Girls Will Be Girls - JoAnn Deak, Ph.D

Summary: Girls Will Be Girls offers a comprehensive road map to the many emotional and physical challenges girls ages six to sixteen face in today's changing world. Author JoAnn Deak looks past the "scare" stories to those that enlighten parents and enable them to empower their daughters.

My Review: This book is fantastic. I've read Reviving Ophelia because of past experience with girls suffering from diseases like anorexia and cutting. I had an idea of what books like that offer a teacher, a mother, a sister, or friend. This book, on the other hand, focuses more on your average, everyday girl growing up and how she navigates her own emotions and changes.

An aspect I found particularly intriguing was being able to look back on my own life and understand, through retrospect as well as having been guided by her research, my own path through emotional growth. She seemed to hit every stage right on. I remembered each stage of friendship, whether it was the 'best-friend' stage or the 'transitory friendship' stage or the 'interest-based friendship groups.'

There is a chapter just on the mother-daughter relationship, as well as a chapter on the father-daughter relationship. The chapters I found most applicable (besides the ones relating to my own girls' ages) were the chapters on Betwixt and Between: The Preadolescent Years and Everything and Nothing: Sharing the Adolescent Girl's Struggle to Be and Become Herself. What she wrote about I get to experience everyday, in my classroom. It's very real. It was nice to have some logic put to the insanity that middle school aged girls exude.

Rating: 5 Stars--every parent of girls, every teacher should read this book!

Sum it up in a phrase: How to raise your daughters without going crazy from hormonal insanity!