Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
If you've got teen daughters, you know that their world is a jumbled mess of messages coming to them from peers, from those they go to school with, from people at church, from the culture. The culture, oh my goodness. You are a rock, mom. You are a rock, dad. You are the foundational, most influential person in their lives, and you have great ways to encourage them. It's just figuring out what does that look like. Mm-hmm.
So like one of my daughters is a words girl. And so we spent a lot of time exchanging notes. One of my other daughters is a physical touch girl. And we, I hugged her a whole bunch during her teen years still do. She walks in the door, she comes over and says, I want to hug. So you have to dial in and find out what works and,
I'm John Fuller. Dr. Danny Huerta heads up the Focus on the Family parenting team. And Danny, you're a counselor. And in this broken world with so many mixed messages and kids just crying out, teen girls especially need us as parents to show up. Yes, they do. But what does that look like? Well...
Teen girls are struggling with insecurity, all kinds of insecurities underneath the surface, and they compensate for them in a variety of ways. And those insecurities can lead to tremendous loneliness, anxiety, depression, eating issues, all from this place of comparison. A common phrase I get when I'm speaking to teen girls is, I don't know if I'm good enough.
They have this doubt. Am I good enough? Am I lovable enough? Am I, you know, those types of questions that are core beliefs. And I want to just interrupt and say, despite what I said as we opened the show, a couple of my daughters struggled with really core issues like you're talking about. We had a child with eating disorders. One of those girls struggled with depression. And so you can do everything you want, but it may not be enough. Right. And it's going into...
Those deeper belief places with your daughter, being able to say, I love you and I love who God has created you to be. And know that a consistent, genuine reminder of that is important for your teen girl to hear, even if she rolls her eyes and looks away. That consistent message to her.
is going to be a real safe haven for her as she deals with all those different insecurities. And as she's trying to manage growing up and trying to look like she's got it all under control, maybe at some point you can tell your daughter, hey, I can see you're wrestling with a lot. I wish you could give me a few of those thought bubbles so we can talk about those and make sure they're true.
And as you take the time to do that, know that sometimes it may take a little longer. Just plan out some extra time if they're actually going to open up with you so that you don't hurry through those moments. That's gold right there. And we have more wisdom and insight for you as we continue the show now.
We're going to listen to a clip from Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. Carrie Kempakis was on the show with Jim. She's a mom of daughters, and she spoke about some of her own personal experiences relating to her teen girls. Carrie, welcome back to Focus on the Family. Thanks for having me back. It's good to see you. And let's just give the qualifications. How old are your daughters?
My oldest daughter is 20, and then I have a high school senior who is 17, a high school sophomore who's 16, and then a daughter who's 12, about to be a teenager. Okay, I'm sure moms listening, when we mention the title Love Her Well, love your teenage daughter well, they're going, are you serious? Are you serious? Do you know teenage daughters? Right. You do. Right. So in that context, I mean, you're that mom of four daughters, you've been in that world for a while, what kinds of things...
are teen girls facing today that a father of teen boys wouldn't understand? Right. I'm convinced that this generation of teenagers, that they have it way harder than we had it at their age. Why? I just think the cultural experiences, they're growing up in a culture that's very unforgiving, generally speaking, pretty mean. It's just a post-Christian culture. And
I think all the things that we want for our children and our families, that kindness, forgiveness, compassion, just unity and community that I believe comes from having a relationship with Jesus and a society that values those same values, that that's not always what they're getting into when they go into the real world. They might be getting it at home. And so for parents, we're just parenting against that reality that what we're instilling at home is not being reinforced out in the world.
And so how do you teach your children to navigate that? And all the tools of meanness, if I can call them that. Social media, just general bullying that occurs at school. That did occur. I mean, I can remember that back when I was a kid, if you can imagine that. But that was kind of normal. But today, there's just so many ways.
to be mean toward each other, unfortunately. I'm thinking of the research that talks about affirmation and negatives with kids. We often talk about a 10 to 1 ratio as a parent. Try to give 10 affirmations for every one kind of correction. But then if you count the culture in that, they're probably getting 100 negatives a day. And hopefully you're getting two or three affirmatives in with your child. But it comes up really short when you count social media in the world that's
seemingly arrayed against them, right? Yes. And I think mentioning social media is huge because not only what they might be hearing from the world, but what they're telling themselves, because like the rest of us, they're looking at everybody else's life on social media and they see this curated perfection. And I think it gives them this idea that their life is supposed to look like that.
and it's not measuring up. Or they're seeing somebody their age that's a superstar and they're getting a 34 on the ACT and they just got a 23 and they think something is wrong with them just because of the pressures to succeed. And just the, I think the mentality in our society that our children should be these superstars at a young age
And that they need to follow this one path that is right for every teenager when really everybody has a unique path that God is calling us to that's using our unique strengths and gifts. And not all of those strengths may be measured in school. And it might not always be obvious when they're a teenager. Yeah. And for parents, I want you to lean in on this question because you identify three roles in
that parents play while raising children. What are the three? The three roles are when your children are little, you're basically in a cop role. Cop. Cop, yes. Writing tickets. Yes, that's right. Like they're wild animals. Get your finger out of the outlet. Right.
