All That She Can Be: Help Yr Daughtr Achieve Full Potential & Maintn Slf-Esteem

Eagle and Colman here provide sound, comprehensive advice on how to avert the well-known precipitous drop in self-esteem that American girls typically experience as they become teens. ``Without the proper intervention, many girls will spend much of their adolescence and adulthood trying to cope with . . . negative feelings about themselves,'' warn Eagle, associate professor of psychiatry at Einstein Medical College in New York City, and freelance writer Colman. Among the potholes and pitfalls along the route to womanhood that the authors examine are anorexia, poor academic performance, drugs, smoking and struggles with sexuality. They also describe the problems associated with both early and late puberties. The authors are refreshingly opinionated--for example, advising parents not to divorce when their daughters are around 13 and have so much else to cope with physically and sociologically. A girl should be encouraged to tell her father when she begins to menstruate, they counsel, and they provide guidelines for what Dad should say in response. First serial to Ladies' Home Journal; Psychotherapy Book Club alternate. (June)