Why Is My Daughter Having Sex?

 

In this podcast, Dr. Tim Jordan describes the many reasons why your daughter may choose to have sex, including: old limiting beliefs about herself, really liking a guy and wanting a dating partner, curiosity, feeling disconnected or unloved, not knowing how to set boundaries, cultural sexual objectification of women, and not being aware of or following their intuition. Dr. Jordan also shares recent data on the numbers of teens having sex today and over the generations.

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Listen to the podcast here

 

Why Is My Daughter Having Sex?

I hope that the title of this episode wasn’t too provocative. The title is Why Is My Daughter Having Sex? The reason I thought it would be important to talk about this topic, is a couple of things. Prom is around the corner, but this could be at any time of the year. There’s a homecoming dance. There’s life, school, parties, and things. I think sometimes we’re not aware of what’s going on for our kids when it comes to sexuality, and especially why girls might end up having sex or maybe why they’re not having sex.

Some Startling Statistics

I’m going to offer you some statistics at first to set the stage for how many young people having sex, and then talk about some of those reasons why your daughter may end up having sex, whether they’re in high school, college, or whatever. There’s going to be some articles I found with some statistics. On average around the world, 17 years and 2 months, is the average age to lose your virginity. In the USA, it’s about seventeen years old. 1 out of 10 young people has their first sexual experience with somebody of the same gender.

It’s interesting that if you come from a household with 2 parents, the average age to lose your virginity is 17 years and 6 months. For a household without 2 parents, if you’re living with 1 parent, it’s 16 years. Here’s a sobering statistic. With their 1st sexual experience, about 74% used a condom and the rest about 26% did not. I saw one study that showed that only 55% of young people use a condom or some protection the first time they have sex, which is very scary and very sobering. 15% of young people had 2 or more sex partners in the same year that they lost their virginity.

Another study I saw showed that 41% of high school and college students mashed together had sex, and 15% had sex with more than 4 sexual partners. Only 5 out of 10 students had ever talked to their parents or their guardians about how to say no to sex and set boundaries, but 78% had learned in school how to say no to sex. It’s interesting because sometimes we talk about the good old days and why are kids having sex much, there’s a good article about the average age people lost their virginity over the generations.

If you’re a Baby Boomer, I’m one of those born between the end of World War II and the early ‘60s, we might be the oldest group on this list, but that doesn’t mean that we’re old-fashioned. Baby Boomers tend to start their sexual journey at 17.6 years of age, higher than the average across all the demographics that were surveyed, 17.6 years old was when boomers had sex for the first time on average.

Gen X, the generation between Boomers and Millennials, people born between the early ‘60s and the early ‘80s are the latest ones that start having sex because their average age was about 18.1 years. Interesting. That’s Gen X. How about Millennials? Those born between 1980 and and year 2000. Probably a lot of you parents reading this, they tend to lose their virginity at 17.4 years, which is the average of people having sex across all the generations.

Millennials, you’re on average. Young people born after 2000 Gen Z is the earliest starters of the group. They start having sex an average of 16.2 years. It’s almost two years younger than our Gen Xers. Interesting. There was one study done by the CDC. They said the average age at which American women first have what they call penis-in-vagina sex because there are lots of ways of defining sex. The average age from their survey was 17.3 years for women and 17.0 for men. It’s interesting that it’s not even unusual to graduate from college without ever having sex. It happens for about 20% of students. People who graduate from college, that’s about 22 years of age or so never had sex.

Why Girls Decide To Have Sex

The question is why might your daughter or any young person decide that it’s time to have sex? I’m going to give you a whole bunch of reasons. These are the ones that I have found through my experience working with kids, counseling kids, and my retreats, camps, and whatever. One of the things I think they take into account is that the onset of puberty has dropped a lot in the last generation or two. There are a lot of girls today on average who start having breast buds and early signs of puberty as early as the 2nd or 3rd grade.

That’s not every girl, but it’s earlier that it is happening, which means that they look like they’re ready to have sex. Their body looks like it, but they’re still young and their brains have still not matured faster. Our brain growth and maturation have not kept pace with the age of onset of puberty. There are a lot of girls who are in 5th, 6th, or 7th grade who are very curvy and who have been through puberty, who get hit on by boys who are older, 9th, 10th, or 8th graders. I see that a lot with those girls who are the first ones who go through puberty. They’re taller and curvier, but they’re still a sixth grader. They’re still 12 or 13 emotionally, maturationally, and brain maturational. Sometimes those girls get pushed before they’re ready because they look like they’re ready.

