As a society we’ve become obsessed with academic excellence, sports and extracurricular activities. The crazy ‘race to college’ that starts putting pressure on our kids way too early is literally stripping teens of their joy. As parents we need shift our focus and put an equal amount of time, energy and money into their emotional wellbeing – before they hit crisis point.
Whenever I ask a mother what she truly wants for her daughter, the response always comes down to wanting them to be happy, healthy and confident in who she is.
At the end of the day, the relationship your daughter has with herself will impact every decision she makes – from how she spends her time, to whom she spends it with, her thoughts, whom she dates and more.
If she doesn’t possess a healthy sense of self-worth, it doesn’t matter how many honors classes she aces or how high she scores on college entrance exams. It won’t matter if she gets into that Ivy league College – if she isn’t centered in who she is, she will make choices that reflect her own sense of worthiness and become vulnerable to that dark path. That path begins with self-doubt, anxiety and depressions and has the potential in ending in ways that we as parents fear the most.
We are a culture that packs and over-programs our days, weeks, months and years to the brim. Kids spend so much time focused on competing in sports, doing piles of homework and getting ahead. Yet, they’re still unhappy. We see patterns of self-harm, eating disorders, depression, anxiety and suicide in seemingly “happy” and successful girls. Oftentimes they haven’t learned how to balance these pressures and cultivate a healthy awareness of themselves. Before they’re even aware they’re buckling under the pressure, they’re in too deep.
Fact: 1 in 5 teens between the ages of 13-18 have or will have a serious mental health illness.
The pressure teens are faced with today outweighs their capacity to process it. We have no choice as parents of teens today to invest in their emotional health sooner rather than later.
An empowered young woman who understands who she is and who truly embraces self-love will always find her way in life — twists, turns, missteps and triumphs all considered. She will make choices and surround herself with people and experiences that are aligned with her truth. And when she encounters situations and people who challenge who she is and the values she stands for, she will have the assurance stemming from self-love and self-worth to stand up, push back and say no with fierceness and conviction. She will embrace the beautiful messy parts of life instead of feeling like a failure. She’ll cultivate healthy relationships where she can be vulnerable and share her heart. She’ll understand that we don’t get our strength or our character from perfection or from everything coming easy. She’ll appreciate that our grit comes from the hard stuff – falling down, challenging relationships, getting hurt, disappointment – and this awareness will help her to get back up and soldier forward with even more wisdom, clarity, resilience and strength.
For me as a mother of teen girls and founder of The Dragonfly Movement, this is my main focus, and why I’m so passionate about developing self-awareness in young girls from a young age. This is the foundation that will keep our girls grounded in the battlefield of life that she faces as a teenager and beyond.
One thing I know for sure is that if I can help my daughters build that strong connection with themselves, that regardless of which college they go to, or even if they choose not to go to college, that they’ll find their own path to happiness – and that’s the kind of success I want for them.
