Before Your Teenagers Drive You Crazy, Read This!

Nigel Latta - parenting expert, clinical psychologist and bestselling author of Into the Darklands and Beyond: Unveiling the predators among us, the inspiration for the TVNZ documentary series Real Crime: Beyond the Darklands - now brings us:

Before Your Teenagers Drive You Crazy, Read This!

Battlefield wisdom for stressed out parents

Essentially, teenagers are not right in the head. That might sound cruel, but that's only because the truth sometimes hurts. They might look vaguely like normal people, but that doesn't mean they are . .

'Teenagers have an innate ability to confront their parents with utterly unique problems and situations. Don't blame them, it's their job,' says Nigel. 'You don't need to know what to do about things that have already happened; you need to know what to do with the completely unpredictable thing that's going to happen next.'

Before Your Teenagers Drive You Crazy, Read This! is about how to get the family through the teenage years alive and with sanity intact. It is about what to do when you don't know what to do. There are no paint-by-numbers rules; the solutions are as varied and unique as the individuals involved. So, as Nigel puts it, presenting you with a fish on a platter is next to useless - he is going to show you how to catch all different kinds of fish in all kinds of conditions. In this book, Nigel sets out the same frameworks, principles and simple plans he would use with your family as a consulting therapist. These strategies will provide you with ways to understand what is going on for your teenagers, and what you can do to help.

Central to this is an understanding that teenagers are not 'normal' - that mentally, emotionally and physically they are at a specific stage of intense change and flux. Add to that the fact that the power balance is changing as they begin to assert their grown-up selves - and that they have a reduced capacity to process emotional responses at the very time that they rely on them more heavily - and you can be in for quite a ride!

There is some consolation in knowing it isn't just human teenagers who do crazy things. No doubt somewhere in Africa right now there are probably a bunch of teenage zebras throwing rocks at lions.

'Come on, Larry,' one will taunt another. 'What are ya? A zebra or a gazelle?'

And despite the fact that Larry's mum and dad have told him a thousand times to stay away from the lions, he'll probably throw the rock anyway.

... You put a teenage zebra, a lion and a rock on a savannah, and chances are it will end in tears. Understandably, this statement always causes more alarm than it soothes. What it does confirm, though, is that there's a good reason for putting firm boundaries in place.

About Nigel Latta:

Over the past eighteen years, Nigel has worked with thousands of families. He consults with a range of private and public organisations throughout New Zealand, including social service agencies, sex offender treatment programs, prisons, the Department of Corrections, the New Zealand Police, and Child, Youth and Family Services.

In recent years he has developed an increasing specialty and passion for working with kids in the 'too-hard' basket. In doing so, he has unearthed a basic truth: inside every 'bad' kid is a 'normal' kid and inside every 'normal' kid is a devil awaiting its opportunity! While the circumstances and consequences can be widely different, the physiology and psychology are the same, and so the same rules apply. Whether the problem is writ large, or is less extreme in its expression, the problem needs a solution. Before Your Teenagers Drive You Crazy, Read This! equips you with the skills and points you in the right direction to fish for those solutions. So when your Neanderthal eventually emerges as an evolved man, and when the Girl-niverse recedes back into the Universe, you should be left grateful, loved and largely sane.

Nigel's other books include the bestselling Into the Darklands and Beyond: Unveiling the predators among us; Before Your Kids Drive You Crazy, Read This!; How to Have Kids and Stay Sane; and his novel, Execution Lullaby.

What the Critics say about Nigel:

'The book offers practical, commonsense answers and examples, as well as logical strategies and behaviour-modification tools to help parents teach children the consequences of bad behaviour.'
- Sydney's Child

'Before Your Kids Drive You Crazy, Read This! Is a shining beacon of sensible thought, a straight-talking manifesto that makes it all seem oh so clear which, when you're caught in the heavy fog on the front line of parenting, is such welcome relief.'
- Sunday Mail Brisbane

'Latta concludes his book with possibly the finest final chapter in any parenting book ever, in which he burrows right down into the very heart of this parenthood caper, perfectly encapsulating the very essence of the parents job.'
- Sunday Telegraph

Before Your Teenagers Drive You Crazy, Read This
HarperCollins Publishers
Author: Nigel Latta
ISBN: 9781869507138
RRP: $27.99