If a woman has a negative self-image and generally feels poorly about herself, she may work tirelessly to find a cure by securing a perfect match. As a result, she may find herself perpetually caught in a cycle of working to attain male desire and feeling high once it is temporarily achieved. But of course, when the match turns out not to be a good one, the high is often followed by a crushing low. All of which can play out over a few hours or a much longer period of time. When self-esteem is lacking, it is tempting to outsource a sense of self through associating with an idealized match. Unfortunately, until self-love is present within, true love and care from outside evade.

If self-esteem lags, it is easier to focus attention on finding the perfect mate than it is to develop and achieve broader goals for the self. Attaching self-esteem to a romanticized other becomes a way to feel a sense of love that perhaps a woman cannot feel for herself, in her own head. Placing romantic partners on a pedestal is a way to make up for the self-worth deficit. If the man seems confident, sexy, high achieving, then suddenly the woman feels better about herself, almost as if she is him. Failing to harness her own self-esteem, she leans heavily on his.

As a general rule of thumb, the more obsessed and ruminative a person may be about obtaining a partner or finding new romantic attention, the more depleted and inadequate they may feel about themselves.

When self-love is lacking judgment becomes impaired; a woman is more desperate to couple up and is so lost in this pursuit that she has difficulty making an accurate assessment of who the person really is and if he can truly meet her needs. When partners are idealized, the illusion is destined to dissolve, leaving the woman depleted and with a greater sense of inadequacy.

Building self-love is a process. A helpful first step is to notice if you are putting all of your energy into making a relationship work or to finding the perfect match. Take a step back and consider if you are hoping someone else will provide you with something only you can develop. Ask yourself if you have a tendency to idealize your romantic partners and then are left deflated when you discover who they actually are. If you tend to camouflage what you consider unlovable about yourself through attaching to highly desirable, oh so important men, refocus, not on another potential mate, but on yourself.

Jill P. Weber, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist and author of Having Sex, Wanting Intimacy—Why Women Settle for One-Sided Relationships. Follow Jill on Twitter @DrJillWebero edit.

When children lie or steal, it isn't because they are liars or thieves in the moral sense of the word. In fact, to most children, lying or stealing isn't a moral issue at all, it's a functional matter: they are doing it for a reason. For most children, lying or stealing are practical matters.

What to do:

1. Respond proactively
A proactive response is a controlled, mature, constructive, empathic, understanding, and directive response. No one has reason to get mad or to be defensive. The child learns of the parent's disappointment and that better behavior is expected in the future. The child also learns that more attention, hence, more value, was placed on honesty than on lying. The concern is with the child and not with what the child did.

2. Make your expectations known
Rather than arguing with the child about what's right and what's wrong, clearly state what you expect of the child. The child learns, in an atmosphere that is completely under the gentle, mature, control of an adult, what is expected of him. Appropriate adult behavior is modeled. The parent's point is driven home gently in a role-playing situation, which removes any doubt from the child's mind about what is expected of him. The child is involved as a member of the problem-solving team. And finally, everything is positive. The parent uses lots of praise statements. Rather than using the word lying, the parent uses the word honesty and focuses on the positive aspects of the lesson.

3. Implement Consequences
In instances where children continue behaving inappropriately, it may be necessary to implement consequences. When treating lying and stealing, focus on honesty. Consequences, when reasonable and well implemented, deliver the message better than tens of thousands of words. They put the responsibility for the child's behavior squarely where it ought to be: on the child.

4. Acknowledge appropriate behavior
Whenever the child responds appropriately, warmly acknowledge this. Don't assume that being "good" is its own reward. To the child, being good may not be a rewarding or reinforcing experience. Sometimes, for example, being good means facing the music, and that can even be unpleasant. So when a child behaves appropriately, that should be acknowledged in a very positive reinforcing way. Once the child realizes that favorable, controlled parental attention and positive consequences come with being honest/trustworthy, that's the behavior that will most likely be forthcoming.

5. Model appropriate behavior
Parents who fudge on their taxes, fib, tell half-truths and "white lies," are modeling the very behaviors they deplore in their children! These are behaviors that are learned.

6. Teach appropriate behavior
Use lying and stealing as opportunities to teach children what is meant by property rights, what is meant by "yours and mine," and why it is in one's best interest to be trustworthy. Rather than teaching a child to behave well only to escape the negative consequences for behaving badly, teach the child that there are positive consequences for behaving well.

Life is chancy, including the chance we take by having children and the risks involved with becoming parents, particularly becoming parents of adolescents.

Because outcomes in life are determined by many factors beyond our knowing, we must work for likelihood, not certainty in our parenting. We are in charge of effort, but not outcome. We can inform adolescent choice, but we can’t control it. We can be correct some of the time, but not all of the time. We can assert adult influence, but we can’t ensure compliance. We can prepare, but we can’t prevent. Try as we may, there are no guarantees about how our parenting decisions, or our children, much less our adolescents, are going to “turn out.”

