Holding On While Letting Go

Book excerpt: Havard-trained psychologist and Psychology Today parenting expert Carl Pickhardt gives parents an eye-opening lifeline to what to expect on rocky road of middle school, revealing the Four Freedoms that every child must master to become a healthy adult--and how parents can adapt, encourage, and grow themselves This book explains to parents how four unfolding drives for freedom sequentially and cumulatively motivate adolescent growth, as this ten to twelve year coming of age passage forever changes the child, the parent in response, and the relationship between them. The four unfolding freedoms are these. First is freedom from rejection of childhood, around the late elementary school years, when the girl or boy wants to stop acting and being treated as just a child anymore. Second is freedom of association with peers, around the middle school years, when the girl or boy wants to form a second family of friends. Third is freedom for older experimentation, around the high school years, when the girl or boy wants to try more grown up activities. And fourth is freedom to claim emancipation, around the college age years, when the girl or boy decides to become their own ruling authority. With each successive push for freedom, parent and adolescent both have to do less holding on to each other while doing more letting go.