I am a girl.

I was a very late developing adolescent girl. Junior and high school were dark dark years for me, until I met Jesus at age 15. Finding out I was loved by Jesus changed my very identity.

Through God’s calling I became a woman pastor, early in the 1980s. I was a youth pastor for 39 years before I began pastoring my church, Larger Story Church, which has teens in mind in every decision we make. (Of course.)

Working with teens since 1981 meant I have decided to relive my adolescent years again and again in the girls I love. I get to feel their awkwardness and uncertainness again and again, which reminds me of those terrible years I lived.

I love teen girls. Currently my three granddaughters are all teens. I wish they would never age out of adolescence! They feel differently about that and thankfully we have the relationship that they tell me that. I enjoy them so much. I want the best for all of our teen girls.

The world is cruel to teen girls. This is why I write this series. I have some things to say.

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A teen girl’s identity is very much tied to whether she believes she is worth being pursued, and so you and I had better help her navigate this world if we want to save her from shame that leads her life—particularly from sexual sins and addictions.

To avoid basing her identity on a guy, she has to understand why she wants so badly to be wanted by a guy—why she subconsciously craves to have someone tell her that she is worthy and lovely, beautiful, precious and smart. If she doesn’t realize that God has given her a desire to be desirable (innately, as a female), and if she doesn’t know the dangers that lurk because that desire is supersized by monetary gain from tech companies who do not care about her, then she is going to go running to any pair of masculine arms (real or fantasy) that will meet this need.

Their secret world is being reinforced by wounded adults you will never meet and can’t protect her from.

“Twelve-year-olds are scrolling through the inner worlds of wounded adults, reading their rants and ruminations before they’ve even held a boy’s hand. And I try to get this across to parents: porn is not the only problem online, neither are predators; children are also being overwhelmed by the opinions of strangers. We are leaving them swimming through stereotypes and generalisations adults stewed up in their own heartbreak, learning about love from the rules and assumptions of the most neurotic. And the sheer volume of it, it’s gone from advice columns in girly magazines and mums crouching beside beds to talk about boys to this, to TikTok algorithms delivering the thoughts of divorcees to thirteen-year-olds. How confusing, feeling the weight of that at this age. Maybe that’s why young women are pessimistic, why teenage girls don’t dream of getting married so much anymore, in part because they grew up here, taught by the traumatised, hanging onto every word of the brokenhearted.

“But they need advice, need direction. …we have to intervene, to insist that this generation is getting it first and foremost from real people in their lives, from family, from friends, from those who care about them.” –Freya India, https://www.freyaindia.co.uk/p/most-relationship-advice-is-useless

One in three girls have told an AI something they’ve never told another human being–not their parents, not their best friend, not their small group leader. Source.

What is asked of AI contains the very things that scare us the most as parents and adults who care about teen girls:  sexual addiction, sexual identity, cutting, suicide ideation, substance abuse, eating disorders.

Girls are particularly susceptible to unhealthy shame, and it keeps them in hiding. A girl who feels shame over her sin is unlikely to get help. Without help, she is even less likely to find freedom. AI won’t give her this.

Shame lies by telling you that you are alone. Our girls need to know that shame lies. And that they are beautiful. Break into their secret world with these truths.

Start with the assumption that all teenagers secretly worry that they are crazy. They need us adults to help them discern they are not crazy. Notice I said help them discern this. They will not believe you if you simply tell them this. This will take time, consistency, and patience from you.

Girls are scared of their new emotions. Just one reason why they build a secret world. During adolescence emotions become more intense. Girls remember being 11 and not feeling this intensity. Around age 14 abstract thought is developing which gives them profound thoughts to profound their emotions. These are new big thoughts without lived wisdom to discern them. Those dang smart phones help create that secret world and then reinforce the secrecy. Shame loves keeping the secrets.

Pray for the trusted opportunity for you to break into that secret world. It may come from something alarming you found on that phone. You do have some safety controls on that phone, right? This would be breaking into their secret world with a mix of discipline. Necessary but also not a trusted opportunity. Still necessary. Do something.

Maybe this trusted opportunity presents itself because you are signaling your availability, your teen observes your willingness to listen and to be slow to judge, or because you simply keep showing up when they need someone who can handle the truth without making it bigger than it needs to be. Perhaps it happens in the car, late at night, or in the middle of an ordinary conversation when your teen suddenly says something that has been sitting heavy on their mind.

When that door opens, give your teen a whole breath, then respond. Slowly respond. With slowness. Inside you are hyperventilating but with your teen you are signaling your presence and that you are staying through this no matter what. You are signaling there will be no abandonment.

Say simple things such as, “Anyone in your shoes would be upset.” Don’t add anything. This is not time for the moral lesson. This is empathy and your girl desperately needs that in this vulnerable moment.

Children raised amidst trauma often develop distinct coping mechanisms: rebellion against threats or hyper-compliance to evade attention. Both choices are her seeking preservation and safety.

Sissy Goff of Raising Boys and Girls (recommended) says often, your best job as a parent is to be the calmest one in the room. This allows your girl to face the struggles (part of adolescent development) and remind her that she is not alone. To experience all the emotions God has given her, but to learn also that she is not controlled by those emotions. To remind her yet again that you are here for her to listen and to help her move bravely toward the scary thing. And to tell her what you have learned about God’s faithfulness.

When you react, your girl is learning to respond to take care of you. At this moment, you want to take care of your girl. You want to be on the inside of that secret world and be invited to stay there.

More Freya India wisdom learned from pain:

“Ultimately, girls and young women have been left with a growing sense of powerlessness. We work hard only to feel like we need to achieve more, buy more, become more. We consume and compete and self-optimize, only to feel empty. More stable sources of meaning and identity have been mocked or have disappeared. And we have been left not only unprepared for adulthood but unsure what it even means anymore. We feel hopeless about our futures, and helpless to change them.

“So what are girls and young women grappling with here? These are ago-old anxieties—about what to do with our lives, where to find fulfillment and purpose, who we are, and what we want.

“Except today we are trying to answer these questions with nothing to anchor ourselves to. We have gained freedom but lost guidance. We were left to make up our own morality, to find our own rules to follow. We were warned not to believe in anything beyond ourselves, nothing superstitious. We were told to avoid obligations to other people, nothing restrictive. So we served ourselves instead.” –Freya India, Girls:  Generation Z and the Commodification of Everything, p. 237-238

(I encourage parent and teen girl to read this book together. The book will give you many trusted opportunities to have these conversations.)

Be the anchor. Which eventually means you will get to have the moral conversations, which are desperately needed and wanted. What a gift you are giving.

Because we love these teens girls so much.