SATs loom and tension builds in homes of college-bound teens. Parents’ dreams for their children are on the line. Not that the teens should feel pressure or anything. In “The Good Enough Teen” (Perennial Currents, $14.95), psychologist Brad Sachs explores how families can mend themselves when teens thwart parental aspirations, whether through low SAT scores, perennial sullenness or the less-benign problems of violent behavior and drug abuse.
Sachs advises adults to first examine their own childhoods for answers to parenting issues. He also steers clear of a blanket condemnation of teenage angst, saying that everyone from parents to grandparents can play a role in a teen’s unhappiness.
The book’s hands-on exercises and intriguing case histories guide parents on how to change behavior–both theirs and their children’s. Because Sachs makes it clear that finding the point where you can love your teen for who she is–perhaps a child destined for, egads, an in-state college–often involves instilling forgiveness, acceptance and love in yourself.
On change: “Only when we dare to embrace [adolescents] as they are will they move beyond our embrace and become all that they are meant to be.”
