At the end of the day—and I know the days can be very, very long when you have a teenager—your kids still have to grow up and develop and learn and mature on their own. You can’t do it for them. Hopefully this book has helped you understand that your teenagers are not aliens, they are not another species from another planet, but they are at a critical stage in their development where everything is not yet completely in sync, and the more you understand this—and can explain it to them—the smoother these years will be. They will never be completely smooth, of course, and there will always be times when you want to pull your hair out. So here are a few important reminders:

        • Be tolerant of your teens’ misadventures, but make sure you talk to them calmly about their mistakes.

        • Don’t be shocked when your teens do something stupid and then say they don’t know why. You now know why, but explain that to them—how their prefrontal lobes haven’t quite come online yet. And remember, even the smartest, most obedient, meekest kids will do something stupid before “graduating” from adolescence.

        • Communicate and relate: Emphasize the positive things in your teens’ lives and encourage them to try different activities and new ways of thinking about things. Reinforce that you are there for them when they need advice.

        • Social networking tools and websites are an important avenue of communication with your teens. Some parents report that their most successful and meaningful “conversations” with their teens occurred while texting back and forth with them. And if you don’t know how to text yet, ask your teenager.

I hope that this book will give you many pieces of information to consider and, when appropriate, to use to start conversations with your teen. As I said in the beginning, teenagers respect information and are also naturally curious as to who they are. You can also use the illustrations in this book to help them understand what a special place they are in.

Ideally, conversations about facts—such as those contained in this book—will help you to avoid confrontations with your teens and prevent getting into oppositional patterns with them. This is a time of learning, so appeal to that whenever possible. Judgments handed out in anger or without an explanation only increase the alienation of a teen. Criticisms of behavior are best when they are followed by a “because.” The behavior has to be taken in context, too. A kid who is a straight-A student who does homework while standing on his head is not a problem, even if the parent feels this is an unconventional approach! However, if your teenager is struggling with low grades and organizational issues and is progressively falling behind, it is your job to step in to offer help and brainstorm why these things are happening. Although you may think you have a quasi-independent young person in your household, especially compared with the child he or she once was, you will have to invest more time and effort in your teen than you probably ever anticipated. You are the parent. You need to try to elicit from your teens whether they even care that they’re getting bad grades. If they don’t care, then that’s a much deeper problem than how they study. At that point you need to stop and try to determine if this is just an assertion of independence and control. If so, then why does the child feel he or she needs to demonstrate control? Are there crises in the household or the teens’ lives that are troubling them? Are they being peer-pressured to be in a group that prides itself on academic indifference? Are they abusing drugs? Or do they have self-esteem issues that might be an early sign of depression or other mental illness? All these entail different action plans.

On the other hand, if they themselves are frustrated, they are likely to be at least somewhat receptive to some gentle problem-solving advice from you, the parent. Start by asking them if they think their haphazard study situation is effective. Coax an answer out of them if at all possible—this will help them exercise their own ability to solve problems independently. As a last resort, suggest “directions” as to what might work, and if your kid at least tries to follow through, then you’ve at least set up a situation of positive reinforcement for future use. Offering some sort of minimal reward will help, too, as it is unlikely grades will turn around overnight and be their own reward.

You want to always remain as positive as you can because you want to empower your teenagers and help them understand what an amazing time of their lives this is, a time of opportunity. Your job isn’t to stifle them but rather to help them channel their energies in positive directions. One major way you can facilitate this is by providing a calm and organized environment in which they can grow. The less stressful and chaotic your life is, the less stressful and chaotic theirs will be.

You also really want to be aware of the dangers out there and what your teenagers are being exposed to, so you need to immerse yourself in their world. Learn what music they listen to, what TV shows and movies they watch, and what books they are reading. You don’t need to be your teen’s BFF (best friend forever); you just need to know what’s going on in his or her life so you can better understand, advise, and set limits.

Ultimately, you are your child’s first and most important role model. Your children are watching you, even though they may not even be conscious of it. How you approach your own life, how you confront your own challenges, provides learning experiences for them, so share it with them without overwhelming them. You are a team, after all. That really hit home for me in 2000 when my two sons and I went through the trauma of a house fire. Both boys were home when I arrived from work at around six o’clock. Andrew had a wrestling match the next day and had lost his shoes, so we got back in the car—all three of us—to buy another pair. We were gone only about thirty minutes when my beeper went off. It was the alarm system from the house. So I turned the Chrysler minivan around, and as we got closer to the house, I could see the fire trucks. It was shocking at first. Then I remember thinking, It’s just “stuff,” whatever we’ve lost, because I have everything I need right here: my two boys are safe in the back of the car. That’s all that mattered.

I remember that as we walked through the crowd that had gathered around our burning house, I watched my kids and saw how my neighbors just surrounded them, comforting them. The house looked okay from the outside, but inside it was gutted. Eventually we were told an electric can opener had tipped over and somehow ignited some Tupperware containers. I never let my sons back into the house until it was nearly restored because I didn’t want them to have that image of their burned bedrooms. That’s the kind of stress children and teenagers don’t need, and at least I could protect them from that. My neighbors knew; that’s why they surrounded the boys and whisked them away from the scene.

In the months that followed I realized that as traumatic as the fire was, it was a valuable bonding experience for us, too. My sons learned that material things don’t matter. I learned that it could have been so much worse. Together we were a team, and I kept telling them that: that it was okay, that we were here, alive, and we would make a fresh start. That’s all that mattered. At that time Andrew was thirteen and Will was eleven. Teen times were just starting. This was only the first of the challenges we would face, but we would face them together.