Letting Go with Love and Confidence: Raising Responsible, Resilient, Self-Sufficient Teens in the 21st Century

by Kenneth Ginsburg M.D., Susan FitzGerald

Overview

A parenting guide to adolescence - a sensible and considerate resource for navigating your teen to adulthood, transforming a traditional time of strife into an opportunity for positive growth for both you and your child.

For parents, nurturing their teens to become healthy, well-adjusted adults seems more challenging now than ever before. There are many pressures for kids to grow up faster than they should. Here, renowned adolescent medicine specialist Kenneth Ginsburg, M.D., and award-winning journalist Susan FitzGerald offer parents a practical, thoughtful strategy for guiding children through all the turning points on the way to adulthood - the "whens" and "hows" of adolescence.

Letting Go with Live and Confidence helps parents achieve five goals:

• Manage Their Own Emotions. Many parents are conflicted about their teens growing up. The desire to keep things the way they've always been may get in the way of wise parental decisions. This book addresses the emotional turmoil that surrounds letting go, and urges parents to care for themselves, so they can better care for their children.
  
• Reduce Conflict Around the Whens. It's the everyday "When can I?" questions that trigger many struggles. Parents will learn to turn potential sources of conflict into opportunities for growth as they consider 18 scenarios, including When is my child ready to stay home alone? Get a cell phone? Manage money? Date? Drive?
  
• Minimize Anxiety Over the Hows. Certain subjects are tough to talk about and the stakes in these conversations are high. How in the world do you talk about sex? Drugs? Peer pressure? Parents will learn how to approach critical topics with honesty and clarity, increasing the chances that they'll actually be heard.
  
• Gain Confidence To Make the Right Decisions. Parents reading this book will be better prepared to make decisions because they'll have a strategy to apply to each situation and gain new insight into their child's developmental needs.
  
• Understand That Nurturing Independence Is An Act of Love. The ultimate goal of parenting is to produce a well-adjusted adult. When teens understand that their parents support their independence, they're less likely to rebel. As importantly, when independence is not a battle, families can move toward lifelong interdependence.
  
  Letting Go with Live and Confidence is filled with the latest findings on successful parenting and is infused with Dr. Ginsburg's expert advice on how to build resilience in teens. This comprehensive volume also contains stories from real parents from diverse backgrounds who have faced the challenges of raising teens. Empowering and groundbreaking, this book is a one-stop resource to parenting teens in the twenty-first century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781583334294
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/02/2011
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Kenneth Ginsburg, M.D., M.S.Ed., is a pediatrician specializing in adolescent medicine at The Children's Hospital in Philadelphia and an expert on parenting teens. Regularly voted a "Top Doc" by Philadelphia magazine, he speaks across the country and lives in Philadelphia with his wife and two teenage daughters.

Susan Fitzgerald is an award-winning journalist. She lives outside Philadelphia.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Letting Go 1

Section I Setting the Stage

1 Preparing to Let Go: It's a Lot About You 13

2 Building Resilience: The Secret to Lifelong Success 20

3 Doing a Gut Check: Safety, Practicality, Morality 29

4 Looking in the Mirror: How Do You Parent? 38

5 Seeing Your Child: What's He or She Really Like? 55

6 Social Skills Your Child Needs to Survive Peer Culture 76

Section II When Is My Child Ready to …

Introduction: Why When? 87

7 Walk Alone to School, a Friend's House, the Corner Store? 90

8 Stay Home Alone? 97

9 Take Part in Sleepovers? 103

10 Decide About Clothes, Hair, Adorning the Body? 110

11 Go Online? 116

12 Get a Cell Phone? 122

13 Manage Money? 136

14 Go to the Mall? 144

15 Travel Alone: Buses, Trains, and Planes? 151

16 Help with Siblings and Elderly Relatives? 155

17 Go on Dates, Go to Dances, Have a Boyfriend/Girlfriend? 159

18 Manage Own Time and Schedule? 165

19 Stay Out Late, Stretch a Curfew? 170

20 Get a Driver's License-and a Car? 174

21 Get a Job? 183

22 Make Educational Choices? 189

23 Stop Going to Religious Services? 201

24 See the Doctor Alone? 205

Section III How to Talk … About the Really Tough Stuff

Introduction: Why How? 215

25 Authentic Success 217

26 Managing Stress in Healthy Ways 243

27 Peers: Relationships, Influence, and Sometimes Pressure 265

28 Drug Prevention 283

29 Healthy Sexuality 300

30 Reaching for Professional Help 315

Epilogue: Letting Go with Love and Confidence 329

Resources 337

Index 345

Editorial Reviews

This is no paint-by-number guide to parenting adolescents; it is something quite better. Letting Go with Love & Confidence addresses problems that contemporary moms and dads must confront in this golden age of peer pressure, dating independence, and social networking anarchy. The advice of Dr. Kenneth Ginsburg and Susan Fitzgerald encourages the modulated, confident interactions with teenagers that smooth the transition to responsible adulthood. Sensible counsel for preparing your kids for the real world. A perfect Back-to-School title.

"An eminently readable, down-to-earth, and spot-on book...You'll end up feeling that Ginsburg is sitting right in your living room (and wishing he were!), handing out wise, practical advice, reminding you that there is so much more right with your teen than wrong. Letting Go with Love and Confidence is likely to end up being your teen years bible." — Madeline Levine, Ph.D., author of The Price of Privilege

"A wonderful guide...refreshingly up-to-date and down to earth. Dr. Ginsburg is deeply respectful of both parents and teenagers." — Wendy Mogel, Ph.D., author of The Blessing of a Skinned Knee

"Ginsburg (pediatrics & adolescent medicine, Children's Hosp. of Philadelphia) sticks to the "seven C's" he outlined in his well-regarded Building Resilience in Children and Teens and shows how a sense of competence, confidence, connection, character, contribution, coping, and control leads to healthy outcomes for both parent and teen. Here, he centers on the adolescent years and charts out five goals for parents: managing emotions around letting go, reducing conflict, minimizing anxiety, becoming confident in your parenting ability, and understanding that nurturing independence is an act of love. His style is pleasant and concise and, while 30 chapters and 350-plus pages on teenagers may sound like Gitmo to some readers, his advice will be of great value to parents who stick with his program. Recommended." — Library Journal

From the Publisher