The Terrible Teens by Kate Figes

Parental guide to living with teenagers

"I haven't told him that he's made me feel like jumping in front of a train, but I feel anguish, rage, misery, humiliation and, yes, suicidal at times," says Rosamund, mother of a 16-year-old son. The Terrible Teens is full of quotes like this. Kate Figes seems to have had two main objectives: to reassure parents that they are not alone in finding life with adolescents challenging and difficult; and to show parents how to learn to live with their teenagers.

But she focuses on the former, reproducing many depressing rants from parents. Gita, mother of 16-year-old twins, says: "Trying to be nice to your children when they're not very likeable – that's the hardest part, because they're not people that you want to be around." Thanks for that, Gita. I'm sure her children enjoy being with their mother too, if that's how she talks to them.

By Chapter 4, the tone changes. While we still hear from Rosamund, Gita and 16-year-old Clara, who expresses herself through tattoos and piercings (apparently all teenagers like to feel powerful by drawing blood, which is news to me), Figes looks at the teenage psyche: why they say and do the things they do, why they think differently from everyone else. New American research shows that teenagers have completely different minds from adults and therefore a whole new way of thinking, which explains why arguments with parents occur so easily.

The subtitle of this book is "What every parent needs to know", which seems the tiniest bit arrogant. How can she know what every parent needs to know? A big fan of teen stereotypes, she finds "all" adolescents self-centred, moody, difficult and prone to obsession. She is so fond of the image of the dysfunctional teen that she was "staggered by the number of healthy family homes" she found. But you cannot generalise about every teenager like this. I know loads of perfectly fine teenagers who don't need to be treated with the caution Figes recommends.

Nor does she offer any advice on living with your "egotistic... narcissistic... hypocritical" teenage son/daughter other than to say: "Teenagers need understanding, guidance, empathy and a sense of security from parents". This is true but, as a teenager myself, I feel that most parents should be able to understand their children and guide them through life without having to read about it in a guidebook.

Don't worry. Figes admits that adolescents do have some good points. They sleep a lot, which cuts down the amount of time that you have to spend with them. They go out a lot, so you don't have to see them much. And they can cook beans on toast, so you don't have to worry about them starving.

If you want to hear about the problems other people have with older children, then The Terrible Teens is a useful window into a world of whingeing mothers (strangely enough, almost no men seem to have volunteered similar horror stories). My advice is to talk to your children, not read about them. Besides, if they catch you reading a book called The Terrible Teens, you've had it anyway.