The Truth is starting its journey to becoming a play, The Locket!

The Truth (I’m a girl, I’m smart and I know everything) is coming a alive in the most amazing way! It is developing into a play. The first staged reading of the play took place on June 2, 2013 at 6:30 PM at the Asbury Park Musical Heritage Foundation. Seven girls played the girl in the book. They actresses were Alysa Finnegan, Julia Hecht, Kaylin Iannone, Carlee Iannone, Tess McDougal, Angie Bianchi and Megan Brown. They ranged in age from 8 to 15. There was also a professional actress, Heather O’Scanlon. The play was directed by Bob Angelini.

Was I excited? Absolutely. Hearing the girls act and bring the girl to life was an amazing thrill. The most amazing thing of all, was how all 7 girls made here so alive. It didn’t matter whether the lines were spoken by a girl or 8 or a girl of 15. The lines and comments and opinions and worries of the girl still all rang so true.

We played to a full house! After the performance, I gave a little talk in which I explained how the girl had come to exist. Good fiction is based on truths and my book certainly is based on truths. As a psychologist I am so aware that children have insight, wisdom and deep feelings. Capturing this in a book for girls was easy for me, as I am so convinced that we need to listen to each other so much more carefully than we usually do. Our kids need to be heard and also the girl or boy still inside of the grown-up has to be better understood and that voice allowed to come through. We don’t want to keep down the real source of all our energy and enthusiasm!

That’s right, it is the kid within us! Treasure her.

I hopw you enjoy this short clip from The Locket.

Why Lockets Are So Important in Books for Ten Year Old Girls And All The Rest of Us!

Did you ever own a locket? If you did you probably remember the magic of first checking to see if it really opened and then trying to figure out what to put in the picture spots. Usually there were two, one on each side. If you received your first locket when you were a girl, as I did, then you probably chose yourself for one of the pictures. At least I did. It made sense to me, as I had no siblings and if I put pictures in of my mom and dad, then where would I go?

What if I had a crush? Actually I did, but I never would have dreamed of puttling the boy’s picture in. My crush was even to personal to be hidden in a locket.

I liked to wear my locket as it gave me something lovely to touch when I was bored or thinking abstractly in school. It was engraved with some small hearts in a pattern and I could follow the pattern.

So when I was writing The Truth (I’m a girl, I’m smart and I know everything) it was natural for me to put a locket in the story. And for the girl it became very important as she, like most of us, came to value her locket. But for her, unlike me, the locket became a perfect vessel for a secret that she was trying to take into adulthood.

I can’t give it away, that would be unfair. But I do want to share with you some remarks from my associate journalist, Linh, the girl in Vietnam who read The Truth in Vietenemese and then wrote to me. She actually gave the girl a name as she read the book. Here are a few remarks she made about the locket:

“I decided to choose her the name “Funny” when I first read her diary two years ago. Today, I’m writing about her, specifically about her locket and her feelings about it.
On Funny’s birthday – March 30th – she was given money and a lot of gifts. However, maybe the present that she took most of her notice to was the necklace with a locket her aunt gave her. The locket was heart-shaped and lovely with spaces to put two photos in. Funny was extremely happy and satisfied with the gift Aunt Belinda gave her. That is to say, she ran around her room eagerly and kept the locket on her chest before putting the necklace around her neck. And in the locket, there was a picture of hers which was put in by Aunt Belinda. What about the other space ? Which photo would Funny put in, along with her own picture ?
After going downstairs, Funny talked again to her grandmother. Her .grandmother asked her whether she would put her little brother’s picture in the cute locket. Funny didn’t answer, but she thought that she would never put any photo of her little brother’s in the locket with her photo. She wanted to put Paul’s picture – the boy that she had fallen in love with before – in the locket instead. She thought couples often put each other’s picture in a locket like that. But she could find no ways to have one photo of Paul’s. At first, she intended to use Paul’s picture in his student card, but the picture couldn’t be neither taken out nor small enough to be in Funny’s locket. Funny wanted to borrow the Brownie camera of her parents; unfortunately, they wouldn’t permit her to bring it to school. It was such a pity !
There are many things else about Funny that we can discuss more. But still her lovable locket with Funny’s insighful emotions are very awesome, to me personally. Do you also think so, girls ?”

