Useful as a piece of the puzzle for puberty-panicked teen girls...

books:


	• Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls Mary Pipher Riverhead Trade, 2005 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 314 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Useful as a piece of the puzzle for puberty-panicked teen girls...

As the parent of an apparently bipolar daughter who is about to turn 16, and whose symptoms destroyed her parents' marriage, coming as they did just before her 13th birthday, I had hopes this book would give me some tips on how to help her from the status of non-custodial dad, now living 600 miles from her (not due to my moving, but her mom's.) Alas, it was not any real help in that specific problem area. It really does not address bipolar disorder itself, anyway, although it touches upon the related troubles of eating disorders, depression and social anxiety. Some of Dr. Pipher's insights, opinions and experiences are helpful in figuring out what went wrong in the way her mother and I tried to cope with her suddenly dangerous and hostile choices. However, the book suffers, surprisingly, from a feeling that too much of it is "dated" now. It was created in the early 1990's, and Dr. Pipher relies far too much on pop culture references from that time which have faded in the consciousness of even many adults, but which surely would mystify any teen girls who read it in 2007. While rebellion, early sex, anorexia, bulimia, sucides, suicide attempts, running away, smoking, illegal drugs, alcohol, tatooing and piercing are certainly still major problems in this population, I kept feeling while I was reading that this is no longer a work with many answers for parents. Maybe it's just me. Maybe if I had read it three years ago I could have saved my family. Surely, however, we need a new version of this one, to reflect the times, temptations and troubles of 2008.

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I heard good things about this book. I look foward to reading it. It came quickly.

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Still a Neccesary Read

This is the book that parents and girls need to read and discuss.

I read this as a girl myself, and it allowed me to see my behavior in new, helpful light.

Now I am a mom myself, and one of my children is a girl, so I read it again- and still, it speaks to me in a profound way. I hope it makes me a better mom in the same way that it made me a better adolescent.

However, it does need to be updated, not just because the case studies now seem dated, but also because Pipher unflinchingly discusses the problems with schools. Since homeschooling has grown a good deal in the years since this book's initial publication, I think it is a neccesary componenent to explore, perhaps even as a partial solution for many of the problems outlined in this book.

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Reviving Ophelia

I thoroughly enjoyed every page of this book. Dr. Pipher does an outstanding job of exploring all the issues adolescent girls are struggling with.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

The phenomenal #1 New York Times bestseller. More than 1.5 million copies sold. Now available from Riverhead.

This is the groundbreaking work that poses one of the most provocative questions of a generation: Why are American adolescent girls falling prey to depression, eating disorders, suicide attempts, and dangerously low self-esteem? Dr. Pipher posits that it's America's sexist, look-obsessed "girl-poisoning" culture-one in which girls are constantly struggling to find their true selves. In Reviving Ophelia, these girls' uncensored voices are heard from the front lines of adolescence. Personal and painfully honest, this is a compassionate call to arms, offering strategies with which to revive these Ophelias' lost senses of self.

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