“I’m not so sure being in the same place is the same as being friends.”
E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web
An 11th grade girl missed 2 weeks of school due to an emotional breakdown.
From her large friend group, only 1 girl checked on her, which fueled her fear that her friendships weren’t real.
A 10th grade girl got booted from her friend group. They treated her terribly, yet she was scared to leave because the groups at her school were set in stone, and she had no place to go.
A 9th grade girl saw a dominant new leader convince her friend group to exclude her. Her mom tried to stay upbeat, but seeing her daughter so hurt and spending every weekend at home made her want to cry.
An 8th grade girl got dropped from a group text. First her friends stopped replying to her comments. Then they started a new thread without her.
A 7th grade girl who was kind and well-liked suddenly got edged out. Even her mom noticed how the other moms and daughters would get together without them, and they didn’t understand why.
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“Our prayers may be awkward. Our attempts may be feeble. But since the power of prayer is in the one who hears it and not the one who says it, our prayers do make a difference.”
Max Lucado
When my daughter was 2 years old, she went into anaphylactic shock from eating a food that we didn’t know she was allergic to.
It was a terrifying, painful reminder of how life can change in a blink.
By God’s grace the EpiPen worked, but that night changed me. It was my third major parenting scare, one that left me shaken for days and ready to bargain with God.
I didn’t like how different my faith looked before a scare versus after a scare. It felt wrong. Why did it take an emergency to bring me to my knees? Why did I regret the way I forgot God on normal days and clung to Him in a crisis?
Deep down, I knew I depended on Him for every breath in my lungs, yet I felt self-sufficient until a crisis hit. Seeing my child in danger and feeling helpless to save her made it crystal-clear that I have far less control than I believe.
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I have a friend (I’ll call her Janie) who is very outgoing and talkative.
When she was in high school, she told her mom everything. She opened up and shared her heart like every mother hopes and dreams her daughter will.
Things changed, however, when Janie was in 11th grade and overhead her mom talking on the phone one day to a friend. Her mom told this friend how she was afraid Janie might follow her boyfriend to college – but she hoped she wouldn’t because it’s not like they were going to get married.
In that moment, Janie felt violated. Hearing her mom discuss the private life details that she’d revealed in confidence totally blindsided her. That day, Janie says, was a game-changer in their relationship. Although she remained close to her mother and still loved her, she never opened up to the same degree again.
This story is a great illustration of why it’s increasingly important to protect our kids’ privacy as they grow up. For one, it’s the right thing to do, and two, if they find out we’ve shared too much about them – especially in the teenage years – they’ll shut down on us. They’ll find someone else to be their safe place and sounding board.
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“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” Viktor W. Frankl
Mom sets the tone.
For years I’d heard this saying, yet it didn’t really register until I witnessed it firsthand.
It was 2011, and my daughters were young. We’d gone to dinner to celebrate a new home that the sellers said was ours. My girls had chosen their bedrooms, and our family was giddy with excitement. After years of being crammed into tight quarters, we were desperate for more space.
And that’s when the curveball came. Halfway through dinner, our real estate agent called and said the owners signed with another family. We soon discovered how they used our contract to get a higher offer.
I was heartbroken – and mad. We’d let ourselves get attached to this house because we thought it was a done deal.
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During a Spring Break family trip to a Caribbean island, I got a text from my daughter’s friend.
Help! These guys are begging us to party with them tonight, and they won’t leave us alone.
I reached the girls quickly, thanks to it being a small resort. Sure enough, 5 young men were surrounding and flirting with my daughter and her friend, both 16 years old, as they laid out. The girls were trying to be polite, so I told the guys – who looked to be 20 – that they weren’t interested.
They left, and when my husband arrived, the girls explained how they couldn’t get rid of the guys. They kept pushing the girls to leave the resort, even as they repeatedly turned them down.
