In a little over a month, my fourth kiddo will cross over to the dark place known as Tweendom. This means for those of you keeping score at home that I will soon have a house bursting at the seams with teens and tweens. Please send reinforcements in the form of Diet Coke and chocolate.

I jest, but there’s truth here too. These years leading up to and including the teens can be challenging for you, your kids, your sanity, and your bottom line. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a guidebook or ten to help you navigate these unfamiliar and sometimes hostile waters?

Well, here they are! We are not promising that these books will solve all your problems but they are the perfect parenting books to help you through the tween and teen years.

All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood by Jennifer Senior

This is not a parenting book, but a book about the act of modern parenting itself. We’ve come a long way, baby, in terms of how we view and tackle this very fundamental task and Senior’s take is just fascinating.

Chock full of impressive research and held together by anecdotal stories of families, this is quite frankly my “Get a Hold of Yourself, Woman” book. Surprisingly easy to read and so so smart, this book reminds me that yes, parenting is hard, but it’s the thing I’ve chosen as my most important work.

I find myself revisiting this book time and again not only to remind myself that “mothering isn’t just something I do, it’s who I am” and to find solace in the fact that I am so very not alone on this road.

Masterminds and Wingmen: Helping Our Boys Cope with Schoolyard Power, Locker-Room Tests, Girlfriends, and the New Rules of Boy World by Rosalind Wiseman

This IS a parenting book and frankly anyone who spends any time around any boys age 11 through 18 needs to read it. With over 200 interviews with boys and strong research guiding her conclusions, Wiseman draws the adolescent boy in sharp relief and gives us not only a true picture of the more complex lives of boys, but some ways we can help them through the next few years.

My favorite insight is that we do boys a disservice by dismissing their emotional lives as simple when they most assuredly are not. There is even a free e-book for boys themselves to read about what to do in difficult situations.

I know what you’re thinking: Wiseman is kind of a superhero. Or a superstar. In any case, she has written a book that can save you and any special boys in your life.

Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and the New Realities of Girl World by Rosalind Wiseman

And Wiseman works a similar magic for girls. I read this book when I first started teaching middle school and it fundamentally changed the way I looked at girls, their friendships, and their struggles with each other and themselves.

Wiseman offers sage, sound advice for how to guide girls towards treating themselves with dignity and grace and treating each other fairly, but there is so much more than that in this book. Understanding girl power plays, how boys fit into the big picture of girl relationships, and the different roles girls play really helps anyone who knows or loves an  adolescent girl guide her to her best, most authentic self. Thanks again to the wonderful and very wise Wiseman.

 The Wonder of Boys by Michael Gurian

I often scribble pearls of wisdom from what I’ve been reading on whatever scrap I have available. This quote from this book has become my talisman over the past few years:

“As our lives speed up more and more, so do our children’s. We forget and thus they forget that there is nothing more important than the present moment. We forget and thus they forget to relax, to find spiritual solitude, to let go of the past, to quiet ambition, to fully enjoy the eating of a strawberry, the scent of a rose, the touch of a hand on a cheek…”
― Michael Gurian, The Wonder of Boys

Michael Gurian shares his larger vision of how culturally we are failing boys by not acknowledging and thus not meeting their biological and spiritual needs. Ellen and I both love books with a strong scientific bent that are also easy to read. This book meets those criteria and yet exceeds expectations too.  It will be a beloved helpmate on the hormone highway you are now traveling.

 The Wonder of Girls: Understanding the Hidden Nature of Our Daughters by Michael Gurian

This is a riveting read. Honestly. Bursting with excellent, updated scientific research about how girls develop, how their brains work, and how this all affects how girls relate to themselves and each other, this is as unputdownable as nonfiction gets. Ditto everything I said about The Wonder of Boys but yet uniquely wonderful in its own way. Magic.

The Drama Years: Real Girls Talk About Surviving Middle School — Bullies, Brands, Body Image, and More by Haley Kilpatrick

Anyone who has been anywhere near a middle school lunchroom knows that The Drama Years is the perfect title for a book about girls navigating the difficult tween years. This book is one of the best I’ve read for helping you and your daughter through it.

Haley Kilpatrick is the founder of GirlTalk and she is on a mission to end the drama and change the outcome for our nation’s young women. Sharing her own personal anecdotes from middle school and drawing on conversations with middle school and high school girls about what actually happens and what helps, Haley Kilpatrick has created a book with real insights and a clear path for helping. You will love the real, honest talk and the great, usable advice.

Middle School Makeover: Improving the Way You and Your Child Experience the Middle School Years by Michelle Icard

This is the newest book on my bedside table, but I have already recommended it so many times that I’m out of digits to tell you all the reasons I love it. But here are five.

First, Michelle Icard establishes herself from the very first page as a woman you can trust and want to share this journey with you. Warm and empathetic, Icard is also funny and real. You’ll wish you could invite her over for tea or, in my case, Diet Coke.

Second, as the creator of Athena’s Path and Hero’s Pursuit, social skills camps for middle school boy and girls, Icard has tons of real, practical solutions to share for lots of common middle school issues.

Third, I love this book’s central theme of shifting your parenting to the role of assistant manager. It’s such a recognizable, perfect metaphor for how your role needs to change during these years and she explains just how to do this perfectly.

Fourth, one of the best pieces of advice I ever received about parenting this age was to remain neutral when receiving information.  Icard has given a great name to this strategy, “Botox Brow”, and she weaves in stories, examples, and advice for how to pull off this essential coping skill.

Fifth, Icard likes kids, even middle schoolers. We have that in common. She shifts the paradigm and the assumption that there is something wrong with kids at this age. Kids are just fine, but the way we have been dealing with them at this age has to change. She then goes on to give a ridiculous amount of ways to do help do this.

Honestly, I could go on, but you should just fire up the old credit card and order this one for yourself now.

So there you go: a collection of parenting books to keep you company through the next few years. Short of an endless supply of calorie-free chocolate, it’s the best option.

Happy Tweening and Teening!

-Erin