Book Review: Sleeping Beauties, Awakened Women

Mom Central received a review copy to facilitate this review. All opinions are our own.

I’m a mother of three girls ages 9, 12 and 13 and, frankly, I’m not a big fan of parenting books. When it comes to advice, I trust my daughters’ pediatrician and two of my older sisters. They bravely got married and had children before me, and they have advice aplenty.

That being said, I was shocked to learn that two girls in my daughters’ classes had experimented with cutting themselves and had been hospitalized this past spring. Wow! These were nice girls – not perfect – but they definitely hadn’t seemed like they were falling to pieces to me. So, when the opportunity came to read Sleeping Beauties, Awakened Women I bit.

The author, Dr. Tim Jordan, is a developmental and behavioral pediatrician who has worked with girls in his counseling practice, retreats, camps and schools for more than 30 years. Sleeping Beauties, Awakened Women describes this practice as involving more and more girls facing anxiety and depression and getting caught up with drugs, eating disorders, and self-mutilation. The book is full of insightful examples of how real girls are struggling today and how in their own words they are coping with the pressures they feel. The book then puts these struggles in context. It identifies the fast-paced, high-pressured, highly-distracting world we live in as a major reason tweens and teens are having a tougher time than ever navigating the emotional transformation of adolescence.

Along the way, Sleeping Beauties, Awakened Women gives some good, solid advice as to how parents can help their daughters navigate these emotional struggles. The book’s title refers to sleep metaphorically as portrayed in traditional fairy tales. Sleeping Beauty sleeps after she pricks her finger on a spinning wheel. Snow White sleeps after she bites the poison apple. Both characters later “awaken” as grown women, ready to marry. Today, Dr. Jordan suggests girls also need “sleep” – a mentally active but quiet, reflective time – if they hope to understand themselves and the emotional experience of growing up and then smoothly “transform” into emotionally strong women.

Even if your daughter has no major mental-health issues, Sleeping Beauties, Awakened Women reinforces what we all know already but what we struggle to incorporate into our own parenting. It’s hard to resist the pressure not to push our children for perfection, not to sign them up for ever more challenging sports commitments or more and more after-school clubs and activities. But Sleeping Beauties, Awakened Women reminds us that it’s not only OK for our daughters to relax and have down-time, but it’s actually essential for their emotional well-being. For this reason alone, Sleeping Beauties, Awakened Women is well worth the read.

You can purchase Sleeping Beauties, Awakened Women online or at your favorite bookstore.

Mom Central