Do you have memories of a locket? Please share by writing to me at drbarbara@enchantedself.com or on the facebook page: The Truth for Girls.

Why Did I Write The Truth (I’m a girl, I’m smart and I know Everything)?

Many know me as a positive psychologist, and a therapist. Others remember me as a school psychologist and there are still many who remember me as a first and second grade teacher. Perhaps theirs!

But we are always more than our outer self and those who know me personally know that I am a keeper of the secret voices and issues that we all face as girls and women.

I learned from my father, Dr. Harry A. Becker, Superintendent of Schools in Norwalk, Connecticut and first president of the Norwalk Community Collge, that opportunity is critical for women. Women who don’t make or have a chance to make wise educational decisions may be at the mercy of their society.

My dad spent his professional life designing programs of education and training that would help both men and women find places of dignity for themselves in the work place. He started the School of Dental Hygeine at the University of Bridgeport, the School of Nursing there and the School of Education. In Norwalk, the Norwalk Community College has had 172,000 students study there since the first courses were offered around l970.

I believe that his passion to helping woman think through how they will educate themselves and still live a full life if they desire of raising children, marriage, etc. has fused within in me into a passion for helping girls and women recognize their own potential and have the courage to hold on to and appreciate the best of themselves.

This is no easy task, as what is so fun and playful when we are 10 or 11 becomes very hard to stay part of ourselves when hormones and media pressures start to flow around 12. And by the time we are grown-ups other pressures such as holding a job, marriage, babies, aging parents, money, etc. keep us from delighting in and encouraging the sparks within ourselves that are our talents, strengths and potential.

But we all know that a sober book about this subject may not do the trick. What can help is the use of drama. Good books and plays leave their mark because we are emotionally aroused and infused afterwards.

Watch my video on what I decided to do:

That’s what I decided to do with The Truth (I’m a girl, I’m smart and I know everything). I decided to write a great easy read book for girls, a profound book, like The Little Prince in its simplicity. And like Laura books about The Little House on The Prairie, read enough, with a girl speaking from her heart, so that all girls could relate.

But it wasn’t enough just for them to related to the girl. I needed the moms and teachers and grandmoms to also relate. And I think I have achieved that. We all have the laughing, delightful girl inside of us, who is still full of energy and talents. We just need to find her again and again, celebrate her and let her come alive.

The girl in The Truth finds away to hold on to her girl as she is about to become a teen and I know the energy and wisdom she shares is helping the rest of us also hold on to the girl inside of ourselves!

Forward by Dr. Barbara Becker Holstein:

I am excited and pleased that my first assistant journalist is now aboard The Truth for Girls website. She is Linh from Vietnam. A school girl herself, who read The Truth (I’m a girl, I’m smart and I know everything) several years ago in Vietnamese, she will add a depth and richness to articles that only a young girl can. Linh found me after reading The Truth and writing to me on e-mail. She is a talented, insightful, hard-working girl and I am thrilled to add her wisdom and advice to www.thetruthforgirls.com and to the Face book page:  Truth for Girls.

Assistant Journalist, Linh, from Vietnam writes:  Summer Is On Its Way! 

Summer is on its way. Everything around us is changing rapidly : the weather, the temperature, and our life as well.

At this time, what are you doing ? Before looking at your own list of activities to join during summer, let’s see if anything below may interest you.

SAMSUNG DIGITAL CAMERATraveling: The arrival of summer means we now can leave our studies behind. After a busy school year with so many lessons, exams and stress, students worldwide are given a permission to begin their relaxing summer vacations.  What is the first thing you think about?

