Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood

by Lisa Damour

While an adolescent remains inconsistent and unpredictable in her behavior, she may suffer, but she does not seem to me to be in need of treatment. I think that she should be given time and scope to work out her own solution. Rather, it may be her parents who need help and guidance so as to be able to bear with her. There are few situations in life which are more difficult to cope with than an adolescent son or daughter during the attempt to liberate themselves. —ANNA FREUD (1958), “Adolescence”*

Parents on the receiving end of their daughter’s new attitude feel like they used to be a jelly bean but now they’ve turned into a Brussels sprout. You might be good for her, but you are to be avoided when possible. I sympathize. Though the comparison is a silly one, it’s actually deeply painful to become a Brussels sprout.

yourself for doing your job. What job is this? The one where you remind your daughter that no self-respecting person will enjoy her company when she treats people the way she just treated you.

When your daughter swims to you, enjoy it, but don’t get your hopes up that she has rediscovered the value of your wisdom and affection and will never again forget it. When she shoves off, don’t allow your daughter to mistreat you. If her push-off is rude, tell her so. She may or may not apologize, but you need to say—and she needs to hear you say—“That’s hurtful.”

Looked at logically, it seems that any girl who can develop a computer simulation of how proteins fold can figure out how to wrap a present. But try telling that to the girl.

There are lots of ways to support your daughter, and there’s one way to respond that’s not helpful at all: becoming exasperated when your reasoning fails to convince your daughter that if she can work a table saw she can work a stove.

Accept that girls part with childhood gradually and embrace opportunities to do things for her, with her, and to stand by to admire her when she’s doing more and more for herself.

Given that girls are striving to part with childhood, you’d think that they’d all welcome the biological shift to womanhood. But they often don’t. Here’s why: girls like to part with childhood on their own schedule.

Paradoxically, it’s often time to worry when a teenager’s behavior isn’t all over the map—when she hangs out at one extreme or the other.

research finds that teens who push the limits early tend not to fare well down the line. Over time, they are more likely to have trouble with relationships, substances, and the law than their slow-lane peers.

Just like pneumonia, bullying can cause real, lasting damage if ignored. But our culture’s preoccupation with bullying has led to its overdiagnosis. Too many unpleasant interactions among young people are now referred to as bullying, and misdiagnosis leads to improper treatment. Treating conflict as bullying is the equivalent of prescribing a full-blown course of antibiotics for the common cold. The treatment isn’t necessary, will not cure the cold, and creates new problems.

“Is she popular or just powerful? Do kids like her, or are they scared of her?” Give your daughter a good reason to take popularity off of its pedestal.

“I can still remember the girls at my school who tried to fit in by pointing out who didn’t fit in. It’s not the most mature behavior, and I’m impressed that it’s not your style.”

as a culture, we do a terrible job of helping girls figure out what to do when they are mad. As far as girls know, they can either be a total doormat—think Cinderella—or flat-out cruel like Cinderella’s stepsisters.

We rarely help girls master assertion—the art of standing up for oneself while respecting the rights of others.

Teaching your daughter to be assertive takes time. The first step involves acknowledging and validating her negative feelings.

girls clam up around adults who try to turn almost every conversation into a teachable moment.

encouraging a girl to avoid her frenemy—tends to be a failing parenting strategy.

“It’s really up to you whether you keep hanging out with her. If you do, be careful when she’s being nice because you know that it may not last.” Or, “We love you and hate seeing you put yourself in a position where you keep getting hurt.” Or, “It sounds like she can be fun—I see why you guys hang out so much. But real friends don’t do such mean stuff to each other.”

Three-year-olds specialize in having “mean fun”—gleefully doing things that they know will annoy their parents—but most children age out of this type of low-grade sadism.

Feel free to be as kind and hospitable as your daughter can stand when her friends are around, but stay firmly in your role of boring middle-aged parent so that she can paint you as the bad guy when needed.

Consider this: some parents even arrange a code with their daughter so that if she calls to say “I forgot to turn off my flatiron” they know that she wants to be rescued and they start yelling into the phone. The girl can hold the phone away from her ear, make faces while her friends listen to the rant, and apologize that she has to go home because her mom has gone berserk.

If your daughter isn’t yet texting or interacting online, wait until she really wants a phone or social media accounts and make your right to supervise her activity a condition of gaining access to the digital world.

also discourage parents from calling one another about girls who are in conflict. I have never seen situations made better by such calls, and they are often made worse.

“Double-check the age of the person whose test you are scoring. If it’s a teenager, but you think it’s a grown-up, you’ll conclude that you have a psychotic adult. But that’s just a normal teenager.”

healthy teenage development can look pretty irrational.

Here’s the bottom line: what your daughter broadcasts matches what she actually experiences. Really, it’s just that intense, so take her feelings seriously, regardless of how overblown they might seem.

So if your teenage daughter is developing normally, you are living with someone who secretly worries that she is crazy and who might have the psychological assessment results of a psychotic adult.

Complaining to you allows your daughter to bring the best of herself to school.

For many teens, school is a plate of radishes. By the time they get to the end of the day, there’s just no energy left to contain their annoyance, and the complaining begins.

When your daughter complains, listen quietly and remind yourself that you are providing her with a way to unload the stress of her day.

When she starts rolling out the complaints, consider asking, “Do you want my help with what you’re describing, or do you just need to vent?”

Externalization is a technical term describing how teenagers sometimes manage their feelings by getting their parents to have their feelings instead. In other words, they toss you an emotional hot potato.

When feelings are minimized, girls often turn up the volume to make sure they, and their feelings, are heard.

you’re both better off when you validate her emotions.

As a psychologist who began practicing long before digital media invaded our lives, I’ve been blown away by the power of technology to stunt girls’ ability to recognize and manage their own feelings.

helicopter parents are often created via a two-way process:

If you tense up every time you try to interact with your daughter because you expect her to be prickly, you should consider the possibility that something’s really wrong.

People who fall into the habit of using self-destructive tactics to numb pain will age as time passes, but they don’t grow up.

What does abstract reasoning have to do with questioning authority? Everything.

I’ve heard some parents refer to their teens as “toddlers on hormones”—with

As a clinician I’ll take friction over a stalemate any day.

Come out from behind your curtain and offer the real reasons for your rules.

emotional intelligence as the capacity to reflect on our own thoughts, feelings, and actions and to be aware of complex mental states—the wishes, beliefs, and feelings—of the people around us.

“There will be no place on your high school transcript to explain that you didn’t like Mr. Martin. You’d better figure out how to manage.”

“Clearly you’re very mad—I’m open to having a real conversation about what’s bothering you as soon as you feel ready.”

angry lectures serve the sole purpose of providing relief for frustrated parents.

On top of that, some girls seem to lose interest in a goal the minute their parents get behind it.

for most teenagers, the drive toward autonomy trumps everything else.

From this perspective we see that the issue isn’t the impulses that come with adolescence, it’s the potential that digital technology gives to them.