I HATE MY THIGHS.

You look great–did you lose weight?

Fat talk. Many of us do it every day as we play the “compare and despair” game, trying to live up to an impossible stick-thin ideal of what we should look like and what it means to be feminine. But words have power. Even a casual remark about our own or another’s appearance can hold us back, reinforce our worst body image fears and stop us from being all we can be.

We should be celebrating our bodies and all our other amazing qualities and achievements!

So on Fat Talk Free Week, 19-23 October, please join me in trying to end the madness. Fat Talk Free Week grew out of a successful eating disorders program for young women on university campuses in the United States. It has snowballed into an international week to raise public awareness of how fat talk damages women and girls.

To get revved up, take a look at the video that was released last year for Fat Talk Free Week.

Some of the info shocked me, such as this statistic from the United States:

67% of women aged 15-64 withdraw from life-engaging activities such as giving their opinion, going to school or visiting the doctor because they feel bad about the way they look.

And the situation here is equally as alarming. A quarter of teenage girls surveyed in Australia say they would get plastic surgery if they could. Among 15-year-old girls, almost seven in ten are on a diet, and of these, 8 per cent are severely dieting. Six in ten girls say they have been teased about their appearance.

Let’s start freeing ourselves from all these negative and unrealistic body image beliefs–for our girls’ and our own futures. The Fat Talk Free Week website has great practical ideas for raising awareness in schools, such as:

• making and displaying positive body image banners
• writing down negative body image beliefs, screwing them up and cermonially throwing them out
• writing down positive body image beliefs and displaying them in the school
• making lists of friends’ best qualities, with one important exception: their physical appearance
• groups making a pact to put a coin in a jar every time a girl fat talks during the week, then donating the money to an eating disorders organisation
• discussion starters on defining fat talk and why it’s bad.

And I also love these great ideas that any woman or girl can try anywhere–at school, at work or at home:

The Top 5 Things You Can Do Now to Promote Positive Body Image

1. Choose one friend or family member and discuss one thing you like about yourselves.
2. Keep a journal of all the good things your body allows you to do (e.g., sleep well and wake up rested, play tennis, etc.).
3. Pick one friend to make a pact with to avoid negative body talk. When you catch your friend talking negatively about their body, remind them of the pact.
4. Make a pledge to end complaints about your body, such as “I’m so flat-chested” or “I hate my legs.” When you catch yourself doing this, make a correction by saying something positive about that body part, such as, “I’m so glad my legs got me through soccer practice today.”
5. The next time someone gives you a compliment, rather than objecting (“No, I’m so fat”), practise taking a deep breath and saying “Thank you.”

Now is your chance to get prepared to try out some of these ideas on October 19-23. I’ll be sharing my experiences of ridding my life of fat talk, and I’d love to hear yours, too. Watch this space.

The ‘really big school’ can seem impersonal and overwhelming. The curriculum is more complex. There are new school subjects today that we couldn’t have even imagined when we were at school. Some of the information our teens are learning is outside our realm of experience. Yet teenagers spend only 15 per cent of their time at school, which means our support at home is still essential.

A simple starting point: get to know your daughter’s studying habits and ask yourself: how does she like to learn? When, how and with whom does she do her best learning? If you are unsure, ask her and ask her teachers. Find out what works and how you can make her learning environment at home even better. For more specific guidance on how to do this, I think Elizabeth Hartley-Brewer, a respected parenting author, has a helpful way of looking at the role of a parent in a child’s education. She likens it to the role a good sports coach has in an athlete’s training:

From sports psychology, we know the best coaches focus on improving technique and skill . . . They make rewards reflect achievements; teach individuals to manage their own mistakes, learning and progress; and reduce anxiety by finding out what is causing it and addressing that directly.”

Rather than being overwhelmed by how to help your daughter learn school subjects you don’t entirely understand, you can use the idea of becoming her coach to break down your role into doable tasks: helping your daughter improve her techniques and skills; rewarding her achievements; allowing her to learn from her mistakes; giving her the freedom to manage her own learning; and offering her your loving support, so that she is not left feeling anxious.

One of the areas that seems to cause the most angst with parents is IT. Particularly if Mum and Dad are not confident users of technology.

I was interviewed for two interesting Sydney Morning Herald articles on this topic last week ( both were published today and were picked up nationally).

