Difficult Family Relationships

These are no longer the happy days for kids in America. School shootings, drugs and alcohol, and premature promiscuous sex are only symptoms of a toxic culture run rampant. Let's face the fact that the Disney song "It's a Small World After All" no longer hold true. It is a big world and a dangerous world for kids growing up today. Raising Teens in a Toxic World is a guidebook to help parents navigate their way through the passage we call adolescence. Its goal is not to tell parents what to think. Its goal is to get them to think...to parent consciously...and confidently.

Jack is on the verge of leaving for college, but before he does, he wants to track down his estranged brother, Alex, and find some closure in the wake of their father's death. Meanwhile, Hallie has just found out some upsetting news about a friend in Oregon, and she has a small window to go see him before it's too late. Jack and Hallie are practically strangers. They shared a class together years ago and haven't seen each other since, though they have more in common than they'd ever imagine.

Hold onto the past or embrace the future? Addy Arden lives in a land called denial. After losing her dad in a car accident, she’d rather pretend things are okay than be crushed by grief and guilt. Her friends buy the fake smiles and her mom doesn’t seem to notice...or care. And Addy is doing great until she’s paired with Vincent Castello, the most intimidating senior at Greenville High, for a class project. Interview a random classmate and write a report on them. Should be easy, right? Not by a longshot.

For Kalvin Barnes, the only thing that comes close to the rush of playing the knockout game is watching videos of the knockout game. Kalvin's crew always takes videos of their KOs, but Kalvin wants more - something better. He thinks if someone could really see the game for what it was, could appreciate it, could capture the essence of it - that would be a video for all time. The world would have to notice. That's where Erica comes in.

It's senior year, and Paige Hancock is finally living her best life. She has a fun summer job, great friends, and a super charming boyfriend who totally gets her. But senior year also means big decisions. Weighing "the rest of her life," Paige feels her anxiety begin to pervade every decision she makes. Everything is exactly how she always wanted it to be-how can she leave it all behind next year? In her head, she knows there is so much more to experience after high school. But in her heart, is it so terrible to want everything to stay the same forever?

Learning to communicate and manage frustration is part of growing up. But some children don’t master those skills. If their frequent angry outbursts and aggressive behaviors interfere with family life, making friends, or school performance, they may have oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), which, by some estimates, affects up to 16 percent of school-age children. Though no statistics are available for younger children, experts say that most children with ODD show signs of the disorder in the preschool years.

Georgie Burgess has known only neglect and abuse during his seven and a half years of life. His alcoholic mother does little to prevent the bruises and scars inflicted on Georgie by her brutal boyfriend. With each blow, the little boy withdraws further into his dreams. When he wins a small rose bush in a lottery, it seems as if one of his dreams has finally come true. But after a particularly savage beating, he is taken from his mother and placed in a home for boys.

What do you do with your last day on Earth? There are 27 hours and 15 minutes left until a meteor strikes North America, and for Emerson and everyone else who didn't leave, the world will end. But Emerson's world already ended when she ran away from home last year. Since then she has lived on the streets, relying on her wits and her friend, Vince, to help her find places to sleep and food to eat.

Set in one of the roughest neighborhoods in the city of St. Louis, Jayrin Foster grapples with the absence of his father, while Kamree Covington copes with her own struggles as her father serves time in prison. Aceson Denner, residing in a more affluent neighborhood, faces a different challenge–his father's emotional detachment. As these teenagers navigate the turbulent waters of adolescence, the void left by their fathers becomes an insurmountable hurdle.

Jamal’s best friend, Q, doesn’t know that he died, and that he’s about to die...again. He doesn’t know that Jamal tried to save him. And that the reason they haven’t been friends for two years is because Jamal blames Q for the accident that killed his parents. But what if Jamal could have a second chance? A new technology allows Q to be reanimated for a few weeks before he dies...permanently. And Q’s mom is not about to let anyone ruin this miracle by telling Q about his impending death. So how can Jamal fix everything if he can’t tell Q the truth?

Carson Mastick is entering his senior year of high school and desperate to make his mark, on the reservation and off. A rock band - and winning the local Battle of the Bands, with its first prize of a trip to New York City - is his best shot. But things keep getting in the way. Small matters like the lack of an actual band, or the fact that his brother just got shot confronting the racist owner of a local restaurant.

Around the time that Freya loses her voice while recording her debut album, Harun is making plans to run away from home to find the boy that he loves, and Nathaniel is arriving in New York City after a family tragedy leaves him isolated on the outskirts of Washington state. After the three of them collide in Central Park, they slowly reveal the parts of their past that they haven't been able to confront, and together, they find their way back to who they're supposed to be.

Taylor Markham is now a senior at the Jellicoe School, and has been made leader of the boarders. She is responsible for keeping the upper hand in the territory wars with the townies, and the cadets who camp on the edge of the school's property over summer. She has to keep her students safe and the territories enforced and to deal with Jonah Griggs - the leader of the cadets and someone she'd rather forget. But what she needs to do, more than anything, is unravel the mystery of her past and find her mother.

Stella was born to sing. Someday Broadway. But everything changes when a tragic accident renders her deaf; she cannot hear, much less sing. Trapped in a strange new world of total silence, she must face not only the loss of her friends, her hopes, and her voice but also the loss of her identity and her life's purpose. Who is she if she's not a singer? Hayden is a quiet loner, an outcast, and the only person Stella can communicate with; his profound stutter makes him speak so slowly, she is able to easily read his lips.

The girls have different goals, different friends, and different lives, but they share one very big secret: They're all members of Don't Get Mad, a secret society that anonymously takes revenge on the school's bullies, mean girls, and tyrannical teachers. But when their latest target ends up dead with a blood-soaked "DGM" card in his hands, the girls realize that they're not as anonymous as they thought - and that someone now wants revenge on them.

Mina, Penny, and Sheryl have the typical expectations of prom night in 2005: dresses, dancing, and of course some coming of age moments. None of them plans to get pregnant, but when all three do, they band together as they face decisions that have the power to shape the rest of their lives. In 2024, their three children—Blossom, Amber, and Cole—are high school seniors, gearing up to go to prom and facing some big decisions of their own.

Best friends Carly, Daniella, Lainie, and Penny–aka the self-proclaimed #SummerSisters–have been coming to the New Jersey shore town of Ocean Park Heights ever since they could remember. And every year, the girls make a bucket list and dedicate their entire summer to completing every item on it, documenting their wacky escapades on FotoSlam for everyone to see. It's their tradition, and as long as the Summer Sisters had each other, the rocky jetty on the shore, and their bucket list, that would never change. Right? But then, tragedy strikes.

Zoe, Jake, Mia, Gregor, and Whitney meet at freshman orientation. At the end of that first day, they make a promise to reunite after graduation. So much can happen in those in-between years....

Marcelo Sandoval hears music no one else can hear - part of the autism-like impairment no doctor has been able to identify - and he's always attended a special school where his differences have been protected. But the summer after his junior year, his father demands that Marcelo work in his law firm's mailroom in order to experience "the real world."

The phenomenon that's been sweeping the country seems to be here to stay. Not only are the teenagers who have come back from their graves still here, but newlydeads are being unearthed all the time. While scientists look for answers and politicians take their stands, the undead population of Oakvale have banded together in a group they're calling the Sons of Romero, hoping to find solidarity in segregation.