This article provides practical tips for guiding your teenage girls to adulthood. It will help you to embrace the secret of raising happy and responsible teenage girls.
Below summarises my reason for writing this article :
“Teenage girls are going through all kinds of physical and mental changes. They’re developing interests and relationships outside the family. Hence, they’re building an independent sense of self. As a result, they can sometimes bump heads with their parents.”
In a few months, my new book on teenage girls will be released to the market.
The book will give an expose on the “secrets” to raising happy, responsible, strong teenage girls.
To write the book, I surveyed and interviewed almost 200 teenage girls. These conversations and survey results gave me profound insight into the lives of our teenage girls, most especially in Nigeria.
Yes, parenting a teen girl can be confusing, emotional, and dramatic but our girls are also amazing, thoughtful, and often very self-aware, which means parenting them can also be a joy and peace of mind.
I learned so much from my research, but here are my top tips for raising girls.
Yours might be different which you can add to give you more insight into raising your girl’s child.
Let us take a look at the identified eight practical tips for guiding teenage girls to adulthood:
- Connection
Connection is the question. Connection is also the answer.
Many parents have come to me worried that they aren’t connecting with their tween and teen daughter.
They wonder what to do, how to get through to her. Connection is the question BUT connection is also the answer.
We build a relationship of trust by creating a powerful connection, ensuring our daughter knows she matters to us and taking the time to understand her.
Listen, be there, accept her, tolerate her, love her and let her grow into her independence even if that means she makes mistakes and gets hurt along the way.
Our job is to support her as she does the next bit herself, and not to do it for her.
- Help Her to Feel She Belongs.
As one young woman I talked to put it, ‘Friends are everything when you’re in junior school’.
Helping your teen daughter find her tribe and feel that she belongs is essential to her wellbeing.
Give her space and time to try new things and encourage her to look inside herself and see who she is around certain people.
If she can live with integrity when she spends time with her friends, then she’s found her tribe and her niche.
- Help Her Feel She’s Enough.
Make her feel she’s enough because she is.
Our focus as parents needs to be on helping our girls discover their inner strength and power (identity).
So they know they weren’t put on Earth to convince everyone of their worth.
As our daughters develop a sense of identity, they become strong so they can be real, open, trustworthy, honest, and caring.
We must give our girls the space to discover and create their best selves. That means unconditional love and regard – even when they’re doing things we don’t necessarily agree with.
- Help Her Navigate The Online World.
While there are still many questions about the relationship between screen time and wellbeing, there are far fewer questions about social media.
The data emphasises that social media is harming wellbeing, particularly for our girls and many parents are tempted to limit, or even exclude, screens and social media from their daughter’s lives.
However, anyone who is living in the real world knows that teenagers will find a way to access their screens no matter how restrictive they are. When we become overly forceful in our limits and discipline around tech, we risk rupturing our relationships with our daughters. Force creates resistance.
Instead of worrying about screen time, we should be thinking about context and content.
If our children are doing valuable, growth-oriented, and positive things on their screens, they’re probably not going to experience any ill effects that some of the science warns us about.
Promote the positive online by pointing them to artists, designers, thinkers, and inspires who create rather than compare.
Screens, and even social media, can be used for good.
https://www.morganable.com/lets-talk-about-emotional-affairs/
https://www.morganable.com/michelle-janavs-sentenced-to-five-month-imprisonment/
https://www.morganable.com/self-acceptance-eleven-ways-to-accept-yourself/
https://www.morganable.com/4-amazing-tips-for-great-styling-sense/
https://www.morganable.com/five-keys-to-effective-and-successful-personal-branding/
https://www.morganable.com/greta-thunberg-sails-atlantic-again/
- Help Her Feel Beautiful.
Most girls want to feel beautiful. It’s our job to let them know they are – always.
Move away from any kind of campaign that tells girls to find fault. And be careful of your attitude towards beauty.
Stop talking negatively about your body. Just don’t do it. And never talk negatively about your daughter’s.
Body shaming doesn’t encourage healthier behaviour. It just makes our daughters want to disappear into the black hole of unworthiness and low self-esteem.
Some people ask me whether we should point out that a child is overweight.
My answer: They already know. They don’t need you to emphasise it and make them feel worse about it.
When it comes to our teen daughter’s body, what her body can do matters more than how it looks.
- Talk About Sex and Intimacy
We must have conversations about sex regularly.
It’s how we equip our daughters to thrive in a sex-saturated world. Before they are old enough to even think about dating, intimacy, and sex, we need to start emphasising the importance of choosing romantic interests that will be kind and respectful.
Teach them about consent and arm them with the courage to have difficult conversations and stand up for themselves.
We want to help them understand that physical and emotional intimacy should never be divorced from one another.
Results may often be painful if we decide not to engage them in talks about drugs, alcohol and sex.
We often talk about them separately, but we need to discuss them together.
The combination of the three often leads to lousy experiences for our teens.
This conversation should help them want to make safe, healthy decisions.
Ultimately, encourage her to wait and wait and then wait (abstinence) a little longer.
Waiting for sex is based on good science, communication and is something our girls will benefit from.
- Talk About Independence
Striving for independence is an inevitable part of adolescent development.
Teen girls are learning to take responsibility, forming their values, and figuring out how to make decisions that are right for them.
Thus, teenage girls express independence through their fashion choices, the music they listen to, the friends they spend time with, and the activities and hobbies they choose.
The choices they make might not be the same ones their parents would make for them.
Therefore, the teen years can be hard on parents.
Hence, parenting teen girls requires finding a balance between setting limits and allowing teens to forge their path.
Furthermore, parents may need to let teen girls experience failure.
As a result, they learn more about themselves and develop resilience.
However, it’s not easy for parents to stand aside and watch their teenage daughters struggle and sometimes fail.
- Remember You Don’t Own Your Daughter.
She is her person.
Your job is to guide her in becoming you of her dreams and prepare her to do the next bit on her own.
As parents, we’re playing the long game.
The thing that matters most is the quality of our relationship.
Raising them to let them go is hard but that’s just how it should be.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the teen years can be hard on parents.
Hence, parenting teen girls requires finding a balance between setting limits and allowing teens to forge their path.
Furthermore, parents may need to let teen girls experience failure.
As a result, they learn more about themselves and develop resilience.
However, it’s not easy for parents to stand aside and watch their teenage daughters struggle and sometimes fail.