Too boring: girls miss the IT boat. Read full article at the link provided.

An extract: 

As new media technologies continue to intertwine into our everyday lives and careers, there are fears girls are being left behind, with many finding computer subjects boring or irrelevant.

A study of attitudes to technology and career skills conducted by the Victorian Government in 2001 showed that 36 per cent of girls, compared with 16 per cent of boys, found information and communication technologies boring.

Almost 10 years later, little has changed, believes the educator Dannielle Miller. She says she has picked up on an alarming trend during her work with girls in primary and high schools across Australia and New Zealand, dealing with things like self-esteem and body confidence.

Miller, the chief executive of Enlighten Education, a company she helped found to foster education and self-esteem among young girls, says a big proportion of future job opportunities will be involved in the IT field.

”Increasingly jobs will require high-order IT skills,” she says.

”If we have a generation of young women who have been excluded from that knowledge then there is going to be a stark gender divide which will be quite problematic.”

So Much Homework, so many distractions. Read full article at the link provided.

An extract:

PARENTS who peer over their teen’s shoulders during homework time may be alarmed by all the distractions that are taking place.

How can they concentrate amid the lure of MSN, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, the internet, music and a nearby mobile? Can this seemingly distracting environment actually be positive to their child’s learning? Can it offer them life skills to navigate today’s increasingly digital world?

”When I’m doing my homework I will have Facebook, MySpace and MSN open and I will flick through all the screens constantly,” says Caitlyn Wilcher, 17.

Wilcher is studying for the HSC at Blaxland High School, yet no matter how pressing her homework is, these screens are constantly open, she says.

”When the pressure is on I still leave everything up but don’t check it as frequently and stop talking so much on MSN. I tend to talk about the homework when it’s crunch time.”

Increasingly, homework done on the computer is becoming a social event. Dannielle Miller says parents need not be too concerned about these apparent distractions but rather should try to help young people navigate this environment.”

Love to hear more about how the girls you care for learn.

Sunrise – Raising Teen Girls – 4/9/09: click on the image below to view the segment or go directly to the URL: http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/index.php?cl=15377569

Podcast – Breakfast radio with Tony, Bec and Mikey - Vega: 2/9/09 (listen about 10 minutes in as they talk about birds for the first segement!)

http://podcast.vega953.com.au/brekky_atbm/atbm_bestof/090902_tbm_bestof.mp3

Podcast – The Conversation Hour with Jon Faine, ABC Radio Melbourne – 31/8/09

“Jon Faine and his co-host, Dr Gael Jennings, took your calls today as they discussed the problems faced by girls in our society, and the problems faced by those trying to raise happy and healthy young women. Their guests were authors Melinda Tankard-Reist, who’s book is called ‘Getting real – Challenging the sexualisation of girls’, and is published by Spinifex Press, and Dannielle Miller, who’s book “The Butterfly Effect’, is published by Random House.”

http://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2009/08/31/2672012.htm?site=melbourne

Love for you to join in and comment on any of the points raised in the above!

Advance Praise for The Butterfly Effect

Dannielle Miller is the teen girl whisperer.’ Fran Simpson, teacher and mother of a teen

Dannielle Miller’s book is a must-read for all parents of teenage girls. The first thing that literally thumped me in the chest when reading this book was a total awareness and awakening of what is happening to our teenage girls. At a deep level, it resonated with me. The information is real, pertinent and totally relevant. Great work, Dannielle. Thank you for awakening me. Thank you for snapping me to attention and making me want to become a greater part of the solution.’ Karen, mother of a teen girl

This is the book we have been waiting for. It includes the most up-to-date research and finally gives parents positive, sensible strategies they can easily apply.’ Dr Michele Beale, general practitioner and stress management specialist

If you want to develop a deeply connected and loving relationship with your teenage daughter – then this book is for you. This is a time when many girls struggle to cope and really need our guidance and support, even though they may not be asking for it! The Butterfly Effect is written with passion and honesty, and offers insightful and practical advice for all parents who want to do more than ‘just survive’ the teen years!’ Julie Gale – Founder/Director Kids Free 2B Kids.

Dannielle Miller is not the first person to call attention to these issues, to the phenomenon of girls’ lives sometimes falling apart at the very threshold of womanhood. But in this candid and thought-provoking book, written with passion and conviction, she offers not only insight into adolescent girls as interesting works in progress, but also provides encouragement, solace and solution. She reminds us too, I am pleased to say, that we (their mothers and fathers) are also works in progress…’ Clinical Professor David Bennett AO FRACP FSAM, Head, NSW Centre for the Advancement of Adolescent Health, The Children’s Hospital at Westmead; President, Association for the Wellbeing of Children in Healthcare; and co-author (with Leanne Rowe and Bruce Tonge) of I Just Want You to be Happy (Allen & Unwin, 2009).

What was I hoping to contribute to the vital dialogue on parenting adolescent girls?  

A great deal of research on the issues affecting teen girls’ lives has been conducted by psychologists, sociologists, healthcare professionals and other experts. Throughout my book I considered their data, which has been published in various professional journals and research papers. I am focused on keeping up to date with the latest statistics because they give us a measurable insight into what is happening in girl world.

Yet I also know that the raw numbers do not tell the whole story. They do not always tell us how girls feel about themselves, their world and their place in it. So in addition to statistics and expert opinion, I also collated the more detailed and personal information you can really only get by taking the time to sit down and discuss the issues with teen girls. I gathered this research formally and informally over the many years I have worked with young people as a teacher, as a coordinator for students at risk and as the co-founder and CEO of Enlighten Education.

Ultimately, I believe we can join our daughters and work together to find new connections and deeper mutual understandings. In this book, I want to challenge my readers to do just that: to form a new connection with their daughter, niece, stepdaughter – with all the young women close to them – and work with them to bring about change. I do not want us to aim to merely to ‘survive’ girls’ adolescence, as some other parenting books will encourage us to do. We must aim for something far more mutually respectful and rewarding.

If you are currently caught up in screaming fights or in passive-aggressive girl hell – and yes, I do acknowledge that teen girls are gifted at turning their anger on those who are closest – I can see why books that promise survival might appeal. But isn’t the old ‘Mothers and daughters just do not get along; teen girls are hell’ argument just a little clichéd? It is certainly disrespectful to both parties.

If you, like many of us, have been fed that oppositional, woman-pitted-against-woman approach for years, my invitation to begin a more emphatic journey of parenting through self-discovery may seem too simplistic. Or, if you are caught up in conflict with your teen girl right now, it may seem unobtainable. Let me assure you, I am not setting out to make mothers feel any more inadequate than they may feel already. Girls may do seething anger well, but women do guilt well; we’re gifted at blaming ourselves for everything that goes wrong.

I am not one of the ‘Mummy Police’, the smug parenting experts who leave me feeling like I am doing everything wrong. I found myself particularly susceptible to them in my early days as a mother. I spent my time with my new daughter, Teyah, sleep deprived and bewildered by what I was supposed to do with this new and oh-so-perfect creature. I thought I had to be the perfect mother; she deserved nothing less. These were desperate days spent madly reading every book I could find – and becoming even more confused as one only seemed to contradict the next. In the end it was Baby Love, by Australian Robin Barker, that resonated with me. Why? Because she emphasised the need for following one’s instincts, and love was put at the forefront, right there in the title. Isn’t that what it is supposed to be about, after all? Teyah didn’t need a perfect mother; she needed a happy, confident, loving one.

Your teenage daughter does not need perfection, either. It may surprise you to know that out of the many thousands of young people who have crossed my path, including those from very troubled backgrounds, very few have ever questioned their parents’ skills or said they wished their mothers were better at parenting, or were thinner, more beautiful, more successful. Rather, they have told me they want more time, more love, more empathy and more happiness.

I believe the key is empathy. Instead of viewing adolescence as a stage in which fights between mothers and daughters are inevitable, try viewing it as a stage when a new connection can be found and a new level in your relationship reached. And empathy should be easy. Her pain is your pain. Her struggles are your struggles.

Make no mistake, in this book I am not suggesting you stop parenting and become your daughter’s new ‘bestie’. The other thing that young people consistently tell me they want more of from their parents is boundaries. Your daughter needs to see what a strong, confident, healthy woman looks like, how she copes with mistakes and failures, how she sets boundaries, and how she demands to be treated, both within the home and by society as a whole. If you won’t show her, who will?

