"Adolescence can feel like a tug-of-war between parent and child. Changing young people push for more worldly experience and become less welcoming of parental authority, often leaving parents feeling perplexed, unappreciated, and wondering where their adoring daughter or son went. The one thing that teenagers crave, and wish their parents would simply allow, whether ready for it or not, is more freedom to make individual and independent choices. However, loving parents often find the risks of allowing growing freedom to be an agonizing part of their continuing responsibility. Holding On While Letting Go explores how four basic freedoms drive the period of growing up commonly termed adolescence. 1. Freedom from rejection of childhood, to stop acting as a child. (Around the late elementary years.) 2. Freedom of association with peers, to form a second family of friends. (Around the middle school years.) 3. Freedom for advanced experimentation, to signify becoming more adult. (Around the high school years.) 4. Freedom to claim emancipation, to become one's own ruling authority. (Around the college-age years.)" -- Back cover.