Talking to Girls in "How Can You Say That?" summary and book review

How Can You Say That? by Amy Lynch with Dr. Linda Ashford is a book about girls and talking, and talking to girls and listening to girls and understanding how girls use words to control their environment.

"[They] understand the power of saying things aloud to people who matter to them." (6) According to studies quoted, psychologists have found that high estrogen levels increase linguistic abilities - helping girls to remember exactly what you said, and come up with just the right word for the situation.

Our girls are exposed to language that is MEANER than it used to be, whether it's language they hear at school, on television, from the internet or on the street. (7) This makes it that much more important for us to really hear what our girls are saying, underneath the words themselves, as they hear and say things beyond the words themselves, such as tone, lilt, cadence, syntax, and pitch.

For example, girls know a fine line between interruptions and interjections. An unwelcome, off-topic comment is an interruption, but an on-topic, supportive comment is an interjection and is perceived as relating, not interrupting. This is why groups of girls carry on conversations apparently over the top of one another. "Researchers have found that girls are less likely than boys to end speaking by actually falling silent. Sometimes when girls have said all they want to say, they just start repeating themselves, and that's an invitation for us to begin speaking." (11)

After a chapter of academic support for the ideas proposed, the authors Lynch and Ashford go on to address specific areas of struggle in communicating with our growing girls. They ask parents to consider the following questions in the midst of conflict:

1. How can I bring some calmness to what is happening?
2. What can I do or say that will show her I'm listening?
3. What can I say that will validate her feelings, or at least not make things worse?
4. What can I say that will express my own feelings, and not make things worse?

Then, they continue to present chapter by chapter, answers to these questions as they apply to specific situations. Chapter 3 tackles picky eaters and more in 'body size and food issues'; Four helps parents take on the 'you embarrass me' statements; following chapters address competition, bedroom conditions, disobedience and disrespect, boys, boyfriends and sex, and household chores.

Overall, I learned some interesting things about how my teenage daughters and I communicate with each other and possibly even learned some insightful ideas about how she hears the things I say to her. But, while I was reading this in reference to girls who are 17 and 19 years old, the examples in the book are often much younger.

For example, what do you do when your fifth grader tells you she's "going with" a boy; or your sixth grader wants to go to a party; or a ten year old who can't leave the bathroom because she has to look 'just so' in school or suffer for her imperfections.

Homeschooling does have it's advantages. It's difficult for me to imagine girls so young in these situations, but Lynch and Ashford have research to back up the age-range for their examples - many of them come from real families who were actually in these situations.

I found their advice on some of these circumstances to be too liberal - not saying 'no' to a ten year old with a steady boyfriend, but instead encouraging her discovery of romance.The answers they offered seemed more appropriate for older girls, but I do recognize that young girls who attend public school are usually more worldly in their knowledge and experience than their homeschooled counterparts, making this book a relevant source for their target market.