In her new book, Jennifer Kolari applies her empathic approach to parenting to what may be the most difficult time for parents-adolescence. Combining her own experience as a therapist with the most recent scientific information about mental processes, she explains what's going on inside the teenage brain as well as what's going on in their world. This understanding allows parents to de-escalate confrontations by applying techniques such as CALM (Connect, Affect, Listen, Mirror) that bypass language and go directly to the part of the brain that regulates emotion. By understanding how teens think (or don't think) parents come to see why it's so important to create and maintain a strong emotional bond that will allow their almost grown-up children to correct and contain unacceptable behaviours.

JENNIFER KOLARI is a child and family therapist with 20 years' experience working with parents and children. She is the author of Connected Parenting: How to Raise a Great Kid. She lives in Toronto with her husband and their three children.