Reality Gap: Alcohol, Drugs, and Sex--What Parents Don't Know and Teens Aren't Telling
Former head of SADD (renamed Students Against Destructive Decisions), now a professional speaker, Wallace regularly visits schools to spread the alarm about risky behavior by teenagers—drinking and drug abuse, sex, bullying, and indulging in violence and self-destruction—and how to generate more effective communication between them and their parents. In this vigorous wakeup call for adults, he culls results from rather fuzzy, nonscientific SADD polls taken by the research project Teens Today that show how far apart teenagers and parents really are on these issues—the reality gap of the title. Moving from the statistics-heavy Epidemic chapter, which chronicles a staggering litany of perils like STDs and suicide, Wallace examines the turbulent changes wrought by adolescence in terms of physical, cognitive, and social-emotional development. He devotes the latter part of his work to proactive strategies for dispelling myths that keep parents in blissful ignorance—about the availability of drugs and alcohol, for one thing. Though the presentation can be scattershot and repetitive, Wallace's hands-on research and in-depth interviews are tremendously useful, as are his discussions of the role of the media and the mixed signals gleaned from parents.(Sept.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.