Why should parents care about maturation in their teens?

For parents who want the best for their children, promoting maturation matters, as do love and hope.

Maturation bodes well for the future while immaturity does not. A failure to mature leaves a son or daughter to make do with a stunted personality - to which, over a lifetime, a mediocrity of thinking, education, and career, repetitive troubles with friendship and love, and ultimate personal unhappiness, all may be legitimately ascribed.

Dr. McKinnon writes about how parents need to recognize their children as individuals, with their own feelings and opinions, as they start to establish their separate identities as young people and begin to negotiate their way through high school and beyond.

He also makes clear that parents must continue to establish limits. These allow children to flourish and further their goals within boundaries that enable them to learn the consequences of their actions (both good and bad), thus providing a fundamental lesson of being an adult.

 The book explains that parental recognition and limit-setting work together to promote maturity.

Packed with examples and sensible and practical advice for parents of pre-teens and teenagers, To Change a Mind is an essential guidebook for parents seeking to make their lives—and the lives of their children—richer and more fulfilling, as the family navigates together the potentially treacherous seas of adolescence.

Author: John McKinnonn MD   pub 2011 USA Pb 207 pages.