I found this book to be fascinating and I have recommended it to several friends with preteen and teen girls in their families. I only wish I would have been raised with the brilliant insights and effective communications strategies that are outlined here. I did some serious reflecting on how I treat myself and others after reading this book. It seems with good results so far. ( )

This took me a while to finish, but was interesting and I think will be helpful. I was also reading the book Wildhood: The Astounding Connections between Human and Animal Adolescents and it was fascinating to see the overlaps between the two books. ( )

Excellent book. Gives superb perspective and a framework for understanding what teenage girls are going through. Required reading that should help both parents and teenagers. ( )

"Untangled" features seven strands of development which adolescent and teen girls should progress through to become healthy adult women. HOWEVER, this work is fraught with organizational problems. The seven strands, initially put forth by Anna Freud, get knotted up in way too much case study citation (which is often the problem with books written by therapists). One can't even read chapter titles strategically to discern or name the seven actual strands of development simply because some of the chapters expand, then further expound upon the strand leaving it something like a split in. There are some good takeaways from this work though: a mini course in brain development and how it relates to the prickly state of adolescent emergence and teen transitioning; some great practice speeches and conversation starters to share with one's offspring; lastly, the significance of why lecturing and binding rules aren't effective and letting one's offspring process outcomes as their ability to reason abstractly drives their independent decision-making. I'd appreciate this work more if there was the occasional diagram or other organizational technique. "Untangled" needs a little more untangling. ( )

Useful book—at least, I hope so, though I’m not quite there yet with my daughter. “[G]irls’ bodies part with childhood at a moment girls don’t select and may not like” and advances at a speed they can’t control—that did seem familiar. Damour suggests that teens don’t ignore rules; they just think about not getting caught rather than about why the rules might exist. Struggles can be beneficial for building girls’ emotional intelligence, as long as parents handle them correctly, framing consequences as the result of choices made by the teen herself. I’d seen this before, but Damour points out that teen births dropped most where 16 and Pregnant was the most popular show; she concludes that “teenage girls aren’t dumb. Given a relatively objective picture of the consequences of unprotected sex, girls changed their behavior.” A lot of advice about taking a deep breath and thinking through how you approach a volatile teen; I will probably revisit the book. ( )