10 Things Girls Need Most: To grow up strong and free
This epub is currently best viewed on a tablet or a colour e-reader.In answer to the crisis in girls’ mental health, the UK’s bestselling parenting author Steve Biddulph brings an interactive learning guide rich in content and interactive elements to help parents be prepared and self-aware in providing for their daughters.In his ground-breaking new book, Steve Biddulph, million copy bestselling author of Raising Girls, psychologist and parent educator, offers an interactive experience for parents to explore the relationship with their girls from the cradle to the teenager. It is a guided journey of exercises, conversations, reflections and self-rating questionnaires that builds the inner capacities in a parent, targeted at each stage of their daughters growing up.Every aspect – love and security in babyhood, mindfulness, setting boundaries, emotional well-being and emotional literacy, education and learning in primary and secondary school, friendship, puberty and adolescence, sexuality and sexualization, choosing partners and negotiating equality and respect; in fact everything a father or mother needs to think about to be prepared and self-aware in providing for their growing girl.Complemented by real-life case studies and full-colour photographs throughout.
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First published by Thorsons 2017
FIRST EDITION
Text © Steve Biddulph 2017
Questionnaire design © Bobby&Co Book Design
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017
Cover photograph © FatCamera/Getty Images
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Steve Biddulph asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780008146795
Ebook Edition © April 2017 ISBN: 9780008146801
Version 2017-04-29
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For forty years I’ve worked with parents in talks and workshops, and it is so satisfying, and so much fun, that I wished I could share it with every parent in the world. So I set about thinking how to do so in a book.
What you hold in your hands is the result. You can read it straight through, like any other book, but – if you wish to go further – on every few pages there are opportunities to respond. These are very simple – a self-evaluation quiz, or an idea to give a quick rating to. These instant-response items take you deeper into awareness of how to better help your girl.
As this is an ebook – and you can’t write on your screen – just use a small notebook and give your ratings or answers there. It works just as well. Or if you want a printed record, you can also download the questionnaires at www.stevebiddulph.co.uk/resources. You can print these out and fill them in. They are incredibly useful to discuss with your partner, or sometimes your child as well.
We have field-tested these questions and found that parents love the sudden flashes of insight they can bring. You will find yourself seeing your family more clearly, and, from this, you will become more the parent your daughter needs you to be.
So, please – give it a try and see.
One more thing – it sometimes happens that the questions can bring tears, or other strong emotions. Be gentle with yourself, and know that all of us parents feel this way sometimes. We send our love to you and our admiration for being willing to grow and learn.
Sincerely,
You can also use this book as a discussion guide with your friends. Taking one chapter at a time, you can create your own ongoing support group to help you care for all your daughters together. That’s how girls were meant to be raised – by a tribe.
THE BATTLE TO SET GIRLS FREE
You remember that moment, don’t you? Holding your baby daughter in your arms for the very first time. Her eyes wide open, gazing back into yours. Feeling so protective, so proud, so happy. A daughter!
Throughout the last hundred years, things have got better for girls. People fought hard for our daughters to have more equality and opportunity and to be less pushed into narrow boxes of what a girl, or woman, could be. But about ten years ago – it’s hard to say just when – all this started to change. Girls who had flown up in the sunshine of a century of feminism started to go into a nosedive.
Everyone has noticed this – not just psychologists and counsellors, but parents themselves. They say, ‘Fourteen is the new eighteen,’ or ‘They’re growing up too fast.’ Or they just roll their eyes and say, ‘Girls!’
As I am writing this, the Department for Education is reporting that a third of all teenage girls in the UK suffer from depression or anxiety. They are calling it ‘an important and significant trend’. The NHS says the same; they report that 20 per cent of girls are self-harming – three times as many as ten years ago. Not only that; 13 per cent of girls have symptoms of post-traumatic stress – something we associate with serious trauma or harm. Eating disorders, body-hate, having unhappy and unwanted sex: all are on the increase. It’s not all girls, but it’s enough of them to worry about.
