“There is a predictable pattern to teenage development, a blueprint for how girls grow. When you understand what makes your daughter tick, she suddenly makes a lot more sense.” 

So says author and psychologist Lisa Damour in her new book, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood.

Billed as some of the best work on adolescent parenting since the groundbreaking Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys, this book ($27) covers the complexities of female development, friendships, emotions, power struggles, romantic relationships, planning for the future and self-care.

We like the book’s conversational tone and we LOVE the metaphor of parents as the swimming pool — and the big, wide water, the world:

“Like any good swimmer, (your daughter) holds on to the edge of the pool to catch her breath after a rough lap or getting dunked one too many times,” Damour writers. “Stand strong. Your daughter needs a wall to swim to, and she needs you to be a wall that can withstand her comings and goings.”