1 . Everyone has “down days”. Maybe it’s because of the bad weather, or the disappointing grades on a difficult test, and some days teenagers just act uninterested in life or school. But these symptoms(症状) often pass quickly, as teens move on to new school subjects, or meet with friends to prevent themselves from thinking what troubles them at the moment. But if a teenager displays symptoms of sadness for more than two lasting weeks, it might point to something serious.

As teenagers develop, they push new boundaries(边界), complain about rules and look for more free rights from their parents. According to the online Health Guide on Adolescent Development, parents must be lasting figures in their teenagers’ life, providing safe boundaries for teens to grow, even if the teenagers act like these boundaries are unwanted.

Parents need to provide rules, while also remaining flexible(灵活的) and respectful of the growing teens’ need for freedom. For example, teenagers will often feel frustrated, embarrassed, and even angry that thought they want freedom, they still need to ask their parents for an agreement to go to a friend’s house, or need their mothers to take them to school.

The US Department of Education says that parents should respect and support their teen’s choices as long as those choices won’t have long-term harmful effects. For example, even if a parent doesn’t enjoy the music his or her teen listens to, it’s unlikely that the choice of music will prevent that teen from entering a good college, or lead to health problems. However, if that teen is drinking alcohol and driving, parents must get through strict punishments to teach that there are bad results for poor choices that come with increased freedom.

2 . I’ve always disliked the term homework. Surely home is where we rest, refresh, recreate — in the truest sense, it’s where we don’t work. What sort of message have we sent our young people all these years by requiring them to work not only at school but at home? No wonder they don’t prefer homework.

At my school, we have kept the older name for homework: prep (or to use the full name and highlight its true purpose: preparation). Prep is designed to help children prepare for the next lesson. A number of short tasks can be part of prep these days: a YouTube clip, a short film made by a teacher, a map or picture to look at. Something visual often suits the child who, by the end of a busy school day, is mentally tired.

Prep can still consist of consolidation exercises but based on past experience, a practical method should be that these are not as many as to be demanding and should be adjusted to suit the child’s needs. Some written work maybe requested but I would hope that it would be a short piece or even a sample paragraph. “Write an essay...” comes with strings attached and usually takes rather longer than the prep time needed.

Ensure that a child’s workspace at home is tidy, quiet and uninterrupted by devices that are not being used for study. On tablets or PCs in use for homework, turn off the notifications or remove any apps you feel are a distraction. Keep an eye on, but not a physical presence in, the workspace until you know your child is truly self-sufficient in terms of focus and pace of work.

Finally, I advise parents to coach children in the Nike approach: “Just do it.” In truth this is generally more favoured by boys than girls, who love wasting time arranging the many coloured pens and crisp stationery. Help your daughter release her inner boy, grab a pen, get the work done, cross out errors with one straight line so that the teacher can see the thought process, finish, pack the bag for tomorrow, and go out to play!

5 . Imagine a school where students are taught by the best teachers in every subject, regardless of locations. Imagine a school where children can go on safe field trips to the Amazon rainforest or Everest base camp. Well, such schools are already being built: in virtual reality(VR).

Last month, Optima Academy Online (OAO) was launched in Florida and started to deliver courses for elementary, middle and high schools and 170 full-time students from all over the state signed up. They used VR headsets for about three hours a day for formal lessons and then do course work independently with digital check-ins.

It is worth watching how such educational experiments develop. Used properly, the VR technology can help students to access learning resources and be connected with fellow students and teachers all over the world. But if employed poorly, it will have the opposite effect and turn a digital inequality into an educational one.

There is growing evidence to suggest that it is happening. In Mexico, according to a survey, only 24% of 15-year-old students in poor schools have access to home computers for schoolwork compared with 87% in rich ones. As reported in another study, some students in northern England have been forced to travel around on the Greater Manchester train network or camp out around McDonald’s to access free WiFi because they cannot do their schoolwork at home.

