Parent-adolescent discord is often handled from a unitary perspective, whether the focus is on enhancing parenting skills, resolving conflicts in family relationships, or working to improve the behavior of the individual child. This important work shows the clinician how to incorporate all of these crucial elements into a single, research-based treatment program. Presented is the authors' influential integration of cognitive-behavioral constructs and family systems theory, grounded in consideration of adolescent developmental concerns. The book describes effective ways to conceptualize and assess the problems of embattled parents and teens; use assessment data in treatment planning; overcome resistance and other therapeutic hurdles; and implement carefully sequenced skills training, cognitive restructuring, and functional/structural interventions. The theoretical and empirical bases of the treatment approach are also discussed in depth.

The sullen, withdrawn, sarcastic teenager. The defensive, wary, and helpless parent. This book builds a bridge between the two sides—with practical and supportive advice on how to: Contain conflicts before they escalate into violence Break through the teen's verbal intimidation Avoid futile arguments Turn confrontation into communication Stand firm against teen rage Manage teen manipulation Build the teen's self-esteem Talk to teens when no one knows what to say For ever parent who's screamed, what am I going to do with you?, this book finally provides the answer.

Every teenager rebels against authority at some point--talks back, breaks curfew, or disobeys. But literally millions of teens take their rebellion to a point where it disrupts their families and endangers their own futures or even their lives. If one of these teens is yours, you've probably lived through years of conflicting advice and pat solutions that don't last. Finally, this breakthrough guide from a master therapist will show you the seven steps to positive, permanent change for you and your teenager: 1. Learn the real reasons for teen misbehavior. 2. Make an ironclad contract to stop that behavior. 3. Troubleshoot future problems. 4. End button-pushing. 5. Stop the "seven aces" -- from disrespect to threats of violence. 6. Mobilize outside help. 7. Reclaim lost love within the family. Clear, compassionate, and packed with real-life solutions to real-life problems, Parenting Your Out-of-Control Teenager gives parents the tools they need to turn their families' lives around for good.

Adolescence is often thought of as a period during which parent–child interactions can be relatively stressed and conflictual. There are individual differences in this regard, however, with only a modest percent of youth experiencing extremely conflictual relationships with their parents. Relatively little empirical research, however, addresses individual differences in the quality of parent–adolescent interactions concerning potentially conflictual issues. The research reported in this monograph examined dispositional and parenting predictors of the quality of parents’ and their adolescent children’s emotional displays and positive and negative verbalizations when dealing with conflictual issues. Of particular interest were patterns of continuity and discontinuity in the factors related to conflicts. A multimethod, multireporter (mother, teacher, and sometimes adolescent reports) longitudinal approach(over 4 years) was used to assess adolescents’ dispositional characteristics (control/regulation, resiliency, and negative emotionality), youths’ externalizing problems, and parenting variables (warmth, positive expressivity, discussion of emotion, positive and negative family expressivity). Parentadolescent conflicts appear to be influenced by both child characteristics and quality of prior and concurrent parenting, and child effects may be more evident than parent effects in this pattern of relations.