Book Nook - THE CRUCIAL YEARS: The Essential Guide to Mental Health and Modern Puberty in Middle Childhood

Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler’s THE CRUCIAL YEARS: The Essential Guide to Mental Health and Modern Puberty in Middle Childhood (Ages 6-12), will be published by Harvest on May 6, 2025.  

A pivotal sea change is occurring in children’s development. The age of puberty has been trending earlier for decades, and now starts as young as 8 years old in girls and 9 in boys. Bullying doesn’t just happen on the playground, but over text and DM. Depression and anxiety are drastically on the rise. Couple earlier puberty with ill-equipped, developing brains and the onslaught of new media and stressors that never existed when we were kids, and it’s clear that parents need a new guide to raise this new generation.

Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler presents an essential handbook—THE CRUCIAL YEARS (Harvest, May 6, 2025)—to navigating the often misunderstood and overlooked years of middle childhood (ages 6–12).

A mom and clinical psychologist, Dr. Ziegler masterfully unlocks the enigma surrounding modern puberty and offers strategies, interventions, and answers to middle childhood’s most perplexing questions and concerns. THE CRUCIAL YEARS includes:

• Science-based advice to recognize the first signs of puberty and navigate the changes to come.
• Candid and actionable guidance for getting your kids to talk about anxiety, depression, and their complicated feelings.
• Insight into the changing world of gender and sexual identity, and how to guide your child through this complicated new landscape.
• A clear explanation of the invisible threads linking mood swings, self-image, and social media exposure.
• Road-tested, real-world guidance to handle bullies, mean girls, and other friendship and social challenges.

Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler is a licensed clinical psychologist in private practice in Denver, with more than two decades of experience treating tweens, teens and their families in the areas of anxiety, trauma, depression, chronic stress and adjustment disorders. Ziegler is the creator of Start with The Talk™, a puberty skills course for parents and kids available in-person and online that has helped over a thousand families and counting. She’s a nationally recognized expert on the intersection of puberty and mental health and is regularly featured in the media as such. 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.