For me, it is traveling.  First of all, we have time; to be more exact, we have spare time. During year, we must concentrate on our work and studies, so we do not have enough time to spend on traveling. Now, with summer, there is not a barrier that prevents us from doing anything that we want.

During summer vacation, I often go traveling with my family, or my class.  Each journey helps me broaden my knowledge and change my attitude to the world outside. For example, it is common knowledge that each region has its own features, such as history, customs, and so on.  We can accumulate a wide range of lore and then become better educated for our dreams ahead.

200304242-001Playing sports: Summer is also good time for us to practice playing sports. If you want to keep fit and shape, playing sports maybe the best to satisfy your demands. In the summer, there are a lot of sports clubs and gyms or swimming pools being opened for people to come and practice. Some popular sports during summer are, for example : badminton, swimming, tennis and more. Last summer, I went swimming and attended a badminton club.

Swimming not only gives me a healthy body, but it is important for safety.  If you can swim, you are able to avoid unexpected dangerous circumstances and protect yourself from most threats related to water. Therefore, personally, of all the sports, I prefer swimming. What about you ?

Attending extra classes : Apart from spending most of your time relaxing by traveling or playing sports, it is a good idea for you to enlist time to participate in extra classes.  During summer vacation, whether I like or not, I try to arrange my timetable to learn in extra classes to enhance my knowledge. Thanks to this, in the next school year, I tend to do better in the subjects that I kept learning during summer. Perhaps you also enjoy studying in the summer?

Doing charity : If you look around you will find unhappy and less privileged people. Homeless people, children with disabilities, orphans,…are people who actually need help. Although we are just little children, I think we still can give them a hand. For example, you can help children who live in an orphanage or in shelters.  Why not start a group of your friends or classmates to help?  Your group doesn’t  have to raise money, but you can hold campaigns that urge people to show more concern.  Maybe you can get people to donate book bags, picture books, new summer clothing or other items.  In some places like where I live, we can even go and visit and play with disabled children who live in an orphanage.  I’ve gone with my mother and I played with the children.  Remember, all the things you do should be from your heart. You are not helping less fortunate kids to build your reputation or draw attention of others to you; you are acting for your community.

These are some activities that you can take part in during summer vacation. Summer is great time for you to color your life with different activities, and I think after summer vacations, you will become more experienced than ever before!  Please write back on this blog or send your thoughts to drbarbara@enchantedself.com or share on the facebook page, The Truth for Girls.

 

A little about me Lihn:

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Hello girls ! My name is Dang Thi Hoai Linh, and you can just call me Linh if you want. I’m 13 years old and I’m Vietnamese. I live in a beautiful two-story house in Haiphong City, Vietnam with my family members, including my paternal grandmother, my parents and my little brother. My hobby is writing and I actually love imagining my own stories. Beside that, I also like taking photos when traveling, especially landscapes. This is the first time I’ve ever become an assistant journalist and written articles about aspects that I’d like to show more concerns about. Truthfully, my biggest dream is to study in the United States in the future, so I’m very grateful to Dr. Barbara Becker Holstein who always tries to give me golden chances to learn and experience. I hope that all of you will be interested in my articles and help me get more experiences in writing. Thank you and see you soon in my articles !

Best regards,

Linh ♥

The Truth for Girls is Today’s Girl Doesn’t Want to Be Just a Sleeping Beauty!

This girl looks like she is having a lovely night’s sleep and that is wonderful. We want our kids to sleep deeply and walk refreshed. But don’t think they want to be in a fairy tale like Sleeping Beauty! No way. Today’s girl is full of energy and life and she isn’t going to sit around or nap and wait for prince charming to come along on a white horse.

child sleeping

We, now adult women, may have believed, and some of us still believe that we will be saved by the right man finding us. Thankfully, more and more girls in todays world assume they will make their own way as well as find a suitable mate. They don’t always wait for a fellow to call or text them. The chase is more mutual as it should be.

