3 Ways To Help Your Anxious Teenage Daughter
American teens are among the. unhappiest in the world, according to an international study of children aged between 10 and 15. A quarter of 15-year-olds report low life satisfaction, reports the Children’s Society, which commissioned the study. “Our teenagers are facing a happiness recession, with 15-year-olds recording the lowest life satisfaction on average,” says researcher Mark Russell
Girls especially are struggling — almost a third report low life satisfaction — and are also “significantly less happy” with their lives, looks, family and school than their male peers. Their life satisfaction scores are dropping, whereas boys’ remain stable. Researchers also found that between 2015 and 2022, happiness levels among 15-year-old girls declined more sharply than other teens.
Why are girls in crisis and what can we as parents do to help?
Have regular conversations about difficult topics
Dr Beth Mosley, the consultant clinical psychologist and author of Happy Families: How to Protect and Support Your Child’s Mental Health,says that some parents see that their girls are anxious, and ignore it. “We go into distraction mode. We want to minimise it because we’re scared that if we focus on it, we’ll turn it into a big problem. Sometimes we don’t want to see this stuff as it’s too painful.”
We must onsider whether what’s going on at home could be a factor, such as money worries or marriage difficulties. Mosley says, “thoughts get stuck in an adolescent’s head and get bigger. By having conversations, you can help reduce their propensity to catastrophise and come to the wrong conclusion. Quite often, if parents are having difficulties, children blame themselves.”
To help them, we need to be aware and willing to engage, Mosley says. “Teenagers tell me, ‘We don’t think the adults in our lives have as much familiarity with these topics as we do.’ Have the confidence to raise these topics with your children, in a way that they don’t feel under attack. We often have these conversations only when something’s gone wrong — the worst time.” Arrange for your teen to meet with a skilled Christian counselor if they’re having difficulty communicating with you as their parent.
Avoid perfectionism: teach them that it’s fine to fail
Help your children to feel less pressured to perform. “I’m also seeing more girls struggling to negotiate the demand and desire to do well academically,” Mosley says. “This goes back to pressure and expectation.” Move them away from the need to be perfect in all arenas. “I work with 15-year-old girls who are afraid of making pasta,” she says. “They’re not afraid they’ll burn themselves — they’re afraid they’ll make something other people don’t like or their parents will criticize.”
“As parents, we’re so preoccupied with performance and outcomes, we can add to this anxiety. Give your children more space to get things wrong. Say, ‘It’s fine, next time you won’t burn the pasta! It’s OK to get a B instead of an A.’”
Support teenage girls socially
“Friendship groups are critically important in adolescence, and I think they’re further complicated by digital technology,” Mosley says. It’s good for all young people’s wellbeing, she adds, to have one or two close friends, and spending time together in person, “but these are things girls are doing less”.
Dr Beth Mosley: “Girls feel extreme pressures around their bodies and their looks”
Mosley notes: “Girls tend to be much more socially preoccupied. The challenge we have is that girls’ wellbeing is much more intrinsically linked to their social world and the dynamics occurring on that social level. I see adolescents in my practice who get sucked into relationships that are really unhealthy because they’re not valuing loyalty, they’re valuing popularity.”
Never be dismissive of friendship issues. “Create space where your child can tell you, ‘I’ve fallen out with my best friend again,’ and you say, ‘OK, tell me more — what’s happened?’” Normalize their experience, says Mosley, and don’t make them feel there’s something wrong with them for feeling as they do. “No, ‘Here we go again, you’re always arguing with so-and-so’.”
Try to help them develop more authentic relationships. “Build with your child a sense of the key things that are important to them about friendship.” When her teenage daughter struggled, Mosley recalls, “I couldn’t tell her, ‘I don’t like those friends,’ but I could be in the background, supporting her, helping her to make sense of why those relationships ended up hurting her, and guiding her towards finding other friendships or doing activities where she’d meet other young people who might have a more positive impact on her sense of belonging.”