Raising teenagers does not have to be something to dread. Join Vanessa Kroll Bennett in conversation with New York Times bestselling author Christina Geist for a sneak peek of her new book Teenhood where she shares the secrets to bringing joy, connection, and laughter to the relationship with teens.”

A pre-ordered signed copy of the book is included with each ticket purchase.

Conventional wisdom is that teenagers are selfish slobs, obsessed with their phones, driven by raging hormones, and that raising them is a nightmare. But teen whisperer Vanessa Kroll Bennett flips the narrative, arguing that teens can be the funniest, smartest, most caring human beings . . . if we give them the chance.  Calm, optimistic, and entertaining, Bennett offers positive yet realistic guidance for the biggest challenges parents of teens face—from not taking their behavior so personally to managing tech use to pushing back on today’s high-stress culture. 

Teenhood provides hard-won tenets for confidently stepping into this stage of parenting, including:

• Treat them like jerks, they’ll act like jerks.
• The path to independence is an ultramarathon, not a sprint.
• They’re not ignoring you—you’re just not interesting to them.
• You can’t make them happy, but you can build resilience.

Pairing cutting-edge research about teen development with sanity-saving stories, strategies, and scripts, Teenhood will make the most complex phase of parenting more joyful and less stressful for all.

Vanessa Kroll Bennett is a national bestselling author, podcaster, and teen whisperer on a mission to help adults raise tweens and teens with less stress and more joy. She is the co-author of the nationally bestselling This Is So Awkward: Modern Puberty Explained (with Cara Natterson, MD), co-host of the This Is So Awkward podcast, and co-founder of Less Awkward, a company dedicated to making growing up more comfortable, where she helped create That Health Class, an innovative K–12 health and sex education curriculum used in schools across the country. She is a graduate of Wellesley College and—perhaps most importantly—is the mother of four children, ages 16 to 23. Learn more at www.vanessakrollbennett.com.