Karen H.

With regards to today’s (2/5/24) post on parenting adolescents, as usual Professor Oster offers carefully considered suggestions and thoughts. My family is grown, and it all resonated! One additional good book I would like to put forth is Dr. Frances Jensen’s “The Teenage Brain”. It helped me and I was told it helped a lot of other parents (I gifted the book to many others when they would share their experiences parenting teens). In short, when you can place typical teenaged shenanigans into developmental context, it makes them slightly less vexing. And her advice to “never say no” – because that abruptly ends all future communication about an event or purchase that your teen is considering – was life changing! You can, of course, say “no”, but you only want to do that AFTER a boatload of fact-finding (“…where is the party? How will you get there? What time do you think you might be home? What are you going to wear?) AFTER you have all sorts of invaluable data, then (and only then) you can let your teen know why you don’t necessarily think it’s a good idea. And they may well ignore you and go/ buy it anyways. BUT, when things go south, as they often do, you’ll be the person your teen recalls as someone who who was willing to have a conversation with them, and share your (based on life experience) concerns. Good luck out there! The teenage years are a real challenge. All stages of youth can be described as a period when “ambitions outstrip abilities”, but perhaps none more than the high school years. Toddlers can’t drive. Third graders have no interest in intimacy. Middle school students can’t get jobs two towns over…