With the holiday season quickly approaching, we are reminded that they aren’t always happy for some who find themselves alone, abandoned or separated with distance from loved ones.  Are tweens exempt from the “blues?”  Absolutely not!  We need to look for the signs and be ready to listen, love and be aware!

Tweens are not exempt from the seasonal blues.  Especially when they have divorced parents, a parent serving and deployed in the military, or have had a parent or close person to them pass away.  The symptoms are the same for adults, however, the ability to handle the emotions and feelings may be different as it may be hard to communicate or peg point that’s where it’s coming from.

What are some symptoms for Seasonal Depression to be looking for:

1. Increase in headaches

2.  Too much or too little sleep

3.  Weight loss or gain

4.  Agitation, guilt, or an inability to concentrate

The warning signs for Stress include:

1. Pounding heart

2. Dryness in the mouth or throat

3.  Nervous tics, fatigue, loss of or excessive appetite

4.  Feeling an urge to cry, or increased irritability, restlessness, or depression.

So, this holiday season, be aware of your own emotions and also for your tweens.  Be on the lookout for signs and symptoms of possible problems.  Simplify.  Relax.  Keep a schedule, but try not to overschedule.  If you do have a child visiting another parent for the holidays, keep it upbeat and civil for the child’s sake.  No child/tween wants to upset a parent.  If you have a child with a deployed parent, take advantage of the programs the military offers, volunteer, send packages or cards to the troops and try to have some kid of communication.  If they get really bad or are refusing to talk, remember to seek medical and or professional help.

What have you found to be beneficial when dealing with emotional or moody tweens?

Editor’s note: Sarah Moore is a featured blogger on CuddleBugs. She’ll be posting a two-part series this week on TweenBeat.

If you are just tuning in, please read Part One of my story here.

So where did my husband and I go wrong?  What happened?  I need someone or something to blame but I’m running in circles right now trying to find an answer where there might be none.

I know that her mother and father did not get along while they were married and had an especially ugly divorce and custody fight. Could that be it?  I just don’t know and Marissa had a hard time communicating with us about why she behaved in this way.

I considered the possibility of getting her some counseling but my husband is strongly against this, as if it would be admitting there might be something wrong with her, or even us, but I see it as a way to help this confused 11-year old confront her issues.

We spoke with Marissa on this topic and what she had done for a long time that night, and well into the weekend.  We tried to make her connect her actions and words to the whys and hows of the situation.  I even made her read the note aloud so she would hear how ugly those words were.  I showed her articles about recent bullying instances and the devastating results for the victims, such as suicide, failing school, school shootings, etc.

She was in tears during some of this, but I could not stop until she understood this was not a harmless joke.  Even telling the child she didn’t want to be his friend was mean, but then what she had written was despicable.

We asked Marissa to write apology notes to her teacher, to the child the note was directed at, and most importantly, to God.  We also have been praying more and reading the Bible together more as a family.  I am trying to find the positive in all this, so hopefully she has learned a valuable lesson.

Any thoughts or advice would be appreciated.  Any thoughts on counseling?

Editor’s note: Sarah Moore is a featured blogger on CuddleBugs. She’ll be posting a two-part series this week on TweenBeat.

For those of you who don’t know me, I used to teach at an alternative school in the area, so I have a lot of experience with negative childhood behaviors, including bullying.

Usually the students would act out for reasons such as anger issues, various problems stemming from childhood, abuse, neglect, you name it.  We were trained in how to react and respond to these children and help them deal with what was going on with them.  Different methods seemed to help each child, and eventually I learned many ways to do so.  So why can’t I use this experience and training in my own household?

I never in a million years thought that I would see some of this disrespectful and downright hateful behavior from my own stepdaughter.  Marissa is a very intelligent, creative, and thoughtful person.  She has not been abused, neglected, or anything like that, so where did this all come from?

Apparently she was part of a group of kids that wrote a particularly nasty note to another child, telling him that they no longer wanted to be his friend.  Marissa was the author of said note, and even though she wrote it down it while someone else dictated it, in my book she is just as guilty as the rest of the group.

Marissa tried to defend her actions by telling us that the child was being mean to her and her friends and telling them they were stupid and to shut up, but we did not entertain that at all.  It is NEVER OK to hurt someones feelings, regardless of why, and I thought she knew this.

You may be reading this thinking, kids will be kids, but I am not finished yet.  In the letter there was some name-calling and some choice words, such as “gay.”  So guess what?  This “innocent” note just turned into a hate crime.

When I read this my heart broke, seeing what Marissa had done.  As Christians my husband and I believe that homosexuality is wrong, but our way of dealing with this is to love others even if we disagree with their lifestyles!  Never is it condoned to bully others and call them names, whether they are different than us or not.

To be continued…More on Thursday.

Have any of your kids either been the victim of bullying or the bully?  How did you handle this?

Mini likes to talk. She likes to talk a lot. And she likes to talk, a lot, about the things she does with her mother and her mother’s apparent fiancé or the things her mother says or the things her mother’s fiancé says or…Well. I think you get the picture.

I like that Mini shares things with me. And I’m pretty sure AM likes that Mini shares things with her, too. But I think when Mini starts telling us things like “He’s a big lump in the bed” or “My mom got a big engagement ring” things can get a little awkward. And that’s not to say that I’m not interested in the things Mini does with her mother, because I totally am…But I don’t need or want to hear about every little thing or, and this cannot be stressed enough, about her mother’s fiancé.

We’ve told Mini, several times, that we don’t have to hear about every little detail of what goes on when she’s at her mother’s house. And we’ve told her that we don’t have to know about every little thing every one of them say. And we’ve reinforced that, verbally. We have told Mini that it’s for respect of privacy, not disinterest, that she shouldn’t tell us this stuff. I think she just wants to share and doesn’t know where the line should be drawn…But how do we show her?

So, here’s a call for information. How would you, or how have you, handled this situation? How do you get your tweens to respect the other parent’s privacy? Share you suggestions, ideas and questions in the comments.

We wrap up this month’s discussion on blended families with some tips to help you maximize the quality of the time you spend with your family.

Don’t feel guilty about the amount of “quality time” you spend with your family. Some experts are beginning to shun the quality time movement for something much more basic.

“It doesn’t take grand gestures to build quality relationships with your kids,” says Laura Sessions Stepp, an award-winning journalist and author of the acclaimed book Our Last Best Shot: Guiding Our Children Through Early Adolescence.

Ms. Stepp believes carving out family time doesn’t require major adjustments to your life.

“We think we have to cart the family off to Barbados or buy season tickets to the symphony to have a good time,” she says. “But quality time should be woven into our lives. Particularly as our children get older and slip away from us, we need to stop worrying about the extraordinary and think more about the ordinary.”

Here are some suggestions:

• Children want your undivided attention. When they talk, look at them, engage them in further conversation; show your interest.
• Listen to their music. Who knows, you might begin liking it.
• Ask them what they want to do. Is baseball their love? Play catch in your backyard, or pitch a few at a local baseball diamond.
• Establish new family traditions. Set a specific time each week for them, such as Friday pizza nights or Sunday brunches.
• Develop your family as a team. Give everyone chores. Do them together.
• Make one-on-one time with each child. Kids talk more freely when they’re with just one parent.
• Watch television shows they choose. Then talk about them. Even if it’s FOX’s “Family Guy,” seen in the clip above.

What do you do to maximize the quality of your family time with your kids? Share in the box below.