The White Water Rafting Years:

The major life-task of an adolescent is to form their adult identity. If they are not able to experiment with that identity while learning from you, then they are likely to individuate in a negative way. Your kids come under pressure in their teens-- peer pressure, sexual pressure, pressure to perform, the pressure of the tuture. You can be part of that pressure or you can help them cope with it. The White Water Rafting Years advises ever parent to become a parent-coach -- not an enemy to be conquered but a resource to be worked. "Difficult as it may seem," write Ian Grant and John Cowan, "remember teenagers need your love the most when they are at their most obmoxious." Ian Grant and John Cowan discuss how parents and teenagers can negotiate the white-water rapids of emotional turbulence in a sane and consistent way; they offer practical fun and innovative advice to surviving those hectic teenage years. This is a refreshing common-sense delivered with love.