How To Raise Your Parents

Watch Sarah talk about How to Raise Your Parents on CBS News!

The teen-parent relationship has always been a tenuous one. Think back to those years between braces and graduation-when a later curfew meant the difference between social heaven and loser-ville (at least you thought) and your parents held the car keys over your head like a ransom. If only you’d had some solid advice on how to relate to and level with your parents on everything from dating dilemmas to nose piercing. Well, today’s teenagers do!

How to Raise Your Parents: A Teen Girl’s Survival Guide is the essential guide to getting some privacy, understanding “ParentSpeak,” and negotiating for a little independence. Author Sarah O’Leary Burningham speaks directly to teen readers in an open and honest voice-and a language they’ll understand-and offers practical advice to help them survive “the difficult years” with their parents while keeping their relationship intact and lines of communication open. Each page is jam-packed with sensible advice that teens (and parents!) can use in their everyday lives. After all, teens and parents don’t always see eye-to-eye, but with the help of How to Raise Your Parents, they can certainly meet somewhere in the middle.

“This book tackles difficult topics with wit and wisdom. It speaks honestly and openly to teens about the challenges of being an adolescent in today’s world.”

–Kate Della-Piana, LCSW, Executive Director, Family Counseling Center

“[A] wise and witty work for smart teenage girls. The result should be that both parent and teen feel they can be heard and respected, even where there is disagreement.”

–Penny Brooke Jameson, PhD, Clinical Psychologist

“Burningham’s How to Raise Your Parents is an ambitious 144-pager that tackles the Gordian knot that is the relationship between a teenage girl and her parents…Burningham’s book addresses the void by offering girls detailed strategies on talking to parents about boyfriends, piercings, tattoos, cell phones and curfews. She also translates parentspeak.”

Seattle Post-Intelligencer

“Through questionnaires and interviews with thousands of teenagers, Burningham, now 28, came up with a funny and practical guide for negotiating the minefield of parent-teen life.”

Los Angeles Times

“[Burningham] delivers straight-talk in a funny and fun-to read format…Armed with How to Raise Your Parents , teens will have the inside track on effective strategies for communicating, negotiating, and compromising their way to the freedoms and privileges they’re after–skills that will come in handy whether they want their own cell phone, a new hair color or a set of car keys!”

BookPage

Download the full press release