A Parent's Guide to Building Resilience in Children and Teens: Giving Your Child Roots and Wings

I too have read this book cover to cover and still go back to particular passages that I have tagged and highlighted. The positive message serves any parent especially as children transition from child to teen and teen to young adult. I have given this book to many parents because no other book makes a parent feel so empowered to raise healthy children as this one.

There are many times as parents that we all feel a little lost raising our children. We question (or don't question enough) everything we do and say. This book is powerful! Every sentence, phrase, word in this book has a strong meaning. It gives you new ways of looking at the experiences that both you and your child are having from birth through adolescence. Our kids have so much pressure on them today. Helping them to build their resilience and manage stress is imperative. There is even a section just for kids which explains stress and gives real tools that they can use. A wonderful book, a must to read!

I have read Dr. Ginsburg's book "Building Resilience in Children and Teens" cover to cover and still refer to it constantly. He has a way of writing that gives us (parents) a sense of confidence in what we are doing right and elaborates on concrete ways to do it better. This book has completely changed the way my teen and I communicate. I now find myself in a better position to relate to my teen's point of view, and am able to talk with her in a way that she will relate to. I think many parents feel that the teen years are a time to clamp down on kids in order to keep them from problem behaviors. Dr. Ginsburg's book has shown me how to handle letting teens make their own mistakes while guiding them in the right direction. It is so very hard to watch your child mess up, but when you see how essential that mess is to their development, it becomes a little easier to watch and learn instead of worry and lecture. I have learned these years are a time to listen and support instead of trying to mold our kids into who we think they should be. This realization has opened new lines of communication, which is the foundation for everything to come. This book is the best 15 bucks (or less) you will ever spend!

As an physician who takes care of adolescents exclusively, I am grateful for the resource that this book provides both to me and to my patients' families. Ginsburg's approach to understanding children and teens is fresh, realistic, and honest. He teaches how to understand kids and how to communicate effectively with them. He offers guidance on how to help children to help themselves, which is ultimately the skill they need to be well-adjusted, successful adults. Whether you are a parent or a professional, the insight provided by Dr. Ginsburg will change how you approach young people in positive, constructive ways. I keep copies in all of my exam rooms and in my waiting room, and I recommend it strongly to all my patients' parents. For my friends and colleagues, it makes an original and much appreciated gift!

As a single parent of a fourteen year-old daughter and a seventeen year-old son, I see the tremendous stress that my children and their friends struggle with on a daily basis. They are striving to be strong and independent while trying to balance the pressure to get good grades, deal with peer pressure and friends who are exploring risky behaviors, handle family tensions, and just figuring out to grow up to be the adults they want to be. This MUST HAVE book for all parents provides a realistic and easily understandable method of reconnecting with our teens, and gives us the tools we need to teach them not only how to handle the stresses they face now, but how to grow into resilient adults who will be prepared to face the challenges ahead. In fact, so much of the advice in this book is about raising children of any age to become strong and resilient, that I wish that I had read this book 10 years ago, although as a parent of teens I am finding it incredibly helpful in our everyday lives right now. This book also includes a special section at the end - one for pre-teens and one for teens that they can read themselves, and worksheets they can use to build their own stress reduction plan. My kids actually read this section, and described it as "cool", but I like it because it reinforces the strategies modeled in the book. If you buy only one book on parenting -- BUY THIS BOOK!