Teen Behavior Contracts
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Dealing With Violent Teenagers E-mail

Your troubled teenager may be susceptible to violence or hostile behavior if he or she exhibits the following:

  • Aggressive actions displayed in earlier stages
  • Drug or alcohol use
  • Committing common offenses at an early point
  • Weak control over behavior
  • Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or traits of it
  • low IQ
  • Difficulties with information-processing or social cognitive skills
  • Antisocial behavior

If your family exhibits the following factors then your child may also be susceptible to hostile behavior:

  • An authoritarian style of child upbringing
  • Displays of violence and disputes or conflict within the family
  • Extremes in terms of discipline (it may be a lack of or severe discipline)
  • Disciplinary inconsistencies
  • Not being there for the child
  • Lack of emotional attachment of a child to his parents
  • Poor income and a parent’s low education
  • Parents dealing with substance abuse and criminal offenses
  • Deficient functioning of the family
  • Inadequate supervision of the household and children
The factors which may prevent your child from developing hostile behavior are the following:

  • High IQ
  • Constructive orientation towards social relations
  • Steering away from deviant behavior
  • A strong commitment to academics
  • Participation in school and extracurricular activities

Statistics for teen violence

The statistics for teen violence may shock you as a parent of a troubled teen. But these are statistics that we must face in order to get a real picture of the critical situation many teenagers may be facing. A study made in the year of 2002 showed that about 900,000 of people from 10-24 years of age suffered from injuries incurred from acts of violence. Sad to say, homicide follows as actually the second major cause of mortality among those from this age bracket.

Surveys conducted have shown that almost 20% of students actually had a weapon on them in the month prior to when the survey was conducted. A little more than one third of the students admitted to have been in a physical dispute at least once in the year that came before the survey. Concerning adolescent relationships, almost 10% of students admitted to being victims of physical abuse by a boy/girlfriend, also in the year prior to when the survey was conducted. It was observed that girls were double the percent more likely than the percentage of boys to have sexual intercourse forced upon them. Boys, on the other hand, were found to be almost double the percent more likely than the percentage of girls to get in a physical dispute.


 
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