10 Best Gifts for Your Teen: Raising Teens with Love and Understanding [Paperback]

Patt Saso (Author), Steven Paul Saso (Author), Steve Saso (Author), Patt and Steve Saso (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1999

Patt and Steve Saso navigated all the parenting perils from infancy to preteen insecurity, but nothing could prepare them for the unpredictability of adolescence. One day their teenager might say, "I love you," after the morning ride to school, and the next he might sit in the back seat, sulking in silence. In their new book, 10 Best Gifts For Your Teen, the Sasos offer valuable advice to help families maintain strong relationships through the often turbulent teenage years.

Combining Patt's expertise as a marriage and family therapist with Steve's experience as a high school educator, the Sasos share personal and professional anecdotes in this dispatch from the parenting trenches, detailing what adolescents want and need from their parents for emotional support. Teenagers will test the limits. Parents will make mistakes. But no matter how distant and resentful they appear to be, or how disrespectful of parental authority, teenagers internalize their parents' words and actions.

10 Best Gifts For Your Teen -- which include respect, room, role-modeling, responsibility and reconciliation -- teaches parents how to relate when needed, and to relent when necessary, offering support without infringing on their teenagers' burgeoning sense of freedom.

Patt and Steve Saso have shared their wisdom through their Saso Seminars, providing inspiration and information to help parents raise respectful and successful children. And now, with 10 Best Gifts For Your Teen, they have given a gift to parents across the country who want their teenager's transition from childhood to adulthood to be a smooth and rewarding one.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Raising teens with love and understanding is perhaps more challenging today than ever. While adolescence can sometimes be as frightening and challenging for parents as it is for their children, a strong parent-teen relationship can be both influential and rewarding.

Patt and Steve Saso combine their expertise as a counselor and high school teacher with hard-knocks wisdom from the parenting trenches to offer practical and engaging guidance. They stress that parents are the only ones who can offer ten gifts that make all the difference for their teens.

- Respect
- Receptivity
- Responsibility
- Room
- Reconciliation
- Role-Modeling
- Revelation of Self
- Resolve
- Release

Here are both the encouragement and skills parents need to build strong relationships with their teens.

About the Author

Patt and Steve Saso officially combined their talents in 1982 when they married in Oakland, California at the Bishop O'Dowd High School chapel. Steve, a high school educator and administrator for nearly 30 years, and Patt, a marriage and family therapist, have worked hand-in-hand throughout their lives together, giving workshops to married couples and parents. They turned their presentations into a full-time business in 1989 when they formed Saso Seminars, an organization that assists parents and educators in raising responsible children.

Often invited to speak at PTA meetings and conventions for professional organizations that address family issues, the Sasos have facilitated over 100 conferences and workshops. As the parents of preteens and teenagers of their own, the Sasos incorporate their own parenting successes and failures into their work.

Steve is currently chairperson of the Religious Studies Department at Bellarmine College Prep in San Jose, California. Patt is the executive director of Saso Seminars. They are the parents of three adolescents.

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Sorin Books; First edition. edition (September 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1893732053
• ISBN-13: 978-1893732056
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #366,308 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Important Read for Parents of Teens, April 6, 2000

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: 10 Best Gifts for Your Teen: Raising Teens with Love and Understanding (Paperback)

Well written, organized, and an important read for frustrated parents trying to do the best they can. It's a bittersweet time watching my son go through this stage in his life. "10 Best Gifts..." has helped me realize that his moody, sulking, "Aw Mom!", "Whatever!" moments should not be taken too personally. The kid who used to love his mom to pieces probably still does. And now, more than ever, he needs me to be on top of my parenting skills. This book will give you the strength and wisdom to do just that.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Compassionate and compelling insights on raising teens, October 19, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: 10 Best Gifts for Your Teen: Raising Teens with Love and Understanding (Paperback)

Steve and Patt Saso have focused on the work that parents need to do, both within themselves and with their teens, to approach parenting of teens with effectiveness and compassion. Drawing on widespread experience with teens and family life, the Sasos identify the lessons and gifts that parents can uniquely offer their children. Their suggestions are both practical and profound. As a father of four, ages 7-14, this book helped me remember how much I want the best for my kids and what I need to do to make that happen. This book's primary value is that it does not depend on changing the teenager, nor does it collapse into putting all of the responsibility (and guilt!) on the parent; rather, it's about changing the relationship. Parents of children of all ages will be encouraged by the Sasos' insights. This book makes for a greatly appreciated gift.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Teacher's Perspective, March 21, 2000

By 

W. Michael Lovett (Salt Lake City, Utah) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 10 Best Gifts for Your Teen: Raising Teens with Love and Understanding (Paperback)

If you want to know something about raising teens, read this book! Patt and Steve Saso have written a wise and perceptive guide for parents who are trying to maintain loving and vital relationships with their teen-aged children. As a teacher of high-school students for the past 15 years, I have been asked to read and evaluate dozens of books which attempt to "explain" the behavior of adolescents or provide a means of "controlling" what they do. The Sasos have made it clear that these attempts will always fail because they miss the point. With many examples gleaned from long experience, they show convincingly that our task as parents and teachers is not to control but, rather, to do the sometimes painful work of building solid relationships with young persons based on respect and nurtured over time with love and care. There is no other way. For the honesty and truth in this book, I thank them.