An Intimate Understanding of America's Teenagers: Shaking Hands with Aliens

As a thirty-something mom to a kindergartener and twin infants, I face daily challenges that test not only my parenting skills, but my negotiation skills, time-management skills, communication skills and a laundry list full of other skills needed to make my family and home a happy and safe place to be. As a step-mother to a sixteen year old, I have to work from a completely different playbook. Although I feel like it wasn't that long ago I was actually a teenager myself, I am reminded of just how far removed I am from those teenage years. It is almost as if I am an outsider looking at something completely foreign to me… something so different from what I remember my teenage years as being… something completely alien.

Bruce J. Gevirtzman has appointed himself as the expert on teenagers, and rightly so. He's spent more than 30 years teaching teens, being active in their lives in many different ways, and his hands-on experience has given him the ability to bridge the gap of understanding between teens and their parents. An Intimate Understanding of America's Teenagers: Shaking Hands with Aliens is the ultimate guide for understanding and communicating with teens. Not only is it appropriate for parents to read, but Gevirtzman speaks directly to teachers and teens in the book as well. If teens came with a user's manual, this would be it!

Although my husband's daughter doesn't live with us and I don't have a lot of contact with her, Gevirtzman's book and the topics discussed have shed a much needed light upon some of the concerns I've had in understand where she is coming from. I've also gotten a glimpse into the future of what I will be facing, because as Gevirtzman points out quite clearly, although times have changed and some issues are more serious with teens than they were when we were that age, teens are facing the same issues as before and they always will.

An Intimate Understanding of America's Teenagers is broken down into chapters that revolve around one specific topic each, beginning with communication and the unique language of each generation of teens, to the topics of self image, athletics and other extra curricular activities, sex, controlling parents, and a large array of other topics that make up the life of America's teens. In many of the chapters, Gevirtzman presents different answers to straight-shooting questions that teens themselves have provided. Answers to questions like what they see when they look into a mirror, why they participate in sports, would they tell a friend's parents if they knew their friend was doing drugs or other illegal activities, and even why males pierce their ears. It isn't necessarily the questions that will shock parents. Actually, it is quite the opposite. The questions are the same questions we as parents should pose to our teens at some point. The truthful answers are in part quite shocking when we realize that finally, teens are being honest and open (mostly), as this peek into their reality is very telling to their situations. All of this is provided in a way that only Gevirtzman could supply. His intimate knowledge of teens, from public faces they put on for the world to see, to private challenges they face every day, these teens share with him a slice of their lives that many parents and teachers never see or are just to pre-occupied to notice.

As Gevirtzman points out, being a teen is such a small snippet in time compared to the long life many of us have. However, the drama and effects of those few short years can not only last a lifetime, but it can also help (and often does) shape who we are for the rest of our lives. One off-the-wall incident in our teen years could change our very core and affect how we respond to things decades down the road. So why aren't we spending more time with teens, understanding them, so we can help make this time better for them? An Intimate Understanding of America's Teenagers does exactly that. It truly is a handbook for the ins and outs of the American Teenager.

Gevirtzman's shares countless stories of tragedy and triumph from the lives of the teens he's known over his three-plus decades of experience. An Intimate Understanding of America's Teenagers is also as funny as it is endearing and educational. Gevirtzman's experience as a playwright creates a page-turning book with the comic relief needed to make the seriousness of
the topics easier to swallow.

So whether you've got a teen, pre-teen, a tween or even a toddler, An Intimate Understanding of America's Teenagers has the information you need to make it through those few tough years that challenge even the most solid and stable families. Be sure to either read it with your teen if you have one, or ask them to take the time to read it too. It will benefit you both in ways that will not only makes those tough years a little easier to manage, but as Gevirtzman points out, the information he provides will help open those much-needed lines of communication that are key to having a good and loving relationship with the person most important in your teen's life… you.

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An Intimate Understanding of America's Teenagers: Shaking Hands with Aliens
By Bruce Gevirtzman

Gevirtzman takes us inside the minds of today's youths and contrasts them with teens of decades past. Including interviews with fellow teachers, Gevirtzman's book is threaded with one recurring truth: "Sadly, instead of parents and teachers and lawmakers and the public looking out for our kids, today's kids are largely left to fend for themselves," he concludes.