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Grown and Flown

How to Support Your Teen, Stay Close as a Family, and Raise Independent Adults

Lisa Heffernan and Mary Dell Harrington

Flatiron Books

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ISBN10: 1250751373
ISBN13: 9781250751379

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368 Pages

$18.99

CA$24.99

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The high school and college years: an extended roller coaster of academics, friends, first loves, first break-ups, driver’s ed, jobs, and everything in between. Kids are constantly changing and how we parent them must change, too. But how do we stay close as a family as our lives move apart?

Enter the co-founders of Grown and Flown, Lisa Heffernan and Mary Dell Harrington. In the midst of guiding their own kids through this transition, they launched what has become the largest website and online community for parents of fifteen to twenty-five year olds. Now they’ve compiled new takeaways and fresh insights from all that they’ve learned into this handy, must-have guide.

Grown and Flown is a one-stop resource for parenting teenagers, leading up to—and through—high school and those first years of independence. It covers everything from the monumental (how to let your kids go) to the mundane (how to shop for a dorm room). Organized by topic—such as academics, anxiety and mental health, college life—it features a combination of stories, advice from professionals, and practical sidebars.

Consider this your parenting lifeline: an easy-to-use manual that offers support and perspective. Grown and Flown is required reading for anyone looking to raise an adult with whom you have an enduring, profound connection.

Reviews

Praise for Grown and Flown

"Heffernan and Harrington deliver the book we've all been waiting for: a wise, researched, and essential handbook on raising late adolescents and young adults. At once practical and profound, Grown & Flown brims with sensible advice and describes how we can support older children while fostering their independence. I am recommending this book to every parent I know and keeping a copy close at hand to answer parenting questions of my own."—Lisa Damour, Ph.D., author of The New York Times bestsellers Under Pressure and Untangled

"There is no resource I recommend more often than Grown & Flown. This book is an invaluable guide for parents who want to raise independent, competent, and resilient kids who know they are loved."—Jessica Lahey, author of The New York Times bestseller The Gift of Failure

"Grown and Flown is chock full of grounded, expert advice on how to support your teen in their transition to young adulthood. There's something for every parent in this smart, accessible guide."—Lori Gottlieb, author of The New York Times bestseller Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

“There is no better company in this gnarly, possibly fantastic transition than Grown and Flown. The perspective in these pages has been invaluable to me.”—Kelly Corrigan, author of The New York Times bestseller Tell Me More

“This book is even better than a sage on speed-dial. Lisa Heffernan and Mary Dell Harrington intuited a vast need when they cofounded an online parent community. Consider Grown & Flown an indispensable, non-judgmental life-line to answer endless questions, even if your baby is fifteen—or twenty-five.”—Sally Koslow, author of Slouching Toward Adulthood and Another Side of Paradise

"Lisa Heffernan and Mary Dell Harrington have created an extraordinary digital community of parents and caregivers. With this new book, they expand their reach, providing a dynamic melding of knowledge sourced from experts with that of members in the parenting community speaking from experience. Together, they provide the fodder for starting those ever-important 'digital watercooler' conversations about raising teens. And they offer forward-looking ideas in helping families with teens to build not only independence in them today but the healthy interdependence we all seek far into the future with our children as they transition into adult lives."—Ken Ginsburg, MD, MSEd, Co-Founder, Center for Parent and Teen Communication, Adolescent Medicine Specialist at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

"I'm constantly treading the line between letting my kids know that they can count on me for everything . . . and figuring out a way to let them fail. Grown and Flown is such a great resource for this—among a million other things, it teaches me how and when to get out of their way."—Jenny Rosenstrach, The New York Times bestselling author of How to Celebrate Everything

Reviews from Goodreads

BOOK EXCERPTS

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INTRODUCTION

Grown and Flown


Life gave them to me. I’m preparing myself, as best I can, to give them back to life.

—CHARLES M. BLOW

We had a little bit of Mom Swagger going on. We had...

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About the author

Lisa Heffernan and Mary Dell Harrington

Lisa Heffernan and Mary Dell Harrington, the cofounders of Grown and Flown, are writers, moms, and friends. They created Grown and Flown when each of their youngest kids were in high school and their oldest kids were in college. It has become the #1 site for parents with teens and college students, reaching millions of parents every month. In their past incarnations, Mary Dell worked in television and media, and Lisa had a career that included Wall Street, politics, and writing. Lisa is a New York Times bestselling author whose books include Goldman Sachs: The Culture of Success. They both live with their husbands in the New York area, where they raised their families.

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