For Immediate Release:

The Teenager Manual

Practical advice for all parents

RRP: £14.99
Format: Hardback
ISBN: 978 1 84425 409 5

Wouldn’t it be good if teenagers were like cars? Reliable, undemanding and cheap to run. Put them in the garage and forget about them at night. Sadly, they’re not. The teens are a tumultuous period – physical, social and emotional growth can lead to problems, confusion and even dangers for parents and teenagers alike. However unlike a car, they do not come with an owner’s manual . . . until now.

Haynes is renowned worldwide for its car and motorbike manuals and the new Haynes Teenager Manual will help you take pride in your teenager as it develops into a classic model. This new book follows the format for which Haynes is famous – practical instructions written by experienced professionals that will prepare you for dealing with the process of moving from dependent, loving and accepting child to stroppy know-it-all teenager.

Author Dr Pat Spungin is a parenting skills expert and mother of three. She has worked as a senior lecturer in child psychology at Middlesex University, was consultant editor on Understanding Your Family in the Time-Life Mindpower series and founded a parenting website www.raisingkids.co.uk. Having had three teenagers she knows the issues parents face can vary from child to child, but some concerns are common to all parents of teens. How to talk to them about puberty, sex and relationships? How much freedom to give and when? How to make sure that school work doesn’t suffer as the attractions of the peer group and its culture take over? What to say about underage drinking and smoking? And most important, how to deal with all these issues while remaining on good terms?

In the Haynes Teenager Manual, Dr Spungin offers readers a step-by-step guide to dealing with the teenage years. She begins with your contented, obliging child morphing into a sulky, monosyllabic teenager. Physical development is tackled next, followed by emotions – mood swings, loss of confidence and motivation, anger, jealously, apprehension and so on. Then there are friends and social life, health and diet, plus things you can do, such as how to argue without falling out.

Throughout the Teenager Manual, Dr Spungin takes a realistic approach and considers potentially difficult topics such as sibling rivalry, divorce and separation, sexual activity among teenagers, the availability of drugs, alcohol consumption and personal safety through to parental advice on education, earning and independence.

Dr Spurgin says “though apparently eager to break free of the family, teens still need the support and guidance of their parents. My aims in the Teenager Manual are to help parents adapt to the changes their children are undergoing, and to keep their family relationships strong while at the same time allowing their children more freedom to learn for themselves”.

Even if you are the parent of a ten or eleven-year-old, now is the time to think about their teen years. As children ‘grow older younger’, so the teen years often start well before a child reaches thirteen. The Haynes Teenager Manual is a vital purchase to prepare yourself for dealing with pre-teenage or teenage offspring.

Click here to see sample pages

Also available in Haynes Family Manual series: Baby, Man, Woman, Sex, Alcohol, HGV and Cancer.

Dr Pat Spungin is available for interview.

Notes to Editors:

The information on this page is supplied courtesy of Haynes Publishing, please credit accordingly if you intend to use it. For more information or to request a review copy please contact Eventageous PR on 01452 723642 or email info@eventspr.co.uk

Haynes Publishing