Teen girls & real confidence

[BAorAir]

Inspired but the How to raise confident daughters thread, which is great, hI’ve been thinking about how best to parent girls aged 12–18, and how to promote confidence, resilience and growing independence at this age as they manage friendships, crushes, peer pressure, parties, looks, exams, dating and making choices about their future, such as GCSE subjects, A-levels, university.

Often girls this age do find their voice and naturally become more confident but many develop self doubt and insecurities.

IT IS SO HARD! I have two teen dds. Both have a shared massive hobby, one also does sports and an other extracurricular at school. She has great friends, she is doing well (moody, stroppy at times of course but generally stable). The older has terrible friends and is causing a lot of stress currently. The older one has lower self esteem but that is self fulfilling from her daily choices and a vicious circle.

Hobbies have always been a big focus for us. Too much time at home is inevitably too much time spent online.

I agree that hobbies are hugely beneficial to keep them off screens, different friends outside of school and develop (social) skills and have fun.

I am not sure I love the new trend of large friendship groups. They don't seem as close and genuine.

I try and encourage them advocate for themselves as much as possible both at home, school and out and about but also remind them to get their point across in a polite and articulate way.

That's a very good point about friendship groups, dd2's is smaller and she has a very close outside school bbf (from the hobby). Dd1s is large and hard to pinpoint with her exactly who is going out/who she is with.