Another big category about why girls may have sex is that they have some old limiting beliefs about themselves based on their past experiences. I’ve talked about that before in an episode. I call it my spiral beliefs. If they’ve had an experience where they’ve lost their friend group or got ditched by their friends, their best friend excluded them, or if a parent doesn’t spend much time with them. If they had a life experience like that and there are lots of different kinds, they may have developed a belief that said, “Maybe it’s because I’m not good enough. Maybe I’m weird. Maybe I don’t fit. Maybe I’m not pretty enough. Maybe I’m not attractive enough.”

They start developing those old negative beliefs about themselves along the way and they keep them. They don’t drop those when they enter high school. They don’t drop those when they enter college. They follow them. If you have a belief system about yourself that you’re not worth much, not lovable, not important, not attractive, and not good enough, you’re going to be vulnerable to giving in more than somebody who has high self-esteem and a high opinion of themselves.

I see that a lot in the girls who I counsel and girls who have given more than they wanted to. A lot of times the reason they gave in was because their self-confidence is low and oftentimes it’s low because of an old limiting thought/belief system about themselves. They’re vulnerable to not taking care of themselves. I see girls sometimes who worry that they’re behind their peers. They think everybody’s having sex. They look at the popular kids who seem like they’ve all had sex and they’re the cool ones. They’re the ones who get the most attention. They start worrying about, “Am I behind?” They feel lame.

Girls sometimes give in when their self-confidence is so low, and oftentimes, it's low because of an old limiting thought or belief system they have about themselves. Click To Tweet

I’ve had a lot of girls tell me that who are juniors and seniors in high school who are still virgins, worry about, “Am I going to be ill-prepared for college? Do I want to have my first sexual experience in college?” A lot of those people their minds, “All of them have already had sex. Am I going to be at a disadvantage? Am I going to be taken advantage of because I’m behind and because I’m,” in their minds, “Immature.” Some of them push themselves to have sex before they leave high school. The first one is under their belts, which is scary to me. It’s not a good reason to have sex. Everybody hasn’t had sex. By the end of high school, maybe 50% or 60%. If the average age is 17, then there’s still a lot of people who are 18 and 19 entering college who have never had sex, but they think everybody else has.

This is a big one. I saw a girl. I’ll call her Mia. Anytime I use a girl’s name, it’s always somebody else’s name. I’m not using the real name with a real situation to protect their anonymity. This girl who I will call Mia was upset. She came to the office and her parents didn’t know why. She told me was she felt bad because she had allowed her new boyfriend to push her to have sex and she gave in. She had a lot of regrets. She was beating herself up. She had a lot of shame. As we talked, I was trying to get a sense of what I wondered why she gave in. I want her to know why. The truth was that she had been out of her friend group for a while and felt lonely and excluded. She was vulnerable and needy.

This cool popular basketball-playing boy took an interest in her. For the first time, she felt very attractive and she felt good about that. Who wouldn’t? That’s normal. She liked being wanted. She liked feeling attractive. When he started pushing her sexually, she was afraid that she would be replaceable. She had a belief system that said, “I’m not important. I’m not good enough. If I don’t give him what he wants, he will move on right away to somebody else who will.” That was why she gave in. She was afraid of losing this guy who was showering her with affection and telling her she was beautiful, he loved her and all this.

She was vulnerable to taking that in and then giving up more than she wanted. I have heard that story so many times over the years. Some girls end up giving in because they get worn down because the guy is pushing them. I find that true of girls who end up sending nude pictures. Guys press, they press, they push, and they ask. The girl says, “I’m not comfortable,” then they start saying, “Yeah, but you’re pretty and nobody will know but us. You’re beautiful. I just want to see you.” Sometimes the boys will start sending pictures of themselves as a way of saying, “See? It’s okay. I showed you. Why can’t you show me?”

