Ready or Not, Here Life Comes

This book is a excellent resource tool for educators of all ages, no matter what professional role in the school. We must continue to learn ways to encourage, enhance, challenge and enable today's youth to discover their personal goals is life. What can be targeted, through their talents, yet giving them a reason for not giving up. We all have a purpose to fulfill in life. Just need to be challenged, guided to find out what it is! This information can also be used with parents/ guardians who need insight for their child to find a healthy balance, while tackling the teenage years, peer pressures and other obstacles faced. Any guidance counselor, should consider this book, mine could have benefitted- no clue where to direct my future goals in life. Like that old saying goes... " Don't judge a book by it's cover.", any books written by Dr.Levine are worth considering.

Dr. Mel Levine makes some good points in describing why so many of today's young adults have trouble with the transition from the world of school to the world of work. For starters, Levine states that many of the skills needed for school may be different from the ones they will need during a career. For example, think of all the multiple-choice tests you may have taken in high school or at a university. I agree with Levine that these tests really don't prepare a student for anything important in the adult world. Levine also says that kids need to be more interested in the working lives of people. I think this is a great point. So many kids grow up idolizing sports stars or entertainers. Instead, they should try to make more connections with the adult world. Kids and students should focus on their feasible futures because the odds of making it in sports or entertainment are minute. It also talks about reading biographies of people you admire (to get an idea about how they navigated life). However, with technology and other reasons jobs are changing so fast that, as Levine notes, role models even within a family are an endangered species. A lot of the advice is very practical. For example, it helps to know what abilities you have, what you enjoy doing, where you see yourself in x amount of years, etc. If you know this, you will not make the mistake of just taking whatever job comes along. This could easily turn into being stuck in a job you hate after awhile. It is important to keep in mind that a willingness to start way down and climb way up is, of course, the American Dream. Bottom Line: It is a great/essential/interesting read for educators, parents, and students.

Levine takes a hard look at today's youth and how they're being prepared for life in the real world by parents and teachers alike. His all-too-true allegations about young people being prepared to be students rather than real-life workers is all too true. College and college prep programs prepare one for four years in a classroom, but not necessarily for a true career. Learning about a career and actually working in it are two different things, and Levine recognizes this difference with sound advice as to how to prepare for both. Highly recommend for educators, students, and their parents.

As a therapist working primarily with teens and families,I've often felt that the transition from college to work is one of the most overlooked areas in research and writing. Finally a book that helps us prepare our teens for the world of work. I found out about this book by reading Time Magazine's article on kids in their twenties living with parents (a phenomenon all over the world, apparently!)This is a wonderful book, a much needed contribution.

I read "A Mind at a TIme" by Dr. Levine and my relationship with my son changed for the better. I then read "Behavior Coaching" by Dr. Scott Hall and experienced an immediate improvement in my son's behavior through the application of the step-by-step plan in that book. I just got and finished reading "Ready or Not, Here Life Comes" by Dr. Levine and I am thrilled, excited by what I learned in this new book. "Levine argues that telling a student he is learning disabled or has attention deficit disorder is not very helpful" sounds like common sense right? Then why do so many others give the opposite advice or none at all. "He preaches the virtues of helping kids understand their strengths and weaknesses as part of understanding the way learning works." This is the most helpful thing that I learned from reading Dr. Levine. Recommended: "A Mind at a Time" by Mel Levine, "Behavior Coaching" by Scott Hall