Laura Sessions Stepp
Education Writer, The Washington Post
"Our Last Best Shot: Guiding Children Through Early Adolescence"
October 16, 2000

Laura Sessions Stepp: Four years ago, I set out to observe for one year 12 young adolescents — ages 10 to 15 - in three diverse communities: Los Angeles, Durham, N.C. and Ulysses, Ks., a farm community of 6,000 on the southwest Kansas plains. My goal was to write a book that would help parents, teachers and other adults who care about kids understand why young adolescents act the way they do AND what they need from us, the adults.

Shortly after I started my project, two boys, 11 and 12-years old, opened fire on a playground in Jonesboro Arkansas, my home state. A ninth-grader in Paducah, Ky. did the same thing, then came another shooting by a high school boy in Washington State. Suddenly, my research carried a new urgency, buttressed by the knowledge, often overlooked, that teen violence wasn't confined to the suburbs: Young teens in urban areas were killing other teens at an alarming rate as well.

I followed white, black and Hispanic kids from lower-middle to upper-middle income families. Most had two parents living at home. One girl was living with her mom; two other girls were being raised by grandparents. I spent time in all these homes and in their most significant social world, the school. I hung out with these kids at parties, took them bowling and to the movies, and ate more greasy pizza than I care to remember.

Before going further, I would like to show you the faces of some of these children, mixed in with their friends. The song in the background is by Irish folksinger Mary Black. Written by a father trying to understand his teenaged son, it is entitled, "Walk With Me, Talk With Me."

VIDEO

In between visits with the great kids you've just seen, I worked out of a temporary office at the National Academy of Sciences. I was on a two-year leave from The Washington Post, and fortunate to be a visiting scholar at the academy's Board on Children, Youth and Families. I attended conferences, analyzed research papers and interviewed experts in order to better understand what I was seeing. I came away knowing four things for sure.

FIRST, we cannot help young teenagers if we do not understand their unique developmental needs. These kids are very different from their younger and older classmates. Our Last Best Shot shows, through stories of individual children, what I observed to be some of their most important social, emotional and cognitive needs.

The SECOND thing I observed was that the so-called youth culture, on which we blame so many problems, is misnamed. It implies kids set apart from and thus outside, adult influence and adult responsibility. In fact, the culture in which kids are growing up is not just movies like The Cheerleaders and American Pie. It's not just music by Eminem, TV shows like Dawson's Creek, or T-shirts bearing the Abercrombie and Fitch logo. It’s also Mary Pena's kitchen and Steve Marcy's sixth-grade classroom. It is Dr. Mike Hall's waiting room and Lou Dantzler's boy's club. We - all of us - are part of the culture. Our Last Best Shot shows how kids - and their parents - experience the influences of this larger world.

The THIRD thing I observed was that the choices kids are asked to make within this larger culture are more numerous, more difficult and riskier than choices most of us confronted at their age. Our Last Best Shot shows what some of those choices can be.

FINALLY, adults can make a huge difference in what kids choose — particularly kids in the early adolescent years of 10 to 15. If we worried less about Hollywood and more

about home, school and community — and I’m not saying Hollywood isn’t influential, it certainly is — our kids would be better off. What? Can we really make a difference to boys and girls who act as if we come from another planet? Absolutely. Of course, there are exceptions. We probably all know a couple of scoundrels who grew up surrounded by caring parents and neighbors. We can also probably name several accomplished adults who were either ignored or abused growing up. It's impossible to know how any child will turn out. But it's also unthinkable to leave it to chance.

There are things we can do with adolescents that will make these years go more smoothly. AND there are things we can do with kids in elementary school that will give them and us a leg up during adolescence.

I'm going to elaborate on the four points I just made. But first I have a confession. Even though I had written some about teenagers in my early years at the Post, I knew virtually nothing about adolescence before I HAD an adolescent. And I remember clearly the day I realized I did.

Jeff was 11, and he and I had taken a boat trip on a lake near home. He piloted this boat with the assurance of someone twice his age. Driving back, we listened to one of his favorite bands, Green Day, on the radio. It was an afternoon full of quality and quantity time. I was feeling pretty good about myself as a parent. As we pulled in the driveway, he said, "Thanks, Mom. I had fun."

Then we got home and I reminded him that he had to do his homework before playing on the computer.