With anger crossing his face, my husband’s protective side came out. “Girls,” he said, “you’ve got to be blunt. If blunt doesn’t work, get ugly. Don’t beat around the bush, especially with guys like that. Next time tell them to get lost. Or get up and report them to the front desk.”
It was great advice – yet advice I’d never heard. For many females, being blunt doesn’t come naturally, especially when you’re raised to have good manners. But sometimes, manners must fly out the window, and as we prepare our daughters for the real world, it’s imperative to talk through scenarios that may call for a different voice.
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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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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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“Love is not affectionate feeling but a steady wish for the loved one’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.” C.S. Lewis
Only a person without a conscience could watch the video and not feel horror, anger, and heartache.
Only a person with a hardened heart could witness the evil done to George Floyd and adamantly deny that racism still exists. Feeling sick to my stomach I asked myself, How often has racial injustice occurred without video proof? How blind have we been to the reality of prejudice and reckless disregard for life?”
George’s dying words, I can’t breathe, are impossible to unhear. They woke us up, and, like Saul on the Road to Damascus, whose heart converted as he heard Jesus’ voice and went from persecuting Christians to joining the disciples to preach the gospel and changed his name to Paul, they made the scales fall off a multitude of eyes.
The Holy Spirit has been at work, convicting hearts across America of the grave injustices that mark our history and the unjust realities that still exist. In massive numbers, we’ve felt sadness and regret that has galvanized our commitment to righting the wrongs from our past. As my wise friend Toni said, “Only God could give us the same feeling at once.” Only God could take this act of evil and unite us in a movement for change.
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A few years ago, I started to see research that says a girl’s self-esteem peaks at 9 years old.
Sadly, that is third grade.
While I’m glad to hear that little girls feel good about themselves, it breaks my heart that big girls do not.
What causes the shift? There are many factors are involved, but I believe a big one is self-consciousness. As little girls grow up, they become keenly aware of what people think. They begin to tune into cues and reactions, caring deeply about people’s opinions of them.
And since relationships are very important to girls (and friendship is essentially oxygen to them in the teen years) girls often sacrifice what they really like – or who they really are – to fit in or belong.
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It was a crazy thing to do, especially considering the events of that morning, but I couldn’t get the idea out of my head.
The urge to go back felt incredibly strong, and it descended from out of the blue. Since I had two daughters with me saying, “Let’s do it, Mom!” after I voiced the idea out loud, I gained courage. I felt like it might be healing.
It was February 6, 2020, and at 6:45 that morning, my mom passed away. It had been a highly emotional week as my dad, my siblings, Mom’s caregiver, and I kept vigil around her bed after hospice said we were down to a matter of days. Around lunchtime, as my daughters and I started our drive from Tuscaloosa to our home in Birmingham, we got off the interstate exit that led to my childhood home.
For years I’d toyed with the idea of revisiting this place. It’d been a happy home for our family, filled with love, laughter, late-night antics, big family chaos, and countless friends over the course of 30 years. My parents moved after I graduated from college, and because I loved their new home, I rarely thought about the old one.
But as time marched on, and my mom’s health issues intensified during her final 4 years on earth, a nostalgia grew inside me that I couldn’t shake. I felt my childhood tugging me back, making me miss and long for the past.
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This past February, one day before my mom passed away, I opened an email from my five-year-old preschool teacher.
She’s now the directress for a church, and she expressed interest in having me speak to her community.
Immediately I thought of my mom, who was in the room next to me, yet unresponsive. With all my heart, I wanted us to laugh and discuss the irony. You see, I was the shyest kid ever,
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Dear Graduates,
First of all, let me say how no words can alleviate the pain you may feel right now. It is real, it is raw, and it is perfectly understandable.
Of all the worries that you and your parents have had over the span of your life, having your senior year disrupted by a global pandemic was never a blip on anyone’s radar. In fact, if you’d written a fictional English essay about this just two months ago, your classmates may have laughed because it sounds far-fetched. Yet here we are, dealing with a reality that is stranger than fiction.
