Defiant Teens – A Clinician’s Manual for Assessment

This authoritative manual presents an 18-step program designed both to teach parents the skills they need to manage difficult adolescent behavior and to improve family relationships overall. The first nine steps of the program modify the approach presented in Russell A. Barkley’s Defiant Children, Second Edition, to focus on developmental concerns of adolescence. The authors delineate clear procedures for assessing defiance in teens and working with parents, alone or in groups, to reverse problem behavior. Steps 10 through 18 are conducted with parents and teenagers together, utilizing a proven family therapy model developed by Arthur L. Robin and Sharon Foster. Clinicians are shown how to help all family members learn to negotiate, communicate, and problem-solve more effectively, while facilitating adolescents’ individuation and autonomy. The manual’s utility is greatly enhanced by ready-to-photocopy forms that enable clinicians to gauge the nature, diversity, and severity of parent adolescent conflicts; assess for oppositional defiant disorder (ODD); and evaluate parental psychological adjustment. Also included are reproducible handouts for families that reinforce crucial ideas and skills imparted in-session.