Untangled Quotes

“You want your daughter to become a critical consumer of the media, so use what she's watching to help her build those skills. Swing by the couch or lean over her laptop and say, "I'm all for mindless entertainment, but you know that I'm not a big fan of shows that celebrate women for being sexy and stupid." Your daughter may roll her eyes, but do it anyway. Girls can listen and roll their eyes at the same time.”
― Lisa Damour, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood

“Girls often aim their most severe meanness at their mothers—”
― Lisa Damour, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood

“Teenagers often manage their feelings by dumping the uncomfortable ones on their parents,”
― Lisa Damour, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood

“Party parents figure that if their daughter is going to do risky things when with her friends, she’ll be safer if she and her friends do those risky things right under their noses. But party parents rob their daughter of one of the best protections she has: the ability to blame her good behavior on them.”
― Lisa Damour, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood

“People make choices, choices have consequences.”
― Lisa Damour, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood

“The most successful people I know do their best work under any conditions, for anyone.”
― Lisa Damour, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood

“While an adolescent remains inconsistent and unpredictable in her behavior, she may suffer, but she does not seem to me to be in need of treatment. I think that she should be given time and scope to work out her own solution. Rather, it may be her parents who need help and guidance so as to be able to bear with her. There are few situations in life which are more difficult to cope with than an adolescent son or daughter during the attempt to liberate themselves. —ANNA FREUD (1958), “Adolescence”
― Lisa Damour, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood

“I’ve come to learn over my years of practice, which is that having a delicate conversation with a teenager is like trying to talk with someone on the other side of a door.”
― Lisa Damour, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood

“There are few situations in life which are more difficult to cope with than an adolescent son or daughter during the attempt to liberate themselves.” Raising teenagers is not for the fragile, and that’s true even when everything is going just as it should. Parents of teenagers need supportive partners and friends to prop them up when they feel that they just can’t take one more push-off. Knowing that you can serve as a reliable, safe base allows your daughter to venture out into the world; having the strength to stay in place when your daughter clings to and rejects you in short order usually requires the loving support of adult allies.”
― Lisa Damour, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood

“It’s bad enough to be rebuffed by your daughter—it’s worse that it happens right when you feel that she needs you most.”
― Lisa Damour, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood

“Looking back on their own teenage years, most adults feel grateful that there's no easy-to-access document of all the dumb things they did.”
― Lisa Damour, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood

“If you really want to help your daughter manage her distress, help her see the difference between complaining and venting.”
― Lisa Damour, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood

“shame is one of the last places we, as parents, want to land with our kids. Indeed, the capacity to shame a child is one of the most dangerous weapons in our parenting arsenal. Shame goes after a girl’s character, not her actions. It goes after who she is, not what she did. Shame has toxic, lasting effects and no real benefits. Once shamed, teens are left two terrible options: a girl can agree with the shaming parent and conclude that she is, indeed, the bad one, or she can keep her self-esteem intact by concluding that the parent is the bad one. Either way, someone loses.”
― Lisa Damour, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood

“under the sway of social influence, teenagers don’t disregard the issue of rules completely. In my experience they still think about it, but in the wrong way. Instead of reflecting on why we have rules, teens focus on trying not to get caught while breaking them.”
― Lisa Damour, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood

“As one of my friends put it, “My daughter has five different, extreme emotions before eight in the morning.”
― Lisa Damour, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood

“if you feel you must criticize your daughter’s friends—and sometimes you must—use your words and your tone to communicate that the girls are in a tricky situation, not that they are bad people.”
― Lisa Damour, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood

“heavy social demands can undermine what cultural anthropologists call “sustainable routines,” the predictable patterns of daily life that go a long way toward reducing stress.”
― Lisa Damour, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood

“sharing one’s true feelings at home makes it a lot easier to be charming out in public.”
― Lisa Damour, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood

“Thanks so much for letting me know. I am really confident that the girls will find a way to come to their own resolution.”
― Lisa Damour, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood

“There’s no excuse for either girl’s behavior, but there’s an explanation: as a culture, we do a terrible job of helping girls figure out what to do when they are mad. As far as girls know, they can either be a total doormat—think Cinderella—or flat-out cruel like Cinderella’s stepsisters. We rarely help girls master assertion—the art of standing up for oneself while respecting the rights of others.”
― Lisa Damour, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood

“A person stops maturing at the age that they start abusing substances,”
― Lisa Damour, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood

“People don’t do nice things for people who are mean to them. Better for your daughter to learn this lesson before she leaves your home than after she is out on her own.”
― Lisa Damour, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood

“You should start by allowing your daughter more privacy than she had as a child. Interestingly, findings from a research study that examined how much parents seek to know about their teenagers—and how much teenagers choose to share—suggest that we grant greater privacy to our sons than to our daughters. We are more likely to ask girls what they’re up to behind closed doors, and our daughters, more than our sons, answer our questions.”
― Lisa Damour, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood

“When teens are trapped with parents who would rather flaunt their power than negotiate on even minor points, it doesn’t always end so well.”
― Lisa Damour, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood

“So if your teenage daughter is developing normally, you are living with someone who secretly worries that she is crazy and who might have the psychological assessment results of a psychotic adult.”
― Lisa Damour, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood

“researchers have found that many well-liked girls aren’t considered to be popular, and that many girls who are considered to be popular aren’t actually well liked.”
― Lisa Damour, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood

“All relationships come with ambivalence. Knowing someone well means that we enjoy the best of what he or she has to offer and must reconcile ourselves to being frustrated and disappointed at times, too. Acknowledging your own crazy spots (and, perhaps, your partner’s) welcomes your daughter to these facts of life. Don’t hesitate to extend this same lesson to adults beyond your home as well. When we help girls let go of the idea that there are perfect people or perfect relationships, they move into a vastly more mature way of dealing with people as they are and the world as it is. And on your end, too, remembering how to hold on to good feelings when we are angry or disappointed will come in handy because sometimes your daughter will do things she’s not supposed to do.”
― Lisa Damour, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood

“Don’t hesitate to validate your daughter’s experience when she complains to you about another adult. Unless you have reason to believe otherwise, her description is likely accurate; teenagers are particularly clear-eyed and can provide descriptions of adults’ characters that would put a Brontë sister to shame. If your daughter has been lucky enough to spend her childhood surrounded by reasonable grown-ups, she may be confused when a less-than-impressive one first crosses her path. Spare her the trouble of doubting her perceptions while calmly acknowledging that she will need to learn to deal with all sorts of people.”
― Lisa Damour, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood

“In good marriages, partners can help their children appreciate what they should and shouldn’t take personally in the other parent’s behavior. My husband has told our daughters that I’ve been clean crazy for as long as he’s known me and that he stopped taking it personally years ago.”
― Lisa Damour, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood

“Few moments in life spark more maturation than when a young person recognizes that her parents have strengths and limitations that were in place long before she came along and that will be there long after she moves out. In letting go of the dream of turning you into the perfect parent, your daughter recovers a lot of energy that has been devoted to being angry with you, feeling hurt by you, or trying to change you.”
― Lisa Damour, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood