Surviving Your Adolescents: How To Manage and Let Go of Your 13-18 Year Olds. Revised 2nd Edition

A step-by-step approach to handling teenagers, this guide helps parents end the hassles and improve their parent–teenager relationship. Parents learn how to communicate with teenagers, how to manage teenage risk-taking, how to “let go” in certain situations, and when to seek professional attention. Concise and encouraging, this resource walks parents through the ups-and-downs of parenting teenagers as their kids push towards independence. This replaces 0963386107.

A step-by-step approach to handling teenagers, this guide helps parents end the hassles and improve their parent-teenager relationship. Parents learn how to communicate with teenagers, how to manage teenage risk-taking, how to "let go" in certain situations, and when to seek professional attention. Concise and encouraging, this resource walks parents through the ups-and-downs of parenting teenagers as their kids push towards independence.

VOYA

Phelan, author of All About Attention Deficit Disorder (Child Management, 1996), begins with a clear introduction to basic adolescent psychology, with an emphasis on keeping MBAs-Minor But Aggravating behaviors-in perspective. He stresses the importance of communication between parents and teenagers and avoiding what he refers to as the Four Cardinal Sins: Spontaneous Problem discussions, Nagging, Insight Transplants (when parents expect their profound insights to be transplanted into the brain of their teen), and Arguing. By adopting these suggestions, parents can establish or repair positive relationships with their teens that will help them overcome the trouble spots. The next half of the book outlines a series of parental roles to deal with unacceptable behaviors, from Observing and Advising those MBAs, to Negotiating and Directing serious problems such as drug abuse. Phelan suggests two routes of Directing: the Major/Minor system (a penalty system set up in advance so teens know the consequences of irresponsible actions) and counseling, if all else fails or teens are putting themselves in extreme danger. Phelan reveals teens' various methods of Testing and Manipulation (buttering up, playing the martyr) and gives helpful guidelines in the last chapters for specific areas such as driving or school difficulties. Written in a friendly, approachable style, this book is full of practical advice for the overwhelmed parent of pre-teens and teens. It should be in every guidance counselor's office and public library.

Noting that parents raising adolescents need to know when to be quiet and when to act, as well as what to do when something needs to be done, this guide for parents offers guidelines for handling the complex situations and dilemmas that teenagers often present. Topics covered include managing teenage risk-taking, the relationship between parent-teen communication and adolescent safety, and guidelines for specific areas such as clothing and dating. The six sections of the book are: (1) "A Different Planet," identifies normal adolescent behavior; (2) "Communication and Safety," including risk behaviors such as substance experimentation and driving, and four negative parenting tactics--spontaneous problem discussions, nagging, insight transplants, and arguing; (3) "Problems!," discusses the ways in which a parent's state of mind about his or her own life affects interaction with adolescents, and four roles parents play--observer, advisor, negotiator, and director; (4) "Emotional Blackmail," on adolescents' testing and manipulating and ways to manage testing and manipulation; (5) "House Rules," detailing guidelines for specific problems and presenting vignettes of the guidelines in action; and (6) "Ten Years from Now," on likely outcomes for even the most trying adolescent. (HTH) Offers advice on dealing with 13- to 18-year-olds, suggesting ways of improving the relationship, responding to their actions, avoiding damaging behavior, and handling specific problems