How To Help Your Teenager Grow Up A Guide To Creative Parenthood

0/5 ( ratings)

This is the full version of the book. For individual volumes, see the series
offerings.
"Our earth is degenerate these latter days; there are signs that the world
is speedily coming to an end; bribery and corruption are common; children
no longer obey their parents; and the end of the world is evidently
approaching." This message was carved on an Assyrian stone tablet that
dates from about 2800 B.C.
Twenty-four centuries later—about 400 B.C.—the Greek philosopher Socrates
expressed his opinion of the younger generation in these "Children
now love luxury; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place
of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their
households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict
their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table,
cross their legs, and tyrannize over their teachers."
Adolescence, the transition period between childhood and adulthood, is an
exciting, challenging time for teenagers and parents alike. It is a time
for discarding childish habits, for abandoning immature ways of behaving in
favor of mature ones. It is a period of personal confusion, self-discovery,
continual readjustment. It is a dramatic stage of development in which
youngsters definitely need parents, but in ways that are different from
their childhood needs.
Parents everywhere want their teenagers to grow up to be reliable,
responsible citizens, successful marriage partners, and competent,
conscientious fathers and mothers. To help youngsters do this, parents must
understand them, accept them, recognize their normal needs and desires;
furthermore, they must help them find acceptable, constructive ways of
satisfying those needs and desires.
Serious consideration of adolescent development leads naturally to
identifying the problems teenagers how to understand themselves,
make friends, become socially competent; how to resolve important questions
regarding sex, work, money, and cars; how to regard school, the church, the
adult community; how to plan educationally and vocationally for future
success; how to prepare intelligently for the responsibilities of impending
adulthood. Careful analyses are made of these problems, and possible
methods of coping with them are offered.