Kaboom. You would have thought I had asked him to hug me in public. "Why don't I ever get to decide things for myself? You're always telling me what to do!" As the argument escalated, he swept by me with this: "I hope you know how much I hate you right now."

One minute I was a hero, the next, a villain.

Was my child becoming an adolescent? Dear God, not THAT. I wasn't ready.

Everything I had heard about adolescence made me want to skip town for the next eight years: Raging hormones. Mood swings. Lots of screaming or stony silence.

I visited my local bookstore - the day after this incident, in fact - and found little to change my impression. There were very few books about the early years of adolescence, and what was there combined young teens with older teens. That made about as much sense to me as combining advice about infants and kindergarteners.

I decided to write what I could not find. And to my delight, I learned that my negative assumptions were mostly wrong. The early adolescent years are, for most kids, not nearly as dark as books based on therapists' visits, medical journal articles and newspaper stories sometimes lead us to believe. Sure, kids' emotions bounce around like a beach ball. Young adolescents can be rash, rude and raw.

But the majority of them do not turn into some unrecognizable monster. They just become more of who they are - more opinionated perhaps, but also more articulate. More prone to take risks, certainly, but also more courageous. As a report on adolescents and managed care by Children Now states, "Persistent negativity makes it difficult to consider adolescence for what it is: an exciting time of development when careful negotiation of complex situations can lead to immediate and long-term positive results."

Let's look at some good news about adolescents.

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What makes raising adolescents so hard, I think, is not the kids themselves but the language and behavior they absorb from the culture, and the choices they face. There are the obvious risks fraught with danger. Seventh-grader Libby in Los Angeles asked herself, should she swig a beer with her buds at a party? Shannon Steele, a seventh grader in Ulysses, Ks., wondered whether she should continue an on-line friendship with a boy she didn't know but thought she liked.

Ninth-grader Angela, also from Ulysses, was being pressured by a boyfriend to engage in sex. There's no doubt in my mind that while proportionately fewer teens are having sex, those who do are starting earlier. A recent report by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy confirms this: 8 percent of students reported having sex before age 13 in 1999 - a 15 percent increase in only two years.

According to a CBS poll of the class of 2000, 9 out of 10 high school students faced an "adult" difficulty such as the death of someone close to them. Chandler, a 14-year-old girl in my book from an upper-middle-income family in Durham, knew five young people who died over the year I followed her, victims of either homicide, suicide or car crashes. Think of the choices she had to make in that context.

Kids face other choices less life-threatening but also stressful. Jessica, a petite, white sixth-grader assigned to a predominantly black school in Durham, wondered how she should act around the taller black girls who taunted her on the schoolbus every morning. She talked to me about how she didn't want to be racist but couldn't figure out how not to be.

Libby, a seventh grader in Los Angeles, wondered whether she should stay in a talented and gifted program if it meant spending four hours on homework every night. Her brother talked to me about what it was like to feel a physical attraction for another boy in school.

As Anna Quindlan, New York Times writer and mother of three noted in a column, our kids "live a life that the one-size-fits-all generations before them can scarcely imagine."

She continued, "I memorized the Baltimore Catechism; to this day I can tell you that God made me to know him, to love him, and to serve him in this world, and to be happy with him forever in the next. By contrast our kids and their classmates have had endless discussions about whether God exists, whether God has gender, whether a merciful God would countenance AIDS or airplane crashes."

Now we may have asked some of those questions in college, but our kids will have asked these and others that you and I have never thought of BEFORE they enter high school.

So do we stand a chance in helping them arrive at the right answers? Yes, if we inform ourselves about the stages they're in and the unique needs of each particular stage, starting with early adolescence.

You know, before our babies are born, and in the first year or two after they've arrived, the institutions that many of you work for, go to great lengths to prepare and support parents. That assistance virtually disappears by the time kids are in middle school or junior high.

I recently received a brochure in the mail from a first-rate hospital in northern Virginia where I live. Under the heading, Birth & Parenting, it listed eight separate courses on childbirth and baby care. How many do you think it offered for parents of pre-teens or teens? Only one - for mothers and daughters ages 10 to 12 and specifically on the topic of menstruation.

