How to Hug a Porcupine: Negotiating the Prickly Points of the Tween Years

“You never listen to anything I say!”

Yesterday, your child was a sweet, well-adjusted eight-year-old. Today, a moody, disrespectful twelve-year-old. What happened? And more important, how do you handle it? How you respond to these whirlwind changes will not only affect your child's behavior now but will determine how he or she turns out later. Julie A. Ross, executive director of Parenting Horizons, shows you exactly what's going on with your child and provides all the tools you need to correctly handle even the prickliest tween porcupine.

• Find out how other parents survived nightmarish tween behavior--and still raised great kids
• Break the “nagging cycle,” give your kids responsibilities, and get results
• Talk about sex, drugs, and alcohol so your kid will listen
• Discover the secret that will help your child to disregard peer pressure and make smart choices--for life

"This excellent book lets parents peek into the underlying, confusing thoughts and perplexing decisions that young tweens are constantly facing."
--Ralph I. López, M.D., Clinical Professor or Pediatrics, Cornell University, and author of The Teen Health Book

Julie A. Ross, M.A., is the author of Joint Custody with a Jerk and executive director of Parenting Horizons, an organization that offers regular workshops for parents and teachers as well as private counseling. She has appeared on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” “Today,” “The Montel Williams Show,” and others.