What Parents Should Know About Warning Signs of Teen Suicide

Fear of the unknown is an especially powerful emotion when it comes to determining whether your teenager is at a high risk of committing suicide. However, you can turn the fear of the unknown into the power of knowing the telltale warning signs that are associated with suicide. Moving through the adolescent years can be the most difficult era of someone’s life. If your teenager participates in individual child therapy, the therapist can determine whether any of the warning signs of suicide exist.

You can take it a step further by joining your teenager for one or more family therapy sessions that provide insight into the status of your child’s mental health.

Risk Factors for Teen Suicide

Teenagers are particularly vulnerable to experiencing the emotional roller coaster ride that is associated with many life circumstances. Losing a family member is one of the most common risk factors for a teen to commit suicide. A history of physical or sexual abuse can trigger powerful depression symptoms that include the development of suicidal thoughts. Adoption is another risk factor for a troubled teenager, as the adolescent cannot develop a close bond with the adoptive family. When a teenager goes through a traumatic event, EMDR therapy can help address negative thoughts and emotions.

It is not just personal issues that increase the risk of suicide among teenagers. You also have to consider whether a teenager’s family has a history of suicide or living with one or more types of psychological disorders. Then, we have the issue of convenience, which describes how easy it is for a teenager to gain access to a firearm or another type of lethal weapon.

Warning Signs of Teen Suicide

A typically outgoing teenager who suddenly withdraws from interacting with other people might have experienced one or more traumatic events that lead to the development of suicidal thoughts and actions. Writing and/or talking about committing suicide is the easiest warning sign to detect, and it requires the immediate intervention of a parent or another family member to address the issue.

Extreme mood changes that occur without an apparent trigger are another warning sign of teen suicide, especially if a teen starts abusing drugs and/or alcohol. An adolescent who changes a daily routine, such as eating and sleeping patterns, might be revealing one of the warning signs of teen suicide. Your teenager does not have to discuss suicide to demonstrate an overt warning sign of committing the act. Overly destructive behavior like taking considerable physical risks might indicate a teenager does not care about living.

Act with a Sense of Urgency

If you detect one or more warning signs of teen suicide, contact one of our certified therapists to determine how to intervene. Even if you are not sure about the mental state of your teen, get help from an experienced child therapist. As the saying goes, it is better to be safe than sorry.

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5 Specific Qualities to Look For in an Authentic Montessori Daycare

If you are curious whether your child is attending an authentic Montessori daycare, there are some obvious traits you can look for. While any school can legally call itself a Montessori daycare, only authentic Montessori environments will adhere to the qualities listed below.

Child-Centered Learning

Montessori daycare focuses everything around the children. Pictures and decorations are hung at the child's perspective, the furniture is built for child-sized bodies, and children have the freedom to move about from workstation to workstation. The Montessori classroom is called a children's house because everything is designed to be more inclusive of children.

Authentic Materials

Montessori learning materials are sturdy and designed to be self-correcting. Montessori activities such as the Pink Tower develop multiple skills at once, such as building fine motor skills, introducing basic math concepts, and providing children with an engaging and interesting hands-on experience that improves retention and promotes an interest in learning.

Uninterrupted Work Periods

Montessori school kids do not move from room to room throughout the day. They remain in the same classroom for years, and the day is divided into 2-hour learning blocks to facilitate learning. The idea is to eliminate repeatedly stopping and starting work projects, allowing children to spend more time learning and less time going from place to place. And because kids remain with the same teacher throughout, teachers can get better acquainted with children and spend more time working with individual children.

Multi-Age Classrooms

Montessori uses a 3-year age group instead of all of the children being within a few months of the same age. This helps children learn at their own pace, removes the stigma related to always being the youngest or oldest children, and helps build empathy and leadership skills. Because children are able to learn readily from their peers and every student gets a turn at being among both the youngest and oldest kids in class, multi-aged classrooms make it possible for kids to work together and let younger children learn from watching and working with the older ones.

Montessori-Trained Teachers

Montessori teachers undergo special training in the Montessori Method. They are trained to observe children and provide guidance and encouragement. Teacher retention is a trait of Montessori schools, and that benefits children by giving children a stable environment with familiar faces.

