The Rollercoaster Years
Raising Your Child Through the Maddening Yet Magical Middle School Years
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
For the 20 million parents of 10- to 15-year-olds, The Roller-Coaster Years is a lively guide to mastering the ups and downs of early adolescence. Every parent knows about the terrible twos and the brooding teens, but few have anticipated the wild ride of these magical yet maddening years that can provide all the thrills and chills of a carnival ride.
Now, drawing together the latest information from experts, supported and advised by the National Middle School Association, and with surprising insights from the authors' own surveys of parents, teachers, and the children themselves, The Roller-Coaster Years covers every facet of the physical, social, emotional, and intellectual development of early adolescents, including:
• Appearance Anxiety
• Distractibility
• Fears and Other Emotions
• The Battle for Independence
• Success in School
• Friendship and Peer Pressure
• Sexual Awakening
• The Lure of Tobacco, Drugs, and Alcohol
• The Promise and Peril of Electronic Media
• Sticky Questions About Your Own Past
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Impressive in scope and refreshingly candid, this down-to-earth parenting guide helps fill the advice vacuum for the pre-teen years. What's even better, the authors, both freelance writers, have clearly "been there, done that" as parents, and the guidance they offer rings true. In charting the confusing shoals of "middlers"--as they dub middle school students--Giannetti and Sagarese cover the expected bases, from peer pressure and the physical havoc wrought by puberty's onset to effective discipline and what they call "the terrifying triad of temptation"--drugs, alcohol and sex. They push on to explore a host of other topics, including such hot buttons such as body image, gender bias in the classroom and the pervasive influence of the media (the latter in a chapter entitled "Beaver and Wally vs. Beavis and Butthead"). The pages abound with imaginative and pointed suggestions: case in point is a list of innovative strategies for bridging the generation gap that includes calling a close relative to ask what you yourself were really like at that age. Observations from a wide cross-section of parents, teachers and middlers, polled across the U.S. and Canada are woven into each section to lend immediacy and frankness to the lively text. A generous recommended reading and reference guide rounds out this excellent volume. If a parent could only have one manual to help navigate the middle school years, this one should be it.
