Mom to teen boys, Tristan, 15, and Asher, 12, Canadian actress Natasha Henstridge certainly has her work cut out for her. We caught up with Natasha before the release of her latest film Against the Wild for tips on conquering teenage hormones and parenting in the age of technology.
“Boys sometimes have a tendency to put on airs of being men. There’s a lot of pressure on boys to become men before their time and to be ‘cool’. It’s almost expected of them to put their emotions to the side, when nurturing them should be okay. “What I’m having the hardest time navigating right now is the Internet. Kids have pretty much everything in the palms of their hands. It’s convenient to have a phone, but the fact that they can look up anything they want online makes it tough. However, the Internet is such a gift; we no longer have to look up things in ‘actual books’ and we get to look like geniuses as parents, thanks to Google! But there’s a lot of pressure to be the craziest, funniest or most popular. Things spread like wildfire but kids don’t realize the impact that what they’re posting can have on their lives and their future.”
Originally published in ParentsCanada magazine, June/July 2014.
