Product Description

With contributions and foreword by Steve Biddulph, author of the groundbreaking Raising Boys, the book explores girls' emotional and physical development from ages 1 to 16 years old. A warm and inspiring read for parents. Every parent of girls aged between 1 and 16 will enjoy reading this informative and practical book. Steve Biddulph, author of the renowned bestseller Raising Boys, has contributed to the book and called it 'The best book on parenting girls I've ever seen.' It focuses on girls' emotional and physical development, their education, social conditioning and their relationship with parents and siblings. Psychologist and parenting author Gisela Preuschoff covers everything you need to know about girls from birth to teenage years, in this easy to follow guide which includes examples from real families. The book includes: - how girls and boys differ in behaviour and emotions - nurturing a girl's self-esteem and reducing fears - breaking out of the 'helpless girl' syndrome - how society conditions girls -- avoiding gender stereotypes in toys etc - girls' experiences at preschool, single sex or co-ed - girls and maths and sciences -- and how parents can encourage their daughters - teen issues and puberty - the importance of a father's relationship with his daughter

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7354 in Books
• Published on: 2005-08-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

Review
'The book has much that stirs up your thinking ! We've made progress with girls, but as this excellent book points out, we still have a long way to go.' STEVE BIDDULPH 'Read it, even if you have boys.' Pru Goward, Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission

About the Author
Gisela Preuschoff is a psychologist and parenting author. Three decades of experience as a family therapist -- and as a mother -- have given her the wisdom about parenting girls that she brings to this book. Steve Biddulph is a gifted speaker and author whose groundbreaking book, Raising Boys, has been a multi-million copy bestseller all over the world. He lives in Tasmania

Customer Reviews

Not "Raising Boys"
I read Biddulph's "Raising Boys" and it was wonderful. When I had my daughter, I thought I would read this one (endorsed by Biddulph: traitor!). This book annoyed me so much, that I actually sought out this space to vent my opinion. It is poorly written: the structure is disorganised and seems arbitrary, the paragraphs waffle, poor word choice makes it vague. The information varies from so obvious it didn't need to be stated, to so "out there" in a new-agey/feral sense that I couldn't relate, to completely off the topic, to downright insulting to boys. I got suspicious about page 6 and went to check her references. An over-reliance on Alan Pease sent the alarm bells ringing. She's supposed to be a psychologist, she could have done better than popular-psycho-babble-BS as a source. The author is opinionated. The photographs are even annoying (enjoy the one of a man sitting on the toilet pooping!) In short, I am so very disappointed that I would ask for my money back if I could!!

Disappointed by hypocrisy
After the birth of my son, I read ¨Raising Boys¨ by Steven Biddulph and found it extremely useful. After the birth of my daughter, I was looking for a similar book focusing on girls issues and came across this book. It started out well but totally lost me after Ms Preuschoff suggested that fairytales were great for girls but Barbie was bad. Apparently, girls can learn life lessons from fairytales whereas Barbie is just harmful. At no point in the book, does the author justify her view. In my opinion, if Barbie is bad for a girl then the fairytale ¨princess¨ stories filling little girls heads with beauty and romance are not good either, especially in the commercial Disney age in which we live. Basically, I feel that I learnt nothing from this book, and only came away disappointed by the author's hypocrisy.

Obvious repetitive and uninspiring.
I have no doubt that this book will become a best seller as all parents are keen to raise a child that is balanced and happy in this difficult and challenging world. I found the book a profound disappointment, it was written in an extremely simplistic way, many of the points it made were obvious and mainly a re-hash of the Steve Biddulph books "How to raise happy children".

The advice is often conflicting and nonsensical. For example on page 87 we are told what toys to buy for young girls at 2 plus. Dolls, puppets, Accessories, however later in the book we are told that the reason western girls are underperforming in the sciences is because we indirectly encourage this by not developing their spatial awareness and teaching them to be helpless. The author then tells us that we should encourage play with numbers, blocks and more male based toys and those we should involve your child in typically male tasks. It takes as the norm that girls are not interested in playing with cars and trains (total nonsense in my very wide experience).

Coupled with some obvious type comments - girls like pets (particularly horses), (really!) and also music and sport (but don't over schedule them)!

What to do if your daughter gets pregnant "Then, the support of others to continue her schooling and settle in well with her new baby (and hopefully her partner) is essential to things working out. After all, a baby is a gift, even if the timing isn't right."

Err hello, well my daughter is only 2 but if she came home pregnant as a teenager I would want to go through all the options with her and support her choices. Including an abortion. If you indirectly pressure her to have it by telling her that a baby is a gift then she may (only slightly) resent you when her life ambitions, career and marriage prospects are ruined by a baby that you will end up raising.

And of course the fear mongering. Does your daughter feel totally misunderstood "Try family therapy - before your daughter gets into a life-threatening crisis". There are common causes of depression, stress failure at school........any of these can lead to depression, sometimes even to suicide. Gisela and Steve are,of course, family therapists.

Oh and fathers you can be one of three types; bad (authoritarian) Useless (soft) and Good (true) - and that's all! No issues looked at in any depth at all.

Working mothers, she quotes Steve Biddulph who she tells us is "the well known Australian therapist". We know this his name is on the front of the book and she has repeated most of his ideas. "Why did you have this child if you are just going to have her looked after by strangers? Are we living in a cuckoo society where you place your young in someone else's nest?" Steve doesn't believe in children being cared for outside the home until they are 5 ( has he ever tried to keep a 5 year old stimulated home alone for 12 hours a day) unless of course you feel that you are so bad at parenting that you can not raise the child yourself. I was astonished to read in the epilogue that the author had put her child in a nursery (in Steve's view the worse type of day care) from the age of one - so it is certainly not the case of practising what you preach!

On the whole unless you know absolutely nothing about children and gender and don't have copies of Steve's books do not waste your money there is nothing of worth in its pages.