July2020

What Teenage Girls Wish Their Mothers Knew

I have a friend who studied city planning and the purpose of bridges.

She explained how bridges are needed as a city grows and expands. They connect one part of a community to another and offer a safe passage.

We related this concept to raising teens – and why bridges matter in the parent-teen relationship. As a child grows up, their world expands and separates them from their family and familiar territory. They need bridges that take them home and safely back to the people who remind them of who they are.

As a writer for teen girls and a mom of three teen daughters, I’ve long looked for ways to build bridges between their hearts and mine. I’ve seen how disconnect begins when we try to give guidance without awareness of their thoughts, desires, and feelings.

Teenagers don’t care what we know until they know that we care, and one way we earn a voice in their lives (and build bridges that last) is by listening, empathizing, and putting ourselves in their shoes to understand what it’s like to be them.

So how do we tap into that inner world? How do we unlock the mystery of a teenage daughter? Clearly, every girl is unique, but as I surveyed girls on what lingers below the surface, they agreed on some common things they wish their mothers knew.

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Fight For Your Teenage Daughter, Not With Your Teenage Daughter

I was pregnant with my third child and waiting to see the doctor.

In the waiting room, an older woman asked me if I knew the baby’s gender. As I told her it was a girl – my third daughter – she and two ladies nearby exchanged glances and moaned. They all had adolescent daughters, and with despair in their voices they told me:

“Just wait until they’re teenagers. You’re really in for it!”

I’d heard this cliché before, and I chalked these mothers up as Debbie Downers and forgot about their gloomy forecast until I started to hear this script again…and again…and again. You see, when you have four daughters like I do now, that is the #1 narrative that older moms share.

For years my goal was to prove them wrong. I promised myself, My daughters won’t be like that. We’ll always be close, and I will not look like these stressed out, strung out, exhausted moms in the throes of raising teenagers.

This goal seemed doable until my daughter started middle school and we started to fight – and I became the stressed out, exhausted mom of a teen girl. From the back of my mind, I pulled out the narrative that I’d heard too many times to count.

Those moms were right! Everyone has warned me about teenagers, and now their predictions are coming true! The answer, I assured myself, was to navigate this new teen territory by digging in my heels and firmly taking control. Otherwise, this daughter and her three sisters would walk all over me.

After all, it was my daughter’s attitude, moodiness, and sass that had disrupted our once loving dynamic. If anyone needed to change, it was her, not me.

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