In recent years a number of books have come out on the plight of teen girls in our hyper-sexual, commercialised and media-saturated culture. These books are valuable because they provide a real insight into teen-girl world – but they risk leaving us in a state of despair, feeling that it’s all too hard to make changes in our daughters’ lives. It’s not! I was determined to offer practical steps we can take to work towards making things better.

The idea of the butterfly effect comes from the science of chaos theory. It suggests that everything in this world is interconnected, to the extent that the beating of a butterfly’s wings in one part of the world may ultimately contribute to a tornado happening in another part of the world. Small changes can make a huge difference. My hope is that you may harness the butterfly effect in your relationship with your daughter, by being conscious that your actions and words – even ones that seem trivial – have a big influence on your daughter, just as her peers and the media influence her.

Once you have read my book, I would love to know what you think. I also have 10 copies to give away to my blog readers! Simply post a comment here and leave your email address. I will select 10 winners at random and email them to get their postal details.

Advance reviews for this important new collection of essays on the pornification of culture include:

Young women and girls today face extraordinary pressures to meet body image expectations that are unhealthy, unhelpful and unrealistic. The contributors to this book make a valuable contribution to an important national debate on how we can help young women to grow up with a healthy self-image and with the freedom and strength to be their real selves.”
The Hon. Kate Ellis, Minister for Early Childhood Education, Childcare and Youth, Parliament of Australia.

Getting Real is an important contribution to the discussion of the sexualisation of girls. This profoundly disturbing issue is a public health problem of international concern. This book is essential reading for parents, educators and everyone who wishes to make the world a safer and healthier place for all children.”
Jean Kilbourne, Author of  So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualised Childhood And What Parents Can Do To Protect Their Kids

My Melbourne readers may wish to go along to the book’s launch, 2nd September in Hawthorn. The invitation is attached as a PDF here:
GR Melb launch

Getting Real will be available in all good book stores from September 1st. Also available in book stores from September 1st will be my book, The Butterfly Effect. I am very excited about this and will share more in my blog post next week.

The Layne Beachley Aim for the Stars Foundation was created to “inspire girls and women across Australia to dream and achieve”. What a fabulous slogan! Beachley was inspired to start this foundation for young women as she had struggled to fund her early surfing career (imagine a male pro surfer having to go without sponsorship for 8 years and being forced to work four jobs as well as training and competing!). The list of girls she has chosen to support so far is impressive and looks beyond those just interested in sport. Young women passionate about pursuits such as ballet, opera and African studies have all been assisted.

Beachley tells us that “the foundation is an investment into the future of Australian women. A little bit of finance or just the knowledge someone believes in their personal ambition may be all it takes for a female to achieve greatness and ultimately happiness.”

Who else is encouraging our girls ?

The Vicsport website is one which is fabulous for sporting girls, and it also hosts great articles about women in sport and in leadership roles in general.

Youth NSW also has some excellent links to lots of opportunities that would appeal to young women, such as the Future Leaders Awards, which recognise and reward young Australians who have shown strong leadership and potential, and Write in Your Face, which is a funding program supporting emerging forms of writing practice by young writers or organisations working with young writers. I love that the latter invites proposals from people who are using language in innovative ways, including writing for zines, e-zines, comics, multimedia, multi-artforms or cross-media works, websites, live performances and spoken word.

Federally, there is a whole website dedicated to grants and a search for “women” and “youth” brought up a few interesting options, such as the Local Champions Program for young sportsmen and women, and the Science and Innovation Awards for Young People in Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry.

If it is arts you are after, then the Australia Council for the Arts is the place to go!  Search under “Grants”. You will find everything from music to dance to literature.

Other private foundations worth considering include:

The Amanda Young Foundation. This was created in memory of a young woman who tragically died as a result of meningococcol disease. The organisation exists not only to raise awareness of the disease but also to encourage young leaders in Western Australia. They have a Leaders Award and a fellowship coming soon.

The Future Leaders Awards recognise and reward young Australians who have shown strong leadership and potential. The awards also aim to inspire others to engage in environmental and community issues and make a difference. Here I found awards in areas ranging from jazz to writing to climate action.

