Joanne Calcagno's new release, Nineteen: a Moment in Time, a Family in Crisis offers a much needed remedy for teenagers and their families today as they struggle to successfully navigate the turbulent waters of the teenage years.
The author herself suffered from the depression, isolation, anxiety, and trauma of her teenage years until at nineteen she had a nervous breakdown, and that was when the country was far less troubled than it now is. Today the obstacles for a teen finding happiness are far greater than ever before, and that means a teen's entire family is also at risk during those stressful years.
After a successful thirty year teaching career, Joanne is now sharing her insight about the one common denominator she has found that any troubled teen shares...and how to overcome it.
Per the CDC, suicide rates in the U.S. for those aged ten to twenty-four rose a whopping 62 percent between 2007 and 2021. Today a teenager's journey from puberty to adulthood offers far greater dangers to overcome than at any time in the past as teens try to establish a comfortable identity during these years of passage to adulthood.
The difficulties for today's youth start in puberty when a pre-teen's body suddenly starts sprouting all sorts of new "features" and odd, socially unacceptable urges never felt before. They can experience both a destabilization of identity and a new guilt about all things romantic. This period can also be the start of teens no longer talking freely to family or to friends about what is happening to them.
After that comes the stress of parental pressure for getting good grades in high school or for excelling in sports or extracurricular activities. Sometimes the goals parents set are ones that simply cannot be attained, and teens can experience their first major losses in life from these failed expectations.
Next comes the peer pressure for "being cool" - however that might be defined that day, that week, or that season -- and a teen can start to feel the stress of social interaction at a level he or she has never before experienced, in or out of school.
Add to that the media pressure to look this way, act that way, and follow in the steps of the culture's most popular, although sometimes questionable, role models, and a teen can end up utterly confused about the identity he or she is trying to achieve to be successful in this world.
If all that is not enough stress for a teenager to deal with, there's also the temptation of drugs, alcohol, and sex.
Nineteen: a Moment in Time, a Family in Crisis offers teenagers and parents alike one simple, stable tool they can practice which will help them navigate these stressful teenage years. Its use will keep teens sane in an otherwise emotionally chaotic social environment, and it will help protect families from drowning in the crisis created when their teenage son or daughter is floundering in the difficult waters between puberty and adulthood.