HOW TO ACCEPT THE GROWING Daughter. 7 MAIN ACTIONS FOR MOM

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

“Hello, I have a problem, if you can advise, I will be grateful to you. My 13-year-old daughter was abandoned yesterday by a boy, a 15-year-old boy, we live in Kiev, and he is in the village. Meetings were rare, communicated mainly by phone or Vkontakte, where yesterday he wrote to her about the breakup. My daughter cried a lot yesterday evening. How can I help my child cope with the problem?"

Such a literal letter was written to me the other day by a woman on Facebook. I dropped my phone number to her and advised her over the phone, answering all her questions. When I said that the most important thing in such periods for a mother is to withstand the feelings of her daughter, she modestly asked: "Sorry, Svetlana, but I ask you to clarify what it means to withstand."

I was silent for a second. Dozens of stories of my adult clients flashed in front of me, who did not have accepting and enduring mothers nearby, and whose women's destinies then swayed from side to side for a very long time, someone is weaker, someone is stronger.

I remembered them, imagined this crying growing up girl abandoned by a boy and answered: “To endure is to BE NEARBY. To be physically, mentally and emotionally close to your daughter in moments of such experiences and to withstand her tears, pleas and disappointments, not to cover up her experiences and feelings with the phrase: "You will have many more like that" or "It is her own fault", because the mother herself is not knows what to say, or considers it nonsense, or does not want to listen to her daughter's sobs. To withstand is to accept her for who she is. To endure is to be a MOTHER - humane and loving consistently and regularly in any development of events."

Everything seems clear, but in reality it is not so simple. How to be?

Boys and girls in adolescence are fundamentally different in their needs. Boys are future husbands, fathers, earners. It is important for them to learn how to make independent decisions, to be responsible for them, to become financially independent, and this was the subject of my previous article "How to accept the growing up of a son."

For a girl growing up and living through a transitional age crisis, in my opinion, unlike a boy, it is most important to learn to recognize and master her feelings and desires, to be able to control them and not succumb to the manipulation of others. She is a future mother and wife, and whatever one may say, this is her main role in her future life. How she will accept her increasingly manifested femininity, what position in relationships with men she will try to take, depends on how extensive and accessible for expression her arsenal of feelings and desires will be, how much it will be mastered and understood by her in this adolescent period. And not the least role in this is played by the relationship between mother and daughter - open and trusting.

So,

7 MAIN ACTIONS FOR A MOTHER OF A GROWING DAUGHTER:

1. Tell your daughter about the natural physiological changes in the bodyso that she does not develop an inferiority complex. On average, at 12-13 years old, girls begin their periods, hormonal changes in the body affect all organs and parts of the body. Therefore, someone's chest begins to grow very quickly, someone has a foot size, someone has a nose, someone gets fat because it does not grow quickly, but someone, on the contrary, becomes long and thin, like a stick. In general, in addition to the fact that every month now you have to wait and experience inconvenience due to critical days, the appearance also delivers a lot of dissatisfaction. Therefore, the mother calmly, preferably in advance, tells her daughter that all women in the world go through the stage of formation and transformation of their feminine essence. That a girl turns into a girl, becomes more mature and all parts of the body will also harmoniously form after some time, including the nose, ears and chest. It is advisable to give examples from your life, the stories told by the grandmother about her growing up and experiences about this, what comical situations happened to her appearance, how her mother experienced it then and recalls it with a smile now.

It is imperative to focus on hygiene - to look after and take care of your women's health must begin from childhood. In adolescence, girls already ask to spend the night with a classmate, go to health camps, to the village to see their grandmother, where they change things, jewelry, cosmetics, etc. Poor hygiene in girls leads to inflammatory gynecological diseases, which in turn can develop into a chronic disease, further complicating the possibility of getting pregnant. Inform your daughter about this.

2. Talk about relationships between boys and girls … During puberty, the first sympathies, the first meetings, the first love begin. These first relationships will leave an imprint on the entire future of a woman's destiny. It is necessary to talk about this relationship with your daughter. Build a trusting relationship with her from the very beginning.

If your daughter will reveal her secrets and experiences to you, do not focus on moralizing and how you should behave in conversations. With the frankness that suddenly rushed over her, ask her leading questions that reveal to her the meaning of her own words and actions: “Daughter, what does it mean to you to meet? And for him? (if he doesn’t know, let him be sure to take an interest). What does it mean - now I have a boyfriend? What do you expect from these meetings? What is your role in this relationship? How do you feel as a girl who has a boyfriend? How does it make you feel? What do you think attracts him to you? What are your qualities? And in it you? By picking up these responses, you and she will be able to see your own blank spots. For example, dating for her means that the guy will walk her home after school. And for him, as she learns, dating is kissing in the evenings. And then it will be clear that their expectations do not coincide, and someone will have to give in or they will have to part. But then the reason for the separation will be clear to everyone.

