We present a number of books on the general topic of adolescent development and parenting. Each has a slightly different emphasis -- scroll down to find the one that appeals to you.

Click on a cover to go to a particular review or on the underlined title to go to online ordering through Amazon.com.

Borthwick, Paul, But You Just Don't Understand: How to Know You're Doing the Right Thing with Your Kids. (Christian-oriented parenting book; review)

Discipline that Works: 5 Simple Steps, by Joyce Divinyi, M.S., L.P.C., 2004.

Parenting Teens with Love and Logic, by Foster Cline, MD, and Jim Fay.

Fishel, Elizabeth. I Swore I'd Never Do That! Conari Press, 1994. Paper .
[Winner of "Best Parenting Book, Parent's Choice Award]

Guest Book Review

Sol Gordon, PhD, How Can You Tell If You're Really in Love?, Adams Media Corp., Holbrook, MA., 2001.

The Five Love Languages of Teenagers, by Gary Chapman, Northfield Publishers, 2001, Paper.

Wolf, Anthony E., Get Out of My Life, but First Could You Drive Me and Cheryl to the Mall?

Laura Sessions Stepp, Our Last Best Shot: Guiding Our Children Through Early Adolescence

Riera, Michael, Ph.D. Uncommon Sense for Parents with Teenagers, Berkeley, CA, Celestial Arts, 1995.

[click covers to go to reviews]

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Discipline that Works: 5 Simple Steps, by Joyce Divinyi, M.S., L.P.C., 2004. Basic parenting strategies for children of all ages, including teens. The "5 Simple Steps" elaborated in this short, paperback book are:

1. Think feelings.
2. Ask questions.
3. Teach skills.
4. Repeat short phrases.
5. Focus on the positive.

Discipline that Works: 5 Simple Steps is a short, worthwhile guide to effective discpline and is recommended. Get it at amazon.com at a discount, while helping this web site.

For more troubling youngsters, parents, counselors, and teachers can consult her other paperback --in 8-1/2 x 11 format, Good Kids, Difficult Behavior.

Good Kids, Difficult Behavior, by Joyce Divinyi, 2004. The author presents insightful analysis and useful strategies for approaching children and teens whose behavior is troubling to adults. The author's strategies are based on her own experience with and understanding of children whose inner and outer lives have made their demands of the adults in their environments difficult to deal with. This one is highly recommended for anyone trying to parent or work with older children or teens with difficult behaviors. Get it at amazon.com at a discount and help this web site at the same time.

See also, Discipline that Works: 5 Simple Steps.

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The Five Love Languages of Teenagers, by Gary Chapman, Northfield Publishers, 2001, Paper.

Chapman, a marriage counselor, husband of 35 years, and parent of two now grown children, adds to his series of "Five Love Languages" books by writing of the "love languages" of teenagers. By "love languages," he means the particular ways in which particular teenagers need to be treated in order to feel loved. Some teens feel loved when they are affectionately touched, others when they are verbally affirmed, yet others when parents spend quality time with them, or show their love by serving their children, or are given gifts. He helps parents find their teen's way of feeling loved.

Although the book has a Christian slant that I don't appreciate, I strongly resonate with Chapman's emphasis on the necessity for love and accurate expression of love in the parent-teen relationship. His advice on dealing with angry teens -- either the explosive or the withdrawn types -- is itself worth the price of purchasing the book, in my view (see pp. 147ff).

I would take issue with Chapman in a number of areas -- for instance, regarding some of his notions of setting up rules for dating and consequences if teens don't break off unapproved relationships -- but I think the overall messages:

• learn how your teen needs to be loved and love him/her that way -- and
• listen, listen, listen to your teen -- these large emphases are ones I certainly resonate with.

Recommended .

[click covers to go to reviews]

Good Kids, Difficult Behavior, by Joyce Divinyi, M.S., L.P.C. 2004.

