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Tips To Help Your Teen Start the School Year with Confidence

Lolli — Fri, 29 Jul 2016 18:54:52 +0000

I am a member of the Invisalign Mom Advisory Board and my daughter, Necco, is currently receiving her Invisalign Teen treatment for free. All thoughts are my own.

Check the Invisalign Smile Assessment.

I can’t believe that a new school year will be starting next month….and more importantly, that my daughter, Necco, will be a senior! In just over a week from now, she is scheduled to finish up her Invisalign treatment….just in time for the start of her senior year! It has been quite the journey, and it’s drastic to see the difference in Necco over the last 15 months – not just in her looks, but in her confidence.

Since my kids are older now and each have several first days of school under their belts, the first day of school presents a different challenge. Our back to school prep is more focused on being emotionally prepared versus having a backpack full of new school supplies. The newly revised Unbrace Teen Confidence page and guide are a great resource for tweens, teens, and their parents to get ready for the new school year with confidence.

Here are a few tips from my family to help older kids get ready for the new school year.

Keep the lines of communication open – Set the stage for the new school year with an open line of communication between parent and teen. Talk about feelings and expectations ahead of time and address any concerns instead of letting them fester.

Address social media habits and perceptions – Social media can be a huge factor in teen confidence (or lack of it) since teens are so quick to give and receive judgement based on a social media post. Don’t forget that it’s ok to set guidelines and restrictions and monitor use on your teen’s devices. Bullying is never ok, and it’s important to keep an eye on your teen’s accounts to make sure there is no bullying or destructive behavior being given or received.

Be an example of calm and confidence – I remember when my kids were little, I noticed that my little ones would be on their crabbiest, moodiest behavior when I was feeling the worst (tired, impatient, critical, etc). Guess what? Teens are just the same. They feed off our moods. A calm, confident attitude from mom and dad will help them have a good, positive attitude as they start the school year.

Be prepared – Have clothes and school supplies ready well before the morning of the first day of school. If they’re attending a new school this year, have them check out the school during the summer, if possible. The more they know about what to expect, the easier it is to be confident.

Smile more – Smiling is such a simple exercise, but it makes a world of difference, both for the giver and for the receiver of the smile. As a shy teen myself many moons ago, I didn’t like the idea of talking to people I didn’t know yet, but I was always willing to smile. It takes such a small amount of effort but it goes a long way.

Be the friend you would like to have – I tell my kids that it’s they ever question what they should do or how they should act, that they should simply do what they would like for someone else to do if they were on the other side. Confidence comes when teens know they’re making good choices and helping others.

Check out what these middle school tweens had to say about self confidence, how their smile effects themselves and others, and how social media effects how they feel about themselves and others.

Be sure to check out the newly revised Unbrace Teen Confidence page and new guide for tweens, teens, and parents.

Read my other Invisalign posts to see what our journey has been like…and to see how much Necco’s smile has improved! Be sure to check out the It Starts with a Smile Pinterest board, too!

Questions? Ask away! I’ll be sharing more information in the coming months about Necco’s journey with Invisalign and my time on the Invisalign Mom Advisory Board. Please feel free to ask me any questions – here, privately, on Facebook, wherever!

Check the Invisalign Smile Assessment and the Doctor Locator to find an Invisalign provider near you.

What Does The Perfect School Look Like? #RethinkHighSchool

Lolli — Mon, 12 Oct 2015 15:46:17 +0000

This post is sponsored by XQ: The Super School Project. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I’m a mother of five teens and tweens (a college sophomore, a high school junior, a high school freshman, plus 7th and 5th graders), and so it’s no surprise that I think about the education system a lot.

When I was young, I went to an extraordinary elementary school. We had a robust program for gifted and talented kids, and I was stretched more than I thought possible – in a good way. Although we live on the other side of the country now, my kids have also had an exceptional early school experience. Their schooling has been completely different than my own early years, but they have been blessed with an amazing school community and a positive learning environment.

I wish I could say the same for their middle and high school years. They’ve had dozens of exceptional teachers over the years, but I’ve noticed that there is something severely lacking in our secondary education system.

Let’s look at it this way. The high school system in the US was established 200 years ago. It was a completely different world back then. The needs of families and students back then look nothing like the needs of families and students today. How can we expect a system that was built to support teens in the 1800s to prepare our kids for life after public school in the 21st Century? The original goal of the public school system in the US was to provide free education to all of our children to prepare them to enter the work force when they were old enough. The problem is that the work force today looks nothing like it did back then, and yet the education model has not changed much at all.

Enter XQ: The Super School Project – a national movement to reimagine high school. As parents and students in today’s school system, we see a gap, and the time is NOW to make some changes.

If you could change the school system – for your own current teens or for your little ones who will be heading to high school in the future – what would you change? It’s hard to decide what we really need when we’ve only known one way.