My heart breaks for you because my daughter is a high school junior. It’s easy for me to imagine how we’d feel in your position. In short, you’ve been sucker-punched, hit by a curve ball out of left field, and no plan B can compensate for how cheated you may feel to lose the final 2 months of your high school career.
Years ago, I sat in on a conversation between two young widows. One woman had just lost her husband, and her friend – years ahead in her grief journey – shared what another young widow once told her.
“When you grieve,” she explained, “you’ll often grieve in advance. You’ll feel sad because of what would normally happen this Saturday, yet won’t happen now because he’s gone.”
In many ways, this principle applies to you. You’re grieving your senior year – and every highly anticipated milestone. You’re mourning what was supposed to happen but no longer will: prom, awards day, senior banquet, senior trip, championships, banquets, senior skip day, college T-shirt day, touring your elementary school in your cap and gown, and – of course – walking across the stage at a May graduation.
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I’ve never been one who readily embraces change.
If anything, I like to stick to the plan, stay focused, and make it work.
But right now, we’re all changing plans. We’re canceling, re-prioritizing, and uniting to save lives in a global pandemic. What sounds like a plot out of a grossly exaggerated Hollywood movie is shutting down our society, and the strangest part is, we have no prior experiences that even halfway prepared us for this predicament physically, mentally, emotionally, or financially.
Nobody knows what tomorrow will bring – much less next month or next year. And while I spent the first few days of this crisis panic shopping and spending hours online to read articles and stay informed, I quickly concluded that I don’t want to live through this history-making event feeling constantly panicked, scared, and anxious.
I don’t want to be so glued to the news that I miss this extra time with my family as we hunker down and help flatten the curve of the COVID-19.
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Everyone is worried about teenage girls today – and with good reason.
In short, they are struggling. From epidemic levels of anxiety, depression, and loneliness…to a mental health crisis that’s starting younger and younger…to a suicide rate that’s hit a 40-year peak…to the stress of technology and a promiscuous culture, girls face challenges and trials that pain us and haunt us as they flash across headline news.
Like teenage boys, they’re growing up in a fishbowl. They’re scared to death to fail because perfection is the bar. They juggle insane workloads and intense pressures to succeed, and they feel anxiety over realities like our country’s current quarantine, which has quickly ushered in a new era of fear. They’re the first generation of teenagers to be more stressed than their parents.
Today’s girls feel overwhelmed emotionally – yet unsure how to talk about it. They get bombarded by images that make them feel inadequate, and rarely do they get downtime because technology and social media create an intoxicating pull to constantly connect with friends.
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I remember the early days of social media, when everyone was happy and just excited to share space.
Back then, we couldn’t get enough of each other, and we spent hours catching up and reconnecting with old friends.
Today, sadly, a lot of that congeniality is gone. After years of sharing life highlights, we think we know each other better than we do. We speak without filters and struggle with envy or comparison. Rather than act like family, we act like jealous siblings. Spending too much time together, with no parents to referee, has begun to take its toll.
We are different people than we were a decade ago, and more drastic than changes on the Internet are the changes in Internet users. Generally speaking, we’ve grown testy and dismissive, quick to write off or tell off anyone who doesn’t agree with us 100 percent or who rubs us the wrong way.
The problem, of course, is that no two people see eye to eye on everything. Even best friends have opposing opinions, and that’s okay if they’re respectful. On social media, however, we get to skip the real-life challenge of trying to work through differences or bite our tongue to not be rude. Instead, we can join tribes of like-minded friends who second our opinions and make us bold in speaking our mind. While tribes can be beneficial, issues arise when tribes become echo chambers where every voice and story heard only affirms the group mindset.
In these echo chambers, pride grows, minds shrink, and tribes fall under the illusion that they are always right and the rest of the world is wrong. They forget how even a broken clock is right twice a day, and how every human being has something valuable to teach us.
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My late father-in-law enjoyed college football, but he never let the outcome dictate his mood.
In fact, he often joked, “Don’t let your happiness depend on 18-year-old boys.”
