This book offers clear, actionable ways for parents and educators to create and strengthen relationships with teens during a key time of growth and development. With an emphasis on mindfulness, non-violent communication, and rooted in what we know about brain and social development during the adolescent years, this book is a great resource for anyone who is struggling to understand how to support and connect with young people. It includes practical information and activities designed to help spur adults to reflect on their goals as well as unearth their hidden biases about teens and how to direct them. Happy, Healthy Teens focuses on small ways to make a big difference in how teens see themselves and experience their interactions with us and it will help you be more intentional in your choices as you navigate the challenges of the adolescent years. Creating strong, foundational relationships with young people during these years has an enormous, lasting impact on their ability to become adults who are confident, compassionate, and part of a healthy community.

This book is a social-emotional education manual for middle and high school educators. The curriculum contained in this book is innovative, creative, and draws on the most current research in education, mindfulness, and adolescent brain development. It will add a vital piece to the growth and development of middle and high school students as it offers them “soft skills” they will need as they navigate higher education and the workforce. It offers no Right/Wrong solutions and instead helps adolescents explore their own values and beliefs in a shared space that allows for an honest exchange of ideas. Content areas include Compassion, Mindfulness, Self-Worth, Positive Mindset, and Dealing with Stress, Anxiety, and Fear. Each lesson addresses more than one of the CASEL guidelines for social-emotional health, with an appendix mapping the specific skills to each lesson. Educators will find the lessons flexible in that there is no specific progression or required format. They can be delivered in one sitting or across several smaller time periods such as homeroom or advisory periods.

A family built, a family lost. Truth Has a Different Shape is a story of the power of compassion, of love and loss, revelations and relationship, and the evolution of self. Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, Kari O'Driscoll was taught that strength and stoicism were one and the same. She was also taught that a girl's job was to take care of everyone else. For decades, she believed these ideas, doing everything she could to try and keep the remaining parts of her family together, systematically anticipating disaster and fixing catastrophes one by one. Truth Has a Different Shape is one woman's meditation on how societal and familial expectations of mothering influenced her sense of self and purpose, as well as her ideas about caretaking. As an adult, finding herself a caretaker both to her own children and to her aging parents, O'Driscoll finally reckons with the childhood trauma that shaped her world. Adoption, loss, and divorce defined her approach to motherhood, but in Truth Has a Different Shape, O'Driscoll finally pushes back. This memoir tracks her progress as she discovers how to truly care for those she loves without putting herself at risk, using mindfulness and compassion as tools for healing both herself and her difficult relationships.

This book offers clear, actionable ways for parents and educators to create and strengthen relationships with teens during a key time of growth and development. With an emphasis on mindfulness, non-violent communication, and rooted in what we know about brain and social development during the adolescent years, this book is a great resource for anyone who is struggling to understand how to support and connect with young people. It includes practical information and activities designed to help spur adults to reflect on their goals as well as unearth their hidden biases about teens and how to direct them. Happy, Healthy Teens focuses on small ways to make a big difference in how teens see themselves and experience their interactions with us and it will help you be more intentional in your choices as you navigate the challenges of the adolescent years. Creating strong, foundational relationships with young people during these years has an enormous, lasting impact on their ability to become adults who are confident, compassionate, and part of a healthy community.

This book is a social-emotional education manual for middle and high school educators. The curriculum contained in this book is innovative, creative, and draws on the most current research in education, mindfulness, and adolescent brain development. It will add a vital piece to the growth and development of middle and high school students as it offers them “soft skills” they will need as they navigate higher education and the workforce. It offers no Right/Wrong solutions and instead helps adolescents explore their own values and beliefs in a shared space that allows for an honest exchange of ideas. Content areas include Compassion, Mindfulness, Self-Worth, Positive Mindset, and Dealing with Stress, Anxiety, and Fear. Each lesson addresses more than one of the CASEL guidelines for social-emotional health, with an appendix mapping the specific skills to each lesson. Educators will find the lessons flexible in that there is no specific progression or required format. They can be delivered in one sitting or across several smaller time periods such as homeroom or advisory periods.