What Are You Doing in There?: Balancing Your Need to Know with Your Adolsecent's Need to Grow

Giannetti, a journalist, and Sagarese, a former teacher, explain how to strike a balance between giving adolescents privacy and knowing what's going on in their lives in this smart guide to parenting. Identifying""privacy zones"" (bedroom, friends, romance, school and the Internet), they offer advice on many specific aspects of raising teenagers. The authors, who have written four previous parenting books together, are thorough in their coverage and reassuring, too (""Calm down. Most of the adolescent population is not destined for terror or plotting secret lives. Choosing a parenting style that smacks of constant surveillance is overreacting""). They suggest parents treat their kids' bedrooms with an anthropological eye--""think of it as an archaeological dig""--and express interest in items around the room, such as movie ticket stubs. They also tell parents to learn their children's screen names (for chatting online) and limit him or her to one. The book's savvy advice and heartening tone make it a valuable resource.