Who this little book is for
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You are a teen, or you remember being one. You know what it feels like to be watched, judged, or left out.
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You live or work with young people. You have asked "If everybody jumped off a cliff, would you?" and noticed it didn't help.
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You are a grown-up who still feels the pull. Other people's opinions can seem to run our days at any age.
Most of us learned that peer pressure is a force. It starts with other people and lands on us, and it's very hard to fight.
Mavis sees it differently. After more than forty-five years of working with people of every age, she believes the pressure we feel is created by our own thinking about what others might think. It looks like it's coming from the outside. It isn't.
That might sound too simple. It is simple. It is also good news, because thinking is something we can learn to understand.
Come celebrate the book with us
Some books are meant to be read quietly. This one is meant to be talked about.
To celebrate the launch of Adolescents and the Myth of Peer Pressure, Darragh Power, the artist who drew Mavis’s portrait for the book, will sit down with Mavis Karn for an open, unscripted conversation. No slides. No lecture. Just two people, a few good questions, and room for yours.
Details
When: October 31 - 10 am CT - 4 pm UK
Where: on Zoom here
Cost: Free
Put it in your calendar, set your alarm, and let yourself have this hour.
It’s a conversation, and your chair is already saved.
Inside you'll find
Real stories. Lamar, 16, who met a group of rival gang members one night and felt "something click." Katy, 15, who treats other people's moods like the weather. Avery, 19, who comes from three generations of gang life.
A plain-language look at how the mind works, with simple drawings by George Karn.
Short exercises you can try in a minute, with your eyes closed.
A new way to see your feelings: as friendly signals that are on your side, not as proof that something is wrong with you.
Mavis Karn is a counselor, educator and consultant in private practice in St. Paul, Minnesota.
For more than forty-five years she has worked with individuals, families, schools, prisons, hospitals, businesses and Native American tribes, and more recently with people in many countries over Zoom. She is also a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother.
This little book began as a writing class on her way to a graduate degree. Years later she re-read it, decided it still held up, and thought it might be useful to all the kids and former kids who suffer from peer pressure, and to the people who care for them.
"One of the wisest people I know..."
Richard Carlson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Don't Sweat the Small Stuff series