The teen years are tumultuous for adults and their children. A new book uses humor and helpful real-life examples to create a road map for peace.
By LOGAN MABE
Published June 26, 2003
Yes, Your Teen is Crazy! Loving Your Kid Without Losing Your Mind, by Michael J. Bradley
When it comes to teenagers, psychologist Michael J. Bradley makes no bones about this fact. "Your kid is crazy," he writes (and the italics are his) in his new book. "Adolescents are temporarily brain-damaged."
The book, appropriately titled Yes, Your Teen is Crazy!, is far from a screed, though. It is a compelling and compassionate piece of reality literature that goes a long way toward explaining what happens to children as they begin to become adults.
And it explains what happens to those children's parents as they slowly begin to go insane themselves.
Most importantly, Bradley offers a sound battle plan for negotiating the often volatile, maddening, discouraging, heart-breaking, hair-pulling years that define the modern parent-teen relationship in America.
Oh, and he's funny, too. Bradley delivers his hard-won wisdom with a light touch that comes from decades of counseling troubled kids and even more troubled moms and dads. He's been through the wars (both as a counselor and as a parent) and has emerged with a road map for peace.
Bradley has written a vital and lively guide book that should be required reading for any parent foolish enough to think they can navigate the force five storm that is the turbulent teen era.
It's funny that when moms and dads first get into the parenting business, they try to get as much information as humanly possible. They stock up on parenting primers. They subscribe to the magazines. They bone up on the relative merits of cloth vs. store-bought diapers, breast feeding vs. formula, the crib vs. the "family bed." They gird themselves for the various stages leading up to the Terrible Two phase.
They study up for the coming new-family tests with almost graduate-level zeal.
And then, once the kids reach kindergarten age, everyone can breathe again. What follows are joyful years of Little Mermaid sleepovers, Little League and little notes from the teacher saying what a pleasure it is having Hunter or Heather in class this year.
Then, sometime around the fifth or sixth grade, the world turns on its axis. Bradley rightly points out that, based on respected scientific studies, aliens do in fact descend from the sky, inhabit your child's body and turn her into someone who makes Linda Blair's character in The Exorcist seem like Miss Manners.
That's when it's time to hit the books again. Too many parents, Bradley asserts, rely solely on their own histories as teenagers as guideposts for how they'll handle their own teens. Not a good idea.
"Parenting an adolescent in today's world is much the same as flying a jet aircraft or performing brain surgery," Bradley writes. "Any training you received 30 years ago is not only useless, it can actually impair your ability to perform well. . . . Successfully parenting an adolescent in today's world requires levels of skill, endurance, wisdom, and strength that make piloting an aircraft pale in comparison. No joke."
Bradley's writing is crisp and descriptive. This is no egghead tome. Instead, the book reads like a war correspondent's journal of a career spent on the front lines. Bradley relies on his experience in the trenches, dealing with countless teens and their parents. For every new subject he covers, Bradley relates a real-life example of a kid and his problem, painting vivid images of people in pain.
In one section about the affect of blended families on teens, Bradley describes the session like this:
"Michael sat with that 16-year-old gunfighter slouch next to his father on the couch, staring away from Dad as if he could not possibly muster any more disinterest in the old man's words."
These passages are often lengthy, but they give the reader a fly-on-the-wall perspective of the very real traumas visiting teens and their parents.
More impressive than Bradley's you-are-there style is the solid, easy-to-grasp advice he has in dealing with a wide array of topics. It's hard to find a problem he doesn't address.
From the mundane to the mind-bending, Bradley tackles every aspect of the parent-teen dynamic. Peers, clothes, music, sex, drugs, alcohol, curfews, cars, it's all there.
Depending on where your child is on the teen development curve, Bradley's book can be a foreboding harbinger of the coming storm, an in-the-moment snapshot of your own family's situation now, or a rueful reminder of the battles you've already endured.
It is an invaluable resource for anyone who wants to survive the Alien Years.
- Logan D. Mabe is the father of two daughters, ages 15 and 12. "Yes, Your Teen is Crazy!" is published by Harbor Press, $14.95, and is available online at www.harborpress.com and www.docmikebradley.com
