The Disengaged Teen

Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better

By: Jenny Anderson, Rebecca Winthrop

Length: 9 hrs

Publisher's summary

A powerful tool kit for parents of both checked-out and stressed-out teens that shows exactly what to do (and stop doing) to support their academic and emotional flourishing.

Adolescents are hardwired to explore and grow, and learning is mainly how they do this. But a shocking majority of teens are disengaged from school, simultaneously bored and overwhelmed. This is feeding an alarming teen mental health crisis. As kids get older and more independent, parents often feel powerless to help. But fear not, there are evidence-backed strategies to guide them from disengagement to drive, in and out of school.

For the past five years, award-winning journalist Jenny Anderson and the Brookings Institution’s global education expert Rebecca Winthrop have been investigating why so many children lose their love of learning in adolescence. Now, weaving extensive original research with real-world stories of kids who transformed their relationships with learning, they identify four modes of learning that students use to navigate through the shifting academic demands and social dynamics of middle and high school, shaping the internal narratives about their skills, potential, and identity:

• Resister. When kids resist, they struggle silently with profound feelings of inadequacy or invisibility, which they communicate by ignoring homework, playing sick, skipping class, or acting out.

• Passenger. When kids coast along, consistently doing the bare minimum and complaining that classes are pointless. They need help connecting school to their skills, interests, or learning needs.

• Achiever. When kids show up, do the work, and get consistently high grades, their self-worth can become tied to high performance. Their disengagement is invisible, fueling a fear of failure and putting them at risk for mental health challenges.

• Explorer. When kids are driven by internal curiosity rather than just external expectations, they investigate the questions they care about and persist to achieve their goals.

Understanding your child’s learning modes is vital for nurturing their ability to become Explorers. Anderson and Winthrop outline simple yet counterintuitive parenting strategies for connecting with your child, tailoring your listening and communication styles to their needs, igniting their curiosity, and building self-awareness and emotional regulation.

©2025 Jenny Anderson (P)2025 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Every parent of a checked out, overwhelmed, or frustrated middle or high-school student needs to read this book RIGHT NOW. Winthrop and Anderson take on some of the toughest questions about America’s education crisis—and, building on a decade of meticulous research, show parents the levers they can use to unlock inner drive in their children. This is exactly the right dose of science, rich story-telling, and actionable insights that parents need to get their teens out of a rut and set them up for success.”—Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better​

“This urgent book demystifies one of the most important factors behind both academic success and emotional health in adolescence: student engagement. They make a persuasive case that parents hold more influence than they think, offering paradigm-shifting strategies for turning away from monitoring homework and grades to better unleash intrinsic motivation. Every parent of a child ten or older should read this book.”​—Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach For America