Holding on While Letting Go: Parenting Your Child Through the Four Freedoms of Adolescence

Written by Carl Pickhardt

Narrated by T. Ryder Smith

Parenting a teenager is not for the faint of heart. It is during these roller-coaster years that frustrated parents find themselves at their wits' end, barely even recognizing their offspring as they move through the teen years. Carl Pickhardt,
Harvard-trained psychologist and the voice of reason behind Psychology Today's advice column, "Surviving (Your Child's) Adolescence," shares critical insights and practical tools that parents need to know along their child's rocky road toward
independence and adulthood. There's a reason the road is rocky—it's supposed to be. How adept parents become at navigating the twists and turns with less handholding and hitting the brakes directly correlates to how successful their child will
pass through what are four critical milestones that lead to successful adulthood and independence.

This book explains to parents how four unfolding drives for freedom sequentially and cumulatively motivate adolescent growth, as this ten to twelve year coming of age passage forever changes the child, the parent in response, and the
relationship between them. The four unfolding freedoms are these: First is freedom from rejection of childhood, around the late elementary school years, when the girl or boy wants to stop acting and being treated as just a child
anymore. Second is freedom of association with peers, around the middle school years, when the girl or boy wants to form a second family of friends. Third isfreedom for older experimentation, around the high school years, when the girl or
boy wants to try more grown up activities. And fourth is freedom to claim emancipation, around the college age years, when the girl or boy decides to become their own ruling authority. With each successive push for freedom,
parent and adolescent both have to do less holding on to each other while doing more letting go.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9781705078891

Carl Pickhardt

Carl Pickhardt, Ph.D., is a noted psychologist, speaker, and parenting expert, now retired from private counseling practice.  He received his B.A. and M.Ed. from Harvard, and his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. He is a member of the American and Texas Psychological Associations. He writes a popular parenting advice column for Psychology Today and has writtten some of the most practical and helpful books about important parenting issues, including: The Connected Father; Stop the Screaming, The Future of Your Only Child and Why Good Kids Act Cruel. A prolific author, he continues to write three distinct kinds of books: illustrated psychology, of coming of age fiction, and of nonfiction parenting advice – Holding on While Letting Go the seventeenth of these parenting books. For a complete list of his books, see his website: www.carlpickhardt.com