Taming Wild Girls

Ophelia is not the only program doing that work. As long ago as 1986, the Seattle-based Committee for Children introduced its Second Step program, a classroom-based regimen that teaches anger management and impulse control. The program, which has been tested in a remarkable 25,000 schools, is aimed at younger kids--ages 4 to 14--and makes no distinction between boys and girls. But nowadays, says Joan Cole Duffell, the Committee's director of partnership development, girls "are beginning to express anger in ways more similar to boys." Other, independent groups are appearing elsewhere, such as Images of Me, a girls-only self-awareness program in District Heights, Md., that teaches mediation and communication skills.

Nobody pretends that programs or mentoring can roll back the girls' behavior all the way--nor should it. Says Erika Karres, a retired teacher who once worked in the North Carolina school system: "You have to teach kids that it's good to have anger because it helps you get things out." The trick, of course, is learning to master the difference between assertiveness and aggressiveness, confidence and swagger.