Ron Taffel

This book presents groundbreaking strategies for psychotherapy with today's teens, for whom high-risk behavior, lack of adult guidance, and intense anxiety and stress increasingly come with the territory. Ron Taffel addresses the key challenge of building a therapeutic relationship that is strong enough to promote real behavioral and emotional change. He demonstrates effective ways to give advice that teens will listen to, get them to tell the truth about their lives, help parents reestablish their authority, and extend the reach of therapy by such nontraditional means as inviting teens to bring friends into sessions.

Dr. Ron Taffel, one of the country's most sought-after child-rearing experts, draws on decades of counseling experience and extensive conversations with parents nationwide to offer an original and inspiring analysis of the distinctive challenges parents face in raising children today. Dr. Ron Taffel, one of the country's most sought-after child-rearing experts, draws on decades of counseling experience and extensive conversations with parents nationwide to offer an original and inspiring analysis of the distinctive challenges parents face in raising children today. He also introduces a breakthrough approach for guiding kids—from children to teens—in ways that bring out the best in both kids and parents in these twenty-first-century times. With warmth and clarity, Taffel, who is himself a parent struggling with these issues, helps us to understand our sons and daughters in an entirely new way: as a distinctive “free-est” generation, born to the first generation of “post-baby boomer” parents and the products of a decades-long cultural sea change that intensified in the nineties. As a result, kids of all ages are now a bundle of contradictions: they exude entitlement, back talk shockingly, negotiate endlessly, worship celebrity, do ten things at once, conduct independent lives online, and engage in high-risk behavior at younger ages. Yet, they are also far more open with their parents and each other than kids in prior generations, are strikingly generous and empathetic, and care deeply about ethical issues. In addition, their high-speed multitasking is preparing them for the demands of the future. The key question, then, is how to encourage the good while steering them away from the bad. Taffel believes today's parents, having lived through the beginning phases of the same social changes, are uniquely qualified to bring out kids' best—and he shows you how. Using a wealth of examples, he walks parents through innovative methods to get children's and teens' attention, to set limits they will respect, and to engage them in meaningful conversation to provide the guidance they need. He also instructs on how to rebuild supportive community around us. His inspiring analysis and expert guidance will be embraced as the authoritative new approach to raising their kids that parents have been searching for.

A leading child and family therapist and the author of Nurturing Good Children Now reveals why adolescents are searching for comfort in their peer groups in mass culture rather than their own families and gives parents advice on how to combat this trend. Reprint.

How do you help your child open up to you? With so little time in a busy day, how can a parent find that elusive "quality" time? What discipline techniques work for young children, and why? An empowering book that emphasizes real-life parenting situations and practical, compassionate solutions, Parenting by Heart is filled with specific advice tried by thousands of families. Showing what actually works rather than what theoretically "should" work, here are hundreds of step-by-step, tested solutions that will help make parents feel more confident about how to instill values, be in charge, and stay connected with today's kids in these modern and often difficult times.

In these difficult, sometimes violent, times, how can we nurture children who are both good and happy? How can we help them stay safe, be respectful, and reach their full potential? Nurturing Good Children Now outlines precisely what is important to foster in our kids, and how to raise children who have a deep sense of values and an enthusiastic spirit. The most essential traits that children need to thrive in today's world are: mood mastery, expressiveness, peer smarts, body comfort, team intelligence, respect, passion, focus, caution, gratitude. This compassionate book offers unflinching social commentary, the latest research on child development, and practical advice. We can protect our children's sense of integrity. We can teach them to love learning; to hold onto their passion; to be comfortable with their bodies; to get along with their peers without succumbing to peer pressure; and to manage their emotions. We can nurture good children now, and, for a better future, we must.