What does that mean in terms of raising a daughter? It means we really have to work hard to make sure our girls grow up strong with good self-esteem and lots of resiliency. And how do we do this?
By building on their strengths, talents and potential.
By not ignoring their feelings and ideas.
By spending direct time with them, without the distraction of technology.
By laughing and sharing parts of yourselves with them.
By going places and doing acitivities together and remembering good times.

And of course by encouraging their sense of self through the written word. There are many books that are great books for girls. Little House on the Prairie never goes out of style! Little Women helps to build character. There are 100’s of these classics. And in today’s world there are great books for girls. The Truth (I’m a girl, I’m smart and I know everything) is a wonderful place to start building self-esteem with your daughter or granddaughter. It is an easy read and you can have a great discussion after every page. If she is 8, read it together. If she is 9, 10 or older, after she reads the books sit and discuss the questions in the back and discuss page by page.

Have fun making sure your daughter or granddaughter is no Sleeping Beauty!

Good Girl Books Help Girls Grow Up Strong and Happy, such as The Truth

For a girl to grow up strong and happy in today’s world she needs all the assistance she can get. Hopefully, she will have good parents who love her and are devoted to her care. Hopefully, she will have a chance to receive a good education. She will also need good health care, a safe place to live, clean water and good food, lots of loving relatives and good neighbors. Of course, she will also need friends that don’t bully and opportunities that cater to her particular talents, interests and potential.

This does sound like a lot, and I guess that is why they say ‘it takes a whole village to raise a child’.

Thankfully, lots of us do manage to grown up to be grown-ups in pretty good shape. Sometimes it is almost a mircle.

But one thing that really helps the process are good books to read that help a girl grow socially, emotionally and intellectually. There are many.

As a positive psychologist I did feel though that we are lacking in books written to help girls grow up feeling strong, happy and sure of themselves. Books that could really take a girl in and let her identify with another girl who manages to conquer all the negatives in her life and stay whole. Books written by a psychologist!

I decided to fill that gap, at least in part, with The Truth Series. In these books, The Truth (I’m a girl, I’m smart and I know everything) and Secrets (You tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine…maybe), we get to know a girl, inside out.

The Truth is We Need Our Inner Child All of Our Lives for Energy, Creativity and More!

I wrote The Truth (I’m a girl, I’m smart and I know everything) for many reasons.  Perhaps the most important was to help girls hold on to their inner child as they grow up and to help us adults get back to your inner child.  Did you realize how precious she really is? 

Do you realize that she holds many of your dreams, your wishes, your hopes, your aspirations?  She even holds your strengths and potential.  She has your coping skills all neatly there from childhood if you need to grab them again!  She can guide your to what will bring you true happiness.

Find out what I mean in the following video I need for Askimotv.

I Have a Secret to Share About Myself!

When I was in the third grade I couldn’t read and I was ashamed. I pretended to read by trying to memorize some pages in the reader. I sat in agony hoping the teacher didn’t call on me. Phonics just made no sense to me. I couldn’t understand what the teacher was trying to teach when she gave us different sounds that different letters made. I loved Miss Johnson, my teacher, but school was scary. Someday everyone would realize that I couldn’t really read past the first grade level!

But Miss Johnson was going to save me! And that is what you will find out now by listening to my video. She saw more than I realized and she knew how to turn a deficit into a talent!

And see, not only was I saved, but I ended up writing two easy to read books for girls and tweens, The Truth (I’m a girl, I’m smart and I know everything) and Secrets: You tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine…maybe, so that other kids could feel comfortable reading about growing up in a way that didn’t task their reading skills! There is enough in life to task all of us!

The Puberty Roller Coaster: Growing Up is Hard!