There are other important traits related to Montessori daycare, including spending more time outdoors, carefully prepared environments, and including a full spectrum of developmental activities that are individualized to better match different needs and goals.

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How Does Montessori Preschool Compare to Traditional Public Schools?

Montessori preschool is a different type of education than you will find in traditional school systems. The Montessori Method is self-pacing and allows children to learn by doing. The differences are numerous, but these 4 examples demonstrate how Montessori compares to traditional schools.

Love of Learning

At the core of the Montessori Method, encouraging and nurturing children's natural love of learning is where Montessori education begins. Maria Montessori recognized that children are like a dry sponge nurturing that desire to learn, she reasoned that kids can be invested in their own education in surprisingly successful ways.

 
Active Versus Passive Education

Montessori is a hands-on learning environment, compared to the remote memorization of textbook data employed by public schools. Another of Maria Montessori's observations was how much quicker children picked up new information when they were able to physically engage with it. Some studies show that kids who learn with play-based activities have a higher retention rate and are more likely to explore new information on their own.

Expanded Work Periods and Self-Pacing

Not all children learn at the same rate. To account for this, Montessori classrooms are divided into 3-year age groups, and employ 2 hour work periods to give children more time to learn a task before moving on to something different. The age grouping also benefits self-esteem and personal responsibility as each child moves from among the youngest to among the oldest children in the class.

Montessori Teachers

Behind your child's Montessori education is a teacher who has been specially trained in the Montessori Method and how to effectively use the prepared environment. Montessori schools tend to have a higher than average rate of tenure, and because children remain with the same teacher for several years Montessori instructors are better able to build individual rapport with their students and guide them carefully from one stage to the next.

Montessori began as a method of teaching children with learning or behavior. Since then-- over a century ago-- Montessori has spread across the globe and gained recognition as one of the best approaches to early childhood development. And on top of all that, Montessori students learn important social skills, and develop the ability to think critically about the world they live in.

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Why You Need to Sort Your Laundry by Color

As one of the most important residential laundry services, separating clothes by color can prolong the life of apparel and other types of washables. Although skipping the sorting stage of the laundry process does not necessarily mean you return to a washer full of damaged clothes, separating your apparel represents a good idea for several reasons.

Why Should I Separate Clothes?

You have several reasons to take a few minutes before doing laundry by separating your clothes. Sorting brighter colors from darker colors prevent the darker colors from bleeding into the lighter colors. Sorting clothes also match the washing temperature for different colors. The timeless instruction of hot water for whites and cold water for darks still applies when you do laundry. Another reason to separate clothes is based on materials. For example, you do not want to put a zippered jacket in the same wash cycle as a delicate silk shirt. Some types of laundry, such as socks and athletic gear, require sanitizing before going through a wash cycle.

If you use our popular laundry pick-up service, we will separate your clothes for you before washing and drying them. This is especially important for dress shirt laundry, which typically consists of dress shirts that come in a wide variety of colors.

What Are the Benefits of Sorting Your Laundry?

Ensuring your clothes retain their original colors represents the most important benefit of separating clothes before tossing them into a washing machine. Organizing similar types of apparel also helps your clothes last longer.

Every type of color and material requires you to separate clothes based on wash cycle temperatures. When you sort by color, you minimize the risk of a darker color bleeding into a lighter color. Yes, the occasional stray dark-colored sock can taint the appearance of a white dress shirt, but if you sort and then review what you have sorted, you should avoid the color bleeding problem.

Sorting also helps you organize your clothes by hamper. When a set of similar clothes finish the drying process, you place every one of the clothes into the same hamper. Separating clothes also allows you to organize by where you store your clothes. For example, you can sort your clothes by placing some in a dresser and other types of clothing on a rack in the bedroom closet.

The Bottom Line

Sorting your clothes before doing laundry helps you retain the original appearance of your apparel. One of the best reasons to sort your clothes is you can enjoy the time-saving benefit of wash and fold laundry. Laundry Care Express offers this service to help you stay organized when storing your clothes.

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