Not one of the parents I got to know for my book had taken a parent education course on teenagers. Only two of the 12 families had had any assistance from their physicians in understanding the emotional needs of their teens. I am often asked why the parents in my book talked so candidly to me. The truth is, parents are hungry for conversation about their teenaged children.

When my son started sixth grade at a new middle school, I offered to set up three parent education seminars and the response was overwhelming. One anecdote from that year I'll never forget.

The PTA sent out a questionnaire to all 600-plus parents asking what kinds of programs they would like to have. We listed all the usual: drug prevention, motivation, etc. and then, for kicks, added one at the bottom called, "The Positive Traits of Adolescence."

Now one wag returned his form and wrote next to that item, "You mean there are some?" But more parents checked off that topic than any other.

You see, without good information, we adults tend to think of puberty as a curse. Publicly, we laugh at Erma Bombeck's line, "Bury 'em when they're 11 and dig 'em up when they're 21." (PAUSE) Privately, we wring our hands and, sometimes, cry. The mother of Little Rodney, an 11-year-old in my book, said, "My sister told me when he turns 12, I should trade him in for a stuffed animal." This woman expected her son to be a failure in middle school. And guess what, he was. If we think youngsters are going to cause us problems, they will.

Why don't adults talk more about the blessings of puberty - not only to each other but to kids?

One of those blessings is youngsters' increased capacity for sophisticated thinking.

A generation ago, when many of us were in junior high, teachers and scientists thought that our cognitive skills went on hold until high school. Now, thanks to new brain imaging technology, we know that's not true. The chemicals causing the changes we see in kids' bodies are also working their magic in an area we can't see: the brain. The brain makes new cells and new connections beginning at ages 10 or 11 and within the next few years, kids get sassier AND smarter, better liars AND more creative, and clearer about right and wrong. In other words, they begin to adopt patterns of thought and behavior that will accompany them for years to come.

Jay Giedd of the National Institute of Mental Health was quoted in Newsweek as saying, "Teens have the power to determine which connections survive and which don't, by whether they do art, or music, or sports, or videogames." That is a very powerful statement, with implications not just for teenagers but for the adults in teens' lives.

A sixth-grade teacher in Ulysses was more colloquial. "Students this age are like sponges," she said, "going suck, suck, suck, at every little detail you give them!'

I think of puberty this way: From infancy through kindergarten, the cement is poured; in these early adolescent years, the concrete hardens. The shape and strength of this foundation depends in part, of course, on the kids themselves, but also on the choices and guidance we give them.

As I followed the kids in my book around, I noticed that they spent most of their time and energy figuring out four questions. Each of these four pursuits forms its own section of the book.

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1)What kind of person were they? Were they competent at something? Loved and loving? Normal?

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2)Did they fit in with a good group of friends? 3)Were they learning exciting things, inside and outside school?

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4)Were they successfully separating from, but remaining connected to, the important adults in their lives?

In order to successfully answer these four questions, the kids needed three things, primarily, from adults. I call these gifts the three Rs: respect, responsibility and relationship. As we think about the specific ways in which we can influence kids’ choices, we need to ask ourselves if those measures provide kids with the three Rs. I know that all of you feel stretched, as I do, to complete what you're doing now for kids. But even on our most time-pressed days, we should be able to provide the three Rs.

RESPECT

The first is the simplest and probably the most important: We must show respect for their rapidly growing minds and bodies so that they learn to respect themselves.

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Despite their bravado, adolescents don't possess a lot of self-respect. On any given day, they will complain that their nose is too big or their voice squeaks. Other kids, they say, whisper about them behind their backs.

They desperately want respect from us, from other adults, and from their peers, and they will go to any means to acquire it. Let's talk about the classroom first.

Chip Thomson, a Durham boy in my book, did not feel valued by anyone in his elementary school. He was taunted for being bigger than the other boys and his parents and teachers dismissed the taunts saying, "Boys will be boys."

In middle school, he made friends with drug suppliers and became skilled at acquiring the best stuff. He gained the respect of at least some his peers.

Another example was the sixth grader Little Rodney. Kids made fun of him at school because of his stutter. His way of winning respect was to become the class clown. Getting laughs were more important than getting As, Bs or even Cs.

How do we show kids we respect them as learners? As the vice-president said in the first presidential debate, respect can mean simply providing enough chairs. For the first five weeks of the school year in Little Rodney's homeroom, for example, there were 44 students and 36 desks. This class clown could act up and barely be noticed by the teacher.

