She may be taller than me now, but my little girl will always be my `little girl` . Up until this point , in the absence of extended family wisdom and guidance we have relied often on books to point us in the right direction when encountering hiccups along the winding road of raising a daughter. Steve Biddulph , who you may recognise as author of many excellent parenting books , thoroughly recommends `Raising Girls`. He says `This book has so much that stirs up your thinking....What our kids will remember, and what will strengthen them, are moments of closeness, honesty and peaceful times that we spend with them amidst the scramble of life...we`ve made progress with girls, but as this excellent book points out, we still have a long way to go.
Gisela Preuchoff is a psychologist and family therapist. One of the unique qualities of this book is its discouragement of a one-size-fits-all approach to parenting. We are encouraged to really get to know our daughters identify and encourage THEIR strengths and passions rather than a stereotypical impression of how daughters should behave. I can Identify with this and look back and laugh at my own previous attempts to get my daughter to `fit the mould`. (It turns out she would rather play mud pies than go to ballet class!!)
This book is so easy to read and often very funny. There are great images and lots of letters and stories from parents and daughters. The earlier chapters trace the developmental changes in girls, exploring why girls are different, their emotional world, and offers some thoughts on how parents can go about developing their relationship with their daughters in the earlier years. Following this are chapters covering social conditioning, and education. In the final two chapters, Preuchoff turns the spotlight onto questions of family dynamics, the teenage years (ouch), peer relationships, communication styles and self-esteem.
There have been times where reading this book I have thought, ` I wish I knew that before`! This book is definitely worth reading to remind you or reinforce your approach to parenting your daughters.
I have seen this book available in K-Mart and Target!