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jcharlton's review
3.0
This took me weeks to get through. Had some salient points. It didn’t dive much into trauma. Good general overview.
saxifrage_seldon's review
5.0
Lisa Damour’s 2023 book, The Emotional Lives of Teenagers: Raising Connected, Capable, and Compassionate Adolescents, seeks to analyze and provide strategies to help parents of adolescents with mental health issues. While the audience of this book is directed at parents of teenagers, and while I am not a parent, I work with older adolescents daily as a teacher, a supervisor, and a mentor. There was a lot I liked about this book. The first thing I liked is the acknowledgment and analysis of the teenage mental health crisis that has been growing over the past ten years. The second thing I liked was the book’s overarching thesis, which is two-fold. First, powerful emotions in teenagers are normal, and second, feeling good isn’t a sign of good mental health; instead, proper regulation of emotions is. Damour argues that our culture has become one in which we have become so concerned with adolescents feeling good that we have lost sight of helping them recognize, navigate, and regulate their emotional responses. The third thing I liked about this book is that it acted like an instructional manual about how to work with adolescents experiencing emotional distress. Using case studies from her own practice, Damour provides different situations and suggests different methods on how to best help teenagers, as well as what methods to stay away from. This is especially true in the last two chapters, the first of which looks at how we can assist teens in expressing their feelings and the second of which focuses on how we can assist teens in regaining emotional control. With that said, there are things I did not like about the book. While Damour does emphasize diversity in the context of teenage feelings, whether it be through gender, race, and sexuality or acknowledging the fact that each teenager is an individual, most of her case studies and perspectives, I would argue, are very class-based. The case studies she analyzes stem from problems that would impact more affluent teenagers coming from more stable home lives. This may be why Damour’s audience is parents with the means and time to seek out, read, and discuss a book such as this. Another thing about this book I didn’t particularly like is that much of the advice Damour gives doesn’t relate specifically to teenagers but can be used, I feel, in a wide variety of age groups. For example, the two biggest pieces of advice she gives are ensuring you fully listen and empathize with the adolescents you are talking to. I don’t think this is applicable only to one specific age group. To conclude, if you are in Damour’s audience of parents of teenagers, or work with adolescents a lot, I would definitely recommend this book.
zarazuck's review
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.25
I know I’m kind of jumping the gun, but 9.5 has already brought some tweeny mood swings, so I wanted to be prepared. Love how much Dr. Damour adores teens. I’ll be revisiting this for sure.