Emotional Lives of Teenagers

Raising a teenager is not for the faint of heart, however over the years, especially with the rise of technology — parenting teens seems to have become more challenging than generations earlier. The emotional lives of teenagers can not only be intense, but overwhelming to many parents.

Since 2001 we have been educating families when they have reached that brick wall, exhausted all their local resources and have decided they need a therapeutic boarding school or schools for troubled teens.

We also like to offer resources to help with teen issues — a new book that is a must-read is “The Emotional Lives of Teenagers,” by Lisa Damour, Ph.D.

This is an urgently needed guide to help parents understand their teenagers’ intense and often fraught emotional lives—and how to support them through this critical developmental stage.

In teenagers, powerful emotions come with the territory. And with so many of today’s teens contending with academic pressure, social media stress, worries about the future, and concerns about their own mental health, it’s easy for them—and their parents—to feel anxious and overwhelmed. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Parents who read this book will learn:

• what to expect in the normal course of adolescent emotional development and when it’s time to worry
• why teens (and adults) need to understand that mental health isn’t about “feeling good” but about having feelings that fit the moment, even if those feelings are unwanted or painful
• strategies for supporting teens who feel at the mercy of their emotions so they can become psychologically aware and skilled at managing their feelings
• how to approach common challenges that come with adolescence, such as friction at home, spiking anxiety, risky behavior, navigating friendships and romances, the pull of social media, and many more
• the best ways to stay connected to their teens and how to provide the kind of relationship that adolescents need and want

With clear, research-informed explanations alongside illuminating, real-life examples, The Emotional Lives of Teenagers gives parents the concrete, practical information they need to steady their teens through the bumpy yet transformational journey into adulthood.