In addition to resources, we show respect for kids by training teachers in early adolescence. Trained teachers know how to engage active minds by putting students together to solve problems. I watched a sixth-grade girl named Alana light up as she learned about condensation in science by making ice cream with her friends. I also watched her sit with a bored expression, and draw smiley faces on her hand as students took turns reading from a textbook.

Teachers, like the rest of us, show respect toward kids - or not - simply in the way they talk to them. Please remember, kids this age are more sensitive to what others think of them - and more likely to believe those assessments - than they will ever be again.

In her sixth-grade class, I watched Jessica wince as her social studies teacher asked her where her homework was. When Jessica bashfully said she didn't know - bashfully because I was sitting right behind her - the teacher turned to me, pointed at Jessica and said, "Write this down. Jessica didn't know where her homework was and didn't seem to care." This same teacher later wondered aloud to me why her students didn't pay attention in her class.

Respecting kids in school always means supporting strong programs in music, art and drama because some kids who don't perform well in core academics will shine in the arts. It also might mean discovering one day that a particular child had a natural talent for something like the piano - and calling the parents at home to ask if they had ever thought about piano lessons.

We also show respect to kids by letting them decide an increasing number of things for themselves. For example, Jessica's English teacher offered her students a chance to decide, in advanc

e, the grades they wanted to make in any given quarter, and showed them what they would have to do to achieve those grades. How might these same principles apply in a medical office? Well, respect means thinking of the whole kid, not just the outwardly diseased parts or the immunization schedule. It means asking questions about a young patient's soccer team as well her menstrual cycles. It means asking questions about high-risk behaviors, not just handing over a book to read, saying, "share this with your parents," as my son's own pediatrician did when it came to sex. It means listening to young patients with your eyes, as well as your ears. It means asking the young person how he or she plans to keep from drinking or smoking - or how they plan to stop if they've already started. Young adolescents don't want to be preached to about health. They want to be enlisted as health partners. Which means confidentiality must be promised, the exception being that the child is in imminent danger or could put someone else in danger.

At home, respecting kids means asking them what they think about rules and other important family matters. What is a reasonable time to come home? Should Grandma be moved to a nursing home?

How are kids going to learn good decision-making skills if we don't give them decisions to make?

Too many of us confine our conversations with kids to lectures, or we talk over their heads to other adults as if the kids were some senile great aunt nodding off in a corner.

As we attempt conversations with them, we should be prepared for increased debate. That's not all bad. Debate encourages reasoning and decision-making skills, the very things that will help kids make good choices. I would never admit this to my son, but sometimes when he is arguing with me in a particularly convincing way, I silently am cheering him on for using his mind so well.

We have many discussions that are enjoyable, as well, about his musical preferences, or his views on the presidential candidates. These dialogues are a lot more interesting, in my view, than talking about Teletubbies.

RESPONSIBILITY

The second R is responsibility: asking kids to fulfill important tasks at home, school and in their communities.

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By the age of 10 or 11, kids are able to project themselves forward 10 years ahead to the adult world. What will that be like? they wonder. Big jobs help them answer that question and

build a sense of competence that enables them to say, "I don’t need — drugs, alcohol, or sex — to feel good about myself." When Eric, the kid in my first chapter, was 11, he started helping his mother Denice sell African-American art on the weekends at California's Venice Beach. The summer he turned 12, Eric started selling the merchandise by himself during the week while his mother worked her two other jobs. On good days, he would turn over to her as much as $300.

Eric's parents were divorced. He lived with his dad, who underwent two surgeries when Eric was 13, the year I observed him. During the second half of that year, Eric played part-time nurse when he wasn't in school or out with his friends. He changed his father's yuckky bandages every day. He ran errands for him. These were jobs no one else would do.

I was with him one afternoon as he paid a visit to a Boys and Girls Club that had played a big part in his life. We ran into the club president, Lou Dantzler. "

I hear you've been helping out your dad," Dantzler said.

Eric grinned. "Yeah, my dad kinda needs me."

Sometimes the tasks we ask of kids this age can be small but significant. A couple of Sundays ago, I was speaking to about 200 adults at a Methodist church in Richmond and one man raised his hand and said he would like to give a testimonial.