Girls give in because they want it to stop. They want the pressure to stop, which is not a healthy reason to give in, to send nudes, or to have sex if they’ve been pushed to go farther than they want. Eventually, sometimes, they get worn down. Some girls I meet are curious. They may have made out with a boy. They may have gone to a second base. They may have experienced some of it and enjoyed it they’re curious about what’s it like. You can’t turn on a TV show or watch a movie without there being sex in it and there are some very sexually explicit Netflix shows and on social media, texts and videos and things.

Girls get curious about, “What’s this about? It seems like everybody’s having sex. It seems like everybody who’s having it. It is cool, good-looking, and popular.” They get curious about it and wonder what it’s like. It’s a natural urge to be curious about sexuality. There’s much shame around sex and sexuality in our culture.

It's a natural urge to be curious about sexuality, but there's so much shame around sex and sexuality in our culture. Click To Tweet

I’m going to do an episode about that down the road here. Most kids at some point become curious about it. That is especially true for girls who I think are free-spirited, independent-minded, and those girls who want to try everything. They’re one of those kids. Sometimes I’ll see those kids in my office, and I tell them, “I think you should have been born in the ‘60s,” because they have this Woodstock mentality, their persona.

They’re hippies that if they had been born in the ‘60s would’ve fit right in. I’ve seen a lot of girls who are very independent-minded. If their parents say no, then they push that boundary because they can’t be told no. I describe those girls sometimes as being like a young cult, a young horse in a corral and kicking the slats of the corral because they want to get out. They want to try everything. They have that spirit. They’re adventurous. Sometimes it’s as simple as they want to try it because they want to try everything.

These are the kids who tend to be risk-takers. they like being outside the box. They like being on the edge and sexuality is one place where they can experience that. Going along with that, in this day and age, there are some different views about sexuality than there may have been back say in the ‘50s when it was repressed. The only message kids got was, “Don’t do it until you’re married.” That message is still there. For some kids today, it’s different. The way they look at sex, the way they view it is different than maybe in past generations in the sense that there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s something physical that they want to have with somebody. It’s a closeness. It’s not like closeness, like a more platonic closeness but is a level of closeness and they want to experience that.

I see some girls where if they have sex with a guy and then the guy says, “Whatever,” and then they move on. It doesn’t mean much to them. Sometimes they’re the ones who initiate and they’re the ones who walk away. They want to try it. They were curious. They don’t have all the baggage that a lot of us have at least, I’m a Boomer, in my generation growing up the way I did. That’s true for a lot of kids. They see sex differently because they’ve been saturated with it. Since the ‘60s and ‘70s, the whole culture has been, every TV show, every movie. At some point, it’s kinda like we get numb to what it’s about.

For some kids, it’s a matter of, “It doesn’t mean that much to me.” On the other side of my mouth, I also want to say, I’ve met a lot of girls where it does mean something. There is an emotional attachment to sexuality. if they have sex or hook up with a guy and then he doesn’t call or they have a boyfriend who they have sex with and then the guy moves on, it does hurt them deeply. They feel upset and hurt because it means something to them emotionally. For some girls, it doesn’t. For some, it does. In general, from my experience, there’s an emotional tie to it in more than half of the girls I meet because they get upset if the guy doesn’t call or doesn’t follow up and it is a nightstand hookup thing.

For some, it’s a big deal. For some, it’s not a deal at all. Some girls I have noticed will give in and give more than maybe they wanted because they see the cool popular kids and they assume they’re all having it because they’re talking about it and they’re more racy, they’re drinking, smoking weed, and all that. If they for some reason end up getting included in that group, they want to keep up with the Joneses because they feel like, “If I don’t end up acting like they are, they’ll move on.”

Not all, but for some girls, it’s important to be in that group. That group gets noticed. That group gets seen. Everybody knows that group. It’s like the Mean Girls movie, the ones who walk through the hallways of school and it’s like they’re like supermodels or something. To be included in that group, for some girls is everything. They don’t want to lose it. You can get included at some point, but you can also be left out. You can be kicked out. Sometimes girls will end up shifting their morals based upon, “They’re doing it. If I want to stay in this group, then I’m going to have to be like them.” That sense of belonging is strong. That sense of belonging in this group pushes them to do more than perhaps they wanted to.

