Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood

by Lisa Damour Ph.D.

Paperback, 2017

Call number

305.235

Description

In this sane, highly engaging, and informed guide for parents of daughters, Dr. Damour draws on decades of experience and the latest research to reveal the seven distinct—and absolutely normal—developmental transitions that turn girls into grown-ups, including Parting with Childhood, Contending with Adult Authority, Entering the Romantic World, and Caring for Herself. Providing realistic scenarios and welcome advice on how to engage daughters in smart, constructive ways, Untangled gives parents a broad framework for understanding their daughters while addressing their most common questions

Genres

Collection

Your library

Publication

Ballantine Books (2017), Edition: Reprint, 368 pages

User reviews

LibraryThing member BetsyKipnis

"Untangled" features seven strands of development which adolescent and teen girls should progress through to become healthy adult women. HOWEVER, this work is fraught with organizational problems. The seven strands, initially put forth by Anna Freud, get knotted up in way too much case study

citation (which is often the problem with books written by therapists). One can't even read chapter titles strategically to discern or name the seven actual strands of development simply because some of the chapters expand, then further expound upon the strand leaving it something like a split in. There are some good takeaways from this work though: a mini course in brain development and how it relates to the prickly state of adolescent emergence and teen transitioning; some great practice speeches and conversation starters to share with one's offspring; lastly, the significance of why lecturing and binding rules aren't effective and letting one's offspring process outcomes as their ability to reason abstractly drives their independent decision-making. I'd appreciate this work more if there was the occasional diagram or other organizational technique. "Untangled" needs a little more untangling.

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LibraryThing member rivkat

Useful book—at least, I hope so, though I’m not quite there yet with my daughter. “[G]irls’ bodies part with childhood at a moment girls don’t select and may not like” and advances at a speed they can’t control—that did seem familiar. Damour suggests that teens don’t ignore rules;

they just think about not getting caught rather than about why the rules might exist. Struggles can be beneficial for building girls’ emotional intelligence, as long as parents handle them correctly, framing consequences as the result of choices made by the teen herself. I’d seen this before, but Damour points out that teen births dropped most where 16 and Pregnant was the most popular show; she concludes that “teenage girls aren’t dumb. Given a relatively objective picture of the consequences of unprotected sex, girls changed their behavior.” A lot of advice about taking a deep breath and thinking through how you approach a volatile teen; I will probably revisit the book.

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LibraryThing member whoizme8

This is a monster book for teens, parents of teens, those who are going to deal with teens, etc...Dr. Damour has done us a great service by breaking down the various transitions that our teen girls go through. Even a parent of a boy will benefit greatly from reading this book. I really enjoyed

reading this book received through the Goodreads giveaway plan.

J. Robert Ewbank author "John Wesley, Natural Man, and the Isms" "Wesley's Wars" "To Whom It May Concern" and "Tell Me About the United Methodist Church"

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LibraryThing member bangerlm

This took me a while to finish, but was interesting and I think will be helpful. I was also reading the book Wildhood: The Astounding Connections between Human and Animal Adolescents and it was fascinating to see the overlaps between the two books.

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