Bradley - Crazy-stressed: saving todays overwhelmed teens with love, laughter, and the science of resilience by

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This book will save the sanity of parents and will save teens lives... beautiful wisdom in straightforward language. This one raises the bar.

Jodee Blanco, author of New York Times
bestseller Please Stop Laughing at Me:
One Womans Inspirational Story

For parents of todays teens, the world is not the one they knew as kids. The pressures on them to perform and compete are greater than ever; the virtual world has replaced the social everyday world with new plugged-in existences (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and more), as well as addictions to video games, and porn for guys. No wonder parents worry! To help parents navigate this challenging new millennium, Dr. Bradley draws on current research, clinical practice, and personal experience, offering parents practical solutions that will help their teens survive, thrive, and enjoy fuller lives.

Philip Zimbardo, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus,
Stanford University, and author of Man Interrupted:
Why Young Men Are Struggling and
What We Can Do About It.

Our teens are not crazy at all, they are reacting to a world sending confusingeven crazy at timesmessages. Dr Bradley guides us through preparing them to deal with a far from perfect world while coaching us on how to better handle the occasional challenges our kids offer us. He makes learning effortless by seamlessly integrating relatable stories, science, and clinical expertise with humor. This book prepares you to build resilience in your children today so theyll become the adults we need to take over our world tomorrow.

Kenneth Ginsburg MD MS Ed
Author of Building Resilience in Children and Teens:
Giving Kids Roots and Wings and Raising Kids to Thrive:
Balancing Love with Expectations and Protection with Trust

CRAZY-
STRESSED

Saving Todays Overwhelmed Teens with
Love, Laughter, and the Science of Resilience

Michael J. Bradley, Ed.D.

In Memory of Virginia Smith-Harvey-Dawson.
To my kids Sarah and Ross: in different ways,
you each made me crazy! And you each also taught me
more about love than I ever could have imagined.
Thanks for the adventure.

To those who have shaped my heart and so shaped my work, the best I can do is to say, "Thank you" to Bonnie Arena, Pete Bradley, Tony Chunn, Ginny Harvey-Dawson, Joe Ducette, Mattie Gershenfeld, Barry Kayes, Terry Longren, Father Michael McCarthy, Father John Riley, Pat Williams, Gene Stivers, and most of all, Chuck Schrader.

And to those who believed in this book and made it happen: Ellen Kadin, Marilyn Allen, and Sandy McWilliams. Thank you!

PART I
The Anti-Adolescent Resilience Conspiracy

PART II
Strategies and Tactics

PART III
Common Resilience Parenting Challenges: The DOs and DONTs

Welcome to the most frustrating, satisfying, depressing, uplifting, infuriating, thrilling, sleep-depriving, and sometimes terrifying adventure of your life: parenting a new millennium teenager. My head knows a little about those feelings because Ive spent more than three decades working with teens and parents. My heart knows even more about it because in the last 14 days Ive experienced all of those emotions while parenting one of my own. Yesterday at 3 PM, as a result of a teen crisis in my family, I couldnt write. It was so bad that I asked my best friend, Cindy (another expert in adolescence, who also happens to be my wife), if this was the right time for me to be writing a parenting book. I told her that on the good days I feel I have something helpful to say to you, but on the bad days I dont. Cindy thought for a moment and then said, Only write on the bad days. Parents will really connect with you then.

Cindy was reminding me of an upsetting thing weve noticed about many books on parenting teenagers. They are often filled with great information that enlightens our minds and yet depresses our souls, seeming to talk down to us, as if parenting was easy. These well-intended authors can also make it worse by telling us about their own terrible teenagers who ultimately get straight As in Ivy League colleges. They seem to think that sharing their own Disney endings will reassure us that everything will be OK. They forget to note that Ivy League scholarships are given to the children of about .0000015 percent of us real-world parents. We know that our real-world kids will get abducted by aliens before they win full rides to Princeton. So if we are having a hard time successfully parenting teens, is it perhaps because were stupid?

Maggie, a client of mine, once made that point while walking into my office quoting from one such book: This lady tells me that freaking out on my kid is a sign that my emotions are out of control. She angrily snapped the book closed. As my daughter loves to say, Really! No, duh? Dr. B, do you happen to know if this woman ever had a kid like mine? A week earlier, Maggies daughter had been dropped off at home at 1 AM from the back of a motorcycle, helmetless and smelling of beer. Id guess not, Maggie said. She continued, Yelling comes automatically to me even though I know its dumb. So I guess Im beyond help dumb, right?

Maggie was not dumb, and neither are you nor I. Its just that parenting teenagers today can be really, really hard on your soul or heart or whatever you define as your essence or core being. It can challenge you in ways youve never been challenged in your life before, causing you to do things you already know are dumb. It can push powerful people to their knees, trying to figure out what the heck happened to them, as with another of my clients.

I want you to know something about me, Jim said softly. I spent 20 years in the Army. I did three combat tours, and Ive been through things that most people think are the toughest things you could ever do. He leaned his weathered face forward, narrowed his eyes, and looked hard at me. None of that ever made me feel as scared and crazy and helpless as I do trying to parent my 14-year-old daughter. I sh-t you not.

As I sighed and nodded in agreement, one of my old professors mantras popped into my mind: We are never in this world made more vulnerable than through the lives of our children.

Some of those parenting books can sound as if they were written by the child-lottery winnersyou know, the ones with the perfect kids who dont seem to know that they won that lottery. These are the experts who might work with troubled kids but whose worst personal parenting trauma was an unauthorized nose piercing. If a decorated nostril turns out to be their most terrifying teen trauma, then they really have no idea just how hard your job can be. Counseling troubled teens is nothing like parenting them. As youll see in this book, thats a fact I know very well. I do both. Im not overly impressed by couples who buy brand-new Corvettes or parents of perfect teens. But the folks who hands-on restore an abandoned 59 Vette, and the parents who never quit the fight for the soul of a challenging teenthose folks impress the hell out of me.