Breathe through This: Mindfulness for Parents of Teenagers

Parenting a teenager can be extremely challenging as we struggle to stay balanced and supportive of our child's ups and downs, granting them increased freedom while still maintaining necessary limits. Mindfulness meditation—which emphasizes the quality of attention that combines full awareness with acceptance of each moment, just as it is—is a practice that is uniquely well-suited to helping us strengthen our parenting skills during this this time. This practice—which has gained broad acceptance among family therapists and other mental health professionals, and in schools, for stress and anxiety reduction and behavior modification—helps us to stay calm in tense moments and be less reactive with our children. It allows us to respond to them in ways that are most helpful, and that promote dialogue rather than clashing.

This little book, written by Eline Snel, a popular therapist and mindfulness teacher, is a very appealing introduction to mindfulness meditation for parents of teenagers. In a warm, simple, and accessible way, Snel describes what mindfulness is and how mindfulness-based practices can help you calm down during tense and heated moments and become a more focused and open-hearted parent. Snel includes numerous guided meditations on the accompanying audio.