Sometimes girls will end up shifting their morals because they want to stay in a certain group. That sense of belonging is so strong that it pushes them to do more than they wanted to. Click To Tweet

I saw a girl whom I’ll call Sophia, who had been without a group since middle school. She was in sophomore or junior in high school. She’d been without a group because she was one of those kids who was very kind and hated drama. She got tired of all the groups in middle school, even early high school where that was what they talked about. The way they connected it was through talking about people behind their backs, rumors, gossip, and all that.

She had been drifting without a group. She had a few acquaintances and friends she could sit with at lunch, but no real good friends. She was included in the popular group because she met somebody when she was playing soccer in the fall and then she included her in the group. It meant a lot to her. All of a sudden she had her friend group, which she had always wanted. She thought they were acting, which they were acting. She started becoming more sexually active because of that. That is not uncommon.

I did an episode several years ago. I interviewed three women who were in college. I noticed that some of the young people whom I was working with had gotten into being Christian, not just going to church with their family, but like being involved in the church. I was curious about what that was about for them. These girls were down at some camp in Florida in the summer where college students go to learn about the Bible and Christianity.

I interviewed these three girls like, “What’s this about?” One of the things I remember them saying was all three of them had gone through a tough period early in college. They were drinking a lot, partying, and stuff. They got tired of it. They felt disconnected. That was the biggest thing I heard from those three women. They were looking for something deeper or meaningful than the party scene. Christianity was attractive to them. They had used sex. All three of these girls had sexual experiences as a way of trying to get closeness.

There’s a level of closeness you get when you have intercourse or sex with somebody, but obviously, it’s not the same as a more emotional closeness. They hooked up because they wanted to. They felt lonely and disconnected, but it didn’t work. They were tired of that so then they turned to Christianity. They turned to their church. The part about how they’d had sex because they felt disconnected and they were trying to find some connection. It was better than none is what they told me. That’s true for some kids. I also think that most girls I talk with have not taken the time upfront to sit down with themselves in some quiet alone time to decide within themselves, “What’s right for me when it comes to sexuality? What’s okay and what’s not? What are my boundaries?”

I even do this as an exercise sometimes in my high school retreats. I have them think about then write down, “What are my boundaries.” It’s important to decide those boundaries and what’s right for you. Not in the backseat of a car, not when you’re at a party, not when you’re with your dating partner, but when you’re alone. It’s not about all that other stuff. It’s not about other people. It’s about, “What do I want? What’s right for me?”

If they can set those boundaries within themselves and decide what’s right for them upfront, then when they’re in those situations, they don’t have to make a decision in the heat of the moment because they’ve already made it when they were cool, calm, collected, and when their prefrontal cortex was operating. I think that’s important. I think some girls don’t do that. They fall prey to the heat of the moment and they have sex because they get caught up. In general, because of our good girl conditioning, which is still there, I think girls in general have a hard time setting boundaries. They think it’s mean sometimes.

Girls, in general, have a hard time setting boundaries because of the “good girl” conditioning that is still prevalent today. Click To Tweet

They think it’s being too aggressive. I’ve heard that many times. It still bothers me. Good girls are pleasers. Good girls put everybody else’s needs before their own. Good girls shouldn’t stand out. Good girls should be compliant and obedient. When I make lists with a group of girls as young as 5th and 6th grade or middle school or high school of the qualities of a good girl, those sorts of qualities are always on that list, obedience, compliance, “Don’t make waves. Don’t stand out. Don’t be angry.” For them, it ends up meaning oftentimes, “Don’t set boundaries.”

I’ve had many girls who will tell me that they’re worried about setting boundaries because they didn’t want to hurt the guy’s feelings. They don’t want to hurt their dating partner’s feelings by saying, “No, they might get hurt. I don’t want to hurt their feelings.” They’re more concerned with the other person and their feelings and needs than they are with their own. That is not uncommon in our preteen and teen girls.

Another issue that crops up is our culture, all the sexual objectification that our girls have been inundated with their whole lives about sexuality, their bodies, and what their bodies are good for. They see themselves mostly as their body and their body about, whether are they attractive. Are they pretty? Will a boy want them? I can do a whole episode on that at some point, but the whole thing about the sexual saturation of our culture and the objectification of girls. That is a role that gets played here sometimes where girls end up doing more than they want to.

What Can Girls Or Their Parents Do?

What can girls do and what can you do as their parents? One of them is you can help your daughters from the time they’re little all the way through to learn how to access their gut intuition. That takes the ability to quiet yourself down, comfortable being alone, think, reflect, do some journaling, and do something where you get inside and say, “What is right for me? What do I need? What are my needs? What feels right to me?”

