Life with a daughter of nine through twelve is a special experience for parents, particularly mothers. In a daughter's looks, actions, attitudes, passions, loves, and hates, in her fears and her foibles, a mother will see herself at the same age. You are far enough away to have some perspective on what your daughter is going through. Still, you are close enough, if reminded, to feel it all again.

Even today . . . experts, usually male, tell women how to be mothers and warn them that they should not have children if they have any intention of leaving their side in their early years. . . . Children don't need parents' full-time attendance or attention at any stage of their development. Many people will help take care of their needs, depending on who their parents are and how they chose to fulfill their roles.

Adolescents may be, almost simultaneously, overconfident and riddled with fear. They are afraid of their overpowering feelings, oflosing control, of helplessness, of failure. Sometimes they act bold, to counteract their imperious yearnings to remain children. They are impulsive, impetuous, moody, disagreeable, overdemanding, underappreciative. If you don't understand them, remember, they don't understand themselves most of the time.

A child is nothing like a racing car. . . . Souping up babies doesn't work that way. The child is what she is. There is a certainirreducible if elusive core. Pushing, pulling, stretching, and shrinking will not really change it. There may be spectacular interim results. The baby may say the alphabet before she walks, master two-times or even ten-times table at three. In the long run, however, this forced precocity tends to be irrelevant. . . . Whatever gains there are become unimportant. The losses can be irrevocable.

Remember...that each child is a separate person, yours forever, but never fully yours. She can never be all you wished or wanted,or all you know she could be. But she will be a better human being if you can let her be herself.

Parents' ability to survive a child's unabating needs, wants, and demands...varies enormously. Some people can give and give....Whether children are good or bad, brilliant or just about normal, enormously popular or born loners, they keep their cool and say just the right thing at all times...even when they are miserable themselves, inexhaustible springs of emotional energy, reserved just for children, keep flowing unabated.

Life with a daughter of nine through twelve is a special experience for parents, particularly mothers. In a daughter's looks, actions, attitudes, passions, loves, and hates, in her fears and her foibles, a mother will see herself at the same age. You are far enough away to have some perspective on what your daughter is going through. Still, you are close enough, if reminded, to feel it all again.