This is the eighth in a series of blogs about connectedness.

School-connectedness is a concept very similar to parent-child connectedness. In addition to time at home, parents can be involved in their children's schools to strengthen school-connectedness and increase positive results for their youngsters.

ETR Associates is an organization producing information on how to help kids develop successfully and avoid many of the risks they face. They suggest that parents can assist schools in strengthening connectedness at school by:

This is the tenth and final post in a series of blogs about the benefits of connectedness between parents and children.

A research report in 2005, from the journal known as Current Opinion in Pediatrics, explored different parenting practices and how they influence risky behaviors among youth. Researchers reviewed an abundant amount of literature on parenting and teenage risk behaviors.

This is the ninth in a series of blogs about the benefits of parent-child connectedness.

Teen suicide is a chilling topic. Mental Health America talks about the severity of this problem:

Sometimes teens feel so depressed that they consider ending their lives. Each year, almost 5,000 young people, ages 15 to 24, kill themselves. The rate of suicide for this age group has nearly tripled since 1960, making it the third leading cause of death in adolescents and the second leading cause of death among college age youth.

This is the seventh in a series of blogs about the benefits of connectedness.

Dr. Michael Resnick, a researcher from the University of Minnesota, conducted one of the great research projects measuring connectedness and applied it to kids and high-risk behaviors. Many of his findings were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1997.

This is the sixth in a series of blogs about the benefits of parents and children connecting with each other.

There is an abundance of research on conditions at home that relate to violent behavior. They include early aggression and witnessing violence in homes and neighborhoods. Once children are victims of violence they may become perpetrators of violence.

This is the fifth in a series of blogs about the benefits of connectedness between parents and children.

Research shows that :
“…among both older and younger teens, those who felt very connected to parents and other family members reported less frequent use of cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana. The presence of parents at home during key times of the day was associated with a lower likelihood of smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol among older teens (those in grades 9 – 12) and with a lower likelihood of marijuana use among both older and younger teens.”

This is the second in a series of blogs about parent-child connectedness.

Recent research from eight African countries surveyed adolescents to learn rates of different high-risk behaviors, including sex at an early age.

Researchers discovered that 27.3% had experienced sexual debut before age 15. Boys and girls with sexual debut at younger than age 15 were more likely to report alcohol, tobacco and drug use, truancy, poor parental- or guardian-connectedness, sedentary behavior, having been in a physical fight and receiving a serious injury.

This is the first in a series of blogs about parental connectedness. "Parental connectedness" is a term researchers often use when talking about kids and the risks that they face. So what does it mean to you and me?

This is the third a series of blogs about parent-child connectedness.

At the core of a happy family are parents and children, connected to one another in a way that is mutually satisfying, pleasing and enduring. This elusive quality is parent-child connectedness.

Parent-child connectedness has gone by (and probably will continue to) many other names: mutual attachment, family strength, and parent-child bonding to name just a few. But what exactly do we mean by "parent-child connectedness?"