Peter CostelloTeenagers Translated: How to Raise Happy Teens by Nancy and Naella Grew (Vermillion, €15.00 / £11.99)
The concept of the teenager is quite a modern one. It is a development of educational changes that kept young people in school until 16 and then 18. In early centuries, and in other cultures, young people are often at work by the age of 12 or 14.
Teenage problems were then unknown, for the teenagers had already become responsible contributing members of society. In western cultures, however, young people often at the period of socialisation and early sexuality maturity are kept from the real world by education and so become in a sense prisoners of modern culture.
Few people would want to neglect the education of our young people, so inevitably solutions have to be found to cope with what is an unnatural social situation. This book the authors of this book have developed a programme to provide parents with strategies to deal with the issues not as they arise but before they arise. Many parents will find this a most useful, and encouraging book. But perhaps their best guidance and that of grandparents is to recall their own teenage years and to exercise great patience!