to tell girls every day that they are enough as they are. By focusing on inner qualities such as her kindness, her compassion, and her willingness to try, we help her to focus on what matters most—her core values, not her achievements. This is not to say she should not strive for excellence. Excellence and perfectionism are not the same thing. Excellence is a journey of better and better every day, a gentle nudge for ongoing improvement that feels like progress. Perfectionism is an elusive destination that nobody ever reaches.
There are simple ways you can help your perfectionist teen daughter recognize that she is good enough as is. Tell her that you love her, just as she is, with a tender touch, a simple hug, and by simply being there. Yes, being there and the power of your presence is something, even though you may feel it’s not doing anything. Praise her while she’s working on her homework or a project and ask if she needs help. Ensure she takes the time to talk or just to have fun, to take her mind off her stress. “Not good enough” can become “good enough as is and getting better every day” for every single one of our perfectionistic daughters. Perfection need not be an inevitable part of a teen girl’s identity. In fact, we can liberate our girls from the quest for perfectionism by guiding them to let go.
All She Can Be
Five years ago, with clarity and intentionality, I named my company Bold New Girls. The “bold” stands for the confidence and bravery that we all want girls to feel. And “new” stands for the hope that every day is a new day—a new chance to embrace a fresh start and become all she can and wants to be, with neither the limits of the world nor the limitations she places on herself weighing her down. When a girl is “all she can be,” she is letting go of the idea of who she should be. She is letting go of pleasing and impressing others, letting go of searching for validation and approval outside of herself and instead seeking self-acceptance and self-love. She is lowering any masks she might be wearing to hide her true self and releasing any pressure she puts on herself to be perfect.
To help your teen girl achieve all she can be, I recommend you begin with a question of playful curiosity that I often use in my practice: “What if?” This poignant question dares her to imagine: “What if you were a little braver every day? What if you weren’t afraid of failure? What if you had that difficult conversation you needed to have, even though it was uncomfortable? What if you could be anything, and all possibilities were open for your taking? What if your identity and who you are are good enough—then who would you be?” When I ask these questions, the looks on girls’ faces often move from confused (good enough?) to relief (good enough!). They pause. They think.
Planting seeds with the language of possibility is crucial. Your teen girl cannot become what she does not know is possible, and she cannot know what is possible if it is not talked about. Once you help her imagine the outcomes, she can work backwards and start taking small steps toward actualizing her goal. Girls need to know they can embrace their identities despite family circumstances, school, and cultural and societal expectations. Teen girls need to know they can be what they choose: lawyers, designers, teachers, engineers, investors, inventors, moms, entrepreneurs, artists, or musicians. Your message of “you can be anything” must be louder and stronger than any cultural message.
From the outside looking in, a teenage girl’s world appears complex—and it is. But as you and she navigate it—you from the periphery and she from the inside—an amazing thing happens. With every step she takes, every stumble she overcomes, every choice and challenge she engages, she gains deeper insight and a broader understanding of herself. She is widening her circle; her identity is expanding beyond her initial expectations. She is taking time to listen to and then trust her inner voice, fine-tuning her intuition, living out her integrity and values, and showing the courage to own and share her story. She is learning to follow both her moral compass and her heart, as well as evaluating who and what is influencing her, how this affects her, what she knows to be right and true, and what she feels is best for her. This is what it means for a teenage girl to be rooted in her identity. And you can help her get there!
| How Parents HELP Growth •Showing support by parenting on the periphery of her circle •Accepting who she is becoming •Letting her choose who she wants to be •Showing genuine curiosity about her interests •Providing her with opportunities for choice and voice •Listening and being curious about her choices | How Parents HINDER Growth •Expecting her to be who you want her to be •Limiting her with labels such as “social” or “shy” •Deciding who her friends are •Being a “helicopter parent” •Believing the masks she wears are who she is •Pushing her to be perfect |
BEYOND APPEARANCES
I WAS A CONFIDENT teen. By the time I was sixteen, I had found my place in high school on sports teams, in band and choir, and with friends. I studied hard and earned good grades. Then it happened. One day, as I walked past a group of popular boys in the cafeteria, they called out, “Hey, Farms!” and followed it up with lots of snickering. At first, I had no idea that this unusual greeting had anything to do with me, but I became suspicious when this phrase kept popping up when I was around. I begged a friend to tell me what she knew. Reluctantly, she spilled the secret. “Farms” was a word they’d made up to merge “fat” and “arms”—and they were using it to refer to my arms.
Before this catastrophic moment, I felt beautiful in my body and was blissfully unaware of the normal weight gain teen girls often experience as they grow. I decided that my best weapon in fighting off these hurtful comments was retaliation—and this came in the form of self-neglect and, eventually, an eating disorder. I ate less; I ran more. I pushed, punished, and starved myself. Essentially, I developed an unhealthy coping tool to deal with life’s stressors. I thought my body was the problem and that changing my body was the obvious solution. Less obvious to me at the time was the underlying issue: my inability to love myself exactly as I was.
My challenge with holding a healthy body image emerged out of a lack of positive role models for how to love my body. Today, I want to share my experience with girls as a message: your bodies are not the problem. The deeper concern is the capacity to accept who you are and feel good about yourselves at any shape and size, and regardless of other people’s opinions. Looking back now, I feel incredibly sad for my teen self who didn’t know what to do with uncomfortable criticism and who was incredibly beautiful and healthy just as she was. Still, I am grateful for this experience. It inspired my passion to empower girls to be more preventative when faced with stress and strife. This chapter is all about body image—how deeply it is felt as a defining part of a teen girl’s overall image, and how it can be both a positive and negative influence. An adolescent’s view of her body can become convoluted so quickly as she grows and becomes more aware of what a body “should” look like. Girls are born loving themselves wholly and completely. We need to remind them of this and guide them back from self-loathing to self-loving.
Body Love and Loathing
“It’s a girl!”
Do you remember when she was born? Those chubby little thighs, round tummy, and teeny fingers and toes? What your daughter needed then was simple: your love and attention. She did not ponder if she should eat fast food for lunch. She wasn’t wondering how many calories she could burn at the gym later in the afternoon so she could eat the muffin staring her down at the bakery. She wasn’t stressing over every bite she ate, counting each calorie consumed. As a
