Don't be surprised if your prepubescent kids have heard from older siblings or friends that something exciting and scary is coming, even if they don't yet know what it is.
Once these developmental changes begin to occur, they can be deeply disturbing to a girl who hasn't been told what is happening to her body.
Because it is all so bewildering, she can worry herself sick about sore breast buds ("Do I have cancer?"), menstruation ("Am I bleeding to death?"), and other fears associated with physical changes. That is why it is so very important for you to prepare your daughters for puberty and adolescence. Not only should they come to understand the approaching physical changes, they should also be informed about the wildly fluctuating emotions that will accompany this time of life. Doubts about personal self-worth should also be anticipated and explained. They are inevitable.
By the way, in the addendum at the conclusion of this book is a description of a CD and book series for prepubescent boys and girls titled Preparing for Adolescence.7 I designed it to assist parents in talking with their kids about what is about to happen to them developmentally. Tens of thousands of families have used the recordings and the book to ease the transition from childhood to the teen experience.
Moms and dads should understand that the hormonal barrage that initiates puberty is highly traumatic to the female brain, and it can throw a girl into complete disequilibrium until she begins to adjust to it.8 This is why parents must take the time to understand what she is going through. From pubescence through adolescence, there will be recurring times of moodiness, anxiety, anger, self-pity, and depression. There will also be periods of giddiness, glee, elation, and happiness. Emotions are on a roller coaster from the peak to the valley, and from one day—or one hour—to the next. The entire family sometimes hangs on for dear life until things start to settle down. For some girls, the return to equilibrium can take five years or longer. In the meantime, surging levels of estrogen and progesterone affect behavior and personality dramatically. They have the female brain (and parents) rocking and reeling.
Dr. Louann Brizendine, a Yale-trained psychiatrist and the author of The Female Brain, describes the adolescent experience like this:
Drama, drama, drama. That's what's happening in a teen girl's life and a teen girl's brain. "Mom, I so totally can't go to school. I just found out Brian likes me and I have a huge zit and no concealer. . . . How can you even think I'll go?" "Homework? I told you I'm not doing any more until you promise to send me away to school. I can't stand living with you for one more minute." "No, I'm not done talking to Eve. It has not been two hours, and I'm not getting off the phone." This is what you get if you have the modern version of the teen girl brain in your house.9
With this new estrogen-driven reality, aggression also plays a big role. The teen girl brain will make her feel powerful, always right, and blind to consequences. Without that drive, she'll never be able to grow up, but getting through it, especially for the teen girl, isn't easy. As she begins to experience her full "girl power," which includes premenstrual syndrome [PMS], sexual competition, and controlling girl groups, her brain states can often make her reality, well, a little hellish.10
Hellish, indeed! According to a report issued by the National Institute of Mental Health, approximately 10 to 20 percent of teen girls are in continuing states of crisis.11 Those upheavals are physical, emotional, and mental in nature. They produce large amounts of the stress hormone cortisol. This hormone prepares the body for emergencies, but when cortisol levels are continually high, both the mind and the body are affected adversely. The result is an interference with normal female development.
These findings do not apply to every girl, of course. The NIMH report implies that 80 to 90 percent of girls are not in constant states of crisis, and they go through this time of hormonal imbalance without serious consequences.12 Most struggle one way or another, however.
What does a girl need from her parents when everything has gone topsy-turvy? The answer, in a word, is more attachment, not less. (Remember chapter 7?) Even when she is most unlovable, she needs love and connectedness from her mother, but also from her father. She needs them to be as calm, mature, and parental as possible. There is no room in their relationship for an out-of-control, screaming, confused, and scared adult. A voice of reason is desperately needed, even with a child who has become entirely unreasonable. I know this is difficult advice to receive or implement because a pubescent girl can be absolutely maddening. But she typically has little self-control and certainly doesn't need a mom with the same problem. The 10 to 20 percent of adolescent girls who are in crisis mode need all the stability they can get from their families. Strange impulses are urging them to do things that make no sense to a rational mind, and many of them can't help responding the way they do.
And let me emphasize this: the divorce of parents during this time is always devastating! Marital breakups are difficult for a child of any age, but they are especially stressful when puberty is in full swing. If moms and dads love their kids, they will do everything possible to avoid this tragedy during the toughest years of their child's life. Divorce can send an unstable kid, and even a mature one, over the edge.
Furthermore, because the onset of puberty is occurring earlier today, and because women are tending to marry later, it is not uncommon for mothers to be going through the stresses of menopause at the same time their daughters are entering the age of sexual awakening. The proximity of those two volatile hormonal experiences within a family can cause a train wreck between generations.
Physician Nancy Snyderman and her teen daughter experienced just such a collision in their relationship. It led the doctor to write an outstanding book titled Girl in the Mirror. In it she observed that in previous generations these pivotal journeys had been separated by time. But the simultaneous occurrence of two highly charged hormonal phases adds another dimension to the mother-daughter relationship. It often creates catfights between generations.13 All I can say is, dads, beware. Maybe you ought to get out of Dodge every now and then.
That last sentence was intended to be tongue in cheek. In reality, fathers are extremely important in the midst of this chaos. If their temperaments allow, they can be the "voice of reason" to which I referred. Fathers can help interpret motives, mitigate harsh words, and soothe hurt feelings across the generational gap. But if Dad also starts to go berserk, it's Katie bar the door. A pubescent girl, a menopausal mother, a couple of adolescent siblings, and an emotionally unstable dad become a volatile cocktail.
9.DeWitt Williams, "The Friendship Factor," College and University Dialogue, http://dialogue
.adventist.org/articles/15_2_williams_e.htm.
10. Shalit, Girls Gone Mild, 254.
11.Helena Oliviero, "Bully Girls: Intimidating Practices Grow among Female Teens, Atlanta Journal-Constitution (August 26, 2004): B1.
12.Cheryl Dellasega and Charisse Nixon, Girl Wars: 12 Strategies That Will End Female Bullying
(New York: Fireside, 2003).
13.James C. Dobson, Preparing for Adolescence (Carol Stream: Tyndale House Publishers, 1992),
146–159.
Book: Bringing Up Girls
By Dr. James Dobson