Inside Scoop 2019

INSIDE SCOOP
It’s the LITTLE things
With his new book, Adolescence: How to Survive It, in the offing, former
Eton head Tony Little tells Susannah Warren why it’s vital to keep talking
to your teenager, how to choose a school and what he’s learnt in the job
The teenage years have never
been easy, but with so
much unchartered territory
to navigate, the experience
is more complex today than
ever before. “The human condition is constant,”
says Tony Little, former headmaster of Eton and
co-author of Adolescence: How to Survive It. “What
has changed is the electronic world of the screen.
That’s a game changer in terms of how adolescents
can behave and indeed in terms of relationships. It’s
one of the difficult areas of life that we are yet fully
to understand and resolve.”
Eager to put his 40 years’ practical experience in
the context of the knowledge of a real expert,
Little collaborated on the book with Herb
Etkin, one of the UK’s leading authorities
on child and adolescent psychology.
Through a series of Q&A dialogues, the pair
tackle the key problems facing today’s young adults
and set out practical ways to combat them.
The most important thing parents can do for their
adolescent children, Little says, is “to listen and to
talk”. “It sounds so simple as to beggar belief… but
actually in the adolescent years it often becomes very
difficult. When things have a tendency to go awry
is when the lines of communication aren’t clearly
open, they clam up or their experience becomes
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