Underestimated : the wisdom and power of teenage girls / Chelsey Goodan.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

*National Bestseller*

"If you have a teenage girl in your life, you need to read this." -- Oprah Daily

In the vein of Reviving Ophelia and Untangled comes a fresh, unexpected, and empowering guide to better understand teenage girls, revealing how their insights can create heartfelt connections and impactful change.

Written with warmth and humor, Underestimated is the first book to invite us into a teenage girl's brain and heart, as told from the point of view of a beloved and trusted mentor. Chelsey Goodan is a highly sought-after academic tutor who has worked with hundreds of girls from all different backgrounds, earning their trust, confidence, and friendship. They in turn have shared with her their innermost concerns, doubts, and what they wish they could communicate to their parents and the world at large.

With topics and language directly chosen by the girls, Goodan reveals how the solutions to a girl's well-being lie within her. She offers parents the exact words they can use to help her discover these solutions and demonstrates how adults can better support a teenage girl's voice to create positive change.

Rather than dismissing teenage girls based on our own fears or treating them as problems that need to be solved, Goodan encourages us as parents, and as a society, to help girls unleash their power and celebrate their intrinsic wisdom, creating more healing and connection for everyone. With inspiring ease, Underestimated shows us how to do this with accessible advice, entertaining narratives, and profound wisdom.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

A teenage girl "want to scream.... A battle cry loud enough to shatter the glass above her and obliterate what tries to contain her," according to this shortsighted debut guide to learning from and connecting with teen daughters. Academic tutor Goodan contends that teen girls are frequently silenced by society, and parents would do well to ask nonjudgmental questions ("How can I support you in this?") that make space for emotions without trying to "solve" the issue at hand, thus allowing their daughters' natural problem-solving skills to emerge. Unfortunately, Goodan undermines that helpful advice with some selective interpretations (selfies almost exclusively help girls empower themselves, she suggests, without adequately unpacking how posting such images in search of "likes" can create a harmful validation loop). In addition, parents will struggle to apply such vague lessons as "rather than working to prevent and judge teenage girls' sexual choices, let's work to create a world that thoroughly educates everyone on sexual responsibility and pleasure." Despite the author's good intentions, this stumbles. Agent: Karen Murgolo, Aevitas Creative Management. (Mar.)

Booklist Review

What are teenage girls thinking and feeling? What are their struggles? What do they need from adults in their lives? Tutor, academic coach, and speaker Goodan learned the answers to these questions from years of working with and listening to teenage girls. Her debut is a wise, well-articulated handbook to help adults listen to and hold space for teens. Goodan starts with the topic of fear. Teenage girls fear being judged, stereotyped, and dismissed as hormonal, crazy, dramatic. Topical chapters form a catalog of common challenges (media, friends, perfection) and emotions (shame, self-doubt) experienced by teenage girls. Chapters on feelings and sexuality have practical wisdom that belongs in the toolbox of every teenager. Each chapter ends with a section titled "Core Insights," with key bullet point reminders plus memorable quotations as Goodan "hands the microphone" to the girls themselves. Goodan concludes with the topic of liberation, which is found in each of the book's lessons. Liberation is the product of self-healing, owning mistakes, making amends--the work of teens and adults who care about them.

Kirkus Book Review

An activist offers a view of modern life through one of the most dismissed of all social groups: teenage girls. Despite a variety of stereotypes about teenage girls, they are "a wildly underestimated force for good in the world," writes Goodan, mentorship director of DemocraShe and founder of the Activist Cartel. Informed by a decade and a half of experience working with young women of different races, sexual orientations, and socioeconomic backgrounds, Goodan probes key issues, both internal and external, that girls struggle with on their journey to adulthood. The stormy adolescent feelings that can make girls appear emotionally "lawless" top the list. They cause well-meaning adults to take an "advise and fix" approach to girls' problems, but the author proposes a far more effective idea: create a validating, nonjudgmental space in which girls can express their emotions. The need to speak honestly about themselves and their lives can also present problems to young women. In Goodan's experience, teens such as 16-year-old Lori believe that "adults…cover the truth because they think [girls] can't handle it." What truth actually does offer is permission to successfully express selfhood. The pressure to be beautiful according to Eurocentric, heteronormative standards is also a source of profound female angst, causing girls to constantly question their value and social worth and fall victim to dangerous disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. When older women model attitudes of self-acceptance, however, girls like 15-year-old Rosy are able to articulate important truths: "[B]eauty is…transparency within yourself, not hiding, being real." What makes this book stand out is the way Goodan allows girls to share their truths openly and without judgment. In this way, the author empowers young women by showing readers what they have to teach adults about the power of (inter)personal authenticity. A heartfelt and humane sociological report. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.