dailyBooks - Untangled--Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood by Lisa Damour​​​​​​​ | Conversation Starters

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Lisa Damours

Untangled

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EVERY GOOD BOOK CONTAINS A WORLD FAR DEEPER THAN the surface of its pages. The characters and their world come alive through the words on the pages, yet the characters and its world still live on. Questions herein are designed to bring us beneath the surface of the page and invite us into the world that lives on. These questions can be used to:

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Introducing Untangled

U ntangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through The Seven Transitions Into Adulthood is a book by Lisa Damour, a clinical psychologist who directs an international research center focusing on girls. Her book reveals the reasons behind girls' erratic behavior and claims such behavior is considered healthy and natural. There is more to girls' tangled behavior that parents don't understand yet. The book educates parents about the stages of growth and development that girls go through based on Damour's decades of experience and research. It focuses on the seven developmental transitions that have to be untangled in order for girls to become whole adults. Damour guides parents through these seven transitions, giving advice and encouragement as they face the challenging task of bringing up girls during the most confusing part of growing up.

Damour opens the book by assuring parents that life with teenage girls doesn't have to be a tangled mess. She writes that teenage development has been studied by experts and there is a blueprint to their development. Understanding how girls think and behave will illuminate parents and enables them to guide their daughters well. She identifies the seven development strands or transitions that girls go through. Each strand is given one chapter each for discussion. The book has seven chapters in all. The first few chapters describe the strands that are descriptive of girls in middle school, mostly aged eleven to thirteen. The later chapters feature the strands that are descriptive of girls in high school. Damour says girls normally grow on several strands at the same time, though they grow at different rates. This is the reason why the teenage years are stressful for girls and their parents. She points out that the concept of development strands has been studied decades ago, in 1965, first introduced by Anna Freud who used the term to categorize the stages of childhood turmoil. Anna Freud is the daughter of psychoanalysis founder Sigmund Freud. Damour also cites another psychologist, Erik Erikson, who helped develop the strand concept. In 1950, he identified the developmental stages that individuals go through, from infant age to maturity and old age. He cited existential challenges that are encountered and are to be mastered in each of the stages. Modern psychology continues to study human development in terms of development parts, Damour explains, citing the modern approach as one categorized into the emotional, physical, cognitive, and social aspects. The chapters and development strands are thus identified as the following: Chapter One- Parting with Childhood; Chapter Two - Joining a New Tribe; Chapter Three - Harnessing Emotions; Chapter Four - Contending with Adult Authority; Chapter Five - Planning the Future; Chapter Six - Entering the Romantic World; and Chapter Seven - Caring for Herself.

The book has an epigraph in its front pages which features a quote from Anna Freud taken from her work entitled "Adolescence." Freud says that the adolescent may have unpredictable behavior but she does not need treatment. It is the parents however who need to be guided "to be able to bear with her." Freud says adolescence is a difficult stage as young people "attempt to liberate themselves." Damour says thinking in terms of strands is very useful for psychologists but is also helpful for parents in order for them to identify markers that signify girls' achievements in their growth process. These help parents make sense of the often confusing behavior of their daughters. Knowing the development strands helps parents to focus on the stages where their daughters need more help. It helps to identify which areas the girls are successful in and which areas they need more guidance.

The author adds a section entitled When to Worry after each chapter in order to help parents know whether their daughter has normal behavior or if parents have to be concerned and call for professional help. This section provides new insight into why some teenage girls collapse in on themselves or act out in destructive ways. Damour further says that the development strands are universal in that they capture the timeless aspects of adolescence. This includes boys and girls as well as young people from different backgrounds. The book addresses the concerns involved in teenagers growing up in a high-speed culture of intense competitive pressure and 24/7 digital connection. The strands apply across racial and economic differences according to the author. To make clear how the strands apply in each stage, Damour uses stories of teenagers taken from her clinical experience. The stories are an amalgam from different cases rather than particular individual stories. The book includes a Recommended Resources section at the end for readers to continue exploring the subject. The book also has a Notes section where the author elaborates on particular topics in each chapter. A Reading Group Guide is provided to help parents explore the book as a group.