Thank you to Netgalley and Bloosmburry Academic for the gifted copy.

The Mindful Teen was very insightful. It covers tons of interesting research on teenagers when it comes to adolescence, technology, cyberbullying, parenting, and much more. I find that there was a ton of information that many parents can agree or disagree with in this book. There's also a ton of information in this book that sounds like it was well researched. I just wished that it provided the actual graphs and stats to what it was talking about, because it does sound legit, but without "evidence," parents seem to sneer at the idea of anything. You can say the sky is blue, and without physical evidence that they can see, they won't believe a word you say. So it can be written in words that "The number of fatal crashes among young drivers between the ages of fifteen and twenty increased by 18 percent from 2012 to 2021," but even if it says by NHTSA, the visual stats should've been included. Sounds dumb, but many "like" pictures. Think of some as giant toddlers. It sounds insulting, but that's the reality of it.

Not many will find this book helpful or will agree to everything in this book, but it is a decent read. I think teens are complicated human beings. As parents, many of us have been through the "phase." We try to have our children avoid making mistakes or similar mistakes we made. We avoid having them make bad decisions based on what the news says is wrong. However, open communication is really key to a lot of this. It might not be 100%. Your children may still be pulled towards something negative, but having an open conversation with your children about safety and the dangers of the world rather than masking them from it is healthy. I think many parents avoid their children from experiencing or being involved in many life challenges, experiences, and much more due to fear of failure, safety, and much more. I am guilty of being one of those parents. However, your teen ends up not learning. We end up holding them back. As they get older,l they end up becoming self-entitled. That becomes much harder to fix when they're adults.

As I mentioned above, this book has a bunch of information that we should already know, and information that we should consider. Not everyone may agree, but it is good to know.