No More Mean Girls: The Secret to Raising Strong, Confident and Compassionate Girls

Hurley (The Happy Kid Handbook), a child and adolescent psychotherapist, bases this timely parenting guide on the observation that today’s girls tend to encounter harmful stressors, including peer pressure, cyberbullying, and low self-esteem, at much younger ages than in past generations. Addressed to the parents of girls aged three to 13, the book takes on the “mean girl culture” and alerts parents to the signs of relational aggression—behavior intended to harm someone by damaging or manipulating her relationship with others—in their daughters’ daily lives. Hurley helpfully illustrates her advice with a multitude of stories illustrating how girls relate to each other in elementary and middle school, and she provides well-organized ways for them to develop a sense of identity, acquire resilience and autonomy, improve their communication skills, stand up for themselves, and become individually accountable. Most of the book’s hands-on advice appears either in list form in the many “Parent Teacher Conference” boxes throughout or in plentiful “Girls Can” activities and strategies created for the author’s in-school empowerment program. Hurley’s user-friendly layout and compassionate advice ensure that her book will be a useful workbook not just for parents, but also for youth counselors, teachers, and other caregivers. Agent: Lauren Galit, LKG Agency. (Jan.)