Charles Staples said the morning before, he had wanted to take his young stepdaughter and her friend to breakfast at McDonald's. He also hoped to take his 12-year-old stepson Patrick, but Patrick was in a "I dont wanna" stage. Charles said he had just finished my book and decided to try out the responsiblity strategy.

To Patrick: "I want to take Stephanie....but need your help.

What Patrick did....helped them order. And took himself a little too seriously: 20 minutes in the park.

Sometimes, kids need to be asked to do a lot. This is true even when - and maybe especially when - they make childish mistakes.

Mario, for example, was a 13-year-old North Carolina boy who carried an unloaded handgun to school for a friend. He was suspended for a year — with no alternative education provided. No books, no tutor, nothing.

Imagine the dismay of his parents. They in no way approved of what he had done, but worried that without schooling, he would end up on the streets that year. So they hooked him up to two men who put him to work.

One of those men was Al Singer, his lawyer. Mario worked in Singer’s office every day from 9 to 4, filing, answering the phones, running errands.

The other person who came to Mario's rescue was Mike Benjamin, the director of Mario's neighborhood recreation center. Benjamin pulled Mario into the center to help teach basketball to the younger kids.

Mario’s father, a mason, also put Mario to work helping him hang drywall on weekends. Mario began to think of himself not as a lawbreaker or a "bad kid," but as "the right-hand man" for his dad, Singer and Benjamin.

As I watched Mario mature, I was struck by how often we judge and reward kids based on their performance — by the number of As they bring home or track meets they win. Unlike Mario's parents, we give them responsibility for themselves, but not for others. In so doing, we fail to enable them to become fully competent, to develop a sense of personal power and purpose that, among other things, allows them to say No to the things they know they shouldn't do.

Competence comes from being useful, not just smart or agile. When our kids are younger, they love learning facts and doing stuff just for the heck of it. But in early adolescence, they want to know that something is at stake that is bigger than they are. The teenager who tutors a young child in reading knows that if she forgets to show up for a couple of sessions, her young charge will fall behind in school. But she's going to feel mighty good when her tutee finishes the chapter they were working on and captures an A on the quiz.

I found that sixth graders in a grade 6-8 middle school, especially, are overlooked when it comes to assigning responsibility. Jessica, for example, whose teacher jumped on her about not doing her homework, was thrilled to be asked to be a peer counselor midway through her sixth-grade year. Imagine her disappointment when she found out she couldn't start until seventh grade - the principal said sixth graders weren't mature enough.

The next time parents complain to you that their child is irresponsible and lazy, ask them what it is that they’re asking the child to do beyond schoolwork. Pick up her room, or build a bookcase for the study? How about doing the family laundry once a week? Cooking dinner when Mom or Dad are going to be late getting home from work? Ladeling out soup at a homeless shelter? Adults must not shy away from asking kids to do big jobs, to give them some say in what they do and how they do it. After all, we are training leaders, not servants.

RELATIONSHIPS

When we involve kids in our work, and when we treat them respectfully, we are building the third component, a strong relationship. I'm going to start with their relationship to their parents.

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When I began researching Our Last Best Shot I intended to focus on kids’ relationships to neighbors, coaches, teachers, mentors. The kids THEMSELVES kept leading me back to their families.

Thirteen-year-old Shannon, for example, complained about her mother for an hour over pizza and yet, as soon as we got back to her house, headed straight for Brenda, gave her a big hug and said, "I love you Mom."

In Durham, Mario was grounded by his parents for six months after he was suspended from school. He was pretty upset about that, yet when I asked him what, if anything, was good about his life, he quickly answered, "My parents. I be doin' everything with them."

While researchers on adolescence disagree about many things, on one thing they're unanimous: Teenagers whose parents stay involved in their lives make better choices regarding almost every risky behavior you can name. According to a recent report to President Clinton by the Council on Economic Advisors, they are less likely to smoke, drink, use drugs, be in a serious fight or have sex by age 16.

If there is one message you stress to parents, let it be that they matter. They may think they don't when their kids slam the door in their faces, sulk in their bedrooms, or tell them how much they "hate them right now". They may think they don't when they read in other books that outcome is determined by genes or by peers or by the would outside the family.