I want you to teach your daughters to be aware of their internal alarms that go off whenever they get uncomfortable. If they make a mistake, not necessarily with sex and a boy, but any kind of mistake with a peer group, it is something where they end up saying, “I shouldn’t have done that.” Always valuable to go back in time and say, “Let’s talk about what happened that night.”

Teach your daughters to be aware of their internal alarms that go off whenever they get uncomfortable. Click To Tweet

There was a fork in the road at some point where one side said, “You shouldn’t do this. It’s not right.” The other fork said, “Yeah, but, they’re going to think I’m lame. They’re all doing it.” We hit those forks in the road. I’ve got to make a choice, yes or no. When we hit that fork in the road, we tend to have internal alarms that go off that say, “Time out. You need to think about this before you act.”

In my retreats, camps, and things, I have girls who think about and reflect on, “Where do my alarms feel? Where in my body do I feel my alarm?” For some, it’s their thoughts start to race. For many, it’s a pounding heart, their breathing gets faster and more shallow, they get a funny feeling in their stomach, their chest feels tight or they feel a tightness in their throat. Their bodies are oftentimes a great signal flag. The first signal says, “Time out. You need to think about this.

I want them to go back in time and think about, “Did I feel the alarm?” If they didn’t, then you can start asking questions about how you experience your alarm so the next time, they’ll be aware of it. When they made their mistake, ask them why in that moment you think you ignored their alarm, you felt it, you were at that decision point, and then you chose the “dark side.” Why do you think? There’s always a reason. For some girls, a reason is things like, “He’s such a cute guy. He’s popular. I was afraid that if I said no, he would think I was lame and he’d move on. I like him so much. I’ve always wanted to have a boyfriend,” etc.

I want girls to be able to hear that alarm and trust it. Their alarm usually is saying, “It’s not okay. Think about this. You need to set a boundary. You need to take care of yourself.” Even if they don’t have any reason to not trust this boy, for instance, in that situation, I tell them all the time, “This superhuman computer brain of viewers is picking up many subtle things that you’re not even aware of about him, about the way they act.”

I’ve said this before in an episode a long time ago. I ask girls if I’m in a group like one of my weekend retreats, “If you’re at a party and a group of guys comes in that you don’t know, they’re from some other school, how many of you feel like your radar goes off and you’re judging them like, ‘What’s his energy like? Does he seem safe? Does he seem okay? Does he seem creepy?’ How many of you feel like that alarm goes off and your radar is out there checking them out?” All the girls say, “Yeah, for sure.”

I say, “How many of you are aware that when you walk into that party guys are also looking at you and they’re judging strong, confident versus vulnerable?” All get that sinking feeling, like, “Yeah, for sure.” They need to be aware that alarm is important, their intuition is valuable and to always trust it. If there’s no reason and you don’t even know the guy. If the alarm says, “I don’t like his energy, there’s something in there. It doesn’t feel right,” trust it, because your brain’s picked up a whole bunch of stuff unconsciously that you need to pay attention to. Even if you can’t spell out why, it doesn’t matter. Trust it. That’s an important lesson for every girl to learn. You can help them with that around things that aren’t even about sexuality, about anything, and any decision point in their life.

Your intuition is valuable. Always trust it, even if there's no reason. Click To Tweet

Another thing every girl needs to do is become aware of any limiting beliefs that they’ve accumulated about themselves. We talked about it earlier. They may have some old beliefs about things like, “I’m not good enough. I’m not very important. My needs are important. I’m not very attractive. I’m not cool. I don’t fit.” If they go into a situation with a dating partner, with that belief system, they’re probably not going to take care of themselves as well as if they go into that situation thinking, “I like myself. I deserve the best. I deserve to be treated well. I have high confidence.”

If they have that belief system inside them, they’ll be much better at setting boundaries. They’ll know it’s okay to set boundaries. Reframing those old negative beliefs is important. You can talk to them about that. You can see if they have any idea about that. If not, and you’re worried because of things they’ve experienced, send them to a counselor like me who can help them get under the surface and say, “What have you decided about yourselves?”