The Audrey Fagan Enrichment Grant program is offering girls in the ACT grants of up to $2,000 to pursue study in a field of interest.

Finally, should you decide to pursue any of these opportunities, the following site has a few good basic tips for writing successful grant applications: Tips for Writing Grants. If the writing process really intimidates you, the excellent site Our Community has a list of experienced writers who can be paid to complete grant applications on your behalf.

Do you know of any other funding opportunities young women can access? If so, please share these!

Their research showed that the widely held belief that most women aren’t hard-wired for careers in science and technology is erroneous. Rather, the researchers provide several possible cultural factors keeping females from excelling in maths, including classroom dynamics in which teachers pay more attention to boys, while failing to nurture even mathematically gifted girls. In addition, they found stereotypes may drive guidance counsellors and others to discourage girls from taking engineering courses. The lack of female role models in maths-intensive careers was also identified as a possible reason why girls may steer clear of these paths.

I confess that I once said to my daughter when she was struggling with maths, “You’re just like your mummy. We both love reading and writing but find maths and science tough.” Way to go, Danni. What kind of message was I sending Teyah? The same message Mattel’s Barbie gave girls when she spoke her first words in 1992: “Math class is tough!” How limiting. Throughout history there have been accomplished women across all fields of learning. We need to take every opportunity to remind our daughters of the many women who have achieved academically.

The following websites may be worth encouraging your budding maths star to explore:

Girlstart - American site created to empower girls to excel in mathematics, science and technology. They have an interesting blog and a related website where girls can complete maths-based puzzles, etc.

Nerd Girls - American site celebrating smart-girl individuality. Their beliefs: “Brains are beautiful. Geek is Chic. Smart is sexy. Not either/or.”

An extensive list of general maths sites is also offered at the South Australian Department of Education and Children’s Services site: http://www.millnthps.sa.edu.au/websites/mathematics/general_maths.htm

Even the most simple empowering messages we give girls can have a lasting effect on them. Fifteen years ago, Rachel, who is now a grown woman, was in a class I taught at high school. She recently emailed me to share the following: “I still remember the first thing I noticed when I walked into your classroom in Year 10: a sticker on the top of the board that said ‘Girls can be engineers too.’ Yours was one of the few classrooms where I believed that I could achieve something.”

I’d love to hear how you have been encouraging girls to move beyond all sorts of limiting stereotypes.

It was Dr Sloane Madden from The Children’s Hospital at Westmead, New South Wales, who raised the alarm: “What we are seeing clinically, and what is being reported anecdotally around the world is that kids are presenting in greater numbers at a younger age,” he said in a recent interview. “They certainly will tell you that they believe that they are fat, that they want to be thinner, and they have no insight into the fact that they are malnourished and they are literally starving themselves to death.”

Dr Madden went on to say that the number of EOED cases is expected to rise unless there is a change in the media’s obsession with fat and weight. “I think that there needs to be a move away from this focus on weight and numbers and body fat, and a focus on healthy eating and exercise,” he said in a Sydney Morning Herald interview. “You can see that in current (television) programs like The Biggest Loser, where it is all about numbers and weight, it’s not helpful for those people and it’s certainly not helpful for this group of kids.”

Not helpful either is Australia’s Next Top Model. Early reports about this season’s show indicate it will, once again, feature bullying and an unhealthy preoccupation with weight. In the first episode, to air on April 28, Perry tells his fellow judges - the model agent Priscilla Leighton-Clark and former model Charlotte Dawson – that some contestants look like “Frankenstein”, “a wild pig”, “fat”, “a moose” and that one has “something spaz [spastic] with her teeth”. All this from a show hosted and produced by Sarah Murdoch, a member of the Federal Government’s newly formed advisory group on body image.

Richard Eckersley in his excellent book Well and Good – Morality, Meaning and Happiness voices the concerns of many:

No sensible person would argue that there is a simple, direct relationship between media content and people’s behaviour. But nor should any sensible person accept the proposition, implied by some cultural commentators, that what we see, hear and read in the media has no effect on us. Maybe children today are savvy, sophisticated consumers of media – as we are often told – but this does not mean that we can be complacent about media influences.”

