The Grown-Up's Guide to Teenage Humans

How to Decode Their Behavior, Develop Unshakable Trust, and Raise a Respectable Adult

By: Josh Shipp

Narrated by: Roger Wayne

A practical guide to understanding teens from bestselling author and global youth advocate Josh Shipp.

In 2015, Harvard researchers found that every child who does well in the face of adversity has had at least one stable and committed relationship with a supportive adult. But Josh Shipp didn’t need Harvard to know that. Once an at-risk foster kid, he was headed straight for trouble until he met the man who changed his life: Rodney, the foster parent who refused to quit on Shipp and got him to believe in himself.

Now, in The Grown-Up’s Guide to Teenage Humans, Shipp shows all of us how to be that caring adult in a teenager’s life. Stressing the need for compassion, trust, and encouragement, he breaks down the phases of a teenage human from sixth to twelfth grade, examining the changes, goals, and mentality of teenagers at each stage.

Shipp offers revelatory stories that take us inside the teen brain, and shares wisdom from top professionals and the most expert grown-ups. He also includes practice scripts that address tough issues, including:

• FORGIVENESS: What do I do when a teen has been really hurt by someone and it’s not their fault?
• COMMUNICATION: How do I get a teen to talk to me? They just grunt.
• TRUST: My teen blew it. My trust is gone. Where do we go from here?
• BULLYING: Help! A teen (or their friend) is being harassed.
• DIFFICULT AND AWKWARD CONVERSATIONS: Drugs. Death. Sex. Oh my.

Written in Shipp’s playfully authoritative, no-nonsense voice, The Grown-Up’s Guide to Teenage Humans tells his story and unpacks practical strategies that can make a difference. Ultimately, it's not about shortcuts or magic words—as Shipp reminds us, it’s about investing in kids and giving them the love, time, and support they need to thrive.

And that means every kid is one caring adult away from being a success story.

should be recommended reading

this book helped me change my mindset about my teen. I am not raising a child anymore, I am raising a young man and I'm ready to take on the role of "coach" rather than parent. I cried sweet tears reading this.

Very distracting Narrator

Overall, the content of the book is fantastic. I learn and and am currently implementing a lot of ideas and reflections from the book. The 4 parent traps are excellent points to ponder.
The downside of this audible product is the narrator Roger Wayne. Whenever there is a dialog, he tried to change his voice to someone else to mimic what is in the book. He is terrible at it, and it is very very distracting and sounds disrespectful. He does NOT have to change his voice to sound like a female voice! So, publisher, please do not use this narrator.

Highly recommended

The book is great. As somo other review said, the audio version's conversations which are supposed to be by girls and women are weired as the male narrater attempts to read in his female-mimicking voices. That was the only strange aspect. Contents are great and offer tons of insights for parents.

Insightful Book

Great content. He really is passionate about the healthy development of teens. Kudos too for the content available on his website. I've already made use of the teen cell phone contract.

Only negative-reason for 4 stars on performance... The audio of the "scene plays" is corny to the point of annoying with the faked voices for parents & teens. would have been better to actually have other real people just read out the parts.

if you have a Teenage Human you have to have this

As a mom of two terrific teenagers and a marriage and family therapist I would say this is my number one recommended book for parents of teens. It gives you actually hands on strategies and fabulous information