where everybody seems to feel ugly and unintelligent and useless.  But also explain that this is a temporary experience, like going through a tunnel from which you will inevitably emerge.  It would also be wise in this twilight of childhood to discuss the sexual awakening that's about to occur; including how the body will change and how to use this new experience responsibly and morally.  To not do to is to leave the child to cope alone with the terrors of menstruation or other physical transformations.  So much can be done to prepare kids for the coming crisis in adolescence if we'll give a little thought to the task.  This is Dr. James Dobson for Focus on the Family.