Jonathan I. Cloud

Parenting the Guardian Class: Validating Spirited Youth, Ending Adolescence, and Renewing America's Greatness Jonathan I. Cloud

If you have ever wished teens weren?t so rebellious, you won?t after reading this book. It is an explanation of spirited youth and the heroic roles they struggle to have in society. Rebelliousness is a part of this struggle, an inborn drive to demonstrate high self-worth that opposes families, schools, and communities that restrict them to roles that offer no means of being special, daring, and invincible. Notions about adolescence create such restrictions. The book counters them with findings and perspectives from human and social science, philosophy, myth, and cultural history to show that spirited youth: 1) innately struggle to realize potentials of their awakening spiritual intelligence; 2) aren?t adequately supported by modern forms of parenting, family, and community; 3) respond well to authoritative validation and properly resist authoritarian control; 4) lose optimism about what they can become when forced to be obedient and dependent; and 5) will become a Guardian Class that defends and creates good in communities when they are consistently validated. A validating approach to parenting that extends beyond one or two adults in a nuclear family is presented. Guidelines are offered on how it can support youth spiritual development, which is manifested by behavior that departs from established norms, encounters trials and tests, and confronts adversaries and dangers. This pattern of behavior produces positive change when adults nurture, affirm, and engage what is actually underway: 1) struggling for freedoms, possibilities, and opportunities; 2) aspiring to be special, daring, and invincible; 3) seeking to change things through defiance, challenge, and aggression; and 4) discovering the calling, purpose, and vision for their lives.