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May 2006
Responsible teen not an impossible dream
Respectful kids become well-adjusted adults
Margaret Plevak
Special to Parenting
ON TO THE PROM — Ozaukee High School students in Fredonia exit Holy Rosary Church after Mass in April 2005. According to family therapist Paul Gasser, when teens make mistakes, parents should react with empathy, not anger. (Catholic Herald file photo by Sam Lucero)
For the fourth time in the last two hours, you’ve asked your teenage son to unload the dishwasher, or your daughter to put down her cell phone and start on her chemistry homework. Their promises — and excuses — are wearing on your nerves, and you ask yourself if a responsible teenager is a reality or simply an oxymoron.

Paul Gasser thinks it’s the former, although the marriage and family therapist at the Franciscan Skemp Lake Tomah Clinic in southwestern Wisconsin hears from frazzled parents and teachers of teenagers in the presentations he’s given at schools and parishes around the Milwaukee Archdiocese.

Parent/adolescent struggles are a familiar topic for Gasser, the father of four. Besides being a family therapist for more than 16 years, he’s a former junior high school educator and elementary school principal who currently teaches courses on child behavioral issues for the University of Wisconsin-Platteville Continuing Education Department, and speaks at parenting workshops for the Colorado-based Love and Logic Institute.

While setting up drug and alcohol prevention programs in schools near Moscow through a federal government grant years ago, Gasser found teenage struggles are a universal topic.

“This isn’t unique to American parents,” he said. “Russian parents have the exact same concerns.”

Full story...
May 2006
Cover Photo
Catholic Herald Parenting is a supplement of the Catholic Herald published eight times annually, September to May. It is intended to help parents pass on the Catholic faith to their children.
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