In Secrets: You Tell Me Yours and I’ll Tell You Mine, the girl really worries about getting older and how hard it will be to be a teen. She is very aware. Aren’t all of our girls? She is writing a lot of songs, a few of them appear in the book. In one of the songs she says:

“What is in store for me as I get older?
How can I leave behind so much of me?”

Yes, we do leave behind parts of ourselves at each transition in life. And of course, we get new aspects to ourselves. It is very hard to transition.  If you have had to move as an adult, or started a new job, or maybe lived through a marriage that fell apart, you know how terribly hard transitions can be. However, sometimes we forget how hard it is to grow up.  It is but a distant memory as we go through our busy days.  Yet we need to remember and to find ways to help our kids transition.

Can you remember being a kid moving toward puberty, and the teen years?  I am asking readers for input.  Here is what one reader shared:

    “When I was growing up I felt like I couldn’t do anything right. My parents were not ever happy and I was always fighting with my brother and sister. The cool kids in school made fun of me because I was little heavy and most of my clothes were made by my mother or grandmother. We didn’t have a lot of money, in fact I cannot ever remember a time growing up where my parents weren’t worried about how they would pay the bills and put food on the table.

    I was thankful that they made my clothes (and in some varity of my favorite color – red) and I wore them proudly but the feelings of shame and confusion because of the kids at school put me in an emotional whirlwind. Sometimes I didn’t know if I was coming or going!

    I was worried about it getting worse as I approached middle school and having older kids around that would probably push me about and make fun of me as well. I was scared to death of getting older and things getting worse. I just couldn’t see that life is what I make of it and if I’m not happy with something then I’m the only one who can change it. At that age you are more worried about what your friends think, what rumors are being spread, your school work, and trying to have a little peace and harmony at home then to look at how you can better your own situation and emotional chaos.

    Then there was my little sister who got away with everything, blamed me for the things she actually gets in trouble for and who I had to share everything with. We shared a room, had bunk beds, and I never had my own play things. In fact I was stuck with my sister in the same room until I was 17 and my older brother moved out but that is a story for another day and a whole different set of problems.

    Growing up is hard, but I think if we stay positive and teach our kids that if they think positive and work towards shaping their life to how they desire it to be instead of following the herd that they can be happy, even during the emotional roller coaster of puberty!”

What a moving story. Our reader overcame many obstacles. And the truth is that most of us do come through puberty and grow up with strong resources, some degree of optimism, humor, caring for others, the capacity to love and many other great traits.  But it isn’t easy, and we owe it to our girls to help them through the process with wisdom and support.  That’s what I do in my work as a positive psychologist.  You  may be doing it as a parent, aunt, teacher, guidance counselor, grandparent.

Try reading passages together with your youngster from either The Truth or Secrets.  You will find it fascinating, as feelings and thoughts and memories start to be exchanged.  This is one of the most therapeutic ways to make sure you have really ‘heard’ and understand your youngster and the bonus is she gets a better chance to ‘hear’ and understand YOU!  It is a win, win for both.

The Truth: I’m a Girl, I’m Smart, and I Know Everything
(now available as an ebook or a paperback)

Secrets of Life Through the Eyes of a Tween

Growing up in life  your family was your whole world.  No matter what was happening you knew that you could always count on them.  As with any family you are going to ride a journey of  emotions and uncertainty when things change.  When changes occur or secrets surface you wonder where you stand, where you fit.  You ultimately realize your family is your world, no matter the situation.

For the girl in Secrets: You Tell Me Yours and I’ll Tell You Mine….Maybe, she has to absorb all sorts of changes and emotions that go with growing up as well as dealing with her family. She has to move, get used to a new baby in the family, handle a death of a close relative, learn to navigate the moods and decisions of her parents and lots more. She even has to handle finding out about some family secrets.

I love that I got a chance to share all of this book with two young girls who had just read it. In this short video you get to see Francesca responding to passages in the book, particularly the importance of family in a girl’s life.