Raising teen girls is a unique challenge. From conflicts and frustrated responses, adults often feel clueless about how to help their teens go through complicated situations that affect their mental health.
The first step to becoming a helpful adult is to understand those situations and gain trust by demonstrating that understanding. Books on raising teen girls are an excellent resource for that knowledge.
This article has five top-rated books that offer essential tips on handling peer pressure and raising confident and compassionate girls.
1. No More Mean Girls: The Secret to Raising Strong, Confident, and Compassionate Girls
Year: 2018
Amazon Rating: 4.7/5
No More Mean Girls is a guide for grown-ups and caretakers for helping girls with the challenges of growing up so they develop a compassionate, positive, and strong personality.
The author gives practical advice on navigating such complex and unknown territories as starting relationships, expressing themselves, creating an authentic personality, and standing up for themselves and others.
With simple language and relatable anecdotes, this book explains what parents can do to help their girls to avoid suffering societal pressures and be cruel to others. So if you’re looking for advice to increase self-confidence in your teen girl, this is a good option.
2. Raising Worry-Free Girls: Helping Your Daughter Feel Braver, Stronger, and Smarter in an Anxious World
Year: 2019
Amazon Rating: 4.8/5
Peer pressure, college essays, upcoming exams, relationships – these are just some sources of stress for teen girls. To help your teen deal with them, take a look at Raising Worry-Free Girls: Helping Your Daughter Feel Braver, Stronger, and Smarter in an Anxious World – a practical guide to instill bravery and self-confidence from a young age.
The author, a veteran counselor, Sissy Goff, focuses on giving tips to overcome troubling emotions that lead to anxiety and worry, which are major problems for 70% of U.S. teens. By using these tips, grown-ups can help realize their power and overcome fear.
One specific area she explains is the flaws of common parenting strategies – something that all grown-ups can also find useful. So if you want to develop skills to help your teen girls reduce anxiety and depression, check out this book.
3. Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls
Year: 2002 (Updated)
Amazon rating: 4.5/5
Rachel Simmons, a New York Times best-seller and co-founder of GirlsLeadership.org, wrote Odd Girl Out to share her exploration of the ways how girls express anger and strategies to prevent bullying (the updated version also includes materials on cyberbullying).
She also talks about common strategies in which teen girls are taught to tolerate and accept aggressive acts. The readers can read about how the hidden nature of the expression of aggression in girls impacts friendships.
A major lesson for grown-ups from this book is to give girls an opportunity to access and manage open conflict rather than encourage them to be “nice.” This is how they can prevent teens from directing their aggression into spreading rumors, manipulations, and backstabbing, causing psychological pain in other girls.
4. Queen Bees and Wannabes, 3rd Edition: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boys, and the New Realities of Girl World
Year: 2002 (Updated)
Amazon rating: 4.5/5
Queen Bees and Wannabees is already a legendary book that inspired the hit movie “Mean Girls” and became a best-seller. Rosalind Wiseman introduces parents to the world of their girl’s adolescence and gives practical and creative strategies for guiding them in difficult situations.
“What strikes the most about this book is the level of analysis of cliques,” shares Melissa Mauro, a literature expert writer at TrustMyPaper. “Understanding how they work gives a good idea of how to navigate a variety of situations.”
Indeed, Wiseman shares useful insights into the role of cliques in shaping teen girls, including how they communicate with boys and perceive themselves. She gives each major role in a clique a special name (a Queen Bee, a Wannabe, Messenger, etc.) to help understand how relationships with cliques affect girls’ choices and actions.
5. American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers
Year: 2017
Amazon rating: 4.4/5
Looking for a book to help your teen girl manage their social media and grow to be a confident woman? American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers is the one to get helpful advice from.
The book explains how social media affects teen girls’ self-esteem and understanding of friendships and sexuality. The author shares real stories of girls affected by social media bullying and whose behaviors were changed by online responses to their content.
The biggest benefit for adults from reading this book is to understand what today’s teen girls are going through and how to help cope with the constant pressure of instantaneous peer judgment, hypersexualized imagery, and a need to maintain an idealized online version of themselves.
Donald Fomby is a valued member of the writing team at Supreme Dissertations. At a relatively young age, he has already amassed impressive experience as a freelance writer. He partakes in different projects that allow them to grow his list of experiences and expand his interests.