Finding the Path

About the Book

Finding the Path is a “teaching not preaching” novel for parents of teenagers and parents who fear their children’s imminent descent into teenhood.  An apocryphal story of a mother and her oppositional son, Finding the Path has truths and wise counsel interspersed within the text that that will benefit parents, teens, educators, and mental health professionals working with teens.  To help readers understand and absorb the universal messages embedded in the story, the text is peppered with fifty footnotes, which explain the theory illuminating the steps needed to bring peace to families with conflict.

Annamarie Farmer is a woman pushed beyond her ability to cope.  A widow before she hits forty, she can’t shake the anger and resentment she feels for her dead husband, who left her with an adolescent son, a hefty mortgage, and no life insurance.  To make ends meet, Anna must work at a job she hates, for a boss who demands much and gives little in return.  In the maelstrom of her life, she has lost touch with her soul.  

Anna sees glimmers of the woman she used to be on the rare occasions she connects with her fifteen-year-old son, Nick, who is in the throes of an adolescent identity crisis.  Nick’s remoteness and oppositional behavior sink Anna deeper into a quagmire of depression and anger.  She no longer expects joy from life.  Instead of looking forward to finishing her college degree in horticulture and someday working with the plants and flowers she loves, she is satisfied when she makes it through a day without getting knocked to the floor by life’s low punches.  She blames her job, the mounting bills, and especially her disrespectful teenager for making her life a living hell.

In many ways, Nick Farmer is a typical teenager clawing his way toward independence through a fog of youthful angst.  He questions every word or edict from adult authority figures.  Attempts to control his behavior and injustice are the two most potent triggers that set him off, and his mother trips his wire at least once a day.  She is the worst type of adult — a hypocrite.  She tells him not to swear, but can’t control her own language.  She urges him to show respect, then says hurtful things to him.  She says she loves him, but never supports his efforts to create a life for himself independent of her.  Always on his case about his bad grades, the messes he makes around the house, his grungy new friends, she can’t see how hard he’s working at trying to find himself.  And succeeding.  Thanks to a recent growth spurt, he is now tall and lanky and attractive to the opposite sex.  He is dating the cutest girl in his class and hanging with a crowd that knows how to have serious fun.  If it weren’t for his mother the nag, life would be sweet.

On a Monday in early October, Anna arrives at the advertising agency she manages already wrung out emotionally from her latest screaming match with her son, who can’t get himself up in the morning for school.  Her hectic morning only gets worse when, before the noon whistle blows, she receives a call from Nick’s school counselor.  He has been suspended for a week.  Anna doesn’t see how she can get away from the office to meet with the counselor until her friend Carol, the agency’s art director, steps in.  She agrees to watch Anna’s back at work so she can slip out for an hour.

At the high school, Anna overhears two students talking about a police raid that took place earlier, and she makes the (false) assumption that Nick’s wild new friends have led him astray.

Upset with the police and the school administration for orchestrating the early morning raid on student lockers, Nick organizes a sit-in in the principal’s office.  He refuses to leave the premises without a struggle and is suspended from school for fighting.  His anger against authority intensifies when

About the Author

Dr. Jeffrey P. Kaplan, a licensed psychologist, is a member of the American Psychological Association, the National Association of School Psychologists, and the APA Division of Consulting Psychology. In private practice, he specializes in teaching stress management and working with families of hard-to-reach teenagers. He is founder and president of Interpersonal Growth Workshops, a consulting and professional training firm located in the Philadelphia suburbs. Dr. Kaplan has received local and national media attention for his innovative work with adolescent boys. Abby Lederman, a former reporter, editor and freelance journalist now writing women’s fiction, brings her novelist’s skills and her faith in “the growth process” to the creation of Finding the Path. As a mother who, with Dr. Kaplan’s expert coaching, learned to see the adolescent storms of her three children as a blessing and opportunity for personal growth, she has become an enthusiastic supporter of Dr. Kaplan’s “love-based” parenting approach.