Have you ever wished that someone had told you ahead of time how a problem could be avoided? Do you feel like no one understands where you're coming from? Now there's a blueprint that can offer you comfort, motivation, and real solutions. When Yasmin Shiraz launched Mad Rhythms, a hip-hop magazine aimed at college students, she visited youth organizations and colleges across the country to teach young people how to effectively pursue their dreams. Drawn to Yasmin's confidence and determination, young women in particular sought her opinion on topics such as body image, popularity, dating, sexuality, child-parent relationships, and social and academic pressures. Yasmin could easily speak to those issues. She struggled with many of the same concerns when she was younger. Inspired by the common threads connecting each generation, Yasmin developed The Blueprint for My Girls to help young women discover who they are, develop a sense of self, and stay positive. In the book, Yasmin pairs her personal stories with 99 "expressions" designed to help readers deal with situations they may not feel comfortable discussing with friends and family. Each expression is accompanied by exercises to help readers progress on their journey. Staying real without being preachy, The Blueprint for My Girls will be a solution giver, a problem solver, and a friend in need for generations to come.

This is my first relationship. What should I do? I don't know who to trust. Which guys can be trusted? My best friend and I like the same guy. Should we remain friends? Has everyone had sex except me? How long should I wait? No one defines your life but you. After publishing her first book, The Blueprint for My Girls, author Yasmin Shiraz conducted workshops with girls across the country. She was flooded with questions the girls had about love, relationships, and intimacy, questions they didn't feel comfortable asking their family and friends. She realized that her role as the "old enough to advise you, young enough to keep it real" big sister could help girls stay grounded as they experienced dating, relationships, and intimacy for the first time. In this book, Yasmin tackles the pressures of dating, breaking up, and friendships -- as well as HIV, pregnancy, and abuse. By sharing her own mistakes Yasmin helps girls answer the tough questions without being preachy. It's the perfect guide to help young girls decide for themselves what they want from relationships, guys, and love.

The expert guide to girl talk. How to Say It(r) to Girls provides a wellspring of practical advice for parents on how to broach uncomfortable subjects with girls of all ages, or how to simply open the lines of communication. This book offers concrete words, phrases, and sample dialogues to help parents figure out what to say and how best to say it.

As a middle school teacher, author Bart King listened carefully to the wisdom of his girl students. Along with his five sisters (!), their knowledge made The Big Book of Girl Stuff a classic that Parenting magazine has called “a must-have for girls.” This updated and redesigned edition of The Big Book of Girl Stuff is still loaded with fascinating facts, activities, quotes, games, and insightful information and advice on important topics. This humorous and informative resource is filled with everything a girl needs to know and celebrates all the things that make being a girl so wonderful. And not only is it a perfect handbook for preteens, ’tweens, and teens, but it will delight moms, aunts, and big sisters as well!

Empower students to stand up for what matters Created in collaboration with children and teens, Owning Up helps young people identify and be critical of social issues in their lives—from bullying and harassment in the classroom to systems of power and oppression in the world around them. While there is no one-size-fits-all curriculum, Owning Up takes us leaps forward by: Designing sessions to be easily facilitated by a school counselor, teacher, leader, or other professional in small group settings Combining discussions, games, and role-playing to engage adolescents in the complexities of social culture Exploring critical topics such as media analysis, gender, sexual harassment, racism, gossip, and self-image

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The parenting classic that inspired Mean Girls, now fully revised and updated with new material on gender expression, cancel culture, social media, and bullying based on feedback from today’s teenagers More than twenty years ago, Queen Bees and Wannabes let parents inside the secret world of their adolescent daughters’ female relationships, giving us a new vocabulary for these fickle social dynamics as well as invaluable strategies for helping our daughters navigate them. Since then, nationally recognized thought leader and speaker Rosalind Wiseman has interviewed and listened 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. This fully revised and greatly updated edition of this parenting classic now reflects the pressures unique to today’s girls—including the role that social media and gender as a spectrum play in adolescent life. With input and stories from dozens of girls experiencing these dynamics today, Wiseman takes readers into “Girl World” to analyze teasing, gossip, and reputations; beauty and fashion; alcohol and drugs; boys and sex; and more, plus how cliques play a role in every situation. Full of sample scripts, strategies, and pointed advice, this book will equip adults with all the tools needed to build the right foundation to help a young woman make smarter choices and empower her during this baffling, tumultuous time of life.

“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 adolescence—as 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 Wannabes will 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.

Elissa Schappell, “a diva of the encapsulating phrase, capable of conveying a Pandora’s box of feeling in a single line” (The New York Times Book Review) delivers eight provocative, darkly funny linked stories that map America’s shifting cultural landscape from the late 1970s to the present day. Blueprints for Building Better Girls delves into the lives of an eclectic cast of archetypal female characters—from the high school slut to the good girl, the struggling artist to the college party girl, the wife who yearns for a child to the reluctant mother—mapping America’s shifting cultural landscape from the late 1970s to the present day. Its interconnected stories explore the commonly shared but rarely spoken of experiences that build girls into women and women into wives and mothers. In revealing all their vulnerabilities and twisting our preconceived notions of who they are, Elissa Schappell alters how we think about the nature of female identity and how it evolves.

"Separate sessions for girls and for boys combine group discussions, games, role-playing, and other activities to engage students in understanding the complexities of adolescent social culture. Students learn to recognize that they have a responsibility to treat themselves and others with dignity and to speak out against social cruelty and injustice. A CD of reproducible program forms and student handouts is included with the curriculum."--From publisher description.

Renowned Irish Culture vulture Mike Farragher turns a critical eye on himself in the pages of This is Your Brain on Shamrocks and provides a funny, sweet, and certainly irreverent take on life, spirituality, parenting, music, and heritage. Turn the pages and take a whiplash ride through the Irish American psyche!