Parenting the Addicted Teen offers a much-needed resource for parents and families struggling with addiction. So often the focus is on getting the addicted loved one into treatment. Parents and families hope that getting their adolescent or young adult into rehab will magically solve the problem. Treatment is an important first step, but in reality the process of healing and recovery is not a straight path. It is one of ups and downs, relapse and renewal, with ongoing stressors that can tax the already-challenged resources of a beleaguered family system. Krovitz-Neren offers a concrete, practical, yet emotionally intelligent model based on her years of experience and research to guide parents through the difficulties of navigating the recovery process in a way that is healing, compassionate, and hopeful. She is finely attuned to the voices and needs of the kids who are desperately fighting for their lives and are so in need of the love and embrace of their families, as well as to the plight of parents who are often frustrated and desperate. An important book for parents and professionals! —Ann Cusack, PsyD, RN, CADC
Parenting the Addicted Teen is a rich, useful how-to book of the highest order. With clarity, simplicity, depth, and enormous wisdom, Barbara Krovitz-Neren offers a life-changing guidebook parents can use right now to understand their recovering children as they’ve never understood them before. Barbara redefines healthy parenting as she introduces parents to their recovering children—who they are, what they think, and what they want and need from their parents. Instead of focusing on how to fix the kids, she tells parents to pay attention, listen, and take time to be with their children. This book provides a clear ultimatum for all parents: your kids need you, and here’s how you can show up for them. What a fresh, new, enlightened perspective for parents who have been at their wits’ end or have given up, or for parents who feel too busy and too burdened by life today to pay attention to their kids. This is a parents’ book that puts the focus on the parents, exactly where it needs to be, in a positive, hopeful spirit. —Stephanie Brown, PhD, Director, Addiction Institute Outpatient Program, Menlo Park
Every parent, not just one of the parents, but every parent of a young adult or adolescent struggling with addiction and/or early recovery needs to read this book! Barbara Krovitz-Neren captures the essence of the war-torn family and with great compassion offers a focused path to healing and recovery for the whole family system. She knows her teens and young adults, and she knows their parents. You’re no longer out there alone. —Claudia Black, PhD, MSW, Clinical Architect of the Young Adult Program at the Claudia Black Young Adult Center, The Meadows
I have been working with youth in recovery from chemical use disorder (CUD) for twenty-one years and have known Barbara Krovitz-Neren for ten years. Throughout those years, parents have reached out and asked if there are any resources I could point them to. Besides the obvious choice of twelve-step fellowships, there are not too many resources for parents of children battling CUD. As their child goes through treatment, parents receive counseling support through the treatment center, but when the child leaves, the support typically ends. Recognizing this, Barbara has done a remarkable job of creating a program to assist parents in recovering in their own right and re-creating a positive family unit once again. Barbara has worked with our students and parents over the years to help in this endeavor. By collecting real-life testimonials from our students, she has been able to synthesize the information in a very meaningful way. She provides very useful and specific tools for parents to rebuild the family unit in a positive and healthy manner. At our school, we saw positive growth from the students and received many compliments from the parents who participated in the program. I’ve had the pleasure of copresenting with Barbara at professional conferences as she has endeavored to bring her 5-Step Foundational Parenting Program to a larger audience outside Minnesota. Now, with Parenting the Addicted Teen, she can help many more families with her insight and knowledge. By using real-life testimonials from actual adolescents and parents, Barbara has written a thought-provoking parenting manual specifically for parents of young people suffering from CUD. I am grateful not only for the work Barbara has done with our families over the years, but even more importantly, for writing this book, thus providing me an excellent resource to pass along to inquiring parents. —Michael Durchslag, Director of P.E.A.S.E. Academy, Recovery High School