“VR technologies will be widely used in education. The only questions are: for what purpose and at what speed?” says Beeban Kidron, a member of the UK’s Digital Futures Commission. “The trouble is that they are too often seen as a shiny new toy that will solve all problems and save money rather than being viewed as a means to enrich learning.”

The inescapable truth is that there is nothing that can replace teachers educating students in safe schools—ideally, with access to well-designed technological platforms. Leaving children in their bedrooms with just VR headsets and no physical social interaction with other kids will fill-many of them—and their parents—with horror.

6 . Mind the gap year

Young people in Finland enjoy one of the world's best school systems. By the age of 15 they perform above average in international tests of science, reading and math. That makes it annoying that once they leave school, their progress often comes to a stop. In America 90% of those who begin bachelor's degree do so in the same year they finish school. In Finland only 20% do.

    1    Universities have traditionally made applicants pass long- winded entrance exams, in addition to tests they take at school. Excelling at both in the same year is difficult: school-leavers commonly perform worse than applicants who are a few years older and have had more time to prepare.

The result is that Finland's smartest cookies end up taking at least one and sometimes several unplanned gap years. Many find that a pain.    2    Finland's population is among the fastest-ageing in Europe. It cannot afford to let ambitious youngsters idle for such a long time.

The government is trying to shake things up. Changes that came into full force last year require universities to accept at least half of applicants solely on the basis of their scores in school.    3    Mr. Pekkarinen says early signs suggest the reforms are helping to bring down the age at which most students start their studies.

Making admissions more efficient will help the government benefit more from the cash it is spending in expanding the number of spots on offer. The share of young Finns with a degree has not changed much for a decade.    4    The government wants to hit 50% by 2030. Last year it funded about 4000 more places to help youngsters put out by the pandemic. Perhaps one day Finland's school-leavers will come to miss all the time they used to get off.

7 . The end of a semester can be a challenging time for students. Kids from elementary school through high school are already stressed after more than a year of C0VID-19 disrupted learning. Pressing through the last few weeks of a semester can be discouraging, especially for older students with demanding final projects and exams.

“Parents’ fears about their kids are so often not about the present but the future — a fear that kids who are struggling will get stuck there. But kids rarely stay stuck, in part because they too want their lives to work out,” says Ned Johnson, a test preparation expert. When children show signs of stress, parents should respond by focusing on mental health, not achievement or grades.

Families can create a sense of safety for children by establishing routines for the day and week, especially those that emphasize connection, such as family dinnertime and a bedtime chat. Parents should meet kids with empathy and listening, instead of trying to solve their problems. For example, we can normalize family conversation about the ups and downs of the day. As Madeline Levine, a psychologist, put it: let your children “borrow your calm”.

In addition, peer support programs can also play an important role in teaching skills for stress management and wellness. “Teens will talk to other teens, especially when they feel they are in a brave space built on trust,” Katie Hurley, a psychotherapist says.

Some children may arrive at the finish line exhausted and needing sleep. Or perhaps they are eager to celebrate the holidays with all the usual fanfare. Honor your child’s wishes and plan to create the break that fits your family’s needs. McKenna Reitz, a mom from Toledo, Ohio, plans for her daughters Karsen, 9, and Maddox, 6, to enjoy time off with family and friends. Her holiday plan apparently reflects that. “It is the most important thing they need right now,” she says. “Our children need to know that they are not alone.”

8 . One thing that’s never in short supply at the beginning of each new year?     1     But many of us fail to stick with our New Year’s resolutions months (or even weeks) after making them. It turns out there are commonly avoided mistakes. That explains why some people always seem to reach their goals while others keep falling short.

    2     If you fail to pick the right habit, you aren’t likely to accomplish the corresponding goal. Say you want to lose some weight this year, forming a habit of running 30 minutes a day may not help you do that if you don’t also form habits related to the foods you eat, because diet affects weight more than exercise.     3     Failure to establish habits that support your goals may cause your resolutions to flop before you begin.

