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Talk to your teens

In Monday’s edition of The News, reporter Julie Riddle wrote about the efforts of local groups and individuals to promote Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month, which happens every February.

Riddle highlighted the story of a local teen who had been in an emotionally and sometimess physically abusive relationship, and she revealed some disturbing national statistics: One in three girls in the U.S. is a victim of physical, emotional or verbal abuse from a dating partner. Only a third of teens in an abusive relationship ever tell anyone about it.

It’s a sad truth that, like so much in our media-saturated world, seems to be made worse by the internet and social media. Today, teens can experience all kinds of trauma and abuse without alerting parents because all that trauma can happen while teens are “safe” in their bedroom.

Fortunately, Riddle’s story also offered ways we all can combat the problem.

And the simplest and most effective way is for every parent, teacher, mentor, neighbor and friend to talk to our teens about what they’re experiencing and — as Jillian Ferguson of Hope Shores Alliance put it — “believe, support, and validate” them.

But that can be a challenge to many of us, as our teens live lives so very foreign to those of us who grew up before Facebook, Twitter and Tinder.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, at healthfinder.gov, suggests talking to teens openly and explicitly about what makes relationships healthy –mutual respect, mutual decision-making, friends outside of the relationship, privacy and space –and what makes relationships unhealthy, such as one person trying to change the other, one-sided decision-making, yelling, hitting or threatening, or one person always wanting to know what the other is doing.

We shouldn’t be preachy, DHHS says, but we should be open and direct.

In addition to talking to teens about those relationship traits, adults should model those healthy traits in their own relationships.

No amount of abuse — physical, sexual, or emotional –is acceptable.

And one abused teen is too many.

We all play a role. Take time to talk to the young people in your lives today, and show them you care.

(THE ALPENA NEWS)

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