It is more important than ever that we give our young people the skills they need to deconstruct the many media images they are bombarded with every day. With this in mind, the following books and web sites provide ways to begin this essential dialogue with the young people you care for:

Web sites

Enlighten Education – http://enlighteneducation.com: My company’s web site. We deliver in-school workshops for girls on self-esteem, body image, managing friendships, personal safety and career pathways for girls.

The Butterfly Effect – http://enlighteneducation.edublogs.org: My blog, featuring weekly posts targeted to educators and parents of teen girls. Check out “Danielle Miller’s videos”, “My Book Collections” and the “Articles of interest” page for suggestions.

Girlpower Retouch – http://demo.fb.se/e/girlpower/retouch: A site that shows how easy it is to distort the images we see in magazines to change someone’s appearance.

Jean Kilbourne – http://jeankilbourne.com: Writer and documentary maker who explores the way women and girls are portrayed in advertising.

The Beautiful Women Project – http://www.beautifulwomenproject.org: American art project celebrating diversity and real everyday beauty.

Girl Guiding UK – http://www.girlguiding.org.uk: The section “Girls Shout Out” has some particularly interesting reports on teenage mental health, active citizenship and the pressures girls feel growing up.

Kids Free 2B Kids – http://kf2bk.com: Australian site that raises awareness about the damage caused by the sexualisation of children and acts to combat this.

Young Media Australia – http://youngmedia.org.au: Australian organisation with a particular interest in developing media literacy in young people.

American sites that help young people develop media literacy skills to combat unhelpful media messages about beauty and body image:

• About Face – http://www.about-face.org
• Adios Barbie – http://adiosbarbie.com
• Any Body – http://www.any-body.org
• Love Your Body Now Foundation – http://loveyourbody.nowfoundation.org
• Turn Beauty Inside Out – http://tbio.org

American sites offering resources and professional development for teachers who want to nurture media literacy in the classroom:

• Centre for Media Literacy – http://medialit.org
• My Pop Studio – http://mypopstudio.com

Books and magazines

For girls

New Moon Girls – American magazine aimed at 8- to 12-year-old girls, with accompanying web-based activities: http://www.newmoon.com

Indigo 4 Girls – Australian Magazine aimed at 10- to 14-year-olds that describes itself as a “positive, body friendly, age appropriate magazine for girls”.  http://indigo4girls.com

Girl Stuff: Your full-on guide to the teen years – Book by Kaz Cooke, Penguin Group Australia, 2007

Body Talk: A Power Guide For Girls, Elizabeth Reid Boyd and Abigail Bray, Hodder Headline

The Girlosophy series by Anthea Paul, Allen and Unwin

The Girlforce series by Nikki Goldstein, ABC Books

For Parents and Teachers

Faking It – A special publication that deconstructs the female image in magazines, available through Women’s Forum Australia: www.womensforumaustralia.org

Can’t Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel – Book by Jean Kilbourne, Free Press

The Beauty Myth – Book by Naomi Wolf, Vintage

Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body – Book by Courtney E. Martin, Free Press

Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture – Book by Ariel Levy, Schwartz Publishing

Well and Good – Book by Richard Eckersley, Text Publishing

It is also more important than ever that we all take stock and ask ourselves whether we too are getting caught up in playing the compare and despair game. Many of us tell our children they do not need to change in order to be beautiful, while we rush for Botox. We tell them inner beauty counts, while we devour magazines that tell us beauty is really only about air-brushed perfection after all. If even the grown-ups are struggling, is it any wonder that our daughters are? Our children cannot be what they cannot see.

It is up to us to show them what the state of “I am me, I am okay” looks like.

I think it is a day well worth commemorating at your school or workplace, hence the early heads-up. Here are some ideas you might like to pursue:

• Fundraising: The Butterfly Foundation, an organisation supporting Australians with eating disorders, is asking for groups to host a morning or afternoon tea, at which guests make gold coin donations to the foundation. For a fundraising kit, contact romy@thebutterflyfoundation.org.au
• Film screenings: Hairspray is one of my favourite feel-good movies to show girls. For older girls, Muriel’s Wedding offers some great messages on choosing to be yourself. Do you know of others?
• Art projects: I love Nancy Bruno’s Beautiful Women Project. This series of photos and stories focuses on real women and what makes them truly beautiful in the present moment. A wonderful idea might be to ask girls to record an image of themselves at their most beautiful and to write an accompanying reflection on what real beauty means to them.
• Closet clean-outs: Encourage girls to clean out their wardrobes and donate to charity any clothing they’ve been keeping “until they get thin”.
• Sharing the love: Girls could make cards that celebrate diversity and send these to their family and friends. How about these ideas: “I like you the way you are”, ” You’re beautiful because . . .”
• Awareness campaigns: Love Your Body Day (www.loveyourbody.nowfoundation.org) runs an excellent poster design competition. Some of the past entries are fabulous (including the one below by Australian Anand McCorquodale, from Pyrmont, New South Wales) and may inspire your own budding artists to reflect on how they can spread some positive body image messages.

Any other good ideas we can share?

I am a long-time fan of Associate Professor David Bennett, Head of the NSW Centre for the Advancement of Adolescent Health.

We first met back in 2006. At the time, I was combining part-time work developing Enlighten Education with a senior role as an Education Officer responsible for developing enterprise education in Catholic Schools. I had just written a 60-hour one-unit Higher School Certificate (HSC) course suitable for Year 11 or 12 called Applied Enterprise Learning. The course, approved by the Board of Studies NSW, has a strong practical component; students apply their core learning to find local solutions to local community problems and contribute to community renewal. (An independent evaluation of the course is available here should you be interested: project-evaluation-report-no-course-outline.) This type of learning, which not only enhances a participant’s skills and knowledge base but also adds value to their community, is known as service learning.

David was also keenly interested in exploring innovative ways of engaging young people in their learning and was a member of the National Youth Careers and Transitions Advisory Group (NYCTAG). We were both invited to deliver presentations at a national conference exploring the merits of  service learning. The final report, commissioned by the Department of Education, Science and Training, voiced our hopes for the service learning model. We bonded instantly as we shared an obvious enthusiasm for young people and passion for our work.

Since that time, I have had the opportunity to connect with David at various points in my career. He was an early supporter of Enlighten’s work with girls in schools. He is also the co-author of one of my favourite books on parenting teens, You Just Can’t Make Me. Recently, David was generous enough to act as a “critical friend” and read the draft of my own book on parenting teen girls (to be published by Random House Australia in September) and kindly agreed to write the foreword, too.

With this history of deep admiration and respect between us, you can imagine how excited I am to report that David has a second book, due to be released this month. This work has been co-authored with Associate Professor Leanne Rowe AM (the former chairman of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners) and Professor Bruce Tonge (Head of the Centre for Development Psychiatry and Chairperson of the Division of Psychiatry at Monash Medical Centre, Melbourne).

The book’s media release follows:

In the lead up to National Youth Week, three specialists in the fields of teenage psychiatry, general practice and adolescent health broach the difficult and often underestimated subject of teenage depression in this new guide for parents, carers, teachers, social workers and doctors.

The Facts of Teen Depression…

· 1 in 5 teenagers will experience major depression before they are 18

· The chance of a child developing depression has tripled in the last 30 years

· Hundreds of thousands of prescriptions of antidepressants are written for under 18’s each year

· Those aged 15-24 have the highest prevalence of depression of any age group

· Hospitalisations for self harm by teenagers are escalating dramatically

One of the most challenging and problematic issues facing Australia today is the increasing rate of youth depression and the high rates of self harm by our young people. But these things can be prevented, identified and managed and I Just Want You To Be Happy is a much needed, practical, clear and highly accessible guide to show you how.

I Just Want You To Be Happy describes the factors contributing to the increasing depression in young people and discusses why our search for constant happiness is setting our children up for problems. It is important for all parents to know that, contrary to popular myth, depression can be prevented and treated. Alongside expert specialist advice, I Just Want You To Be Happy contains an invaluable contact list of mental health organisations, support groups and websites where parents and carers can seek further help.

Every school and every parent of a teen should read this important book. It combines solid research with practical, doable advice and, as always, reflects the writers’ deep affection and high regard for young people.

In fact, I love this book so much I really want to help generate a groundswell of support for it. I am going to offer a free copy of the book to a school or community group that can show me they have recommended it to their wider circle via their school website or newsletter. Simply email me a link or scanned copy of your recommendation, along with your postal address, and I shall randomly pick one submission and send them this book for their reference library.

Good luck!