Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood

by Lisa Damour

“We hate to see you shutting down options that you may want to have at the end of high school. You’ll probably have interests then that you’re not aware of now. And there’s something else. We know that you want to go to parties and concerts with your friends, but those come with risks that require maturity and good judgment on your part. You’re not showing us maturity and good judgment at school, so we’re not doing our job as parents if we let you go into risky situations without any proof you have the judgment needed to handle those situations well. Show us your maturity at school and we’ll let you exercise that maturity when you spend time with your friends.”

Research shows that moderate levels of anxiety actually energize test takers (and athletes, actors, and other performers) and contribute to their success.

Even girls who study can arrive at tests underprepared because, overwhelmingly, students get ready for tests by reviewing their notes, highlighting passages, or rereading material. While reviewing the material constitutes a good first step in studying, it should only be considered a first step because research finds that highlighting and rereading are among the most ineffective study strategies of all. To return to the theater analogy, reviewing the material is the equivalent of learning one’s lines—you can’t have a play without the actors knowing their lines—but memorizing lines doesn’t make an actor ready for the play. Next, the actor needs to practice delivering her lines under playlike conditions—hence rehearsals. For test takers, this means applying their knowledge in conditions like the ones they’ll face during actual tests, such as being quizzed at home or, best of all, writing and answering their own test questions. Some of the best students I know search online for sample tests on the topics they’re studying and routinely find tests like the ones they’ll be taking. When girls actively engage with test material under testlike conditions, studies find that they learn the material more thoroughly and get better scores than students who use passive review techniques.

The groups differed in only one way. Before the test began, the first group was told that they were taking a test that had yielded gender differences in the past and the second group was told that no gender differences had been found on the test they were taking. When mentioning gender differences, the researchers didn’t even say that men had outperformed women, and yet here’s what they found: in the first group, the men got much better scores than the women, and in the second group, the men and women performed equally well. The mere mention of a gendered pattern on the math test was enough to trigger stereotype threat and suppress the performance of strong female mathematicians.

Remind her that a test only measures her mastery of the material on the day of the assessment.

People only make changes when they are uncomfortable,

Digital grade books have been a godsend for the parents whose daughters have real problems with executive functioning (shorthand for the capacity to plan, organize, and strategize) and cannot learn from their own academic mishaps.

Unclear how to tell if this is the case and what to do for a teen if so

“I’m so glad that you’re not leading the pack—it’s easier to grow when you’re surrounded by peers who can stretch and inspire you.”

Girls who overperform and overstudy often lose sight of the possibility that studying smarter might not mean studying harder.

Many teenagers who lack a plan find their way to goals once they grow up a bit.

Your aim should be to help your daughter develop her interests and to minimize the number of doors she closes while you wait for her to mature. Keep an open mind about what constitutes a reasonable plan, and encourage—or, if necessary, require—your daughter to do things she might find appealing. Some parents insist their daughter get a job or volunteer position but remain entirely flexible about where she chooses to work.

Research finds that the more sexist and sexualized content girls consume as part of their media diet, the more likely they are to hold stereotypical views about gender roles, such as believing that women ensnare men through manipulation.

When you take up these conversations, help your daughter appreciate how often the girls’ wishes are left out of media messages and encourage her to take a critical, if not robustly skeptical, view of what drives sexist media content.

“People are making money off of that girl, and I don’t feel comfortable watching this video because I feel as if we’re participating in her exploitation.”

Even if your daughter doesn’t look at pornography, by seventh grade the romantic and sexual landscape around her has likely been altered by boys who do (like I said, things on this developmental strand change fast). I routinely hear from girls that boys are now emboldened to expect sexual favors or sexual pictures, both inside and outside of relationships. We already know that digital technology makes it easy for teens to act on impulse and send pictures they shouldn’t, but most adults don’t know just how much pressure girls can face to participate in sexting.

You have three jobs: to alert your daughter to the fact that she has an inner compass, to support her in asking for what she wants, and to make sure she knows how to express what she doesn’t want.

“That movie made it seem like guys call all the shots, but I hope you know that what you want out of a relationship matters. Anyone worth being with will know that, too.”