But, as Laurence Steinberg, psychologist and outgoing president of the Society for Research in Child Development, says, "All of these beliefs are wrong and contradicted by scientific data."

You tell parents, they do matter.

You are in a unique position to make a difference here because parents listen to you. You can explain to them that hormonal changes in young people account for only a fraction of the behavioral shifts they see. That, for example, violence in the media plays a very small role in adolescent violence. It does not, for example, according to Steinberg, account for the inclination to be violent or the motivation to carry through with a violent thought.

You can remind parents that their own behavior, their own reactions are at least as important as hormones. One mother in my book, for instance, would slap her daughter in frustration during arguments, then wonder why her daughter kicked her. You can remind parents that adolescents take risks as a way of figuring out who they are, what they are capable of. And that the key is to help kids find healthy ways to challenge themselves.

You can remind parents that it is as important to spend time with their kids as adolescents as it was when the kids were toddlers. It may surprise you to learn that in a recent poll of teenagers by the YMCA, one out of five teens said they didn't have enough time with their parents. What's really interesting is that only one out of 10 parents said they didn't have enough time with their kids. The kids want us around more than we want them around, at least according to this survey. I find this both reassuring - and disturbing.

I also came across a survey, by Statistical Research Inc., saying that almost half of the kids polled, ages 8 to 17, said their parents don't have any rules governing the time kids spend watching TV or what they watch. I suspect that's partly because the parents are stuck in front of the tube as well. Maybe they should turn off the TV and take a walk with their kids.

The key to a good relationship between parent and adolescen

t, I learned, is being able to let go but stay in touch. To gradually relinquish the idea of control and substitute communication. You know what Theodore Roosevelt said on the subject of control, don't you? He was hosting the visit of a dignitary one afternoon and three times, the two men were interrupted by Roosevelt's young daughter, Alice.

Finally, the guest, quite fed up, said, "Mr. President, isn't there anything you can do to control Alice?"

At which point the president said, "My dear fellow, I can do one of two things. I can either be president of the United States or I can control Alice. I cannot possibly do both."

We do lose control of our kids as they get older but we don't lose our influence - if we are good communicators. By that I mean asking questions and listening carefully to the answers before jumping in with our own thoughts. Kids this age don't talk so much as they dribble and sputter. They need to be given time to express themselves. (To Daddy: Let me say everything first¼ .)

When Libby, a seventh grader in Los Angeles, was caught smoking marijuana and drinking beer at a friend’s house, her mother Rebekah felt like blasting her. Instead she asked questions calmly, not accusatory questions such as "Why in the world did you do something so stupid?" but questions designed to make Libby think and keep the conversation going. "What does it mean to do something like this with your friends?" was one of the questions she asked.

Rebekah used the three Rs: She respected her daughter's thinking skills, even though Libby's judgment occasionally failed. She reminded Libby that Libby was responsible for herself and for others. And most importantly, she kept their relationship going - through what could have been a disaster - by asking thoughtful questions. She also grounded Libby for a while, by the way, but it was their conversation that Libby remembered months later.

Meaningful questions elicit meaningful answers. Instead of saying, "That's not right," or "I think you should...", try "What do you think you should have done?" or "I disagree; help me try to understand." I have to remind myself all the time: Discipline is a tool for teaching, not venting.

Rebekah was Libby's main disciplinarian. But occasionally Libby's father Aaron got into the act, talking to Libby about something she had done, right or wrong, while the two of them went horseback riding. Such "sideways conversations" - in the car, on the hiking trail or the golf course - can be excellent opportunties for discussion. In fact, for all the fuss we make over eating dinner together as a family, dinnertime often is not the time to get into serious conversations.

A good sense of humor is invaluable when communicating with your adolescent. Kids this age love puns and jokes. One reason the ZITS strip is so popular, I'm sure, is that parents and kids read it together.

I'll give you a personal example of keeping a sense of humor.

Jeff, 12, going to the movies, walking several years ahead. "You don't know me."

Jeff, 16, going to the movies, "You can walk with me just don't be stupid."

We're still trying to figure out what stupid means.

Good communication also means parents must talk on behalf of their kids to teachers, doctors, neighbors - in other words, all the other adults who make up their children's world. And it means that you, these other adults, must reach out to the parents. Parents' memories of doctors' offices or school may not be pleasant; if that is true, it will be difficult for them to approach you for help.

