Six Ways to Keep the "Little" in Your Girl: Guiding Your Daughter from Her Tweens to Her Teens Book

Reading this book proves true the saying "desperate times call for desperate measures." If parenting pre-teen daughters isn't a desperate time, I'm not sure what is. This book is the first parenting book I've read in my eleven years of parenting and it quickly reminded me of why I don't read parenting books. So many of them are written as if-then statements. If you do these things as a parent, then this will (or won't) happen. I believe that is, quite simply, a lie. Parenting is not an if-then statement. And books that lead us to believe it is are damaging - to parents who feel like failures when their children don't fit the mold - and to children who are damaged because their parents want them to fit the mold.

I nearly stopped reading this book when I hit page 26 and Gresh told me to think of her as my research assistant. She went on to explain all the research she's done for this book and ended the paragraph by saying, "I can to the heavy lifting, okay?" No. Not okay at all. They are my daughters and I'll do the heavy lifting when it comes to parenting them. How about you just try to share your ideas without being patronizing?

Right about now, you might be wondering why I finished this book. I partly finished it because I really am a bit desperate for ideas on how to connect with my daughters, let them grow up and simultaneously preserve their childhoods. It's not an easy task. And Gresh did ultimately offer a few suggestions that I felt made this book worth my time.

Here are what I thought were her best suggestions:
1) Create a girl basket for your daughter as her period approaches. Stock it with pads, tampons, chocolate, pain reliever and a note from you. I thought this was a great way to celebrate an impending event that many girls dread. (As a side note, we are also celebrating this event in our family by letting our daughters get their ears pierced after menarche.)

2) In her discussion of 1 Peter 3, Gresh suggests a rule of thumb for balancing focus on inner beauty and outer beauty: ask yourself (and your daughter) whether you are spending as much time with God as you spend looking in the mirror every morning. I'm not in the habit of primping a lot at this stage in my life, but I flashed back to hours in the mirror in high school and thought I could have used this concept to call my attention to where I was placing my value. It's also a highly practical tip that's easy to suggest to your daughter without being legalistic.

3) Gresh and her husband started preparing their daughters for marriage by dreaming with them about their husbands. For some special birthdays, they gave them something old (a handkerchief sewn by a grandmother), something blue (a bracelet with a blue jewel), etc. I really like this idea and think it would make my daughters' wedding days that much more meaningful. What I haven't figured out is how to incorporate this idea without making my daughters feel like their goal in life is to get married. (Which is NOT what I want them to think.)

So, should you read this book? Honestly, I think you're probably better off just using the ideas above. Unless you really love reading parenting books...