Growing Up Too Fast: The Secret World of America's Middle Schoolers

In this startling book, now issued in paperback, a leading child psychologist reveals the results of an unprecedented survey of America's pre-teens—and helps parents deal with the troubling findings

While most parents remember high school as the time when they encountered sex, drugs, alcohol, body image issues, and other typically "teenage" concerns, today's kids are running into these issues as early as fourth grade. That is the unsettling discovery that emerges from the most extensive probe of America's middle schoolers ever conducted.

Dr. Sylvia Rimm surveyed more than 5,400 third- through eighth-grade students from a wide variety of backgrounds and communities in 18 states. As a result of these surveys and the more than 300 focus group sessions she conducted, Dr. Rimm has penetrated the secret world of today's "tweens." Here this trusted authority—the best-selling author of See Jane Win—gives readers the concrete parenting advice they need to guide their kids through these modern pressures to a bright and promising future.

SYLVIA RIMM, PhD, is a noted child psychologist who directs Sylvia Rimm's Family Achievement Clinic in Cleveland and is a clinical professor at Case School of Medicine. She is also the author of the New York Times bestseller See Jane Win.