Growing Up Too Fast: The Rimm Report on the Secret World of America's Middle Schoolers

A leading child psychologist reveals the results of an unprecedented survey of America's pre-teens-and helps parents deal with the troubling findings

Through instant messaging, cell phones, and email, today's middle schoolers hide their real lives from their parents. To find out what these youngsters are really up to, Dr. Sylvia Rimm, author of the New York Times bestseller See Jane Win, conducted a survey of over 5,400 middle school kids and talked with over 300 students in focus groups. In Growing Up Too Fast, Dr. Rimm reveals the startling results of her research.

While parents remember high school as the time when they encountered sex, drugs, body image issues, and other "teenage" problems, today's kids face these pressures in middle school. In fact, some are confronting "teen" issues by age 9 or 10. A 7th-grader told Dr. Rimm about "a friend who brags that she can chug a Bloody Mary in less than 10 seconds."

In Growing Up Too Fast, Dr. Rimm shows parents exactly what they can do to help their kids with these modern pressures. Katie Couric, host of NBC's Today show, has called her "a welcome voice of calm and reason-someone who offers practical advice, with almost immediate results." Growing Up Too Fast will show parents how to lead today's new breed of adolescents 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 a bestselling author.