That is easier said than done, right? Especially here in the South, where football is like a religion, victories and defeats can dictate moods for weeks or months on end.
Why the obsession? Why is football a billion-dollar industry? I find it interesting (and kind of crazy) that Americans will pack stadiums and pour money into a sport that revolves around one ball. Many people care more passionately about who dominates that one ball than they do eternal matters.
Yet God’s genius is that He can use anything – even one ball – to speak to us. He meets us where we are and often tells epic stories in stadiums and arenas. Through both lows and mountaintop moments, we can experience Him, learning lessons about life and character that can only be taught through exhilarating, high-stakes events.
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“Except for during the summer months, today’s teens now, for the first time, feel more stressed than their parents do. They also experience the emotional and physical symptoms of chronic tension, such as edginess and fatigue, at levels that we used to see only in adults.” Dr. Lisa Damour
I was saddened to hear it – yet not surprised.
According to the American Psychological Association, today’s teens are the first generation of teenagers to feel more stressed than their parents, at least during the school year.
We saw it coming. We’ve read the heartbreaking stories. We’re seeing the dire consequences, how young people today are lonelier than senior citizens and report poorer health. How rates of teen depression and suicide have skyrocketed since 2011, when smart phones became ubiquitous, and the suicide rate among teen girls is the highest it’s been in forty years. How iGen is on the brink of the worst mental health crisis in decades.
What is provoking so much stress? I believe it’s a perfect storm of many factors.
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One interesting dynamic of life is the universality of what feels most personal.
Those hard feelings deep inside you that hesitate to admit? That inner wrestling you do in your quest to find peace? The pain that keeps you awake at night in bed, tossing and turning as your mind spins restlessly and relentlessly?
It is all part being of human.
God planted in us a desire to be with Him.
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Friends, I’m thrilled to share a guest post from Sissy Goff, author of Raising Worry-Free Girls, which releases this week! Sissy has counseled teen girls for almost 30 years and is one of my most trusted sources of parenting advice. Sissy read 23 books on anxiety as research for Raising Worry-Free Girls, so it is packed with wisdom and hope. Grab your copy and share this message with friends. Thank you, Sissy, for being a gift to today’s moms!
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I once read a parenting book that frustrated me.
The wisdom was amazing, but it felt like the author was saying, “I raised great kids, and here’s how you can, too.” There were many 1 + 1 + 1= 3 insinuations like:
Taking kids to church + studying God’s word + surrounding them with godly people = godly kids set for life.
I believe in intentional parenting, and I believe it’s really hard to love someone you don’t really know. For our children to know, love, and understand God, it’s important that we take them to church, share Scripture, cultivate character, and encourage healthy relationships.
But what some parenting books ignore (or skim over) is the fact that even the best parenting doesn’t guarantee results. Jesus was the perfect teacher, yet one of his disciples betrayed him. His perfection could not override the free will that God gives to everyone.
Additionally, a child who looks like a role model can be more distant from God than a child whose life is in shambles but who has a deep, desperate faith. A young adult who thrives in their twenties may self-destruct in their forties. There is no guarantee that any child is set for life, no matter how well-adjusted they seem as they leave home or enter the real world.
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It takes a thousand good choices to get where you want to be in life.
Every choice has a consequence and creates a trajectory for your life that can launch in a meaningful direction or take you down dead-end roads.
Even small choices you barely think about – like the choice to get out of bed, the choice to go to school or to work, the choice to study for a test, the choice to show up for a family member or friend – matter tremendously by impacting the future.
In his best selling book Make Your Bed, Admiral William McRaven shares life lessons he learned during Navy Seal training. McRaven says if you think it’s hard to change the lives of 10 people – change their lives forever – you’re wrong, because he saw it happen every day in Iraq and Afghanistan through the choices people made.
He says the average American will meet 10,000 people in their lifetime, and if each of us change the lives of just 10 people, that could add up to big numbers.
