All That She Can Be: Helping Your Daughter Achieve Her Full Potential and Maintain Her Self-Esteem During the Critical Years of Adolescence

A parent's guide to helping adolescent girls through adolescence discusses self-esteem, eating disorders, unhappy personal relationships, suicide, and other issues.

Eagle and Colman here provide sound, comprehensive advice on how to avert the well-known precipitous drop in self-esteem that American girls typically experience as they become teens. "Without the proper intervention, many girls will spend much of their adolescence and adulthood trying to cope with . . . negative feelings about themselves," warn Eagle, associate professor of psychiatry at Einstein Medical College in New York City, and freelance writer Colman. Among the potholes and pitfalls along the route to womanhood that the authors examine are anorexia, poor academic performance, drugs, smoking and struggles with sexuality. They also describe the problems associated with both early and late puberties. The authors are refreshingly opinionated--for example, advising parents not to divorce when their daughters are around 13 and have so much else to cope with physically and sociologically. A girl should be encouraged to tell her father when she begins to menstruate, they counsel, and they provide guidelines for what Dad should say in response. First serial to Ladies' Home Journal; Psychotherapy Book Club alternate.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Monumental emotional and physical changes occur during the early adolescent years, especially in females. Eagle, an eminent therapist, explains how parents can help their daughters through the adjustment. She encourages parents to look for warning signs that their daughters may be headed for trouble during puberty and the "teen phase." Low self-esteem and a poor sense of self can create an insecure, unhappy teenager. Good communication and awareness, Eagle claims, will help daughters overcome the trials of these troubled years. A wide variety of issues are covered, including information on the adolescent female's changing body, intellectual and emotional growth, peers, pressure and friendships, dating and sexuality, and special situations. Recommended for public libraries with parenting collections, and academic libraries with family studies and child development sections.
- Jan Wiedemann, Vernon, Tex.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.