Maria Clark Fleshood - From Tweens to Teens: The Parents Guide to Preparing Girls for Adolescence

Praise for From Tweens to Teens

From Tweens to Teens: The Parents Guide to Preparing Girls for Adolescence by Maria Clark Fleshood is a must-read book for all parents who want to understand and support their daughters journey to finding their identity,strengths and potential. Inspiring and illuminating, Maria Fleshoods book teaches parents how to use rituals to gain self-efficacy and self-confidence as they move into adolescence. This book is a gift for the whole family and the culture at large.

JETTE SIMON, Clinical Psychologist (DK-Degree), Director of Washington, DC, Training Institute for Couples Therapy

Maria Fleshood gives her readers, both clinicians and parents of growing girls, some exceptional tools in her much-needed book. Touching both head and heart, she does so with the hands-on skills of a solid, experienced therapist. Her research into scholarly studies provides a sound theoretical basis for her direction. Her case studies show not only the effectiveness of the rituals but also her heart of compassion contained in this approach. She does all this without excessive sentimentality, although the reader may be moved to tears by a few of the cases. This guide is most timely for the current generation of parents and grandparents who want the best for their girls but who are overwhelmed by the technological world of todays kids and the seeming power those smart phones/social groups have. I recommend this book not only for therapists, parents, and grandparents but also the many others who are trying to be helpful to girls growing into adolescence in this world that has lost most of the transitional rituals of our ancestors in all cultures.

G. KEITH PARKER, PhD, Pastoral Counselor and Jungian Analyst

Dr. Fleshoods book provides parents with the integrative information, framework, and tools they need to help their daughters develop a strong core of identity, have the courage to hold onto their values, and the fortitude to develop the inner resources they need to cope with life now and in the future. At some point, we know that we will have to trust our children to make the right choices in life on their own. Dr. Fleshoods book provides the guide parents need to prepare their daughters for when that day comes. Its a must read and an invaluable resource for parents raising girls.

LISA ZOPPETTI, PhD Clinical Psychologist and mother of tween and teen girls

From Tweens to Teens: The Parents Guide to Preparing Girls for Adolescence provides readers with insight and guidance in the creative use of shared rituals to support young girls through their developmental passages into healthy adolescence. A master therapist, Maria Clark Fleshood introduces readers to the wisdom of ritual in support of contemporary parenting. Her writing is scholarly, accessible, and filled with the joy of life, making this a must-read.

PAULA RAY, PsyD, Pediatric Neuropsychologist

Through our work with Dr. Fleshood, we have established many meaningful family traditions. A family favorite has become the memory box. Family members including grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins are asked to give the high school graduate a special memento to commemorate a treasured memory. The box of mementos is intended to provide the graduate with love and support when perhaps homesickness or challenging times arise. The outpouring of love demonstrated during this tradition has helped our family develop stronger relationships with one another.

MARC W. FLICKINGER, MD

Copyright 2016 by Maria Clark Fleshood

All rights reserved.

Published by Familius LLC, www.familius.com

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Reproduction of this book in any manner, in whole or in part, without written permission of the publisher is prohibited.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

2015956719

Paperback ISBN 9781942934561

Ebook ISBN 9781942934981

Hardcover ISBN 9781942934998

Printed in the United States of America

Edited by Katharine Hale

Cover design by David Miles

Book design by Brooke Jorden

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First Edition

To my children, Beth and Phillip, for the abundant joy, love, and laughter you offer to parenthood.

In memory of my mother, Ercell Elizabeth Potter, for modeling unconditional love and acceptance throughout my childhood.

Preface

Lisa, a seventeen-year-old high school student, sat in my counseling office, head bowed, voice trembling in anger and heartbreak. I really believed I was something back then, she said, describing herself at eight years old. You knowimportant, like everyone really cared about what I had to say and who I was. Where did I go? Where I am really sucks, and I hate myself; I hate my life.

What happens to happy, energetic pre-puberty girls that they so often lose themselves during their adolescent years? In the crucial bridging from girlhood into young womanhood, adolescent females often struggle to hold on to their assertive, secure, and courageous selves that defined their formative years.

Having worked for more than thirty years as an educator and clinical psychotherapist with female adolescents and their families, I have met a lot of Lisas. These young women have profoundly shaped my personal and professional conviction that the adolescent years do not have to be such a trying time for girls or their families. It canand shouldbe different.

This book evolved out of my doctoral project, Reviving Rites of Passage for Adolescent Girls, in which I worked with six high school girls and their parents for a year, guiding the girls and their parents through six stages of a rite of passage. I wrote From Tweens to Teens: The Parents Guide to Preparing Girls for Adolescence out of a sense of urgency for parents to understand the physiological and psychological needs of daughters entering adolescence. The in-between years are the time for parents to help their daughters create an internal framework to support an identity that is not based on the shallow hype that the media and other external forces promote. By providing parents with developmental information and a step-by-step process to incorporate age-relevant rituals into their daughters lives, I wanted to offer a new paradigm that, when implemented, allows families to experience positivity and connection.

From Tweens to Teens provides educational information, parenting skills, and powerful vignettes that teach parents how to mark the years between childhood and adolescence with meaningful rituals that support their daughters as they cross this developmental divide.

There are vision-quest weekends, clinical workshops, and camps that teach the psychological necessity of a rite of passage and offer this experience to adolescents. Although good and valuable to those who participate, they often are costly, require extensive travel, and fail to involve the immediate family. My goal in this book is to help more parents learn how to implement rituals within the family throughout their daughters preteen years, strengthening the most influential relationships in a young girls life.

I have seen the results of these rituals in the lives of hundreds of girls and parents who have used them over the years. My hope is that many more families can experience the richness and connection these rituals offer.