There are many things that a teenage daughter wants from her mom, but there are also certain things that a teenage daughter needs from her mom. Some of these things are relevant in any era and some are specific to the times we live in. I will try to address both in this post.
Your teenage daughter needs you to teach her she is loved unconditionally and she is enough.
Your daughter’s self-esteem derives from you, her parent. You need to instill in her the belief that she is enough. You can do that by gently reminding her that you love and cherish her no matter what happens. Every person goes through ups and downs, and she needs to know you love her through both. You need to reassure her and tell her it is okay that she sometimes fails. Make sure she knows that it is important that she tries and that she continues to try until she achieves her goals. Guide her into loving her outer shell (her body), her mind and her spirit.
Firstly,
You need to make her love her body by telling her how beautiful she is, going shopping with her, having weekly beauty nights where you both take care of your bodies, visiting hair and nail salons or doing sports. You can tell her:
- You look beautiful today.
- I love how you matched your clothes.
- These colours/styles suit you.
- I like how you take care of your body.
- I love that you do sports because it is going to keep your body in shape.
- Let’s go for a run/hike/walk together.
When she complains about certain imperfections of her body, you need to keep telling her her body is beautiful just the way it is, and even more so, because it houses her beautiful mind and soul.
Secondly,
She needs to strongly believe that her mind is a great machine that is trainable and she can tweak it by conscientious work. Support her interests and encourage her to try new things. Tell her that even a failure is a valuable experience. Take her to take a variety of courses or classes, so she can try different things and widen her interests. She will discover her strong and weak points this way. Use words to empower her. Here are some examples of what you can say:
- I love that you keep trying to solve this problem.
- I love how you found a solution to this issue.
- Your mind works so quickly.
- Tell me how you came to that conclusion.
- Teach me/Show me how to do that.
- I am very interested in hearing how you managed to do that.
Thirdly,
Teach her to love her spirit, nurture her emotional side and be in touch with her feelings. Do not let her sweep her emotions under the carpet or cry herself to sleep when she is sad. Teach her to identify and talk about her feelings. Validate the way she feels on her good and bad days. You can use some of these expressions:
- I feel you have had a splendid day. You look so happy.
- I am so happy you had that experience. It lightened up your spirit.
- I see how hard it is for you. I feel for you.
- It must be so hard to be you today. Tell me about it.
- I love how you showed your friend kindness in this difficult situation.
Above all,
Teach her good moral values. Teach her to be a kind, generous, and helpful person, because no matter how beautiful or smart she is, the goodness of her spirit is going to make her truly happy. Besides, if she is to attract good, she needs to be good herself.
Your teenage daughter needs you to believe in her.
You need to help your teenage daughter to believe in herself. She needs to know that she can try new things, follow her passions and be great at everything she sets her mind on. Whenever she wants to try something new, encourage her and cheer her on. Don’t express doubts, because she will stop trying and won’t have courage to try things later on in life. Don’t let limiting beliefs take root in your daughter’s mind. She will become a stronger person when you emphasize her good qualities. Empower her by telling her things like:
- You can do whatever you decide to do. You just need to work at it.
- I love how you took care of your siblings when your dad and I were out.
- You can handle difficult tasks very well.
- Keep trying at it and you will finally succeed.
Your daughter needs you to support her.
Mothers and daughters can share conversations about their feelings the way daughters and dads often can’t. Women are usually much more in touch with their own feelings and, therefore, can better sympathize with other people’s feelings. When your teenage daughter goes through puberty and her hormones buzz inside of her, she is often at a loss with herself and needs someone who can translate her feelings to her. That someone should be you.
There are many good and bad moments in your daughter’s life. She needs your support through both. She needs you to support her through the positive stress of good moments. She wants to share her joys and delight. Express your pride of her when she does something well and listen to her feelings when she is happy. That will give you a glimpse into her soul and will make it easier to devise ways to cheer her up when she needs support. In her sad moments, don’t judge or scold her for making mistakes. Rather, let her know that you are always there for her no matter what happens and she can always come to you with her problems.
She needs you to be there for her and spend quality time with her.
There is never going to be enough free time to spend with your daughter. You need to make time. You need to put quality time with your daughter on the calendar. It should be a weekly event when a mother and a daughter have unrestricted time with each other to do things they enjoy. It can be a movie night, a visit to a spa or a hiking trip. Make it seem like the most important thing in the world, so your daughter feels important.
