BOOK REVIEW: What Teens Want You to Know

We don't understand a lot of what goes through Austin's head. I'm not sure he does either.  So when I saw this book I signed up to review it.  I haven't had the opportunity to devote time to reading this book like I wanted to but there's a lot of information to absorb.  I received What Teens Want You to Know for free in exchange for my honest review.

What Teens Want You to Know (but won't tell you) is full of anecdotes from teens, parents, ministers, and educators, including actual dialogs.  To protect the doctor-patient confidentiality the names and other identifiable data have been modified.  There are practical suggestions, questions to reflect upon, prayers, and Bible verses pertaining to the topics of each chapter.

Oops, forgot YOU!

Some things I've learned from reading What Teens Want You to Know:

• No matter what they do or say your teen DOES want to have a relationship with you.
• If you invest the time to LISTEN to your teen you'll earn the right to be heard by him.
• Your teen's foundation for healthy self-love and respect starts with the way WE perceive them.
• There are four types of resistance - intellectual (i.e. different POV), emotional (from a previous experience of disappointment), physical (i.e. touching, creating, destroying), and spiritual (sin).
• Resistance occurs between you AND your teen, not your teen alone.
• Being right is a need of the ego.
• The questions your teen asks aren't always what they're wanting answered as there's often a deeper question they have.
• Teens are disillusioned on several levels - society, parents, peers, themselves, and God.  They are feeling the disenchantment not apathy, as we perceive.

Each person that reads this book will have different takeaways.  If you don't have a Christian background you may have difficulties reading this book with all the scriptural references.  If you're not Catholic (I was raised Southern Baptist) there are other parts that may go over your head.  Overall there's a lot of potential to learn about both yourself and your teen from reading What Teens Want You to Know.

To pick up your own copy to see if this book will help the relationship between you and your teen hop on over to Amazon.

What can we offer teens that they cannot Google?