Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and the New Realities of Girl World

by Rosalind Wiseman

Paperback, 2009

Status

Available

Publication

Harmony (2009), Edition: Original, 448 pages

Description

Family & Relationships. Nonfiction. HTML:"My daughter used to be so wonderful. Now I can barely stand her and she won't tell me anything. How can I find out what's going on?" "There's a clique in my daughter's grade that's making her life miserable. She doesn't want to go to school anymore. Her own supposed friends are turning on her, and she's too afraid to do anything. What can I do?" Welcome to the wonderful world of your daughter's adolescence. A world in which she comes to school one day to find that her friends have suddenly decided that she no longer belongs. Or she's teased mercilessly for wearing the wrong outfit or having the wrong friend. Or branded with a reputation she can't shake. Or pressured into conforming so she won't be kicked out of the group. For better or worse, your daughter's friendships are the key to enduring adolescence�??as well as the biggest threat to her well-being. In her groundbreaking book, Queen Bees and Wannabes, Empower cofounder Rosalind Wiseman takes you inside the secret world of girls' friendships. Wiseman has spent more than a decade listening to thousands of girls talk about the powerful role cliques play in shaping what they wear and say, how they respond to boys, and how they feel about themselves. In this candid, insightful book, she dissects each role in the clique: Queen Bees, Wannabes, Messengers, Bankers, Targets, Torn Bystanders, and more. She discusses girls' power plays, from birthday invitations to cafeteria seating arrangements and illicit parties. She takes readers into "Girl World" to analyze teasing, gossip, and reputations; beauty and fashion; alcohol and drugs; boys and sex; and more, and how cliques play a role in every situation. Each chapter includes "Check Your Baggage" sections to help you identify how your own background and biases affect how you see your daughter. "What You Can Do to Help" sections offer extensive sample scripts, bulleted lists, and other easy-to-use advice to get you inside your daughter's world and help you help her. It's not just about helping your daughter make it alive out of junior high. This book will help you understand how your daughter's relationship with friends and cliques sets the stage for other intimate relationships as she grows and guides her when she has tougher choices to make about intimacy, drinking and drugs, and other hazards. With its revealing look into the secret world of teenage girls and cliques, enlivened with the voices of dozens of girls and a much-needed sense of humor, Queen Bees and Wannabes will equip you with all the tools you need to build the right foundation to help your daughter make smarter choices and empower her during this baffling, tumultuous time of li… (more)

Rating

½ (124 ratings; 3.7)

User reviews

LibraryThing member AnnieHidalgo
Rosalind Wiseman really does think of every social interaction as a minefield - an intricate game of one-upsmanship with hardly any real relating going on. At the end of the book, she also offers a list of movies you 'should watch' to get to know your teen better - among them Pretty in Pink. It
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made me wonder just how old she was. My generation WAS the Pretty in Pink generation. Wiseman seems to have reached the point in her own life where she's utterly forgotten what it is to be a teenager. She decodes rather than relates. The danger with using this book to relate to your daughter seems similar to the danger of navigating France armed with only a Berlitz phrasebook. You might make your point a few times, but you won't really know the culture because there was so much you didn't take the time to understand. I like to think of people as individuals, not striving graspers engaged in some kind of a social war, and wrapped up in it to the exclusion of everything else. If this is Wiseman's worldview, I don't want it.
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LibraryThing member lynnm
Fascinating look at the world of pre-adolescent and adolescent girls as they make their way through the horrifying maze of teenager-hood. Deals with such problems as cliques, boyfriends, and the temptations of booze, drugs, and sex. Offers some great advice for parents on how to handle conflicts,
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including sample discussions or how to open the lines of dialogue. Scary to learn the truth, but invaluable information for any parent of a girl.
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LibraryThing member dms02
Just wanted to pick this up and see some of what may be in store for me in the next few years. Thought that some of this was interesting and I may come back to it at a later date as my daughter moves through higher grades.
LibraryThing member dougcornelius
OH....MY...GOD... My young daughter will be a tween someday, then a teenager.... I will need help.

This was pointed out during a visit to the pediatrician. He recommended this book as a way to prepare for the coming tsunami of girlhood.

I still have a few years to go before. So the book left me
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terrified of what's to come.

Wiseman packs the book pull of useful strategies and anecdotes. It's hard to imagine that my delightful daughter will have to confront these issues. But I'd be a fool if I thought it would not happen. I need to be prepared, my wife needs to be prepared and my daughter needs to be prepared.

This book is must for anyone with a daughter.
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LibraryThing member NTG_Library
Fantastically insightful presentation concerning the psychology and social environments of young girls.
LibraryThing member SeriousGrace
Written for parents as a tool for understanding their daughters, Queen Bees offers insights from children and teens to supplement Wiseman's sound advice. Wiseman’s first job is to offer suggestions for what kind of guidance a mother can give her daughter surrounding all kinds of situations,
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usually related to peer to peer friendships and other critical relationships in a girl's life. Occasionally, she addresses the dads, too. More often than not, Wiseman will offer sample "scripts" of what to say in various situations. It is here that I found Wideman to be a little idealistic in more than a few places. See here: "Get inside her head and then you'll understand where she is coming from and how to help her" (p 8). That is like saying create world peace and you will end gun violence. Don't all parents want to know what is going on inside their child's head? Wouldn't knowing her true thoughts give parents at least some of the tools they need to help her? Additionally, some of the quotes from children seem a little suspect; a little too good to be true. Wiseman ignores the impact emotion has on an action. Sometimes logic is compromised by uncontrolled feeling; so much so that the right thing to say cannot come out. In truth, there are so many suggested dialogues that I found them a little tedious.
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Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

2002-04-30

Physical description

7.9 inches

ISBN

0307454444 / 9780307454447
Page: 0.3734 seconds