Vanessa Van Petten

Vanessa Van Petten, teen author of the parenting book “You’re Grounded!,” writes RadicalParenting.com along with 60 teen writers, ages 12-20 to help parents and adults get an honest and open view into the world and mind of youth. Van Petten, now 25, graduated Magna Cum Laude from Emory University in May of 2007, the same month, her book “You’re Grounded!” launched and was named in the “Top 5 Hottest Books” on Amazon it’s first month.

•Her site contains thousands of articles, videos, screencasts and live chats with Van Petten, teen writers and trendsetters from 34 different countries to offer parents a win- dow into the daily lives of their teen and tween kids. She shows parents how to talk with their screen-obsessed net generation children about everything: including safely using Facebook, smoking pot, High School dances, oral sex, and gives them tips from actual teens. Radicalparenting.com is read by thousands of teens and parents daily

•Van Petten is now on an international speaking tour and was chosen as one of the top 100 Bloggers to watch by Women’s Magazine.

•She was featured on The Dr Drew Show, CBS News, and Fox News, The Doctors, The Real Housewives of Orange County and has been in the Wall Street Journal, Teen Vogue, MSN Money, Good Housekeeping Online, Atlanta Insite Magazine and the World Journal. She has been an expert on Playboy Radio, KBUR, WCOJ Philadelphia and more for giving a young perspective on awesome parenting.

•Vanessa also runs a popular website called The Science of People.org. On this website she shares the latest research on human behavior, relationships and personal development. She gets the most interesting studies from around the world and synthesizes it into bite-sized science, for every day people to use in every day life.

Vanessa’s Mission Statement: To improve parent-teen relationships by providing them with new perspectives, stories and neutral places to communicate. This will help families build strong relationships that promote healthy attitudes and lifestyle behaviors in this generation of young adults.

What Makes Vanessa Different: One of the reasons so many communities have brought Vanessa to speak is because she is young enough to know where teens are coming from and have them open up to her and she is old enough to respect and translate for parents. She also interacts with thousands of teens on a weekly basis, her research studies, one-on-one work and position in the media give her a platform to understand youth in a very different way.

Radical Approach: Vanessa teaches, applies and is currently doing research on the principles of Dr. Paul Ekman on human lie detecting and emotional reading. She often teaches audiences–both teens and parents, how to read facial microexpressions, be a human lie detector and excel at social literacy to be able to read who they are communicating with. Vanessa has found this essential to her help for teens and parents. Parents learn to better understand their teenager and kids grasp the importance of social literacy to prevent bullying, cliques and miscommunication with their parents. This makes for lively and unique presentations.