A Tribe Apart, a Journey into the Heart of American Adolescence, by Patricia Hersch, Ballantine Books, 1999.

Mary Sheedy Kurcinka, Kids, Parents, and Power Struggles

Schneider, Barbara & David Stevenson, The Ambitious Generation: America's Teenagers, Motivated but Directionless. Yale University Press, 1999. Hardcover.

Schwartz, Pepper, and Dominic Cappello, Ten Talks Parents Must Have with Their Children About Sex and Character

American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, Your Child: Emotional, Behavioral, and Cognitive Development from Birth through Preadolescence, David B. Pruitt, MD, Editor-in-Chief, 1998, American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry

Shure, Myrna B., Raising a Thinking Preteen

Judith P. Siegel, What Children Learn from Their Parents' Marriage, Harpercollins, Feb. 2000

 Barbara A. Unell & Jerry L. Wyckoff, PhD, The Eight Seasons of Parenthood

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Borthwick, Paul. But You Just Don't Understand: How to Know You're Doing the Right Thing with Your Kids, Oliver-Nelson:Nashville, Tenn., 1986.
This little book (paperback, 141 pp) is older but full of good advice. It seems to be intended for parents who have a Christian orientation. The author quotes the Bible often, and presents principles for dealing with teenagers based on his reading of it. The thing is, the advice is really pretty sound...whether you're a Christian or not, and it's easy to read. Consider this passage from a chapter entitled, "Why Teenagers Need Freedom to Fail" (pp 98-99)

"Peter's parents did not want him to have freedom. Until he was eighteen, they made almost every important decision for him. They kept him rather sheltered from his high school world, and they refused to let him have many friends. They bought his clothes, dropped him off at and picked him up from school, and welcomed him into their social sphere (so that he would not hang around with teenagers).

Then Peter went to college. He became irresponsible, sloppy, and very nervous. He came home every weekend, retreated to the family room, and watched television. He could not cope, and at age twenty, he had a nervous breakdown and dropped out of college. Now, at age thirty-one, Peter lives with his aging parents and holds down a minimum-wage job."

Click to order. (See the Archives, topic "autonomy/independence.")

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Fishel, Elizabeth. I Swore I'd Never Do That! Conari Press, 1994. Paper .
[Winner of "Best Parenting Book, Parent's Choice Award]

(A revision of the hardback, Family Mirrors, 1991, Houghton-Mifflin.)

Have you heard yourself say something to your child and thought, "I sound just like my mother/father?" If so, this book is for you! The author, although not herself described as a mental health professional, presents deeply considered, well researched reflections on the "intergenerational transmission" of many of our least-favored character traits.

Based on her own deep reflections on her personal experience, but also on information gleaned from interviews of and readings from distinguished theoreticians and philosophers, Elizabeth Fishel's book is highly recommended reading. Click to order.

Consider this particularly poignant and painful example (pp 47-48 of hardback):

...Bowen [a psychoanalytic family therapist] tells the story of a family with a particularly troubled mother and teenage son. This mother felt that her own "emotional insecurity" was the result of "emotional neglect" by her mother, who was cold and aloof. She was determined to be warm and close and "emotionally available" to her son in the way that she wished her mother had been with her.

Until her son reached adolescence, this mother's efforts were successful, and their relationship was harmonious. If her son showed any signs of distress the mother simply redoubled her efforts: spent more time with him , assuaged his worries. "His problems were her problems; his pain was her pain."

By the time the boy became a teenager, this awkward lack of differentiation, this blurring of boundaries, had taken its toll. Despite all the mother's efforts and reassurances, her son remained "aimless and insecure." Never having been allowed, and certainly not encouraged, to do the difficult work of hammering out a separate self, the boy had scanty inner resources to draw on. Now he felt--and could finally articulate--that his mother rejected his need to be his own person. And ironically, despite his mother's herculean efforts to prove otherwise, he did not feel that she loved him enough. (emphasis and words in brackets added)

The author's point is well taken--see Karen Martin's "Autonomy/Independence" topic in the Archives. Highly recommended. Click to order.

