With Jozi nights already getting June-cold, the fire braziers at the launch of Meg Fargher and Helen Dooley’s The Adolescent Storm were a welcome sight. Add to this the moving musical sounds from The Ridge School marimba band and a book launch party was definitely in the offing! It was a capacity crowd of parents, teachers and book fans for this new handbook for parents.
Having eaten, drunk and been merrily entertained, guests collected in the school’s art room to hear headmaster, Paul Channon, welcome everyone, saying “we are most delighted to be associated with the launch of this most wonderful book”.
Penguin’s Tracey MacDonald opened proceedings by first, praising the marimba band, and then talking about the “tumultuous storm” that often awaits the parents of teenagers. She talked of the “overnight metamorphosis of a teenager from a lovely, respectful, obedient beautiful child to a disrespectful, argumentative, disagreeable caterpillar,” saying that, “it is really up to parents to weather the storm in order for the beautiful, young adult butterfly to emerge at the end of it”.
She then introduced Fargher and Dooley’s book by saying that it may just be the answer to many “parental prayers”. Fargher and Dooley took to the podium, with Fargher speaking on behalf of both of them. Fargher shared how the book was born out of many hours of talking to parents when they “co-listened and co-counselled”. They found that “similar parenting issues were occurring often at common times in the year”.
They saw and heard many parents “getting overwrought about pretty typical behaviour, worrying about their teens possibly having a major personality disorder or sleeping sickness, when in fact the diagnosis was simple – adolescence!”
Fargher said that The Adolescent Storm “seeks to make sense of the normal, but challenging time of adolescence”. The book is focused on healthy adolescence and the journey to adulthood, “how parents and teachers can mitigate some of the negative deviations on that journey”. The book includes many real case studies that they have found occur often.
Fargher continued, saying besides recent medical and technological advances, the many issues which adolescents in the 21st century face “are probably as old as the proverbial hills”. She quoted Aristotle who said, “the youth are heated by nature as drunken men by wine”. She talked about Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who advised parents to “keep your hand upon the helm”, and how this idea is an essential tenet of The Adolescent Storm. Fargher emphatically stated that, “There can be no denying that what one does as a parent does matter”.
Ultimately the book looks at how an adolescent should be treated as a “thinking and valued person”. Fargher concluded by saying, “Good parenting builds the next generation and bad parenting can destroy it.” Her speech was warmly received by all present and it seems this handbook will be too. Parents and teachers queued up for over half an hour to buy the book and have both authors sign it for them.
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Bekommer jy jou oor hoekom jou baba huil? Kry jy nie genoeg slaap nie? Geen tyd vir jouself nie? 
