A Book Review
Sixty diverse teenagers from around the country have helped write a groundbreaking new book in which they offer advice and arresting insights to parents and other close adults.
Risk-taking, rules and expectations, privacy, parental breakups, and planning for the future are among the topics on which kids speak out in What We Can't Tell You: Teenagers Talk to the Adults in Their Lives (Next Generation Press, May 2005). In candid first-person accounts gathered by journalist Kathleen Cushman, they give straight-up assessments of what teenagers need from adults.
“My mom makes me feel like I have to learn from her mistakes − she doesn't even give me a chance to make any of my own”, says Tabitha, who lives in a small rural town. “She just flat-out says no.” Michael, an African-American teenager from St. Louis, warns, “What might not be a large issue to you could be a very large issue to your child. So don't say, 'Don't worry about it.' Don't act like it's nothing.”
Tensions about control or worries about their children's welfare can make it hard for parents to hear and empathize with their own teenagers, particularly when accusations fly in both directions. But this book opens a “back door” to new understanding, since the messages come from other people's kids. Even if their situations don't match up exactly, they can spark important conversations that otherwise might never happen.
http://www.nextgenerationpress.org/titles/whatwecant.html
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