Get a Clue!: A Parents' Guide to Understanding and Communicating with Your Preteen

Educator Rosenberg attempts to open dialogue between parents and their pre-teen children, advising them to turn ""feelings into words."" Parents are taught to come across as ""caring, not preachy"" and are provided with sample one-on-one talks to use when addressing issues such as peer-pressure or sexuality. Rosenberg also shows parents how to help their children examine options and manage problems, from finding friends to doing better in school to clearly expressing themselves to peers (with the help of additional scripted lines). Central to Rosenberg's approach is her insistence that parents and children alike must understand that they can control only their own response to a situation, not the actual outcome. Among the author's concerns--gleaned from anonymous notes collected at her interactive presentations to students--are self-esteem, sexual development, friendship, popularity and peer pressure, risky behavior (smoking, drinking, sex, etc.) and family, all of which are discussed realistically and humanely. Rosenberg, however, often succumbs to wordiness and pedagogy, and the interspersed notes can be jarring. Even so, the book's inclusion of children's troubles expressed in their own words makes up for any weaknesses. (Oct.)