The Right To Be The Grown-Up: Helping Parents Be Parents to Their Difficult Teens -- Facilitator's Guide, 6 copies of Parent Handbook, plus "affirmations" card deck [Paperback]

Jerome A. Price (Author), Judith Margerum (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2003

Jerome Price and Judith Margerum have joined forces to bring together an essential model for helping parents to help themselves as parents. Therapists will find here a host of practical, easy-to-implement strategies for working with parents to reclaim their lives when their children’s behavior is out of control. Each Right to Be the Grown-Up package comes with a "Facilitator's Guide" and 6 copies of the "Parent Handbook." The package is designed to be used in groups or when working alongside parents in a private therapy setting. (The authors also provide a series of parenting affirmations -- or lifelines -- on wallet-sized cards so that therapists can give them out to their clients.)

The Facilitator’s Guide is laid out into 5 sessions – Getting Started; Reactivity; Information; Coalitions/Teamwork; and Making It Work. Step-by-step guidance is provided on how to lead parents gently but determinedly through a series of learning modules, each of which will clarify parenting goals, instill hope, provide tools, and "unfuzzy" the boundaries that have faded over time. Practical exercises and support materials are offered throughout.

The Parent Handbook follows the sequence of the guide and offers a slew of helpful homework assignments, definitions, and mottos designed to reinforce the information presented there and to bolster parent confidence even at the toughest of times.

Developed by the Michigan Family Institute, this skills program has already met with great success through workshops and trainings based on it. Price and Margerum show what it looks like to move from theory to action when it comes to improving the lives of parents and their adolescent children.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Price and Margerum provide strategies and suggest coping skills, which can be utilized by parents from various cultures. -- Frank M. Dattilio, Ph.D., ABPP

About the Author

Jerome A. Price is the director and founder of the Michigan Family Institute, Inc. He is author of Power and Compassion (1996). Judith Margerum is associate director of the Michigan Family Institute

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: Zeig Tucker & Theisen Inc; Package edition (April 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1891944932
• ISBN-13: 978-1891944932
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 6.9 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #528,450 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hope For Parents of Defiant Kids, May 7, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: The Right To Be The Grown-Up: Helping Parents Be Parents to Their Difficult Teens -- Facilitator's Guide, 6 copies of Parent Handbook, plus "affirmations" card deck (Paperback)

(...)
This is by far the best book I have ever seen on this subject.

As a psychologist with many years of experience treating "out of control" adolescents and their overwhelmed parents, I can attest to the monumental challenges faced by the therapists who treat them. It is extremely difficult for a therapist to not fall into the same helplessness suffered by the parents of severely defiant children, when intervention after intervention fails--as they usually do with "traditional" approaches.

This book offers a highly structured group program for these parents and provides the therapist with an incredibly detailed "instruction manual" for running the group session-by-session. Like the 1-2-3 Magic program that is so effective for younger children, the clear and relatively "simple" principles that make this program so workable for parents belie its underlying psychological sophistication. While the program appeals to parents on a common-sense basis, the well-educated therapist will appreciate the fact that it is informed by mountains of professional knowlege. Although considerable education is delivered in the process, the program's focus is on developing effective parenting skills rather than insight (which is of so little use with kids who are truly "out of control".)

Is this program fool-proof? Of course not. It is best used by people who are comfortable taking a directive--though necessarily supportive--posture with clients . . . something the classroom format makes much more natural. Is this an equally good self-help book? No way. Should this program be used only by trained mental health professionals or, as the authors suggest, can it be equally effective in the hands of teachers and others experienced in this area? I'm not sure what to say about this one--it makes sense that it could, and surely a skilled layperson would use it far more effectively than an *inept* mental health professional; for that matter, a skilled layperson would surely be just as effective as a skilled mental health professional. Probably the best I can say is that I would not recommend it to just anyone and everyone who has an interest in helping parents and kids. These kids and parents are real tough customers. I can say, however, that anyone who already deals with this group would be much better equiped for the job with this program.

Having a thorough understanding of the subject, and a great deal of experience with this population, I have to admit that I wish I had thought of this program myself. If it were mine, I'd double or triple the price (after all, it comes with parent workbooks), and offer a money-back guarantee. There would be very few--if any--returns.