I consider my youngest son. He is brilliant. He is a good student, but school simply isn’t enough. He comes home from school and he builds and he creates messes and he invents and he watches videos to learn everything from how to camp in sub-zero weather to how to start an aquaponics system.

Check out this short Instagram video of what he made this past weekend.

His kind of “smarts” cannot be contained in a textbook or even in a traditional classroom. I cringe to think that our public school system could, one day, stifle his creativity and his love of learning.

What kind of school environment would help him to thrive?

The perfect school that I imagine for my children is a school would allow them to create, get messy, and learn through doing. Instead of desks lined up in a row, facing a chalkboard, classrooms would have round tables to encourage collaboration and discussion. There would be couches lining the walls to encourage a more comfortable, enjoyable approach to learning. Frankly, the perfect classroom would often not be a classroom at all, but learning would take place wherever the opportunity arose.
The perfect school for my kids would bring in people who were passionate about topics and careers and skills so they could share their knowledge and passion with the students. Instead of learning out of a text book, they would learn by doing, from first-hand experience – even if that meant getting their hands dirty every once in a while. The perfect classroom would be filled with mistake-making and it would be perfectly acceptable. Their “tests” would not be about filling in the right bubble on the answer sheet, but about being able to create, recreate, explain, and show.
The perfect school that I envision for my kids would allow them to try many things so that they could decide what they loved and where their talents were. Instead of focusing on one subject per class period, all learning would be interconnected and integrated. Kids would be able to spend more time delving deeper into their areas of interest, moving ahead in those “subjects” at a faster pace, but without totally ignoring other subjects. I think that learning a little bit about a lot of things is valuable, but learning a lot about a few things is even more powerful.
I envision the perfect school to have a more relaxed environment with a greater sense of community, where everyone – teachers and students alike – were focused on building each other up. Lunches would be shared in a more home-like environment, serving foods that were healthy, not quick and easy. The classroom discussions would continue during the lunch hour, as students and teachers lounged around together, eating and sharing ideas and asking questions.

I feel like my kids are hungry for a better learning environment, and that a change in the way they’re being taught would make a world of difference in how well-prepared they are when they leave home.

What does the perfect school look like to you?

Find out more about XQ: The Super School Project.

XQ: The Super School Project is an open call to reimagine and design the next American high school. In towns and cities far and wide, teams will unite and take on this important work of our time: Rethinking and building schools that deeply prepare our students for the rigorous challenges of college, jobs, and life.

Tradition. Celebration. Memories. High School Class Rings by Jostens

Lolli — Tue, 09 Dec 2014 17:02:37 +0000

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Jostens for IZEA. All opinions are 100% mine.

It’s still crazy for me to think that I’ve got a child in college (college?!) and another following closely behind in high school (not to mention the next 3 that will be moving up the ranks soon enough). It feels like I just went through the whole senior year with my oldest, and yet I know that my second daughter will be filling out college applications and sending graduation announcements before I know it.

Watching my kids experience high school has been a very nostalgic experience for me. It doesn’t feel like that long ago that I was in their shoes. I remember school dances, chats around the lockers, experiencing freedom for the first time as my friends and I all got our driver’s licenses. And I remember wanting a class ring SO badly. Just this week, I was perusing Jostens class rings. The variety of class ring styles on Jostens.com, and the ability to customize designs to each student’s taste, blew me away and actually got me thinking about an excuse to order a class ring for myself. Jostens has a huge selection of the most stylish, unique and up-to-date designs in high school rings. I love how easily customizable they are – I played around with Stackable (Style 686) from Jostens, which has 3 separate, stackable bands. If I were making this for my high school-aged daughter, I would design one band with a deep blue stone and the other with a golden stone to represent their school colors, blue and gold. And since she is so involved in her barbershop quartet through the school music department, I would definitely add an engraving of her quartet’s name, Afterglow, to the solid band.

Graduating high school is a great accomplishment, and it’s worth commemorating their accomplishments, experiences, and memories with something lasting like a class ring. Did you get a class ring when you graduated high school? Which of the class rings by Jostens do you like most? Are you a traditionalist or do you like the fresh, new designs best?

Connect with Jostens:

About Jostens: Since Otto Josten created the first class ring in 1906, we’ve been empowering people to connect to important traditions, people, places and experiences throughout their lives. Our legacy was built upon the handmade quality and personal service that helps people etch their unique memories and accomplishments into timeless, custom pieces.

Twitter: @jostens
Instagram: @jostensinc
Facebook: Jostens Inc.

Bing in the Classroom: #AdFreeSearch for Kids #BingClassroom

Lolli — Fri, 09 May 2014 19:24:25 +0000

Many thanks to Bing for sponsoring today’s post, and inspiring me to share about their #adfreesearch classroom initiative. All thoughts are my own.

When I was in school, there was no internet to look up the answers to any question we had. There were no mobile phones to distract students from learning in class, and texting was a thing only possible in SciFi movies.

