JANEY DEMEO, in an article first published on ASSIST News Service, reviews former troubled teen Josh Shipp’s guide to understanding teenagers…
Josh Shipp
The Grown-Up’s Guide to Teenage Humans: How to Decode Their Behavior, Develop Unshakable Trust, and Raise a Respectable Adult
Harper Wave, 2017
ISBN-13: 978-0062654069
“Drawing from his own experience, education and humor as well as a myriad of resources, Shipp’s book The Grown-Up’s Guide to Teenage Humans covers many relevant topics…He seems to hit on just about everything pertinent to today’s teen culture, and provides guidelines – including potential scenarios and conversations – on how to navigate it and best reach the teens in our lives.”
The Grown-Up’s Guide to Teenage Humans by Josh Shipp aims to show us “how to decode their behavior, develop unshakable trust, and raise a respectable adult”. And, overall, it delivers.
Josh Shipp was a troubled teen himself. I heard him speak in Orlando a few years back at the Christian Alliance For Orphans conference. His presentation was powerful, funny and loaded with compelling information.
Josh spent most of his young life in and out of foster homes and was so used to being rejected, he made it his goal to get booted out of each foster home as quickly as possible – and by any means possible. He was good at it. Until one day, one person changed everything. Rodney, an ordinary guy was catalyst to changing this troubled teen’s life so simply and yet so drastically that Shipp became an expert, an authority, and an advocate for teens.
Drawing from his own experience, education and humor as well as a myriad of resources, Shipp’s book The Grown-Up’s Guide to Teenage Humans covers many relevant topics including: stages of growth, identity, relationships, communication, education, drugs, sex, depression, eating disorders, sexting, cutting, hormones, pornography, bullying. He seems to hit on just about everything pertinent to today’s teen culture, and provides guidelines – including potential scenarios and conversations – on how to navigate it and best reach the teens in our lives.
Josh Shipp’s book almost covers it all – almost! But there is something lacking – at least from my perspective as a child advocate working with troubled kids, and as an author of a Biblical parenting book. The most important ingredient for teens and adults investing in teens seems to be missing from this book: The God factor.
If Josh Shipp’s goal is to provide practical guidelines across the spectrum for those of us who love the teens in our lives, the book is a fabulous tool – a fabulous handbook of wisdom. But if Shipp wants to help us the caregivers, and help them the teens, to have a higher chance of true success – eternal success – then bringing God into the picture would seem a no-brainer – especially coming from a Christian perspective.
Still, The Grown-Up’s Guide to Teenage Humans clearly pinpoints how to get teens and supplies excellent pointers on how to help them thrive.
The Grown-Up’s Guide to Teenage Humans can help any parent, foster parent or caring adult navigate mentoring the teens in their lives.
Janey DeMeo is the founding-president of Orphans First – a Christ-centred non-profit ministry helping underprivileged children around the world. She is an author, freelance writer and Bible teacher – and has worked with husband, Louis, as a church-planter in France. This review was first published on ASSIST News Service.