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A Tribe Apart, a Journey into the Heart of American Adolescence, by Patricia Hersch, Ballantine Books, 1999.

Ms. Hersch is a journalist and mother of three adolescents who decided to explore teenagers' world from the inside out. She hung out with, went to school with, interviewed teens for three years. This is the record of what she found --material which surprised and alarmed her. She interviewed the "average" kids, not the ones who stood out as making a mess of their lives. Her bottom line is a belief that adults have abandoned teenagers --hence making them "a tribe apart," who long for understanding, guidance, and love from the adults around them. Click to order.

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Riera, Michael, Ph.D. Uncommon Sense for Parents of Teenagers, Berkeley, CA, Celestial Arts, 1995. Click to order.

This one should also be available at your local public library. The author is the "Dr. Mike" who writes "About Teens" for ParentsPlace.com. We found the book basically sound. Consider this statement (page 10): "In many respects, teenagers appear to be more like adults than children, and often seem to inhabit a mature intellectual world. You must remember, however, that they are not adults. Adolescence contains aspects of both adult and child worlds, but is wholly neither." Riera also points out, in his chapter on "Limits and Structure," that ". . . structure and limits need to evolve to reflect each developmental stage. You don't negotiate with a 1-year-old about bedtime, nor insist a 17-year-old be in bed by 9." He adds a few pages later, "You can't simply upgrade the strategies and structures that worked from infancy through late childhood; they must be reworked for teenagers. In addition, there needs to be room for real input from adolescents." Recommended. Click to order.

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Schneider, Barbara & David Stevenson, The Ambitious Generation: America's Teenagers, Motivated but Directionless. Yale University Press, 1999. Hardcover.

The authors, whose credentials are impressive (she's a professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, senior social scientist at the National Opinion Research Center and currently co-director of the Alfred P.Sloan Center on Parents, Children, and Work; he's the assistant director for social and behavioral sciences in the Office of Science and Technology Policy and formerly deputy director of the National Council on Education Standards and Testing and has held research and teaching positions at University of Chicago, Stanford, and Oberlin College), state in their Preface (p. x):

The ambitions of adolescents are fundamental to sociological models of social mobility--that is, who gets ahead and why.

And what they have found in a longitudinal study of American eighth-grade students is that the ambitions of these students are very high--with "large numbers expecting to become college graduates and to work as professionals (p.ix)."

This represented a change from prior findings--and the magnitude of the change was significant and appeared to characterize both males and females as well as different racial and ethnic groups.

[The latter aspect--that the finds apply to different ethnic/racial groups--is not clear from the book jacket, which pictures a group of very middle-class looking, hip white kids.]

So far, this all sounds like good news. However:

• Even though "adolescents in the 1990s are the most occupationally and educationally ambitious generation of teenagers" (p.79), the authors find that many lack basic information about what constitutes required preparation for the professions they wish to enter.
• The authors promote the development of what they call "aligned ambitions"--that is, ambitions grounded in knowledge of the pathways to different professions or occupations.

The authors illustrate their point with interesting case studies: for instance, there is "Paul," son of Chinese immigrants, and "Rosie," daughter of Mexican immigrants. Paul "wants" to be a physician because his family wants him to--and they are strongly supporting his organizing his life, including his choice of friends, around this career goal. Rosie really does want to be a physician, that is, feels a calling to help her people by becoming a doctor, but has no supportive network, a difficult family life, and no accurate sense of what is really required to become a physician.

Paul has "aligned ambitions"--whether he ultimately becomes a physician or not, he is well on the way to appreciating "what it takes" to enter one profession or another. Rose has the same high aspirations, but "unaligned ambitions," and, the authors seem to imply, may have little chance of realizing her dream.