Right. That kind of ticket. It's survival. It's a no-no. Right. Don't run in front of that car. How long does that last? Until about 18? Yeah, exactly. In a way. And it depends on the child, too. Hopefully about three to five, that's passing to the next phase, I would think. Yes. I would say maybe even six to seven. Okay. Some grace there for the slow learners. But you've got that cop stage. And then we run into the coach stage as they're becoming teenagers. And you're still involved. You're still keeping a pulse on their life. But you're coaching them through it.
And then ideally, as they get older, especially as they're about to leave home, you're in more of that consultant stage. And so that's where I am with my oldest daughter. She's a sophomore in college now. Not to say I'm not still her parent, but she's making a lot of decisions on her own. And she's calling us like, can you help me think through this?
Well, Danny, just kind of going through what we heard there with Carrie, which is great stuff, and what you were saying earlier about, hey, share some of those thought bubbles. How do we make sure that we're safe for those thoughts and those insecurities and those emotions and those struggles? How do we help our kids, especially our teen daughters, know I'm safe?
Yeah, it's important to, like we've talked about in the show, to stop and listen and also validate the fact that there is this world of comparison. And I still remember moments with my daughter Lexi where she wrestled through insecurities and comparison. And she wasn't even that much on social media. It was just a regular developmental phase of,
for girls. They, they can be so mean to each other in the junior high years in their comparison competition and, and just competing to see who gets the most attention and most love from people around them, get, get some most likes, not only on social media, but most likes just in friendships. And in that competition, they can push each other to the ground. And, uh,
I had many moments with my daughter where there were tears. There were, you know, I don't get this. And I could see her trying to adjust herself for that. I could see her sometimes spending extra time in the mirror. I go, man, it's been a while in the bathroom. And I would ask her, hey, what's going on? And she...
Let me into that world. I see you're wrestling with some big things and probably self-doubts. There's some things now that you are not liking about yourself. Tell me about those. And how much do you believe? When we tell you, your mom and I tell you that we love this about you. How much do you believe that? And I could tell that it was lesser and lesser. And the peer feedback was more and more and more important. Mm-hmm.
And I asked her why, because it's totally normal. And so it wasn't a surprise. I go for you. Why is that? Why is that more important to you? She said, I just want to know beyond our home that I'm lovable, that there's things people love about me. And I talked to her about the fact that there's so many other insecurities that other people are carrying.
You're probably not going to get the most accurate feedback from the people that are insecure and carrying all those insecurities because they can't see you clearly. They're trying to manage and navigate their own insecurities, seeking love from others. And so they're not the most trustworthy.
And, John, we've talked about this exercise before on the show, the who gets a vote. Yes. Oh, I love that phrase. That's so good. It's a handout we've provided, something we've provided in the show notes before. Let's do it again. Okay. And it's in the middle are these people that get a say in giving you feedback, the votes they get. Usually we put the popular people in there, the powerful personalities in there, people we admire in.
And with our daughters, let's find out who those people are and then say, should they have that many votes in your life? And when they do have that many votes, what does that create for you in your own insecurities? And we know in social media, there's comparison to whoever's getting the most likes, whoever's getting the most responses. They get a lot of power and say on social media, and then we assume that
man, I need to be like that person or they're saying mean things to me and so it must be true. Let's help our daughters go to Philippians 4.8.
Think on things that are true, that are of good reputation, things that are specifically designed to be thought about to remove us from anxiety. That's a good place to go with your daughter today. Philippians 4.8. Talk through that. See how it applies to her. That is excellent. And we know it's hard to raise teen girls. Danny's done it. I've done it. There are so many resources here at Focus to help you.
And as he said, there's that great article. I pulled it up. Who gets a vote in your preteens life? Walk through that. Walk through Philippians. You might subscribe to Brio magazine for your daughters. It will validate biblical values and solid thinking. The things you're trying to train your daughter to really embrace, really.
Brio's going to come alongside you and help reinforce those positive messages. It's a terrific resource. We shut it down for a while and the parents are like, hey, we need Brio Magazine for our teen girls. So it is back and we encourage you to learn more in the show notes.
And then finally, Kara Kampakis has a terrific resource. It's a book called Love Her Well, 10 Ways to Find Joy and Connection with Your Teenage Daughter. We're making it available for a donation of any amount to the ministry today. Stop by the show notes for details. We'll hear more from Kara next time. For now, on behalf of Dr. Danny Huerta and the entire team, I'm John Fuller, and thanks for listening to the Focus on the Family Parenting Podcast.
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