Each Spring, select books are recognized for the high quality they represent. Book awards guide parents, educators, librarians and others in choosing the best materials for youth. Tween You and Me: A Preteen Guide to Becoming Your Best Self is among the acclaimed juvenile non-fiction titles of 2010.
Tween You and Me is a positive and empowering book that provides tools to build confidence and self-worth during the process of identity development that occurs in the preteen years. Using the tools in this book helps the young reader to build and sustain a healthy self-image.
Self-consciousness escalates between the ages of eight to twelve, and many tweens begin to define their self-worth according to peer approval” says Deb Dunham, author of Tween You and Me. “Learning to silence the bully within helps them transform the destructive self-doubt that is common among adolescents. Healthy self-esteem is a critical component to thriving in the teen years and beyond,” states Ms. Dunham.
The three associations that have selected Tween You and Me for its excellence in publishing are The Indie Book Awards, ForeWord’s Book of the Year Awards, and USA Book News awards. Each of the contests are open to independent publishers and authors worldwide and are designed to discover distinctive books across a number of genres.
While self-help books are often thought of as the domain of adults, this first-of-its-kind title is a comforting companion to any girl going through the exciting but challenging process of becoming a teenager. Parents will find that this book’s instructional yet empathetic style provides an opportunity for meaningful dialogue with their daughter about self-respect and a positive self-image.
The following link forwards to an article written by a teen at RadicalParenting.com. I share it with you because it is a very typical example of the critical and defeating inner dialogue of an adolescent girl. It reminds us that exterior image or impression is not necessarily indicative of one’s inner sense of self-worth. A bold, beautiful, accomplished girl can feel ‘unpretty’ and unworthy.
I invite you to appreciate the pain of self-doubt that robs many young girls of a joyful adolescence and commit to transforming it. Young people need to know, and deserve to know, that they are enough just as they are!
My children deserve the best from me. But my best self sometimes gets lost between the soccer field and gymnastics class. I have worried that once lost, my best self would never return.
After many desperate attempts to find peace of mind and lightness of spirit, I’ve found the secret hiding place – solitude. Being completely alone somewhere – anywhere - far away from my responsibilities, I return to that feeling of deep, patient, rewarding love for myself and my family. It’s in this place that I quickly realize how lonely the quiet can be. When I arrive there, all alone, I have to fight the urge to rush home to the comfort of chaos. But I make myself stay long enough to hear everything the silence has to tell me. Only then can I return home with renewed inner strength to the role I love more than any other I’ve ever had – being Mom.
I’ve committed to this practice of alone time for the past several years with at least one weekend of solitude. My family has enjoyed the benfits of a renewed mother so immensely, that when I had considered staying at home this year, they wholeheartedly encouraged me to go. I don’t doubt that they’ll miss me or wish I would stay to ease the workload of a Spring weekend. Still, they have embraced the notion that Mom’s self-care is a long term investment worth sacrificing for.
In making a committment to oneself, you teach your children a valuable life lesson: each of us is responsible for our own well-being. It is only when we take care of ourselves that we are able to give our best selves to the world.
Q&A: Questions and Actions
- Have you honored the natural need to replenish your energy lately?
- Do you dare to be as generous to yourself as you are to your children?
- What makes you most joyful that you could do alone? Alone is the key word.
- Make a promise to yourself to indulge your body and soul for one day. Enlist help from family and friends to make it happen. (Offer to reciprocate for other mothers if needed.)
- Finally, reap the benefits. Watch the world change in response to your newfound committment to yourself. I’ll bet that the world has not fallen apart without you managing it for a day. In fact, you’ll probably find that many problems will magically resolve themselves.
Words have power! However, the effectivness of our words depend largely on how we use them. Word selection, timing, and tone are critical factors in communication. Following is a link to an article from tweenparent.com related effective parent-tween interactions. Hope you enjoy…
Cautions from childhood echo in my ear, “What are you complaining about? Wait til you’re an adult in the real world. Then you’ll know problems!” Dismal warnings like this were enough to make me want to curl under my covers and hope that Peter Pan would rescue me from becoming an adult. Feeling overwhelmed and unfulfilled at age 10 was tough enough without the ‘older and wiser’ set dashing my hopes of finding even a morsel of satisfaction in adulthood.
Parents can be tempted to diminish the difficulty in a child’s life. After all, childhood can seem like nirvana to a 40-something with mountains of responsibility and stress. But if we take time to reflect on the realities of childhood, we see that it isn’t so carefree after all.
- Expectation Overload: Children try to meet endless expectations from parents, teachers, coaches, and peers. “Finish your homework. Eat your vegetables. Practice your instrument. Clean your room.”
- Big Brainpower: A tween or teen’s mental energy is divided between learning 5 subjects worth of knowledge at school and at the same time, figuring out how to be the most popular, most athletic, smartest, prettiest, most talented person their age.
- Emotional Rollercoaster: Adolescents typically experience embarrassment, loneliness, fear, joy, disappointment, excitement, self-doubt, and anger all before lunch time.
When you consider the energy that is required to balance lofty expectations with peer stress and emotional upheaval, it’s no surprise that children gravitate toward mind-numbing technology and entertainment for relief. Children need a break as much as adults do. Lest you think I’m promoting video games as a solution, let me direct you to another – albeit less concrete - option: compassion.
I’ve polled hundreds of children with questions about what they need and want from the adults in their lives. Their responses can be summed up in three words: appreciation, reassurance, and respect. Although they may work hard to hide this fact, tweens and teens are fearful. They wonder what will become of them. They fear disappointment from others and from themselves. And they long for reassurance (from those who are ‘older and wiser’) that they are enough just as they are; that life in general, and their lives specifically, are not doomed because of mistakes they’ve made.
When I work with tweens and teens, I am continually reminded of the innocence and vulnerability of our young people. More than anything that adults think is important – values, discipline, responsibility – the one thing that matters most is compassion. If we stay centered on this need and revise our parenting and teaching styles to reflect it, we fulfill the most basic need of a child and give them hope that they can thrive in the real world.
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