Olivia: Most parenting advice tells you to fix bad behavior. What if the most annoying things your teenage daughter does—the eye-rolling, the closed doors, the one-word answers—aren't problems to be fixed, but signs she's doing her job perfectly? Jackson: Wait, her 'job' is to be difficult? That sounds like a job description I would have loved as a teenager, but as a parent, that’s a tough pill to swallow. Are you saying the goal is for them to be moody and distant? Olivia: In a way, yes. It's not about being difficult for the sake of it, but about achieving a critical developmental milestone. And that's the revolutionary idea at the heart of the book we're diving into today: Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood by Dr. Lisa Damour. Jackson: Lisa Damour. I’ve heard her name. She’s a pretty big deal in this space, right? Olivia: Absolutely. And what makes her perspective so powerful is that she’s not just an academic. She’s a clinical psychologist who also runs the Center for Research on Girls at a school. She wrote this book because she felt the public conversation about teenage girls was incredibly negative and unfair, creating unnecessary anxiety for parents. She wanted to give parents a new map, a way to see the logic behind the chaos. Jackson: A map for chaos. I think every parent of a teenager just leaned closer to their speaker. So if this behavior is a 'job,' as you put it, what's the first task on the to-do list? Olivia: The first, and maybe the most jarring, is what Damour calls the first of seven developmental strands: Parting with Childhood.

Jackson: Parting with Childhood. That sounds so… final. And a little heartbreaking. What does that actually look like? Olivia: It often starts subtly. Damour tells this great little story about a family at an annual block party. One year, their young daughter is gleefully playing all the kid games, totally engaged. The very next year, she refuses to join in, instead choosing to hang awkwardly with the adults, complaining she’s bored. Jackson: Oh, I know that scene. The kid who is suddenly "too cool" for everything they loved five minutes ago. Olivia: Exactly. And the parents are confused, maybe a little hurt. But Damour reframes it. The girl isn't just being difficult; she has started the work of untangling herself from childhood. She’s unconsciously shedding her old identity to make room for a new one. It’s a sign of progress. Jackson: Okay, I can see that with a block party. But it gets more intense than just refusing to play tag, right? Damour talks about girls getting… mean. Olivia: She does, and this is where it gets really tough for parents. She tells this one story that is just a punch to the gut. A mother named Cathy was getting ready for a huge work presentation. She was feeling nervous and vulnerable, and she asked her fifteen-year-old daughter, Kirsten, "How do I look?" Jackson: Oh no. I feel like I know where this is going. Olivia: Kirsten looks her up and down and says, "Wow, you look okay… if you don’t mind looking like a lumpy librarian." Jackson: Ouch. That is surgically precise cruelty. A lumpy librarian. That’s not a random insult; that’s targeted. Olivia: It’s exquisitely targeted. Damour says teenage girls are finely attuned to their parents' vulnerabilities. And when they need to create distance, to prove to themselves that they are separate individuals, they sometimes use that knowledge like a weapon. It’s their clumsy, painful way of pushing the parent away to make space for their own independence. It’s not about the parent, even though it feels intensely personal. It’s about their own internal struggle. Jackson: That is so hard to wrap your head around in the moment. When you’re the one being called a lumpy librarian, the last thing you’re thinking is, "Oh, good for you, you're developing on schedule!" How are you supposed to react to that without losing it? Olivia: Damour’s advice is to be fair, firm, and friendly. You don't have to absorb the insult. You can say something like, "Wow, that was a hurtful thing to say," or, "You may not like my questions, but you need to find a polite way of responding." You set a boundary on the behavior without turning it into a massive emotional battle. You’re acknowledging the feeling while correcting the action. Jackson: Okay, so there’s meanness. What about the classic teenage trope of the closed bedroom door? The secrecy. I think for a lot of parents, that’s where real fear kicks in. Where is the line between normal privacy and dangerous, I-need-to-intervene secrecy? Olivia: This is such a critical question, and Damour has a cautionary tale about it. It’s about a fourteen-year-old named Ashley, whose father became deeply suspicious when she started closing her door at age twelve. He insisted she keep it open. His suspicion grew until one day he searched her room. Jackson: And what did he find? Olivia: He found a small, locked safe in her closet. He demanded she open it. She refused. A huge fight erupted, they ended up in therapy, and the big reveal was… the safe contained her diary. The entries were personal, maybe a little dramatic, but completely PG-rated. But by violating her privacy, her father had completely alienated her. He’d turned her normal need for a private space to figure herself out into a criminal investigation. Jackson: He made her feel like a suspect in her own home. Olivia: Precisely. Damour’s rule of thumb is to differentiate between privacy and secrecy. Privacy is when your daughter doesn't want you to know something, but she's not in danger. Secrecy is when she's actively hiding something because she is in danger or is doing something dangerous. You look for changes in the whole picture—grades dropping, new friends you’re not allowed to meet, signs of substance use. A closed door, on its own, is usually just a sign that she's building a world of her own. Jackson: So the untethering is about them pulling away, sometimes with insults, sometimes with doors. It sounds like a lonely process for everyone. Olivia: It can be. But it's the first necessary step. Because where do they go when they pull away from the family? They’re not just floating in space. They’re on a mission. A mission to join a new tribe.