For our children, the play of chance starts with the endowments they are given – the human nature (physical characteristics, temperament, personality, aptitudes, and other inherited strengths and limitations) that equip a child at birth. In addition are the human nature of primary caregivers (usually parents), the social, cultural, and economic circumstances into which one is born.

A general goal for parents is to prepare their adolescents to stand a grown up chance in life. This is why for most parents, the power of formal education is important. It imparts much of the basic skills and knowledge, and credential for mobility. However, sometimes parents will attach more importance to successful school performance than it deserves, treating it as an immunity against other hazards of adolescent life, preventing chance of danger elsewhere. This is not necessarily so. Simply because an adolescent academically achieves doesn’t mean that all will be well in the rest of his or her life.

Of course, adolescents are inveterate risk takers. They’re always calculating the odds of giving something risky a try, of getting away with something, of getting out of something, of not getting found out about something, at least not right away. In addition, because growth requires experimenting with the new, the different, and the unknown.

What are some ways adolescents might increase the odds of chance in their favor? Here are a few suggestions.

1. Stay sober. Seven dire threats in adolescence – of serious accidents, social violence, school failure, sexual misadventures, dangerous risk taking, law breaking, and suicidal despondency – are all more likely to occur with substance use that alters judgment and favors impulsivity.

2. Exercise predictive responsibility. Knowing that all choices come with consequences, they can take a minute before automatically going along with some impulse or wild idea, and ask themselves three questions. “Why would I want to do this? What harmful outcomes might occur? Is the benefit worth the risk?”

3. Remain mindful of how group adventuring can cause members to go along with risky ventures into chance they would never individually undertake. Social momentum of the moment and pressure to conform to belong can both be hard to resist.

4. Commit to pursue some objective. Thinking ahead and working for what you want in life is powerful because it reduces the temptation to follow chance distractions.

5. Be determined. By keeping trying, by not giving into discouragement and not giving up because of failure, they keep the possibility of a successful outcome alive.

So what can parents tell their adolescent about playing the great lottery of life? If it sounds congenial, try something like this: “You make your choices, acting and reacting as you think best. You take your chances, never knowing for sure what the outcome is going to be. You face your consequences, taking what responsibility you can. You learn from what happened, from what went wrong and what went right. And then you ready yourself to choose again, because the chain of choice and chance and consequence binds us all our lives.”

Published on February 25, 2013 by Carl E. Pickhardt, Ph.D. in Surviving (Your Child's) Adolescence

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - More children are being diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) now than were a decade ago, according to new research from a large California health plan.

It's not clear what's behind that trend, researchers noted. Possible explanations include better awareness of the condition among parents and doctors or improved access to health care for kids with symptoms, according to Dr. Darios Getahun, the study's lead author.

Prior research has also shown an increasing trend in ADHD diagnoses, according to Getahun, from the Kaiser Permanente Southern California Medical Group in Pasadena.

However, his team had strict criteria for determining which kids had ADHD, requiring a clinical diagnosis and prescriptions for ADHD medications. Past studies have relied on parent and teacher reports alone, Getahun noted.

In an analysis of Kaiser Permanente medical records, researchers found the proportion of five- to 11-year-olds diagnosed with ADHD increased from 2.5 percent in 2001 to 3.1 percent in 2010.

Consistent with past research, white children were more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than black, Hispanic and Asian kids, and boys were more likely to have the condition than girls.

On average, children were diagnosed when they were between eight and a half and nine and a half years old. Hispanic youth tended to receive a diagnosis at a later age than other kids - which could put them at a disadvantage, Getahun noted.

"One thing which is very important in ADHD is parents' awareness... and timely diagnosis of the disease is very important so the treatment is effective," he told Reuters Health.

"If you diagnose the child early when the disease occurs, the child may function better in school and also socially," said Getahun.

One study published last year found Icelandic kids who got early ADHD treatment did better on standardized tests than those who didn't get medication until they were preteens (see Reuters Health story of June 25, 2012: http://reut.rs/KXoQfY).

Common medications used to treat ADHD include stimulants such as Vyvanse, Ritalin and Concerta.

Not all kids with ADHD need medication - some get better with behavioral therapy or extra help at school. ADHD drugs can come with side effects, including appetite loss, sleep problems and stomach aches.

Just under five percent of more than 840,000 kids were diagnosed with ADHD during the entire study period, the researchers wrote Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.

Parental reports suggest that closer to one in ten kids and teens has been diagnosed with ADHD, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and rates vary by state - from 5.6 percent of kids in Nevada to 15.6 percent of North Carolina youth.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/PogxGc JAMA Pediatrics, online January 21, 2013.