The message of the book seems rather simple: adolescents need support and guidance, from the adults in their lives, to acquire the knowledge of what it takes to function in a specific occupation, and often enough, they're not getting these.

We suspect that the people who will most benefit from The Ambitious Generation are middle-class parents ambitious for their children and capable of helping them to fulfill these ambitions.

We would like to see a book about how to help the Rosies of this world. And we would like to comment that Paul, already having a little trouble with his parents' rather overbearing control, may experience a different kind of life problem from that Rosie may face: how to know and rely on his own wants and needs. (See the Archives topic "autonomy/independence.") Recommended.

Go to amazon.com to buy The Ambitious Generation.

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Wolf, Anthony E., Get Out of My Life, but First Could You Drive Me and Cheryl to the Mall?, Noonday Press: New York, 1991.

The title says it all! Dr. Wolf has obviously been there. Unlike most of the other books on adolescence/adolescents we've seen, this one doesn't just try to answer questions, but presents the author's view of the underlying psychological principles that govern teenagers. He points out differences between boys and girls, with humor. Fun, useful, easy to read. Recommended. Click to order.

(Karen's videotape,"Surviving Adolescence," includes her discussion with parents of her own understanding of what makes teenagers behave in the ways they do.)

Mary Sheedy Kurcinka, Kids, Parents, and Power Struggles,

Mary Sheedy Kurcinka brings her considerable experience to the topic of power struggles--a topic that is very familiar to parents of adolescents. While her book deals mainly with power struggles with younger kids, it has a lot to offer in terms of promoting a basic approach of becoming an "emotion coach" to your kids (rather than getting into a power struggle). Using empathy for kids' feelings is great, we think. Our only caveat is that teens may not welcome a parent believing they know how the teen feels--or, worse, telling the teen how they feel. Parents of adolescents, we think, walk a fine line in this area--that's why we say parenting adolescents is "a balancing act." Go to the amazon.com page for more info and ordering at a discount, with benefit to this site.

Raising a Thinking Preteen, Myrna B. Shure, PhD, Henry Holt & Company, Inc., 2000.

The latest in a series of "I Can Problem Solve" books by Dr. Shure. The best part about this one is that it emphasizes the futility of using suggestion, explanation, and command when trying to influence the behavior of a preteen. We'll be surprised if Dr. Shure comes out with a volume on using the ICPS approach with teens--get to your 8-12-year-olds with this book while you still can! Order from amazon.com at 30% discount, and benefit this site.

Parenting Teens with Love and Logic , by Foster Cline, MD, and Jim Fay, a well-known parenting guru who began the "love and logic" series, has much to offer the harried parent of 12 to 20-year-olds. Take a peek inside the book by clicking the cover above--or use this link for more info and/or to order at a discount, while helping this web site as well.

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Laura Sessions Stepp, Our Last Best Shot: Guiding Our Children Through Early Adolescence, Riverhead Books, New York, to be published June 2000. A Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist, Laura Stepp spends a lot of time with pre-teen and early-adolescent kids and their parents and writes their stories, in a quest to find out what parents can do to help kids cope with the challenges of this developmental stage. Deep and heart-warming in many ways, the book presents at the end of each Part a list headed, "As Parents We Can:", followed by the lessons of that part of the book. Stepp ends with a personal story of her interaction with her own son. We like her immersion in the worlds of early adolescent/ pre-adolescent kids and her empathic and insightful comments on what goes wrong, and right, with their lives. She cites many authorities and provides an excellent bibliography. Recommended. Click here to get it at 30% off at Amazon.com and help this site at the same time.

American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, Your Child: Emotional, Behavioral, and Cognitive Development from Birth through Preadolescence, David B. Pruitt, MD, Editor-in-Chief, 1998, Harper Collins, New York.

A paperback version of this recommended reference work is now available for a 20% discount through our link to amazon.com. Offers more or less "commonsense" advice on handling the mental health and behavioral needs of youngsters through pre-adolescence, similar to a medical-health compendium. I understand that the teenage manual will be published soon--when it is, we'll review it here. To order or for more info...

