Smart Phones and Dumb Jerks: Going Online Without Getting Out of Line 

Young people today use social media and inhabit virtual worlds in a manner unlike any previous generation. It is as real an environment to them as the playground is to a preschooler. And the manners violations that most annoy both teens and adults involve 21st-century digitalia, social media platforms, and the modes of relating and communicating they have unleashed.

With all these changes transforming our culture and the world of adolescents, teens need to understand and control their online lives and communications. This presentation takes a multi-faceted approach by focusing on specific guidelines for the websites, technologies, and online interactions that exist today (phones, Facebook, tweeting, texting, etc.), as well as universal principles for polite on- and offline behavior that can be adapted to those new, life-changing Googles, gizmos, and gadgets yet to be invented. This presentation also covers cyberbullying and the importance of digital “time-outs” so teens can give their thumbs a rest and develop their off-line selves. 

How Rude! Good Manners, Proper Behavior, and Not Grossing People Out

How Rude!, Dr. Packer’s award-winning etiquette book for teens, contains over 1,000 topics on everything from texting to tweeting, sneezing to skiing, tipping to teasing, hosting to posting, flying to flirting. Practical and serious, yet light-hearted and humorous, How Rude!’s vast contents includes advice on:

• braces and bigotry
• barfing and belching
• backpack attacks
• locker room lapses
• cafeteria courtesies
• dealing with bullying, rude adults, and total idiots
• picking noses
• popping zits
• giving gifts
• joining cliques
• breaking up
• breaking down
• making friends
• making enemies
• artful listening
• clever conversing
• rowdy roommates
• pervy dogs
• bossy parents
• nasty blogs
• carefree carpools
• covert yawns
• super greetings
• stinky johns                                                                    

Create a custom presentation, workshop, or event with Dr. Packer on the specific topics your students or school community wish to address. Think of it as manners triage.

Wise Highs: How to Feel Really, Really Good Without Alcohol or Other Drugs

The best way to keep kids off drugs is to teach them to get “high”—to strengthen their own protective factors—in healthy, positive ways. “Getting high” is fun. It’s natural. In fact, the desire to experience ecstatic moments and alternative states of consciousness is all part of nature’s grand design. Based on Dr. Packer’s award-winning book, Wise Highs: How to Thrill, Chill & Get Away from It All Without Alcohol or Other Drugs, this workshop explores the reasons young people get high and describes dozens of ways to do it without the risks of alcohol and other drug use. Topics include: safe “trips”; mind over matter; super sleep strategies; reducing test-taking anxiety; visualizing confidence and success; food and mood; developing a personal stress-reduction program. Participants will have the opportunity to try some of these techniques for themselves.

Bringing Up Parents: How to Raise Parents Who Trust, Respect, and Love You

Do you wish things were different around your house? Do you want more fun and fewer fights, more freedom and less frustration, more respect and fewer rules? You can get what you want from your parents. 

Forget that your parents are supposed to be ‘bringing you up.’ With the right tips, strategies, attitudes, and techniques, you can bring them up to be everything you want them to be: parents who trust you, listen to you, respect your opinions, accept your feelings, and let you be yourself. 

Along the way, you’ll gain more privileges. You’ll have more say in family decisions. You’ll find out how to solve problems, even head them off before they happen. And you’ll help to create a healthier, happier home environment for everyone.”

Using humor, anecdotes, and re-enactments, this role-reversal spin on family relationships shows teens how to use “parent psychology” to get what they want and need. Of course, the key to bringing up loving, agreeable, respectful, and trusting parents is for teens to be loving, agreeable, respectful, and trustworthy themselves. So, when teens decide to “bring up” better parents, everybody wins!