by Dennis Coates | Adolescent Brain, Alcohol, Drugs, Education, Parenting Books, Teen Culture, Teen Success
One crucial step in helping your adolescent child build a superior mind is to protect the prefrontal cortex (PFC) from damage during adolescence – the developmental period for wiring the foundation for critical thinking. To this end, I’ve written a number...
by Dennis Coates | Education, Mentoring, Parenting, Parenting Books, Teen Success
The thing I appreciate most about Michael Gurian’s parenting books is their focus on brain science. I’ve studied the human brain for 25 years, and I can tell you that no parenting author writes with more clarity, authority, and accessibility than Michael Gurian. His...
by Dennis Coates | Adolescent Brain, Education, Mentoring, Parenting Books, Teen Success
Two decades ago, Michael Gurian’s best-selling book, The Wonder of Boys, created a stir. The push for women’s rights assumed the developmental needs of both genders were the same. Going against this assumption, he made a convincing case that while boys and...
by Dennis Coates | Alcohol, Drugs, Personal Strength, Rebellion, Self-Esteem, Teen Success
Whenever I think about positive self-esteem and its importance to the achievement, mental health, and happiness of young people, I think of how perilous a life journey can be. And I always think of Jason. Jason was the second child in a large Catholic family. His...
by Dennis Coates | Adolescent Brain, Critical Thinking, Parent-child Communication, Parenting Books, Teen Success
Every time a teenager tries to figure out why something happened, tries to understand the relationship between thing A and thing B, tries to see the connection between cause and effect, foresees possible consequences, evaluates options, solves problems and consciously...
by Dennis Coates | Adolescence, Alcohol, Drugs, Education, Encouragement, Parent-child Communication, Parenting, Parenting Books, Teen Success
I’ve written two books, Conversations with the Wise Uncle (for boys) and Conversations with the Wise Aunt (for girls) that are fictional accounts about an older relative mentoring a young person during the teen years to give the child a “heads up”...
