I would like to share a new self-help book for parents called The Crucial Years: The Essential Guide to Mental Health and Modern Puberty in Middle Childhood (Ages 6-12) by Dr. Sheryl Gonzalex Ziegler. I received a copy of the book in exchange for this review. Inside this post is my affiliate links. If you click on the links and make a purchase I will make a small percentage from the products you purchase.
Even though Charlie is turning 18 this year there is times he acts like a 2 year old which drives me batty. Other times its a snot nosed teenager and in the blink of an eye a grown man who takes care of me instead of me taking care of him.
I chose to read The Crucial Years: The Essential Guide to Mental Health and Modern Puberty in Middle Childhood (Ages 6-12) to see if I could get any insight not only into Charlie but my nieces and nephews as well as my grandchild Elijah.
I love how knowledgeable the Author is and how I felt like I had meet my best friend. I was excited to find out there was a chapter on digital habits because children are on electronics to much and they are getting phones at a younger age which I think can be right at times but also wrong because the phone takes the place of time spent with our families if were not careful.
I believe every Counselor and Preachers should have a copy of The Crucial Years: The Essential Guide to Mental Health and Modern Puberty in Middle Childhood (Ages 6-12) in there offices. I will be sharing this book with all the parents I know and I hope you will do the same.
About the book:
Ever since the pandemic, puberty happens on average two years earlier, but children are generally five years younger emotionally. This schism causes real problems for kids 6-12. Dr. Ziegler shows parents how they can help.
These years used to be considered the “easy” ones by parents and caregivers, but no more. Now, it’s not uncommon for 8- and 9-year-olds to exhibit moods, behaviors, and physical traits typically associated with teenagers—leaving families stressed, confused, and looking for answers.
Enter Dr. Sheryl Ziegler, a nationally renowned clinical psychologist, play therapist, podcast host, TEDx speaker, mother of three, and award-winning author of the forthcoming, paradigm-shifting book, THE CRUCIAL YEARS: The Essential Guide to Mental Health and Modern Puberty in Middle Childhood (HarperCollins Harvest, May 6, 2025).
In The Crucial Years, Dr. Ziegler shares essential new information plus practical strategy:
- Puberty Starts Earlier Today: how this trend + modern-day stressors creates a perfect storm. But properly addressed, we can still set kids in middle childhood up for healthy teen years.
- The Triggering Truths: Scripts for talking to children about earlier puberty. Parents can’t control when puberty begins, but how they handle it can make a huge difference for kids.
- The New Normal for Bodies: Insights into the shifting world of gender and sexual identity, body image and disordered eating for girls and boys.
- Handling 4th Grade “Mean Girls”: What to do when it feels like 7th grade is happening in 4th grade, and the difference between bullying and being mean—and why that matters.
- Moods and Emotional Outbursts: Help your child understand big feelings with easy creativity and art-based explainers, such as the “Volcano and Iceberg” exercise.
- Social Media: Why younger children are drawn to social media meant for older teens plus practical tips for reducing their exposure.
- Drugs and Alcohol: The new landscape plus scripts for important conversations to have starting at age 6.
- The ATTUNE Method for Parents: Attention, Turn Toward, Understand, Non-defensively listen, Empathize. Ziegler helps parents identify and regulate their child’s emotions with less confusion and stress.
- The Window of Tolerance: Dr. Ziegler’s lifeline exercise to help caregivers address the root causes of a child’s emotional dysregulation
Meet the Author
Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler, Psy.D. is an acclaimed expert on children’s mental health with a deep understanding of today’s tweens, teens, and their families. A first-generation Latina with Puerto Rican and Cuban roots, Ziegler was born in Harlem and raised in Washington Heights. She completed her advanced doctoral training at The Astor Home for Children in Rhinebeck, NY, where was she was supported by The Bill and Melinda Gates Scholarship Foundation, and began her professional career treating the highest acuity patients in subsequent youth residential treatment centers
. Her group private practice, The Child & Family Therapy Center at Lowry, was established in 2006 in Denver, CO. Dr. Ziegler appears weekly on Denver’s NBC-TV’s 9News as their on-staff mental health and parenting expert and has been featured in such national media as The Today Show, CNN Headline News, The Katie Couric Show, and The Doctors.
She has contributed to or been interview by The New York Times, Washington Post, Harvard Business Review, Time, Parents, Elle, Better Homes and Gardens and more. Dr. Ziegler has been named a Luminary in the field of Psychotherapy and was recognized as such at the 2022 Evolution of Psychotherapy conference in Orlando, Florida where was asked to speak at the official meeting of the Milton Erikson Foundation alongside the most prominent researchers, theorists, professors and clinicians in the field.
Ziegler is the author of Mommy Burnout: How to Reclaim your Life and Raise Healthier Children (Dey Street, 2018), which won Best Parenting Book of the Year by the International Latino Book Awards Foundation.
She is a board member of Detach, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping teens achieve digital balance and advises major national corporations on tween and teen mental health initiatives. She is also the mother of a tween and two teens.
Thank you,
Glenda, Charlie and David Cates
