The Crucial Years

Dr Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler, Psy.D. is an acclaimed expert on children''s mental health with a deep understanding of the needs of today''s tweens, teens and their families. A first-generation Latina with Puerto Rican and Cuban roots, Dr 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 centres. Her group private practice, The Child & Family Therapy Center at Lowry, was established in 2006 in Denver. 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 and The Katie Couric Show. She has contributed to or been interviewed 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. She 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.

Résumé

The Crucial Years is a comprehensive, scientifically-driven and shame-free guide for all parents of children entering, or already going through, early-onset puberty in today's world, addressing the factors that kids are facing earlier than ever before, such as physical changes, moodiness, body image, substances, gender and sexual identity questions, friendship changes, social media, pornography, race and class differences in puberty, sleep disturbances, anxiety and depression.

As a clinical psychologist with twenty years of specializing in both children in crisis and puberty, Dr Ziegler offers age-appropriate, practical interventions that parents and caregivers can use at home or school to guide children through middle childhood and puberty today, with an emphasis on emotional intelligence and mental health.