The choice of a young Army officer to go left instead of right down a road in Baghdad, for instance, saved the driver and his squad of 10 soldiers from close-in ambush.
In Afghanistan, an officer sensed that something wasn’t right and made the choice to direct an infantry platoon away from a 500-pound IED, saving the lives of a dozen soldiers.
McRaven points out how these choices saved not only the soldiers, but also the unborn children of the soldiers, and their unborn children too. Generations were saved by one decision – by one person.
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A mom of five kids (all teenagers) once told me that something they discuss a lot in their home is RECOVERY.
Her husband’s big question to their kids is, What will your recovery be? He tells his teenagers, “You’re going to make mistakes, and hard things will happen, but what will your recovery be? How will you respond when things don’t go as planned?”
I love this concept because it’s so relevant, especially to teenagers. More often than not, this is the season of life when adult-sized problems, disappointments, and heartbreaks begin to manifest.
An accident they didn’t see coming.
A romance that ended with tears.
A mistake they’ll always regret.
A dream that didn’t come true.
A curve ball that changed their plans.
A setback that felt like punishment.
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“My daughter told me I need to get a life,” my friend said, and we laughed because her daughter is in sixth grade.
Like many kids her age, she is pulling away from her family. She is craving more time with friends. She adores her mom, yet she’s excited about her budding independence.
Chances are, you had a rich and interesting life before you had children. You had passions, interests, and the energy to stay awake past 10 p.m. on a Friday night.
But having a baby shifted your priorities. You became perfectly content nesting at home and marveling over your miracle. As your baby grew up – especially if siblings came along – life became a circus. Some days your only goal was survival. You had to put things on the back burner to conserve energy. You sacrificed things to make room for a new calling.
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I have a confession: If I had to choose one audience to write for – adults or teenagers – I would choose teenagers.
Why? Because they’re easier to influence. They are moldable in ways that adults are not.
I first discovered this while writing an article on teen depression. At the time I was blogging for parents, but during my interview with the doctor, she made a remark that stirred in me a desire to help a younger audience.
“The reason I love working with children and teenagers,” she said, “is because they’re so resilient. You can change the whole trajectory of their life. Early intervention is key. It’s a lot easier to intervene effectively when they’re young instead of years later, when they’ve been depressed so long the illness becomes incorporated into part of their identity.”
In short, adults are hard to change. We are more set in our ways, our beliefs, and our mindsets. Children, on the other hand, are still forming their identities and mindsets. They are what parenting expert Haim Ginott once called “wet cement.”
“Children are like wet cement,” he said. “Whatever falls on them makes an impression.”
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When my daughter was 6, she showed an interest in art. Since I’m not artsy person, I did what non-artsy moms do: I signed her up for art lessons.
At one camp, they told us to send to kids in old clothes they could get dirty. After picking her up the first day and noticing the paint splattered everywhere, I understood why.
The art they created was unique, and when I told the teacher how innovative her work was – and how my brain didn’t think that way – she told me the secret to making art is to not be scared of making a mess.
Immediately a bell rang in my head. I knew exactly what my problem was, why I couldn’t make great art with my kids at home.
Because I don’t like messes.
The root of this is a perfectionist personality, a mindset I acquired as a teenager and will likely spend the rest of my life trying to overcome. Honestly, I think many women and girls share this mindset with me. At some point, we’ve bought into the allusion that life should be perfect – and anything less is wrong or not good enough.
I learned a lot about art, imperfection, and finding beauty after destruction while visiting Greece last summer with my family. Words can’t describe how breathtaking this country is, yet its beauty is not the shiny, polished, and perfected kind we’re used to seeing in America. No, in Greece there is a natural beauty that has evolved over time. Its charm and allure come from age, character, and a rich history.
Chances are you’ve heard of Santorini, one of Greece’s top tourist destinations. You may have seen the jaw-dropping pictures that look unreal, yet I can attest: the photos aren’t fake. Santorini really is this stunning.
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