When Worry Works: How to Harness Your Parenting Stress and Guide Your Teen to Success
A roadmap for parents on how to manage adolescent achievement stress, make values-driven, rather than anxiety-driven parenting decisions, and raise flourishing teens and the future generation of successful adults.
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Dana Dorfman, MSW, PhD, is a New York City based psychotherapist with 30 years experience treating adolescents and parents in her private practice, schools, and agency settings. Dr. Dorfman is regularly interviewed and quoted in the media on mental health topics and was the co-host of a parenting podcast, 2 Moms on the Couch. Dr. Dorfman resides in NYC with her husband, her teenage daughter and son, and their beloved dog, Winnicott.
Let's face it. Parenting teens is stressful. Psychotherapist Dorfman, mother of two teens, admits to her own emotional battles.... Focusing on parents rather than teens, Dorfman offers sensible steps to ease relationships and find winning solutions. She helps parents learn to reason rather than react and points out how their own childhood experiences can influence their parenting styles. Readers are sure to spot themselves among parents described as sculptors, game-show contestants, crowd-pleasers, avoiders, clairvoyants, shepherds, correctors, and replicators and benefit from Dorfman's sane advice.
Out of all of the stages of childhood, the teen years are notoriously the most difficult for parents to navigate. Teens continue to need our guidance, support and involvement and yet are also working hard to separate from us, to develop their own set of beliefs and ideas and to make their own decisions. And so, there is a delicate balance parents need to strike during this tumultuous time.
When Worry Worksis a must read for any parent struggling with this complicated combination of opposing needs.
Dorfman's wise, reassuring, and practical advice will automatically turn the heat down on these family struggles. She quickly identifies herself as a fellow worrier with teens and so approaches her topic from a place of kindness, knowledge, and identification. She advocates for our children while somehow never judging or criticizing parents.
Using compelling vignettes from her own clients she identifies eight different brands of parental anxiety and then guides readers to recognize their own style and then understand the origins of the worry so that they can ward off unhelpful reactions.
Hearing Dr. Dorfman gently yet expertly delve into and help parents sort out their worries will make the reader yearn to have Dorfman as you own family guru. Reading her book is second best to that.
Dana Dorfman's When Worry Works nails the today's parenting zeitgeist perfectly! It is the perfect guide for parents of teens in these challenging times. Dorfman's humor and honesty about her own parenting pitfalls make this book relatable, comforting, and nonjudgmental. She also offers a clear roadmap for parents to understand their own anxieties so they can be solid, loving guides to their teens.
Grab this book and tame your anxiety. Your teenager will thank you.
This is just the book parents need to bring down anxiety and connect more with their child through the ups and downs, pressures and worries of the adolescent years. Based on vast clinical experience and a keen understanding of what parents struggle with, Dorfman takes an empathic approach to get to the roots of what underlies parental worries and fears- shifting to helpful, not hurtful parenting techniques. The book helps parents embrace their worries in the most positive ways on a road to becoming their teen's advocate, not adversary, helping to guide them to become the person they are meant to be. Reading it will help parents exhale and enjoy these fraught years much more.
