Get Out of My Life, but First Could You Drive Me & Cheryl to the Mall: A Parent's Guide to the New Teenager, Revised and Updated

Parents generally try to seek solutions for the issues they are facing with their children, and they often turn to books containing well-meaning advice from experts that purport to tell them how to communicate with their children so that the children actually listen, how to enforce discipline, how to raise a great child, etc. The problem is that many of the prescriptions contained in such books are perfectly suited for someone else's child, some abstraction that somehow doesn't seem to correspond to your child who is standing (or slouching) right in front of your very own face.Wolf's book is refreshingly different. His observations and comments are all grounded in real-life and he avoids the spurious idea that parents can somehow continue to be in control during the adolescent years. Instead, through gentle but persistent examples he shows that the role of parents must change during this time, whether they like it or not, and that in general teenagers will make it through the rough times and come out the other side as nice people. He explains clearly what is going on in the mind of the teenager and thereby why most "appropriate" parenting strategies are actually completely pointless and self-defeating. He never confronts parents' erroneous beliefs head-on, but rather he gently works around them with examples and explanations, so that such lessons can be absorbed without too much internal resistance.Every parent, I think, is likely to read some part of Wolf's book and think, "but I SHOULD have done it that way! I don't see WHY I should change!" And yet... after a few moments, or hours, or days of reflection, it does in fact make sense. The best thing is that his input isn't dogmatic. Each parent can read the book and come away with a different action plan. There are no lists, no "you absolutely must do it this way or else your child will be emotionally scarred for life" kinds of directives. Just a lot of sensible observations presented gently and with subtle humor.One example of this is when he writes: "A number of years back I heard about an unusual situation. A man whose wife had died and who had three children married a woman whose husband had died and who also had three children. Suddenly, six children, but despite the odds against them the two families blended amazingly well into one. Of course there were some disagreements, but there was a lot of love and respect in the family, a lot of caring within the family as a whole. Their name was Brady. Their secret, of course, was that they were not real, but only the product of television scriptwriters."Wolf is superb at pointing out the difference between how we'd like things to be and how they really are - and how, if we continue to behave as if things were as we'd like them to be, we'll dig ourselves deeper and deeper into a hole. Only by dealing with things as they really are, can we help our children to progress through the difficult teenage years and retain our sanity and emotional balance.The only downside of the book is that Wolf labors under the usual American neuroses about sexuality and consequently over-emphasizes the potential downside of sexual issues. Europeans will find the chapter on teenage sexual behaviors perplexingly Victorian, but that's just a seemingly inescapable attribute of all US books that touch on the topic. As always, AIDS is invoked as a potential killer but nowhere is it mentioned that if you are the child of white middle-class parents who have a health plan and you consort with people like you, your statistical probability of contracting HIV is actually only one-third of your probability of being struck by lightning. Sexually transmitted diseases are often prevalent for teens, but they are largely the sort that is cured by a week's worth of anti-biotics - hardly the end of the world unless chronic denial results in lack of prompt treatment. But no doubt the book would sell far less well if it included a more mature, and less repressed, treatment of teenage sexuality.If you only buy one book on how to parent teenagers, let it be this one. Not only is it sensible, it's also quite funny at times - which is an immense relief to stressed parents!

This book was recommended to me by a friend after I expressed my frustration with my young teen. I am so glad that she did. I found this book tremendously helpful for several reasons:1. The behaviour of my kids is completely normal, albeit frustrating. This was an enormous relief. Wolf spent a lot of time explaining the normal development of both boys and girls and it was like a light went on for me. It helped make me more understanding and less annoyed and helped me choose how to react.2. Our laments that we would never have acted this way with our parents are in fact well-founded. Today's teens are different because as a society we have correctly agreed not to wallop our kids and have thus removed the element of fear and a powerful controlling element from the parenting equation. Now that we understand that kids are acting true to their nature and we can't take them to the wood shed for it, how do we respond?3. Wolf outlines at length how to respond to a variety of situations with your teen. Hold firm. Set expectations. Make it all clear.This book has given me renewed confidence as we enter a new era of parenting. The toddler stage seems like a cakewalk! But with Wolf's advice and insight I am hoping that there will still be room for some cake as we navigate the teen years. Very helpful read.

I agree that this is a great book! It describes the teenager-parent interactions in very realistic light, mixing in much needed humor, and tellings us that things are as frustrating and complicated as we think, but also nowhere as bad as we think. We will never have the full control that we want, but we also have way, way more control than we think we have on our children's teenage years and their future.I don't give it 5 stars for one reason. The book ignores one important problem of modern parenting. It correctly identifies one significant issue of parenting today: we constantly look back at OUR own teenage years ("I would never talk to my parents like that!" "I would never do that as a teen!!"), but there is yet another factor that makes our lives as parents so hard. Our parents truly had it easy. They had many, many allies in their good fight! Growing up in Armenia as a kid I had tons of adult supervision: my grandparents (all four of them), my uncles and aunts, our teachers, even our neighbors all supported and buttressed our parents and reinforced their message! "Do you listen to your parents?" "Are you a good boy at home? Do you help your parents?" "Your parents authority is very important, you should listen to them even when you disagree with them." A real confederation, a village of adults working together towards raising a new generation. Where, oh where can we have it today?? When was the last time a teacher told the students that they should behave well at home, that their parents advice is important?? Yes, this is not the panacea and the solve-all...and yes, there were many, many bad things happening with parenting methods 30 years ago. But this loss of a network, of a support adult group who ACTIVELY participated in our upbringing what makes our lives sometimes so complicated.

I bought this book 10 years ago when my daughter was 15 years old, I wish I had read it when she was 10!I gift it to everyone!

Highly recommended even though a bit old. Practical advice, gives you hope, that things will likely work out at the end.

Great book made me rethink how i parent and chill out a lot. I think we over worry and over think parenting some times and there is so much we can let go. Choose out battles wisely.

Recommended by a friend, this book lies now on my bedside table. It gives practical and pragmatic answers to your questions. And makes you feel less lonely because you realize that lots of parents go through the same problems with their teens. Many situations mentioned in the book will appear very familiar to you and will make you smile, or even laugh.

Parents of teens - you have to read this!