Growing Up Apps

Growing Up: Preparing for Adolescence

Available for Apple iPads and Android Tablets

Growing Up: Preparing for Adolescence is an e-book series for preteens ages 9-12 or grades 4-6. The Growing Up Series is designed to empower young people, helping them to successfully negotiate the challenges of pre-adolescence. The "Parent Hints & Tips" feature also makes these books a helpful tool for parents.

Book 1: What Is Adolescence?

Book 1: What Is Adolescence? provides a foundation for understanding the changes and challenges of the preteen years. This first book focuses on developing strong character, recognizing one’s natural talents and abilities, and building self-confidence. It also targets shortcomings and explains the importance of self-improvement. Methods for building stable and long lasting self-esteem are also highlighted.

Growing Up’s content, in combination with its rich interactivity, promotes effective parent/child communication on important life issues. Every page offers parents an opportunity to connect with their pre-adolescent child and to discuss and transmit important values. Some pages offer specific “Parent Hints and Tips.” Thus, it is most effective when read together.

Book 2: Why Do I Feel This Way?

Book 2: Why Do I Feel This Way? outlines some of the physical, emotional, and social changes young people can expect as they approach adolescence. Physical changes, such as growing taller, are covered first. Glands, hormones, the pituitary gland in particular, and the growth hormone all play important roles in the physical maturation process. (Please Note: There are no sexual references in this material.) It’s not only the body that changes, however, and readers learn that emotions and relationships are affected too. Emotional changes such as silliness, talkativeness, and feeling cranky are discussed.

Growing Up: Why Do I Feel This Way? examines “love” quite extensively, as well. Readers discover that “true” love is real, but for love to be “true,” it must be “authentic” — more than a feeling. It must be backed up by appropriate loving behavior.

In the course of this discovery, they are given the opportunity of identifying behavior that is loving and behavior that is unloving. They also learn the difference between feeling unloved and not being loved in actuality. This distinction is an important one, and it is discussed in the context of parent/child disagreements. Young people are “present-oriented” thinkers, while most parents are “future-oriented” thinkers. This difference is often at the root of disagreements between young people and their parents. Readers are introduced to the benefit of the “checks and balances” provided by this difference.