b>b>b>15 revelatory strategies for raising emotionally healthy girls, based on cutting-edge science that explains the modern pressures that make it so difficult for adolescent girls to thrive/b>/b>/b>Anyone on the front lines of caring for girls today—parents, school nurses, guidance counselors—knows this to be true: girls are more anxious and more prone to depression and self-harming than ever before. New science tells us this is a biologically rooted phenomenon, set in motion by a perfect storm of factors, including the earlier onset of puberty, the evolutionary predisposition of the female brain to react to perceived threats, and the many new social pressures (like social media and societal sexism) that have been unwittingly set in place by the adults who love them. Indeed, as award-winning writer Donna Jackson Nakazawa deftly explains in Girls on the Brink, during the critical neurodevelopmental window of adolescence, these factors may be altering the female stress-immune response in ways that turn on genes that derail thriving. But our new understanding of modern girlhood yields very good news, too. We know now that a girl''s innate sensitivity to her environment can, under the right conditions, become her superpower. And from recent studies and trial interventions, researchers have begun to discern the key components of preventing mental health concerns in girls as well as helping those who are already struggling. Drawing on insights from both the latest science and girls themselves, Jackson Nakazawa guides parents through fifteen "antidote" strategies to downshift a girl''s stress-threat response, build up her ability to adapt in positive ways, and prevent a chronic state of fight-flight-freeze, so that she can flourish even in the face of stress. Neuroprotective and healing, these strategies amount to a new playbook for how we—parents, families, and the human tribe—can secure a healthy emotional inner life for all of our girls....

Autorentext

Donna Jackson Nakazawa

Zusammenfassung
**15 “simple but powerful” (The New York Times Book Review) strategies for raising emotionally healthy girls, based on cutting-edge science that explains the modern pressures that make it so difficult for adolescent girls to thrive**

“This is a brave and important book; the challenging stories—both personal and scientific—will make you think, and, hopefully, act.”—Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD, New York Times bestselling co-author of What Happened to You?

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Mashable

Anyone caring for girls today knows that our daughters, students, and girls next door are more anxious and more prone to depression and self-harming than ever before. The question that no one has yet been able to credibly answer is Why?

Now we have answers. As award-winning writer Donna Jackson Nakazawa deftly explains in Girls on the Brink, new findings reveal that the crisis facing today’s girls is a biologically rooted phenomenon: the earlier onset of puberty mixes badly with the unchecked bloom of social media and cultural misogyny. When this toxic clash occurs during the critical neurodevelopmental window of adolescence, it can alter the female stress-immune response in ways that derail healthy emotional development.

But our new understanding of the biology of modern girlhood yields good news, too. Though puberty is a particularly critical and vulnerable period, it is also a time during which the female adolescent brain is highly flexible and responsive to certain kinds of support and scaffolding. Indeed, we know now that a girl’s innate sensitivity to her environment can, with the right conditions, become her superpower. Jackson Nakazawa details the common denominators of such support, shedding new light on the keys to preventing mental health concerns in girls as well as helping those who are already struggling. Drawing on insights from both the latest science and interviews with girls about their adolescent experiences, the author carefully guides adults through fifteen “antidote” strategies to help any teenage girl thrive in the face of stress, including how to nurture the parent-child connection through the rollercoaster of adolescence, core ingredients to building a sense of safety and security for your teenage girl at home, and how to foster the foundations of long-term resilience in our girls so they’re ready to face the world.

Neuroprotective and healing, the strategies in Girls on the Brink amount to a new playbook for how we—parents, families, and the human tribe—can secure a healthy emotional inner life for all of our girls.

Leseprobe
**CHAPTER ONE

Our Girls Are Not Okay**

Why Are So Many of Our Daughters Struggling?

Anna Moralis keeps a portrait of her maternal grandmother on her desk in her small Chicago student apartment. Her resemblance to her grandmother is striking—they share large dark eyes, chestnut hair, and a narrow chin. “Just seeing my grandmother smiling at me helps bring down my anxiety levels,” Anna tells me when we meet for the first time. As we talk, Anna leans over a sketchbook and doodles with colored pencils. I wonder if drawing also helps her manage her anxiety.

Anna, who has just turned twenty-one and has a clear sense of herself gained through time and talk therapy, plans to go to law school and focus on social justice. But even when she was young—indeed, by the time she was twelve—she was politically engaged and reflective about the world. “I begged my parents to take me to human rights marches,” she tells me. “Everywhere I looked, there was so much social and environmental injustice. Racism, voting rights, terrorism, global warming, climate change, spates of school shootings. On the one hand, I found a lot of confidence by being so engaged; I wrote op-eds for my middle school newspaper and sold candy bars to raise money for kids caught in the Middle East conflict.” But immersing herself in larger social issues also made her feel as if “the little things I was going through in my own teenage life couldn’t be valid. I had this sense that it was silly for me to be upset about anything happening in my personal life.”

Toward the end of middle school, “I became popular for the first time,” Anna recalls. “Then social media took over. Social media was terrible for me. I already had a lot of discomfort with my body image. So much of social media is imbued with this constant, pervasive sexism.” That year in middle school, “a lot of girls would get together to watch TV shows like Pretty Little Liars, in which perfect-looking twentysome-things played perfect-looking sixteen-year-olds. They had Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show–viewing parties and posted pictures of themselves on Snapchat trying to look sexually mature and model perfect. That wasn’t good for me or for my self-image.”

When Anna turned fourteen and entered high school, the social scene grew far more challenging. “The friends I’d had in middle school dropped me. They said I was ‘too nice’ and my concern for social justice was ‘fake’; that I was trying to get attention. I couldn’t make new friends because my magnet school was so tiny.” Anna’s precocious self-awareness became a double-edged sword. As her peers made fun of her, she began to turn her capacity for observation and reflection against herself. “I had this sense that if I were skinnier or prettier or happier or less serious, I’d be included in the things everyone posted about on Snapchat and Finsta,” she says, referring to…