Sugar and Spice?

Our girls are not doing very well right now; in fact, they are struggling. While this is a sweeping generalization, allow me to both explain and expound. It is true that most adolescents (and I would even include tweens) suffered and saw a mental health decline during COVID and have been slow to rebound in the months since. It is also true that girls have always struggled in well documented ways directly connected to perceptions regarding their gender identity and expression as it develops, most notably starting in and after 5th grade and continuing through and past high school. So pause here to consider that prior even to my opening sentence, girls in general were not starting from a great place before COVID even hit. Now a recent study by the CDC confirms that girls are experiencing record high levels of sadness, violence, and suicide risk.

Whether things were worse for girls before or after COVID doesn’t really matter. What matters is that our girls need our help urgently. So what is happening, and what can we do? Well, here is what we do know: In past studies we have learned that girls and boys seem to have similar levels of self-esteem through about 5th grade or up until puberty hits. However, once bodies start to change (and perhaps even before then depending on the messages being absorbed at home, in school, and from media), girls begin to be made to “feel” different and to be treated differently based on their newly developing body parts. How they look becomes disproportionately more important than who they are. In fact, their looks, rather than their personality traits or abilities, begin to determine their value. These sorts of judgments based on appearance are much less dramatic for boys, whose primary function in society is not viewed as their sexual role.

As our children move into middle school, the superficial, sexualized messages they receive on their phones from social and entertainment media are magnified by their interactions with their peers. Developmentally, at this age, their peers become even more important than their parents. Young people need to feel included, and currently for girls, inclusion is coming at a huge cost. Because their brains are not yet fully developed, especially the decision-making centers, their behavior is impulsive, and most young girls are incapable of imagining the long-term results of their current choices or even considering other options—unless they have practiced problem-solving over and over again (and even then, sometimes not). So they can struggle to see the messages they get from their peers for what they really are, struggle to make clear decisions to protect themselves, and can end up perpetually feeling like they are never “________  enough” (fill in the blank: pretty, thin, good, nice, popular, smart, ….). To feel included can mean sometimes even betraying themselves, and that’s a high price to pay.

Of course, television, media, magazines don’t help. While there may be a broader variety of people and stories available, the majority of visuals and messages are still the same–“hot” women in competition for the attention of men, women who when assertive or powerful are demeaned as “bitchy” or, if women of color, angry. Stereotypes abound, and for girls they are hardly inspiring. So what can we do to help in home and school? Here are some places to start:

1. Call out stereotypes of all kinds–at home, at work, on social media, on tv. Name them and make them visible. Talk about biases and how they affect everyone. Identify the labels and dismiss them (tomboy, girly girl, bitch, slut, ball-buster, shrill, catty, ice-queen) and talk about the power of language as it is used to keep people “in their place.”
2. Provide role models, find mentors, encourage girls to pursue healthy activities that interest them. Girls need mentors who aren’t necessarily within the immediate family–someone else to whom they can connect, whom you also trust, and who they see modeling positive behavior, maybe connected to an interest they have who can advise them. Find a mentor program or seek out a mentor in some area that matters to them.
3. De-emphasize appearance. Let girls develop their own look without your projecting your standard on it. Athletes get messy, so do artists. If you focus on her appearance, so will she.
4. Find some girl-only activities outside of school where girls are empowered.  School-connected activities may be sources of additional stress depending on social dynamics. Activities that provide an opportunity to meet a new group of friends and focused on girl-empowerment (an all-girl camp, after-school club, or outside-of-school sports group or interest-based group) can forge new friendships and instill some powerful positive messages.  All-girl schools which focus on building strong and healthy girls can do the same thing.
5. Discuss self-talk–positive and negative. Negative self-talk starts to creep in and become the norm and becomes destructive–but the things girls say to themselves, they would never say to a good friend. Point this out and get them to begin to change the dialogue with themselves. As destructive as negative self-talk can be, positive self-talk can be equally empowering.
6. Provide opportunities to try new things which are not gender-connected at home and outside of home. Are the chores your kids have at home gender-based (boys take out the trash, girls do the dishes)? What areas of interest has your girl been exposed to? Does she do engineering? Science? Math competitions? Don’t let one bad experience in anything limit the possibility of developing a future interest; find the right teacher, mentor, or role model and try again.
7. Talk the talk yourself. How do you talk about women and the people in your life? How do you recognize strength in those around you? What is it you praise and value and talk about? The co-worker who stayed calm under pressure, who came up with the brilliant idea, who rose despite odds? What you say matters and is heard even if not acknowledged in the moment. How do the men in your daughter’s life model how she should be treated and how women should be treated?
8. Be her biggest supporter–encourage her to try new things, and be her biggest cheerleader when she does, regardless of outcome. It’s effort, not outcome, that matters. Try some new things with her, get adventurous, and let her take the lead and be the expert too sometimes.
9. Explain boundaries–developing her own, her own body boundaries and personal boundaries. Sometimes even friends go too far, and how do you know? Never ignore your gut instinct (it’s your second brain), and that gut feeling is generally telling you something that you need to listen to. Remember to talk about affirmative consent.
10. Set tech boundaries–start young and leave the screens outside of the bedroom with specific hours of use and then stick to the program. As a parent you will get objections, likely loud ones, but these only get worse the longer you wait to create tech boundaries and the older your child becomes and the more impactful the intrusions become. Texts don’t stop overnight, and kids’ FOMO only gets worse as they get into high school.

Nationally-recognized visionary in the areas of educational system improvement and innovation, educational consultant Marja Brandon has been a teacher, head of school, and founder of Seattle Girls School. She volunteers to offer advice and writes articles for TeensParentsTeachers.

Like most of the pictures on TeensParentsTeachers, the picture posted with this article is courtesy of a free download from Pixabay.com.