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For teenagers, this just might be the summer of love -- an experience that could be as emotional for parents as it is for their child. First love often elicits happiness and heartbreak, elation and utter devastation. So how can worldly grown-ups deal with their kids' emotional roller coaster? They should start by trying to understand what the kids are going through, says Sol Gordon, author of the book How Can You Tell If You're Really in Love? (Adams). "The worst thing that a parent can do is to attack it or criticize it," he says. Even kids as young as 12 feel powerful emotions about the opposite sex, he says, and those feelings should not be minimized. (He estimates that the most common ages for falling in love for the first time are between 14 and 18.) Gordon urges parents not to get hung up on definitions. After all, love is a difficult thing to define -- and probably more difficult for teenagers with raging hormones. "I feel that if a person says they're in love, they are," he says. "I don't have the chutzpah to say it's puppy love or it's infatuation." Parents often think they know exactly what their kids are going through -- and most of the time, they do, says Kay Allenbaugh, author of the book Chocolate for a Teen's Heart (Fireside), a collection of stories for young women. "Parents have been there, done that."
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