When Wor­ry Works responds to one of the pri­ma­ry sources of the nation’s wors­en­ing ado­les­cent men­tal health cri­sis — achieve­ment pres­sure. Bur­dened by the mount­ing pres­sures on today’s youth, par­ents seek ways to strike the bal­ance between sup­port­ing their teens’ cur­rent well-being while also set­ting them up for future suc­cess. Eager to take action and to man­age their esca­lat­ing fears, par­ents inad­ver­tent­ly and unknow­ing­ly exac­er­bate the prob­lem by over­look­ing their own parental achieve­ment anxiety.

Based on thir­ty years of clin­i­cal prac­tice and her expe­ri­ences rais­ing her own teenagers in New York City, the work demon­strates that when par­ents become aware of their indi­vid­ual anx­i­eties and learn to effec­tive­ly man­age them, they are empow­ered to make val­ues aligned, rather than wor­ry-dri­ven par­ent­ing deci­sions. Dr. Dorf­man pro­vides prac­ti­cal evi­dence-based par­ent­ing strate­gies, exer­cis­es, and reflec­tive prompts to guide par­ents through a process to con­struc­tive­ly apply to their day-to-day par­ent­ing decisions.