Besides the weekly fun time, you should check in with your daughter throughout the day. Look into her eyes and REALLY listen to what she’s got to say. Don’t just drift off into your own issues, but stay focused and acknowledge what you hear. Paraphrase what you hear to make sure you understand. If you misunderstood, your daughter will be only too happy to explain. Don’t rush through conversations with her. Take your time. Show your daughter that she is worth your time.
Your teenage daughter needs you to be calm with her.
How calm you are with your daughter will determine how calm she is with other people and how calm she is going to be with her own children in the future. I know from experience that it is exceedingly difficult to keep your cool with teenagers around, but it is crucial to control your emotions, especially anger. When you act angrily around your daughter, she has a hard time talking to you when she makes mistakes. The fear of talking to you prevents her from understanding and communicating her mistakes. It can lead to a growing distance between you two and this is something you definitely don’t want.
Your daughter needs you to let her experiment, make mistakes and forgive herself.
Your daughter must feel she has the freedom to experiment, make choices and risk making mistakes. When she is a teenager, she wants to spread her wings and feel the wind in them. You need to gradually, let her get more and more freedom, so she trusts herself to make good decisions. You daughter doesn’t need a mom who is constantly afraid for her. She needs a mom, who makes her aware of the dangers of the world, and prepares her for them.
Your daughter doesn’t have to be perfect. She needs to have experience with both success and failure. When she fails, reassure her by telling her that everyone makes mistakes, even the greatest and smartest people. Also, make sure she knows to forgive herself for the mistakes she made. When you talk to her about it, make sure she learns to laugh at her silliness and treat it lightly rather than dwell on it forever.
She needs you to teach her to keep her body safe.
We live in times when sexual abuse is more prevalent than ever and human trafficking is a multi-billion business. With so many dangers out there, you need to prepare your daughter to keep her body safe. You need to have regular conversations with her since the time she is very small. Explaining about her private parts is a good starting point. You can explain that only she can touch her private parts and that her body belongs only to her. She needs to know she has the right to decide who touches her. There should also be a mention of appropriate touch and inappropriate touch.
As a mom, you should also prepare your daughter for a possibility of having to defend herself against bad people. Sending your daughter for self-defence courses (Karate, Kickboxing, Taekwondo, etc.,) and giving her the tools to protect herself (whom to call, whom to ask for help in an event of abuse or attempted abuse) is an important part of keeping her safe. Most importantly, she needs to know she can always talk to you about everything.
She needs you to teach her life skills.
Your daughter will stay with you for a fair amount of time, but then, there will come a time when she’ll leave. She needs you to prepare her to be self-sufficient in life. She needs to have certain skills to survive on her own and be okay without you.
She needs to be able to:
- Cook nutritious meals not to rely on restaurant or fast food
- Do things around the house: cleaning, vacuuming, sewing, ironing, etc.,
- Manage her feelings
- Manage money (create budget, regularly save, manage debt, invest)
- Communicate effectively
- Resolve conflict
- Work in groups
Your teenage daughter needs you to teach her about Internet safety.
You daughter needs you to teach her that real life is more important than digital life. She needs to have clear boundaries between the two and favour the real life. You need to teach her to derive pleasure from being with real people in real time and place. So, set limits on screen time and media usage and encourage your daughter to spend time doing real things with friends and family.
However, because we live in an increasingly digital world, your daughter cannot escape it, or she will face rejection by peers. So, you’d better make sure she knows how to be safe in it. You can do it by:
- Talking to her about dangers of Internet and social media
- Warning her not to share her personal details, send pictures to people she doesn’t know
- Restricting her social media accounts to people she knows and blocking people she doesn’t know
- Teaching her about how life portrayed on social media is often untrue and that people often pretend to be happy or glamorous when they are not
- Telling her not to follow instructions online (scams, grooming, etc.,)
Final thoughts:
Your teenage daughter needs you to teach her to verify information.
We live in the era of fake news and disinformation, so your daughter needs to know how to look for reliable information and how to verify if information is true, so she is always well-informed. Internet research skills are highly valuable in 21st century. Make sure she has got them.
She needs you to teach her to form strong circles of friends/communities.
With the advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI), we may have to face the future where our skills will become outdated, or even obsolete, and our jobs will be replaced with robots. Up to now, many people derived meaning of their lives from professional work. Their meaning of life may become questioned in the new reality. Humans, including your daughter, will have to look for alternative ways to find meaning in life. Since people are social animals, we always find pleasure and thrive in communities. Forming strong, close-knit communities may be the way to keep her flourishing.
