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My Girl: Adventures with a Teen in Training
Here's a radical Most girls are happy, and so are their mothers. Most girls are not destined for depression, eating disorders, low self-esteem, and raging fights with their parents-that's just a very noisy minority.
In My Girl , Karen Stabiner tells the story of one girl's journey into adolescence, and of her own efforts to find a way to guide her daughter through life's real thickets-not the scary but rare ones we hear so much about. When Sarah reached sixth grade, horror stories about the coming teenage years began drifting her parents' way. The media reinforced the idea of mothers and daughters as adversaries, and the fashion industry promoted styles that fairly guaranteed a battle. But as Stabiner approached that supposedly stormy time, she found something quite different. The world was full of daughters who were sick of being told how wretched they were and mothers who found that the passage to adolescence was both exciting and enjoyable-despite the inevitable conflicts.
Even the happiest adolescence is full of challenges, though, and Karen Stabiner has gathered a lifesaving breadth of expert instruction ("Even when it's difficult, the onus is on the mother to be an adult"), enlightenment ("Ninety-seven percent of girls do not have a diagnosable eating disorder"), and support (conflict is "an incredible compliment to a mother," the safe person in her daughter's life). Sarah grows from a child who still likes to be carried to bed occasionally into a teen mastering a demanding sport and navigating friendships, and Karen Stabiner tells the story of that transition in scenes that will be both familiar and instructive to all mothers.
Along the way, she learns to let go a little and to adjust the balance of her own life. With warmth, humor, and sharp insight, My Girl charts those first years of adolescence -- and engagingly debunks the prevailing assumption that they are inevitably miserable.
In My Girl , Karen Stabiner tells the story of one girl's journey into adolescence, and of her own efforts to find a way to guide her daughter through life's real thickets-not the scary but rare ones we hear so much about. When Sarah reached sixth grade, horror stories about the coming teenage years began drifting her parents' way. The media reinforced the idea of mothers and daughters as adversaries, and the fashion industry promoted styles that fairly guaranteed a battle. But as Stabiner approached that supposedly stormy time, she found something quite different. The world was full of daughters who were sick of being told how wretched they were and mothers who found that the passage to adolescence was both exciting and enjoyable-despite the inevitable conflicts.
Even the happiest adolescence is full of challenges, though, and Karen Stabiner has gathered a lifesaving breadth of expert instruction ("Even when it's difficult, the onus is on the mother to be an adult"), enlightenment ("Ninety-seven percent of girls do not have a diagnosable eating disorder"), and support (conflict is "an incredible compliment to a mother," the safe person in her daughter's life). Sarah grows from a child who still likes to be carried to bed occasionally into a teen mastering a demanding sport and navigating friendships, and Karen Stabiner tells the story of that transition in scenes that will be both familiar and instructive to all mothers.
Along the way, she learns to let go a little and to adjust the balance of her own life. With warmth, humor, and sharp insight, My Girl charts those first years of adolescence -- and engagingly debunks the prevailing assumption that they are inevitably miserable.
- GenresMemoir
288 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2005
About the author
Karen Stabiner
14 books17 followersKaren Stabiner is a journalist and author of narrative non-fiction. She has co-authored the cookbooks Family Table, a collection of staff meal recipes and backstage stories from Danny Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group restaurants, and The Valentino Cookbook with Piero Selvaggio. Her feature articles and essays have appeared in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, as well as in the Los Angeles Times, Saveur, Travel & Leisure and Gourmet. Her work has appeared in Best Food Writing anthologies. Stabiner teaches at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 15, 2011
Her writing is a little strange....and odd stories are thrown in here and there that are unrelated or irrelevant to surrounding content, but I did enjoy the book and am happy that not all girls need an Exorcist when they hit their tweens/teens!
March 22, 2015
I appreciate very much the main message of this book - that raising a pre-adolescent girl isn't so bad. Most girls don't succumb to the super-scary dangers of excessive drug use, eating disorders, and teen pregnancy. Nor do they all become horrible people to be around. It's possible to be close with one's daughter and enjoy the pre-teen years. So far, I agree (my oldest is only 13).
Like most parenting memoirs, the book has some passages I really related to and others I didn't. Stabiner has just one daughter, so her reality is different from mine; she's a little defensive about this, and her section about the comments people make to her about only children really gave me pause and a reminder to never act judgmental and smug about having multiple children. It's indisputable, though, that the fact that she has only her one daughter Sarah means that she can attend to her and her growing up in a clear and focused way that's inconceivable to me as a mother of three girls. Likewise, they live in Los Angeles and sent their daughter to private school and horseback riding lessons for years... so let's just say that they're of a different social and economic class :-).
I liked the trivial stories in the book the best, the ones that had to do with small changes like the way school supply shopping changes when kids go to middle school, the attitude that her daughter would get and the way that she would sometimes give barbed answers, the story of their trip to Italy. This everyday stuff satisfies my nosy nature and gives me a window into their dynamic that helps me with my own girls, if only that it makes me feel less lonely. Stabiner seems honest and vulnerable about the challenges of letting go and allowing her daughter to grow up. I cried at the end because her love for her daughter just shines through.
Stabiner intersperses her personal stories with the perspectives of various psychologists, therapists, and parenting experts. The book was written about 10 years ago, so this part didn't feel as current, even though it dealt with timeless questions of adolescent identity, gender, and maturity. I like the way she did this, framing perspectives in her everyday reality. In the end, the latter is more powerful to me, though knowing some theory is interesting. For example, she says that Lyn Brown recommends that one should answer complex questions teens ask about big issues like drugs and sex very simply, with only what they need to know and not a lot of extras. This was a good note for me that I'm going to try and apply.
My girls all have big personalities and some headstrong nature already, even though only one is officially a teenager. I'm hoping that Stabiner is right and that the teen years can be fun, just different.
Like most parenting memoirs, the book has some passages I really related to and others I didn't. Stabiner has just one daughter, so her reality is different from mine; she's a little defensive about this, and her section about the comments people make to her about only children really gave me pause and a reminder to never act judgmental and smug about having multiple children. It's indisputable, though, that the fact that she has only her one daughter Sarah means that she can attend to her and her growing up in a clear and focused way that's inconceivable to me as a mother of three girls. Likewise, they live in Los Angeles and sent their daughter to private school and horseback riding lessons for years... so let's just say that they're of a different social and economic class :-).
I liked the trivial stories in the book the best, the ones that had to do with small changes like the way school supply shopping changes when kids go to middle school, the attitude that her daughter would get and the way that she would sometimes give barbed answers, the story of their trip to Italy. This everyday stuff satisfies my nosy nature and gives me a window into their dynamic that helps me with my own girls, if only that it makes me feel less lonely. Stabiner seems honest and vulnerable about the challenges of letting go and allowing her daughter to grow up. I cried at the end because her love for her daughter just shines through.
Stabiner intersperses her personal stories with the perspectives of various psychologists, therapists, and parenting experts. The book was written about 10 years ago, so this part didn't feel as current, even though it dealt with timeless questions of adolescent identity, gender, and maturity. I like the way she did this, framing perspectives in her everyday reality. In the end, the latter is more powerful to me, though knowing some theory is interesting. For example, she says that Lyn Brown recommends that one should answer complex questions teens ask about big issues like drugs and sex very simply, with only what they need to know and not a lot of extras. This was a good note for me that I'm going to try and apply.
My girls all have big personalities and some headstrong nature already, even though only one is officially a teenager. I'm hoping that Stabiner is right and that the teen years can be fun, just different.
September 3, 2016
It's certainly refreshing to read a more positive narrative about raising adolescent & teen girls than the one we typically get . . .
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews