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This is NPR's Life Kit with tools to help you get it together.

Hey everybody, Mary El Cigara here.

Remember what it was like to be a teenager?

Life was so exciting, so full of possibility, and also so damn painful. You know, one day your crush stops by your locker and chats you up and the next he has a girlfriend. One day you're completely in sync with your best

friends and the next they're freezing you out and you don't know why. The ups and downs would be a lot

for anyone to handle, but that's especially true for teenagers,

whose brains are still developing. Psychologist Lisa DeMore has dedicated her career to working with teens.

I have an enormous personal fondness for teenagers. I think it is such an extraordinary and pivotal time of life.

And what I really appreciate about teenagers is that they are heat-seeking missiles for dishonesty.

They can smell it or detect it at 100 yards.

And I think there is something about the rigor with which they engage the world and their high expectations for the adults around them that I find incredibly compelling, both intellectually, but also in terms of my own personal development.

I sort of feel like if you can get it right with a teenager, you're probably getting it right.

She says, thankfully, there are tools you can use to help the teenagers in your life work through their hard moments and big emotions.

On this episode of Life Kit, NPR's Rachel Martin talks with DeMore about those tools and about her new book, The Emotional Lives of Teenagers, Raising Connected, Capable, and Compassionate

Adolescence. By the way, even if you're not a parent or a caregiver to a teen, stay tuned,

because there's a lot in here about how to feel and also how to show up for your loved ones,

regardless of their age.

Support for NPR and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

RWJF is a national philanthropy working toward a future where health is no longer a privilege

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