When I had a report to write, my mom would drive me to the library and I would check out as many books as possible on the subject and photocopy the encyclopedia entries I couldn’t take home.

Even in college (and this will really age me!) I studied the “old-fashioned” way – with books spread across my kitchen table or the floor in my apartment, with a pencil and a pad of paper in my hand to take notes.

Email was something that you checked once a week in the computer lab on campus because normal people didn’t gave internet connections at home.

These days, everyone is connected to the internet. Even the kids at my elementary school have their own cell phones (often fancier than mine!). When kids want to know the answer to something, they wouldn’t dream of getting in the car and driving to the library to search for a book that had the answer. They log on to the computer and have their answer in seconds.

Even classroom study habits have changed drastically. I love that my kids have access to so much information. I do. The fact that information is so easy to access now has given my kids exposure to things that I never would have dreamed knowing or understanding at their ages, but easy access to information comes at a price, too.

With the benefit of internet access comes the exposure to ads and sites that I would often prefer that my kids not see. When my kids get on the computer, I constantly worry that an inappropriate ad will pop up or that they’ll stumble on a site that is teaching them the wrong things…

That’s why I am so thrilled to be supporting Bing’s Ad Free Search classroom initiative.

Jenna Bush-Hager On Bing’s Ad-Free Search:

About Bing in the Classroom:

When students use Bing in the Classroom, all advertising is removed, plus there are strict filters for adult content and enhanced privacy protection. Bing is the only major search engine to provide search options that are specifically tailored for the classroom.

About Bing Rewards:

Not only does Bing offer an easy way for kids to experience ad free searches, but the popular Bing Rewards program enables people to earn credits towards Surface tablets for a school of their choice.

Anyone can earn credits just by searching the web with Bing – it’s kind of like a frequent flyer program. Credits can be donated to help get free Microsoft Surface tablets for schools. All you have to do is sign up, chose your school, then stay signed in as you search with Bing.

How to sign up for Bing Rewards:

To begin supporting schools with Bing rewards, follow these simple steps:

HERE

2 – Enter your school’s zip code and select the name of your school via the dropdown menu and select “Find”.

3 – Select “Support Your School” and click on “Try it now, FREE!.” You’ll be prompted to create a Microsoft account, or sign in with your Facebook account. All you have to do is stay signed in as you search with Bing to earn credits.

Bing In The Classroom Now Available To All Schools In The US:

Support your school now!

Graduation Announcement Heaven {Tiny Prints Graduation Line}

Lolli — Tue, 15 Apr 2014 23:15:28 +0000

This post featuring my daughter’s high school graduation announcements is sponsored by Tiny Prints but all thoughts and opinions are my own.

No one ever warned me how much work (mental and physical) it was going to be for me to help get my daughter prepared to graduate high school and move on to college. Sure, I’d heard everyone warn about how much I would miss her once she moved away (is my baby girl really leaving me and living on her own??) but I forgot how labor-intensive getting ready for college was.

It feels like yesterday that I was in her shoes.

Alas, the end of her senior year is approaching and within a matter of weeks she’ll be done with public school and for all intents and purposes considered by society as an adult. Moving a dozen states away, living in a dorm apartment with 5 other girls, having the time of her life.

It’s an exciting time, for sure. I am more proud of her than I can express. It’s definitely a time worthy of celebration (and even a little bragging).

I admit…if I hadn’t been prompted to order Kimberly’s graduation announcements, I probably would have delayed or forgotten until it was too late. Graduation announcements were one of those things I had put in the back of my mind (you mean someone else is not going to take care of that for me??).

Last week, Kimberly and I sat down at my computer together with all of the digital files of her senior pictures (taken by my incredibly talented little sister, Andrea), narrowing it down to a few (dozen) of our favorites. We then browsed through the graduation announcement designs at Tiny Prints to find a few designs that fit her personality and would showcase her pictures the best.

We tried a few templates before we found the one that was just right (called Shining Memories). Seriously, it was like it was designed just for her. Gold and all.

It took less than 10 minutes from the time we decided on the design she wanted until her cards were ready to be ordered. So easy! After designing her cards, we were able to chose gorgeous matching gold envelopes as well as matching address labels (I left those out of the picture for obvious reasons, but you should check them out because they’re so cute!), plus coordinated “advice cards” to send along with her announcements.

As we went through the ordering process, I was grateful that ordering Kimberly’s announcements was literally the easiest part of helping her get ready for college.

The back of her cards includes the quote from Dr. Seuss: “You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. You are the girl who’ll decide where to go.” Love!

Now we just have to figure out who to send the cards to….and address them all!

Do you have an upcoming graduate? Have you put off ordering graduation announcements like me? It’s not too late! Tiny Prints’ graduation line has everything you need for your grad, includin matching envelope liners, trim options, address labels, and gorgeous foil-stamped designs. If you’ve got a girl grad, Tiny Prints just launched the Victoria Justice collection. The new designs are amazing!