Queen Bees and Wannabes : Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and the New Realities of Girl World

by Wiseman, Rosalind

• ISBN13: 9780307459978
• ISBN10: 0307459977
• Copyright: 2009-10-13
• Publisher: Random House Inc

Summary

"My daughter used to be so wonderful. Now I can barely stand her and she won't tell me anything. How can I find out what's going on?" "There's a clique in my daughter's grade that's making her life miserable. She doesn't want to go to school anymore. Her own supposed friends are turning on her, and she's too afraid to do anything. What can I do?" Welcome to the wonderful world of your daughter's adolescence. A world in which she comes to school one day to find that her friends have suddenly decided that she no longer belongs. Or she's teased mercilessly for wearing the wrong outfit or having the wrong friend. Or branded with a reputation she can't shake. Or pressured into conforming so she won't be kicked out of the group. For better or worse, your daughter's friendships are the key to enduring adolescenceas well as the biggest threat to her well-being. In her groundbreaking book, Queen Bees and Wannabes, Empower cofounder Rosalind Wiseman takes you inside the secret world of girls' friendships. Wiseman has spent more than a decade listening to thousands of girls talk about the powerful role cliques play in shaping what they wear and say, how they respond to boys, and how they feel about themselves. In this candid, insightful book, she dissects each role in the clique: Queen Bees, Wannabes, Messengers, Bankers, Targets, Torn Bystanders, and more. She discusses girls' power plays, from birthday invitations to cafeteria seating arrangements and illicit parties. She takes readers into "Girl World" to analyze teasing, gossip, and reputations; beauty and fashion; alcohol and drugs; boys and sex; and more, and how cliques play a role in every situation. Each chapter includes "Check Your Baggage" sections to help you identify how your own background and biases affect how you see your daughter. "What You Can Do to Help" sections offer extensive sample scripts, bulleted lists, and other easy-to-use advice to get you inside your daughter's world and help you help her. It's not just about helping your daughter make it alive out of junior high. This book will help you understand how your daughter's relationship with friends and cliques sets the stage for other intimate relationships as she grows and guides her when she has tougher choices to make about intimacy, drinking and drugs, and other hazards. With its revealing look into the secret world of teenage girls and cliques, enlivened with the voices of dozens of girls and a much-needed sense of humor, Queen Bees and Wannabeswill equip you with all the tools you need to build the right foundation to help your daughter make smarter choices and empower her during this baffling, tumultuous time of life. From the Hardcover edition.

Excerpts

Introduction Welcome to the wonderful world of your daughter's adolescence. Ten seconds ago she was a sweet, confident, world-beating little girl who looked up to you. Now she's changing before your very eyesshe's confused, insecure, often surly, lashing out. On a good day, she's teary and threatening to run away. On a bad day, you're ready to help her pack her suitcase. She's facing the toughest pressures of adolescent lifetest-driving her new body, figuring out the social whirl, toughing it out in schooland intuitively you know that even though she's sometimes totally obnoxious, she needs you more than ever. Yet it's the very time when she's pulling away from you. Why do teenage and preteen girls so often reject their parents and turn to their girlfriends insteadeven when those friends often treat them so cruelly? Every girl I know has been hurt by her girlfriends. One day your daughter comes to school and her friends suddenly decide she no longer belongs. Or she's teased mercilessly for wearing the wrong outfit or having the wrong friend. Maybe she's branded with a reputation she can't shake. Or trapped, feeling she has to conform to what her friends expect from her so she won't be kicked out of the group. No matter what they do to her, she still feels that her friends know her best and want what is best for her. In comparison, she believes that you, previously a reliable source of information, don't have a clue. For parents, being rejected by your daughter is an excruciating experience. Especially when you're immediately replaced by a group of girls with all the tact, sense of fairness, and social graces of a pack of marauding hyenas. Whatever you feel as your daughter goes through this process, you can be sure that she'll go through her share of humiliating experiences and constant insecuritythat's normal for teens. Most people believe a girl's task is to get through it, grow up, and put those experiences behind her. But your daughter's relationships with other girls have much deeper and farther-reaching implications beyond her turbulent teen years. Your daughter's friendships with other girls are a double-edged swordthey're key to surviving adolescence, yet they can be the biggest threat to her survival as well. The friendships with the girls in her clique are a template for many relationships she'll have as an adult. Many girls will make it through their teen years precisely because they have the support and care of a few good friends. These are the friendships where a girl truly feels unconditionally accepted and understoodand they can last into adulthood and support her search for adult relationships. On the other hand, girls can be each other's worst enemies. Girls' friendships in adolescence are often intense, confusing, frustrating, and humiliating, the joy and security of "best friends" shattered by devastating breakups and betrayals. Girls' reactions to the ups and downs of these friendships are as intense as they'll later feel in intimate relationships. These early relationships can propel girls into making dangerous decisions and shape how they mature into young women. But your daughter is too close to it all to realize the good and bad influence of her friends. She needs guidance from you. This book will examine cliques, reputations, gossiping, rebellion, bullying, crushes, and boyfriends. It will show you how your daughter is conditioned to remain silent when intimidated by more powerful girlsand the lessons she learns from this experience. It will teach you how to recognize which friends w