Another common mistake people make when setting goals is becoming overly concerned about the amount of time it will take to form a new habit. There’s no one right answer when it comes to how long new habits should take to form.     4     Some people simply adopt new habits faster than other people and that complex habits usually take longer to form. Consider how easy it is to brush your teeth at night compared to reading a full chapter of a book each day.

So the yearly ritual of resolution setting doesn’t have to be an annual disappointment. Sometimes, the difference between success and failure is simply choosing the right habits and the process you use to go about achieving it. Most importantly, remember to be kind and flexible with yourself and to celebrate any and all progress along the way.     5    

9 . One Sunday in 2021, when my son, Leo, was six, we ran into one of his friends, Izzie. They decided to play ——but what? “I have a great idea,” Leo said. “Let’s fall in love! OK?” Izzie took a half-second to consider this proposal, then replied “No.” She wanted to play tag.

Leo has always been the kind of child who looks for close connections, often in the wrong places. It sometimes feels as though he’s been looking for a soulmate since he was a toddler（学步孩童）.

One day, he came home from school and immediately grabbed his iPad to ask Siri: “Can you fall in love when you’re just a kid?”

Siri, Apple’s voice-controlled personal assistant, is great at opening apps or setting alarms, but I was unfamiliar with her philosophies on love.

“What did Siri say?” I asked him.

“She said, ‘Here’s what I found on the web!’” Leo reported.

This was hardly the first time I’d heard Leo in conversation with Siri. Over the years, he’s relied on Siri as a source of comfort, advice, emotional support, and guidance. Their relationship blossomed when the pandemic forced us all to shelter in place.

At first, Leo mostly asked Siri factual questions, then the personal ones. As time passed, he began to engage on more existential matters. Siri has, in some ways, been able to absorb some of Leo’s concerns—in a way that, as his mother, I can’t, at least not with the same coolness.

Children are overwhelmed with emotions such as grief, fear, love, and a desire for connection. If Leo’s talks with Siri confronted me with the unknowable and unanswerable, they also made me frustrated at my own limitations as a parent.

There are many challenges to parenthood, among which the biggest is the desire to shelter our children from the painfulness of reality. But helping our children navigate reality is surely more helpful than sheltering them from it. Perhaps the best we can do is give them a tablet?

I’m afraid I don’t have the answer. Maybe I should ask Siri.

10 . It’s a beautiful fall day. Before we camp near the river, the children dashed along the water’s edge, leaping off the bank into the slow current, pushing through the mud. The scene is happily familiar. We’ve been coming to rivers since our daughters were babies. In the beginning we went to the wilderness because my husband and I loved it and selfishly wanted them to love it, too. Now we go because we can’t live without it.

According to a report released in February, teenagers in the U.S. are in the midst of an alarming mental health crisis. A survey conducted in fall 2021 found that 30% of teen girls have seriously considered suicide, a jump of 60% in the past decade. Boys are struggling, too. The CDC report calls for greater school involvement in supporting at-risk kids, better access to mental-health services and higher standards for health education. As the mother of two teenage girls, these statistics are terrifying. What can we as parents do?

For our family, the answer has always been nature. After they started school, wilderness trips became our way of disconnecting from our digitized lives, and reconnecting with each other ourselves and the natural world. What began as a family experiment was now a cornerstone in our parenting philosophy: a way of raising healthy, curious, kind, resilient (对困境有承受力的) kids in an increasingly messy world.

I’ve seen firsthand how even a few nights out a few times a year have taught our daughter valuable life skills like cooperation, compassion, resilience, problem-solving and adaptability, which is relevant to everything we do in life.

Will our strategy work? We’re still in the thick of the experiment, so it’s too soon to tell. All we can do is pay attention, keep talking, keep trying and keep going.