Understanding Your Teen

In less than one month, I will be the proud mother of not just one but two teenagers. Thus, receiving a copy of Understanding Your Teen: Shaping Their Character, Facing Their Realities by Jim Burns, president of HomeWord, was quite timely and appreciated. Jim Burns writes from the perspective of both an expert in adolescence who has spent a lifetime working with teens and a parent who lived to tell about raising his three daughters to adulthood. As such, the book is grounded in research but filled with stories illustrating the concepts.

This volume is divided into two parts--Part 1: Parenting Teems to Become Responsible Adults and Part 2: Common Teen Issues and What Parents Can Do. Jim Burns opens Understanding Your Teen by describing the vast changes that have occurred since today's parents went through the teen years and that parents cannot make assumptions about their teens' experiences. This is a theme he often returns to throughout the book. Burns continues to lay a firm foundation by briefly outlining adolescent development and general parenting strategies before delving into adolescent issues. As expected in a book about parenting today's teenager, the subjects of media, sexuality, education, and communication are addressed as well as spirituality. Surprisingly, Burns also addresses the importance of a strong marriage in effectively parenting teens. Part 2 of Understanding Your Teen functions as a mini encyclopedia describing numerous teen issues, symptoms of the issues, and brief suggestions on how to handle them. This section is intensely practical and useful to have on hand when needed.

A highlight of this volume is the great questions that appear at the end of each chapter in part one. These questions are ideal for spouses to use as they read and interact with the material. They also make this book an ideal resource for a parenting class or Bible study group. Youth ministers will wish to be familiar with this book as a resource to recommend to parents. Church and public libraries will desire to add this to their shelves.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from InterVarsity Press. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”