Let me tell you a story not in my book. A local mother I know had a daughter in seventh grade. The mother was out of town on business for much of the first quarter of her daughter's seventh-grade year. As Thanksgiving rolled around, she realized she didn't know even the names of her daughter's teachers. So she called the school principal to ask if she could come in for a meeting with the teachers.

"Why?" the principal asked. "Miranda is doing very well in school." The mother explained ...

Teachers got together. The team leader: So why are you here? Miranda is doing very well...."

As Anne Lewis, a national education policy writer, has observed, "Just when the lives and schoolwork of young teens are becoming more complicated, schools tend to do less to involve parents."

I would suggest that that observation is not confined to schools. In fact, the parents in my book usually had at least some kind of relationship with school personnel. With the other adults in their kids' lives - doctors, youth workers, rec league coaches - they had almost no relationship beyond a nodding acquaintance.

One exception stands out in my mind. Veronica, the mother of Little Rodney, the class clown, adored her son's pediatrician. That doctor kept her apprised about not only Little Rodney's physical growth but his emotional development as well. I can honestly say that that physician - who worked for a large California HMO, by the way - kept her from giving up on her son. And as you will learn, should you read the book's epilogue, Little Rodney eventually became more serious about school.

Adolescents frequently forget to tell their parents, or don't want to tell them, lots of things, but if the parents are plugged into the larger community of health professionals, teachers, neighbors, church and synagogue members, they will learn many of those things anyway. As our kids get older, we parents increasingly stand on the edge of their lives. But with the help of other people, we can still know - and should know - what is at the center.

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Other adults' connections must extend to kids as well as parents. Almost half of the kids I studied had no adult outside their family to whom they talked on a regular basis. National studies paint a similar picture.

This is tragic, for non-related adults see traits in our kids that we parents see only dimly, if at all. They and our kids can talk unencumbered by the baggage that accompanies family discussions.

Sometimes adults are leery of talking to adolescents because they fear they won't have all the answers to questions kids ask. But what the good mentors in my book taught me was that having the answers isn't nearly as important as helping kids frame the right questions.

You see you raise, or lower, our children's expectations of themselves because our kids believe you - frequently, when they don't believe us.

An example of this in my book is a man who to this day probably doesn't realize how important he was to my son.

When Jeff was eleven, this man, a Babe Ruth baseball coach, took him aside and told him he had the arm of a pitcher. My husband Carl had been catching balls for him in our backyard for years, but Jeff had been reluctant to step up to the mound in a real game.

After those words from Paul Ahrens, an amazing change took place. Jeff began thinking of himself as a pitcher. He started pitching for Paul and has never stopped pitching. It is his favorite position in his favorite sport.

As Paul knew, it doesn't take grand gestures to build relationships with young teens. What matters most to kids is paying attention to them when they’re NOT in trouble, in ordinary ways. Our kids are looking for shepherds, not saviors.

Adolescents' friendships with each other thrive on the sharing of small pleasures. Adolescents' friendships with adults grow the same way. "How many kinds of nail polish do you have?" you might ask. Or, "Do you like N Synch? What about the group do you like? You know, they sound like a group I used to like...." Such conversations demonstrate that we are interested in kids, personally, and go a lot farther in building relationships then giving out lollipops or Jolly Ranchers.

Michelle, a Los Angeles girl in my book, told me one of her favorite adult friends was a school cafeteria aide. When I asked why, she said that this woman regularly commented on what Michelle was wearing and on Michelle's birthday every year, brought Michelle her favorite soft drink.

When we respect even the smallest pieces of teenagers' lives, and give them ever-increasing amounts of responsibility for big tasks, we build the kind of relationship with them that they need and that we often want as well. With these three Rs we can make a positive difference in their lives, and they certainly can in ours.

You know, we don't tell kids often enough how much they mean to us. When I asked a ninth-grade English class to throw out words they thought adults would use to describe them, you know what their first responses were?

"All terrible." "Sex machines." "Weedheads." "Thugs."

In the midst of thinking what we as adults can or should give kids, we need to pause and remind ourselves - and them - of the many things they give us. Inthat vein, I'm going to break a rule this morning and read the ending of my book to you. (I still hope you buy the book, of course!)

(Read )

Thank you and I'm happy to answer your questions.