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Helping girls adjust to puberty is essential for the development of healthy self-esteem and positive body image. For young girls between the ages of ten and fourteen, this life stage can be a time of high drama. Raging hormones create both rapid and extreme fluctuations in mood and behavior. Young girls who are caught in the throes of adjusting to puberty, experience exhilaration one moment and deep despair the next. One pimple might as well be twenty and a bad hair day can lead to a major meltdown.

While puberty is a normal stage of life through which every young woman must pass, for many of them it is awkward, emotionally painful, and filled with feelings of insecurity. During puberty the body experiences its greatest spurts of growth and its reproductive organs reach maturity. Young girls first develop breast buds, followed by breast tissue that continues to mature until late adolescence. Body hair grows in the pubic area and under the arms. When enough hormones have been secreted, menstruation begins, signally that the young woman's body can now conceive and carry a child.

Some girls welcome the first signs of "woman hood" and proudly display the changes in their bodies to their closest friends. Others suffer intense feelings of embarrassment and attempt to hide budding breasts under baggy shirts and layers of extra clothing. Those who have not been emotionally and mentally prepared for puberty often feel a sense of shame about their changing bodies. An adolescent who begins menstruating without begin prepared for this very special rite of passage, can experience significant anxiety.

If you are the parent of a daughter about to enter puberty, there are some significant things that you can do to help her welcome the changes that signal her maturity and move toward young adulthood.

1. Sit down and have not just one talk, but several, with your daughter before she begins to enter puberty. Help her to understand what puberty is and be prepared to handle the physiological changes that will occur in her body. Encourage her to view puberty as a rite of passage and her body development as preparation for becoming a woman. Celebrate the exciting changes taking place in her body.

2. Remember that your daughter's more frequent emotional outbursts are related to hormone fluctuations that will eventually level out. In the meantime, keep the lines of communication open. Listen first, and then validate her feelings. Choose your battles carefully and let the little

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