It’s time to face the reality that I’m soon going to have a
teenage boy in my house. And then a teenage girl. Then another teenage boy. And
another. Then finally another teenage girl, although by that time the first teen
boy and girl will both be in their twenties and hopefully out of the house
either in some career, college, or branch of the military. That’s getting
rather far ahead of myself, but the fact remains that I’d better get used to
having teenage boys around. And while I have personal experience with being a
teenage boy, I could definitely use some additional perspective.
Enter Teenage
Boys: Surviving and Enjoying These Extraordinary Years, the first of what will probably be a number
of books I’ll end up reading over the next few years on how to raise up teen
boys and teen girls. Originally written in the late early ‘00s (hence
the cover of some seriously Xtreme! Teen Boys), this version has been expended
with a couple of additional chapters of response material collected by the
author Bill Beausay after the publication of the original book.
Overall, it’s a useful book for helping to understand the teenage
mind. Again, having been a teen boy, you’d think I’d have a pretty good instinctive
understanding of this, but sometimes, that’s just the problem. A lot of what
teenagers do is based on instinct, not heavily considered rational processes.
It’s one of the big reasons why looking back at their teen years, most people
(guys, at least) have a few incidents they can recall that they now preface
with “Now I don’t know what I was thinking at the time…” Because we probably
weren’t.
The strategies for de-escalation, suggestions for how to establish
firm ground rules, and answers to some of the most common parental concerns are
especially useful.
The book is also a little bit of a time capsule, having been
written just a couple of years before smartphones and social media took over
everyone’s lives. Those strategies for firm ground rules, common concerns and
de-escalation suddenly seem even more difficult now than they would have been
ten years ago, but are more necessary than ever.
The book is written by a Christian, from an Evangelical Christian
perspective. As such, it may not be everyone’s cup of tea, although it
certainly meets me where I live. Still, much of the advice is valuable
regardless of what place religion of any sort has in the reader’s home.
Overall, highly recommended for anyone who is, or will soon be
parenting a teenage boy.
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