Indeed, boys’ painfully narrow definition of masculine behavior drives their dogged gender policing of one another.

Morals are always relative and highly personal, so foisting your principles on an authority-questioning teenager will only invite her to look for holes in your argument, even if she actually shares your views. When talking with your daughter about how she cares for herself, it’s better to set the moralizing aside.

The best take I’ve heard on this topic comes from the geniuses at Sesame Street, who describe foods as being “anytime foods” or “sometime foods.” When you define these categories for your daughter, explain that anytime foods are unprocessed (and are the foods that take the best care of her body) and sometime foods are the heavily processed. If necessary, educate your daughter about how to identify a sometime food: it’s made in a factory, it comes in a package, it usually has more than five ingredients, and it contains things she can’t pronounce.

alcohol safety is often less about the alcohol and more about the context in which it is consumed.

That said, research suggests that the neural structures associated with feelings of reward can be altered during adolescence by the enjoyable buzz of intoxication. Because the adolescent brain reacts to alcohol and drugs differently than the adult brain does, teenage substance use can shape what the brain deems pleasurable and lay the groundwork for addiction.

“Consider a situation with the following variables: you go to a party, your friends ditch you, and there are some guys at the party who seem pretty creepy. To that equation, let’s add one more variable: whether you are totally sober, or whether you’ve had a few drinks.”

We know that heavy drinking can damage the brain’s frontal networks and hippocampus—the parts of the brain associated with learning and memory—and lead to long-term neurological impairment.

the investigators found that people who were using pot regularly by age eighteen saw significant drops in their IQ from the time they were children to the time they were adults, but the same result was not found for people who didn’t become regular marijuana users until adulthood

Further, the investigators tracked the intelligence of participants who lost IQ points as teenagers and found that their IQ scores never recovered, even years after their marijuana habit ended. Sadly, their brain damage was permanent. Specifically, using pot regularly as a teenager has been connected to changes in the brain’s structure and the impairment of learning, reasoning, and the ability to focus and sustain attention.

Drugs are banned when their molecular properties are known to make them highly addictive and incredibly hazardous.

spice (a synthetic marijuana) has been found to cause psychosis and seizures, MDMA (ecstasy) often leads to chronic depression, cocaine can stop your heart, and so on. The opiates, a category that includes heroin as well as prescription drugs such as Vicodin and Percocet, hijack the brain’s pleasure centers and cause cravings even years after a person stops using them. While you’re surfing online, don’t hesitate to point out that we have no way to regulate illegal drugs. We don’t know the dosages or even what the substances actually contain. When I have opportunities to talk with girls about drugs I often ask matter-of-factly, “Why would you put the only brain you will ever have in the hands of some sketchy guy making money as a dealer?”

A drug arrest (with or without a conviction) has the potential to limit educational, travel, or job options indefinitely.

Substance use robs teens of their futures by making a mess of the day-to-day. Often, things start small. I’ve seen girls who smoke pot on a regular basis slowly lose ground at school, drift away from their principled friends, or distance themselves from helpful adults. When a girl gets upset about the troubles caused by her drug problem, she often soothes herself by using more, and harder, drugs. From there, you can easily imagine how this terrible story unfolds as her escalating substance use only makes matters worse. Drug and alcohol abuse becomes exponentially more difficult to treat the longer it persists; the sooner girls get help for substance abuse problems, the more likely they are to recover fully.

You might say, “When I was growing up, I knew that some girls were getting drunk to have sex. That’s not good. First of all, it raises serious questions about any partner who would have sex with someone who’s drunk and it meant that the girls weren’t able to look out for their own interests and probably weren’t comfortable having sex in the first place.”

Not all girls who diet develop eating disorders, but girls who develop eating disorders always start by restricting certain food categories or changing their food habits. Eating disorders progress slowly, and girls will go to great lengths to hide their troubling behavior as it develops. They skip meals or tell adults that they’ve already eaten or will eat later. They exercise excessively or vomit or abuse laxatives to rid themselves of unwanted calories. And girls will put their food rules ahead of everything else, even refusing to share friends’ birthday cakes or go out to restaurants with their parents.