Barbara A. Unell & Jerry L. Wyckoff, PhD, The Eight Seasons of Parenthood, Times Books, NewYork, 2000. Written by a parent educator and a family psychologist, 8 Seasons attempts to address the impact on parents of their kids' ages and stages throughout the life cycle. Reflective, accessible, calming--we read their chapter on "Volcano Dwellers," the name they give to parents living through their children's adolescence. They describe adolescents as "born-again toddlers with driver's licenses," a description we find apt (p. 165). For parents, a big part of getting through these years is learning how to survive, if not love, living on the side of an active volcano--and realizing that it's their turn now. We appreciate their emphasis on balancing kids' needs and parents' relationships during this phase. Not a "how-to," but definitely helps parents look at the big picture. We recommend it. The list price for this book is $24.00. Click here to get it for $16.80, a 30% discount.

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Ten Talks Parents Must Have with Their Children About Sex and Character, by Pepper Schwartz, PhD, and Dominic Cappello, offers good, practical advice about how to talk to kids beginning at about middle-school age (in fact, it's likely to be most useful to parents of kids in 4th to 6th grades), but parents of teens and preteens can also find plenty of good advice here about how to approach delicate subjects. It does suggest some "bare minimum" values (like not calling other people names because they look different), but largely leaves the values questions up to parents. What I liked best about it were the "real-life" quotations from parents who tried to use these talks with their kids--in one case, the kid indicated clearly that he didn't want to talk about "any of this stuff," and the parent backed right off and switched the topic. I think it can be useful; it suggests using a simple "story-telling" approach. If you're finding yourself tongue-tied, you might pick up a copy. Get it at a 20% discount at amazon.com and help keep this site free!

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Sol Gordon, PhD, How Can You Tell If You're Really in Love?, Adams Media Corp., Holbrook, MA., 2001.

Guest Book Review:

[The following review of How Can You Tell If You're Really In Love? is submitted by Jenny Walbridge.]

How would you like to read something that'll set both parents and teens straight on the ins and outs of love relationships? How Can You Tell If You're Really In Love? by well-known psychologist Sol Gordon, Ph.D., cuts through the ridiculousness about love/relationship that most of us allow ourselves to believe as we grow up in American culture. The book is easy to understand, the tone very kind. Here's a quote: "A short time ago, a friend in her 40s sent out wedding invitations. Ten days before the ceremony, all the invited guests received a note saying that the wedding had been postponed indefinitely. My first thought was, 'This is a smart couple.' They were wise enough to put everything on hold until they could work through their difficulties and uncertainties." (p. 88)

The book employs several effective lists, among them one of ways not to try to communicate with your friend/loved one, including telling the other, "You don't love me," "You don't listen," "What's the matter with you?," etc. Dr. Gordon recommends the use of "I messages," like "I'm upset when..."

Basically, the book is required reading for people in any sort of relationship--i. e. parents with teens, teens or parents with friends/ loved ones, etc. It made a big impression on me and I highly recommend it (plus, it's a short read)! -Jenny Walbridge

GET IT FOR ONLY $7.95!

Jenny Walbridge, our guest book reviewer, lives and works in Chicago. Jenny is an artist and writer with a degree in anthropology.

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Judith P. Siegel, What Children Learn from Their Parents' Marriage, Harpercollins, Feb. 2000.

Dr. Siegel subtitles her book, "It may be your marriage, but it's your child's blueprint for intimacy." She covers how children learn from living with their parents' marriage and details seven significant lessons a good marriage can afford to children. Dr. Siegel also talks about divorce--and we are now learning that children from divorced families do not necessarily do less well than their counterparts from surviving marriages. Even divorced couples will teach their children important lessons about intimacy. Get Dr. Siegel's book here at a 30% discount, while benefiting this site.

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