How to Deal with Your Acting-Up Teenager: Practical Self-Help for Desperate Parents

"When my teenager seemed to be going off the deep end and our home life was almost unbearable, I went to my city's largest bookstore, skimmed alot of titles, and bought four or five books. I sampled quite a range, from "control your child and don't take no for an answer" to "tough love" to "understanding adolescence" to this wonderful book, which was the only one that in the end really made sense to me, and WORKED. I learned things from the other books but this is the one that was deeply grounded in reality (and, more than most, in scientific knowledge), wasn't trying to suck me into a movement or a religion, wasn't trying to make me or my children behave the way other people thought we should behave, and wasn't just another slick attempt to make money off of desperate parents.

I won't tell you what the main messages are because you really need to go through the process of reading the book to get to a place where some of these messages make sense. I'll just say that my son's behavior changed dramatically, that our home life (and my personal life) went from a negative 8 to a plus 8, and that I feel as if a great weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I'm proud of my son and now take great pleasure seeing him grow and explore. I also trust him."
~ Written on 1997-03-24