Vanessa Van Petten's Page

10 Ways to Tackle Any Problem
by VANESSA VAN PETTEN


Learning how to approach a problem or a big project is a life skill that I think many adults do not ever learn how to do (I am still learning).

Recently, I have been working with a lot of teens on how to approach and get through their big school projects. I realized there was a system to approaching all of their issues, whether it was a science fair project, a history report, and, in one case, planning the school prom.

Here are 10 id… Continue

5 Strategies to Manage your Family’s Chores—permanently!

1. Use the Web
• Chorewars.com – Yes, someone has turned chores into a video game. If you have kids that really cannot keep focus, this will help.
• Mozilla Sunbird- an amazing way to keep track of all scheduled maintenance things in your house. It is a really easy (and free) way to manage Weekly, daily and yearly chores and tasks
• ChoreBuster – Another easy and free website to manage the chores online—and as they stress a very fa… Continue

What Do Teens Today Really Worry About? The Top 5 Issues Revealed

Teens love to talk: they love to talk online, on aim, on the phone, at school, after-school, at the mall, in the car, behind their friends back–what on earth are they talking about?…and why does sudden lock-jaw occur when parents are within a five foot radius?

I decided to see what the most popular calls were at a hotline called Teenline (where teens call in to get help from other teenagers) So what are the most po… Continue

Me: “Do you know who is Mitt Romney is?”

16 year-old: “Oh ya, isn’t he like some rock star….right?”

Wrong. Many teens today, as well as adults are extremely unprepared and uninterested in the upcoming primaries and elections. As a 24 year-old, I can honestly say that I did not become interested in politics until more recently and wish that my friends and I had been more involved from an early age. It is really important that parents help their teens and kids become more involved and informed u… Continue

What are Kids Doing On Facebook, MySpace and Other Social Networking Sites?
by VANESSA VAN PETTEN


This is from my series about Teens Online: Workshop Presentation where I give parents and kids a really basic explanation of teens and the Internet from a younger perspective. One of the major complaints about Frontline’s: Growing Up Online is it only covered the surface of what we, net-geners, are doing online. There are very few comprehensive explanations, nor are there many good or accur… Continue