Survey of the Relationship Between Teenagers and Their Families in Hong Kong

Survey of The Relationship between Teenagers and their Families in Hong Kong

Introduction

We are writing in response to Mr. Dominic Wu requested for a report on relationships between Hong Kong teenagers and their families. We have investigated the situation and would like to make recommendations for improvement.

Recently trend of adolescent development problems are raising and getting awareness in Hong Kong. It is argued that HK high pressure education system drives parents to over pushing their children in competition and neglects the importance of communication. Through this research we aim to find out the existing relationship between parents and teenagers who in age 13-19, we will carry out a survey with questionnaires to interview the parents and analysis the findings if the communication is sufficient and effective.

In the past decade, young people abusing psychotropic substance has increased around 15% (CRDA, 2009). Ketamine is one of the common drugs which being abused, it is low in price and currently widely spread in school. It may due to the introduction of electronic permits between HK and China, the convenience customs makes parents difficult to track whether their children have gone to Shenzhen where drug abuse are not tightly controlled by legislations.

Another teenager problem is Internet addiction, a study from YMCA in 2002 found that the prevalence of Internet addiction has increased from 0.3% in 2000 to 14.7% after 2 years. Researches also find that young people experienced negative impact of Internet addictive behaviors, for example they could not resist the temptation from being online and the virtual activities are widely affected their normal daily lives. According to a counselling program (Shek, Tang and Lo, 2009) designed for internet addicted teenagers, the situation can be improved by multilevel counseling which include individual, peers and family intervention, the program is proved to have positive changes and help.

There is a phenomenon of Hong Kong parents pushing children to their limit for academic and extracurricular excellence. In 2012, more than half of Form three and 70 percent of Form six students have attended private tutoring classes (Bray and Lykins, 2012) and various after school activities to acquire as many skills as possible. The high pressure education environment in a result pushing the adolescent to think about killing themselves, according to research findings from Accident and Emergency Departments of the Hospital Authority, age group in 15 – 24 has the highest admission rate for attempted suicide in HK. (CSRP, 2005) The report also mentioned parent’s involvement is an essential precautionary measures, parents should identify, communicate and make referrals for teenagers who are distressed and thinking about to harm themselves.

Recommendations

If parents are able to develop a close relationship with their children, this is the most effective parenting.  To improve the situation on rising adolescent problems, we would like to recommend the following measures. It is highly recommended parents should balance between their attention on children’s academic and health in body and mind. Late adolescence are transforming into little adults, they have developed the ability to think indecently and make decisions. Sometimes they may struggle on solving problems or making major decision, it is suggested that parents to discuss and listen what they think and provide guidance. It is important for parents being respectful during communication, they should do not yelling, speaking in a harsh way or angry tone, even not insulting the children.

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