Jackson: Joining a new tribe. That sounds very primal, very high-stakes. Olivia: It is. This is the second developmental strand, and it explains so much about the teenage social world. As girls pull away from the family as their primary source of identity, they desperately need to anchor themselves somewhere else. That somewhere else is their peer group, their tribe. This tribe dictates their interests, their social standing, their self-worth. Jackson: And this is why, as Damour points out, they seem to be addicted to their phones. Olivia: Exactly! She quotes the brilliant media scholar danah boyd, who said, "Teens aren’t addicted to social media. They’re addicted to each other." The phone is just the delivery mechanism for the thing they crave most: connection with their tribe. It’s their 24/7 social lifeline. Jackson: That’s a powerful reframe. It’s not about the screen; it’s about the people on the other side of it. But this drive to belong can lead to some pretty bad decisions, right? Olivia: Absolutely. The need for tribe membership is so strong it can override almost everything else. Damour tells a story about a ninth-grader named Joelle, a talented athlete who had played soccer her whole life. But in high school, the demands of the team, plus her other interests, became too much. She was losing sleep, stressed out, and wanted to quit. Jackson: Seems like a straightforward decision. If it’s making you miserable, stop doing it. Olivia: For an adult, yes. But for Joelle, the problem was that her entire tribe, all of her closest friends, were on the soccer team. Quitting soccer didn't just mean giving up a sport; it meant risking social exile. It meant becoming tribeless. The decision was agonizing for her, because for a teenager, being without a tribe can feel like a kind of death. Jackson: Okay, I get the 'addicted to each other' part, and the high stakes of belonging. But the 'tribe' concept itself has drawn some criticism. Some readers feel it’s a bit of a narrow, stereotypical view of teen girls, that it overemphasizes cliques and doesn’t account for girls who have a diverse group of friends, or friends who are boys. Olivia: That’s a really fair point, and it’s important to clarify. When Damour uses the word "tribe," she’s using it as a metaphor for a girl’s primary support system and source of identity outside the family. For some, that might be a classic, tight-knit clique. For others, it could be the theater kids, the debate team, a group of online friends, or a mix of individual friendships. The form doesn't matter as much as the function. The point is that the gravitational center of their social world shifts decisively from family to peers. Jackson: That makes sense. It’s less about a specific structure and more about a fundamental transfer of allegiance. But that allegiance can get messy. What happens when there's conflict within the tribe? How does a parent know when to step in versus when to let them handle their own "tribal warfare"? Olivia: This is one of the most important distinctions in the book: telling the difference between normal, two-way conflict and actual bullying. Conflict is a part of life. Friends disagree, feelings get hurt, drama happens. It’s often messy, but there’s a rough balance of power. Both sides have some agency. Jackson: And bullying? Olivia: Bullying is different. Damour defines it by two key features: a power imbalance and repetition. It’s one person or group repeatedly targeting someone who cannot adequately defend themselves. She tells the harrowing story of a girl named Lucy, an eighth-grader who was being tormented in the locker room by three classmates. They teased her about her weight, stole her bra, and spread rumors. Jackson: That’s not conflict. That’s a targeted campaign of cruelty. Olivia: Exactly. Lucy started having panic attacks and refusing to go to school. That’s not "tribal warfare." That is a child under attack. In that case, Damour is unequivocal: adults must intervene. You don't ask the victim to "work it out" with the bully. You go to the school, you report it, and you protect the child. The goal is to stop the abuse, not to mediate it. Jackson: So the parent’s job is to be a detective, to figure out if it’s a fair fight or an ambush. Olivia: A discerning observer, maybe. You listen to your daughter. Does she sound angry and frustrated, or terrified and powerless? Is this a one-time fight with a friend, or a relentless pattern of harassment? The first is a chance for her to learn assertiveness. The second is a five-alarm fire that requires immediate adult intervention.

Jackson: Wow. So when you put these two ideas together—parting with childhood and joining a new tribe—it creates this incredible sense of whiplash for parents. On one hand, we have to be okay with them pushing us away, even when they do it in a hurtful, "lumpy librarian" kind of way. And on the other hand, we have to be this vigilant observer of their intense, sometimes brutal, social world. It feels like we're supposed to do nothing and everything at the same time. Olivia: That’s such a perfect way to put it. And I think Damour’s ultimate point is that our role fundamentally changes. It’s not a contradiction; it’s a promotion to a new job. We're no longer the pilots of our daughters' lives. We can't be in the cockpit with them, steering every move. Jackson: So what are we? Olivia: We become the air traffic controllers. We're sitting in the tower, watching them on the radar. Our job is to provide a safe runway for them to land on when they need it. We're here to offer clear guidance on the weather ahead, to warn them about storms, and to dispatch emergency support when they fly into severe turbulence. The goal isn't to prevent the turbulence—that's an unavoidable part of learning to fly. The goal is to help them become skilled pilots who can navigate it themselves. Jackson: I like that. Air traffic control. You’re not grabbing the controls, but you’re also not asleep at the switch. You’re watching, guiding, and ready to help them land safely. Olivia: Exactly. You're parenting for the long haul. You're absorbing the short-term pain of the "lumpy librarian" comment because you know it's part of the long-term process of her becoming an independent adult who, eventually, will circle back and be grateful for the safe harbor you provided. Jackson: It’s a shift from managing their childhood to guiding their launch into adulthood. Olivia: That’s the whole journey of Untangled in a nutshell. It’s about letting go of the child they were, so you can fully embrace and support the adult they are becoming. So the question for all of us, as parents or mentors, is: are we parenting for the child we have in front of us today, or for the capable, resilient adult we hope they'll become tomorrow? Jackson: A question worth sitting with. That was an incredible map. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.