Boy Crazy!: Keeping Our Daughter's Feet on the Ground When Her Head Is in the Clouds

This fun-to-read book covers the gamut of ""tweenager"" experience in a light but direct way that'll help anxious parents navigate those rocky years when their daughters discover boys are more than cootie-carriers. Authors Giannetti and Sagarese (The Roller-Coaster Years; Parenting 911) advocate a hands-off-ish approach when it comes to their daughters' social lives: being interested is good, but don't use every date, dance or social function as an excuse to interrogate. Fathers are warned to be cool and perhaps watch Casablanca to jumpstart talks about awkward subjects. The authors don't shirk the darker side of contemporary teen romance, proffering tips on how to cope with your child's online romances, ""cyberbullying"" and the dreaded teenage rumor mill; and how to address sexuality in a technology-saturated world. (That ubiquitous accessory, the camera phone, will seem less innocent as the pages fly by.) A chapter on dating in a ""multiracial environment"" addresses some parents' fears about whether their daughters ""will encounter prejudice, even violence,"" if they date across racial or ethnic lines. Though this is far from the only book on parenting a teen, the authors' casual writing style and perspective on the world of today's adults-in-training make it a winner.