The generation of mothers of modern teenage girls grew up in Soviet times, then there were no such conversations and mothers now have to look for their own maternal position on their own. Be natural and open to communication with your daughter.

Tell us about your first experience of friendship with a boy, how did you fall in love, what kind of boy did you like, how he attracted you, did you write poetry to him, did you call him first, did you have a girlfriend for heart-to-heart conversations, was your mother devoted to such secret experiences? … Emphasize how glad you are that your daughter trusts you and how grateful you are to her.

3. Use maternal acceptance and care as a resource for the daughter. The relationship and friendship between a daughter and a boy can begin and end, and the reaction of the mother is important here - the endurance that I wrote about above and acceptance of her in any state, and not just smiling and telling poetry on the chair. In parallel, it is necessary to show that any relationship has a beginning and an end. Yes, it happens that something depends on us, but it happens that nothing depends on us. The boy made a decision on his own, and does not worry about the mental anguish of your daughter - do not focus on the negative, support her and encourage her: heart, daughter, will be free and without obligation. Reframing, i.e. reformulating the problem in a positive direction and a mother's embrace will give her daughter the resource that is important to each of us in critical situations.

Give your daughter not only verbal support, but also bodily support - stroke like a little one, comforting, wipe away tears, kiss, hug. The tear-stained teenage hedgehog has lowered its needles for a while and you have some time to meet your little trusting resentful girl, who, as in early childhood, is waiting for your unconditional love and affection. Do not dismiss these moments of her weakness, fill the emptiness of the experience with motherly warmth and it will give her energy for whole weeks of further teenage volcanic life.

4. Never reproach a daughter with her trust, never turn her revelations against her. As much as you would like to sometimes prick your daughter, do not stoop to the memories of her mistakes and moments when she was not up to par. Your such reaction can forever close the door to her inner world of experiences. Once injections, you may not reach for many years later, so that these doors will be opened for you again.

5. Show that adolescence has an end. The transitional age with mood swings for a little growing girl can seem endless. Any tragedy and disappointment is experienced for the first time and there is no previous experience of such experiences. The mother's example of the fact that this period is finite, that the mother also experienced at this time different polarities of feelings and events, gives the girl the opportunity not to feel her unbearable loneliness and abandonment. It gives hope that she, too, will successfully live this period, like you.

Tell us how other women of your family, your close friends whom your daughter knows, experienced the transitional age.

6. Introduce feelings and desires. To reveal all the meanings of feelings and experiences: What are you feeling now? When are you laughing? When are you crying? And what do you want - to go to the cinema, chocolate, recognition by peers on equal terms, or to establish yourself in the status of an undisputed leader?

The daughter needs to be helped to familiarize herself with hatred and love, and with the usual friendly neutral communication. Knowing now trust, disappointment, reciprocity, passion, devotion, jealousy, and much more and knowing how to differentiate these feelings and desires, she will not wander in this forest of feelings at random for many years to come.

7. Engage in sex education for your daughter

Do I need to talk to my daughter about sex? How to start such a conversation? These questions, besides many others, were asked by the mother of that 13-year-old girl, about whom I wrote at the beginning of the article.

Of course it is necessary, and the sooner the better. Surely at the age of 13, a child - both a son and a daughter - can already tell a lot themselves. Internet, TV and acceleration are doing their job. But nevertheless, from the lips of the mother, this information may sound more convincing, and most importantly - this information will be a guarantee for the child that in the future you are on the same side of the barricades. With such a conversation, you show that you know that your daughter is growing and accept her growing up, her needs for such knowledge, support her, and are ready to advise, suggest and support if she suddenly asks for help. Only you need your child. You are responsible for his knowledge. Excuses like - I don't know where to start, maybe early, she is not interested in this - will calm you down for the time being. The main thing is that it is not too late.

Getting started is simple and easy:

“Daughter, for me you are still quite a girl and you will remain one forever. Someday you will become a mother of such a beautiful girl as yourself, and in many years you will talk to her in the same way as I am talking to you today. It will be easier for you, because you will remember this conversation of ours and tell everything in the same way, adding something of your own. Nobody talked to me on such topics as a child - then it was considered wrong and I have to look for the right words myself. It's not easy for me. But you are MY girl, my little future woman, and I want you to grow up happy and healthy. Let's talk heart to heart?"

In adolescence, the opinion of friends and girlfriends is very important for our children. The authority of parents fades into the background, compared with the significance of peer assessments. But when “life cracks”, when “the ship is wrecked”, when “the world is collapsing” and there is no experience to survive this, our children always come to us, for support and with the hope that someone in this collapsed world has before them business and life will get better anyway. Even if you hear: “Close the door! Nothing has happened! your daughter is waiting for your love. Let her get it in full, because one day she, too, will become a mother and understand how difficult it is to ACCEPT AND MAINTAIN THE GROWTH OF OWN DAUGHTER.