If they’ve had a lot of friendship issues in the past, they’ve lost friends. If they’ve had some bad situations with dating partners, they need to figure out why. Otherwise, they’re going to repeat the pattern probably. In some way, they need to become aware of that. Help them with that or send them to somebody like me who can help them unearth that.

If they let go of those old beliefs and reframe it to things like, “It wasn’t about me. The reason that my friend left me out of the group in fifth grade wasn’t because I’m not good enough, pretty enough, attractive enough or I’m not cool enough.” It was because she felt insecure. She was trying to fit into a group. There are all kinds of reasons why people act the way they do. They have nothing to do with you. You are in charge of your story. You are the one who can take away the moral of the story. It could be, “I’m not good enough,” and all that, or it could be, “It’s not about me. I’m not taking it on. I’m a good person. I deserve to have good friends.” That’s the restructuring they can do with their belief system that would be helpful.

I read a book called The Defining Decade by Meg Jay. I interviewed her twice. She talked about what she called Your Self-Perceived Mate Value, which is how desirable you feel about yourself thus far in your life. Often girls’ mate value is dependent upon what’s happened to them in negative ways or they are based upon looking outside themselves and comparing themselves. Oftentimes they compare themselves unfavorably, which leads to some negative beliefs and then more vulnerability. They need to become aware of what their current self-perceived value is and to work on it. I always tell them that what’s far more important than you being wanted is what you want.

 

 

If it’s about being wanted, you’re going to be at the mercy of people outside of yourself. You get clear about what you want and what’s right for you, how you’re in charge. I want every one of your daughters to be in charge of their bodies and their sexuality. We need to give our daughters some practice in setting boundaries. We need to talk about boundaries when they’re little all the way through. Practice saying no to you sometimes.

If they have a hard time with a friend at school who’s mistreating them, do some role-playing at home. Have them say, “Show me how you’re handling it with your friend.” 9 times out of 10, in my experience in working with girls they’re wimpy. They’re not clear. They don’t look the person in the eye with a clear firm voice and set their boundary. They need practice and learning how to do that.

They need to be aware of their good girl conditioning. That’s making it hard for them to do that and to let go of that, let them know how important it is for them to set boundaries. It’s not being mean. It’s not being aggressive. It’s being assertive. There’s a difference between being assertive and aggressive. They need to have permission to set boundaries. They need practice. They need words. I think that’ll help them in those moments of truth. I think it’s important. What might be more important than whether or not they’re having sex is why they’re having it or why they’re not having sex.

They might want to become aware of that, “What are your reasons for sexuality? What do you want? What feels right to you? Forget the culture, your friends, the cool kids, the movies, and the TV show. What feels right to you? What’s more important than whether you’re having sex is why you’re having it and what you’re telling yourself about why you’re having it or why you’re not.” We need to dispel the myths about everybody’s having sex because everybody’s not having sex. 50% or 60% maybe by the end of high school, the average age is 17, which means half of people at 17, which is a senior in high school have had sex and half have not.

It’s not everybody. It doesn’t matter anyway who’s having it and who’s not. It’s more important what you want. Still, I don’t want them feeling like they’re behind and they need to catch up or put pressure on themselves when that doesn’t need to be there because it’s a myth. They need to be educated about what’s the truth. We also need to keep encouraging them all on the way to not become dependent upon other people’s opinions and judgments. Their decisions about what’s right for them should not be based on what everybody else is doing or what looks right or, “Am I going to be judged in a negative way or a positive way?”

Your daughters’ decisions about what's right for them should not be based on what everybody else is doing or what looks right. Click To Tweet

It’s too much about them and not enough about you. That’s not like a one-time conversation you have with your daughters. Those are things you can help them learn all the way through their lives so that when they’re eighteen and go off into the world that they’ve learned about, “What’s right for me?” They’ve learned how to access their inner world. They need to take that quiet time to get to know themselves, to be in touch with themselves and with that inner voice, with their intuition.

That’s a skill that needs to be practiced. It’s a muscle that needs to be exercised over and over so that it becomes easier and easier for them to access what their heart, gut, intuition, and inner voice are saying. You can let your daughters know that you love them and you want them to take care of themselves. What’s more important than that is do they love themselves. If they love themselves and they become okay with the way they look, and that will set the stage for them to have a sense of deservability. Self-love comes and then taking care of yourself. It’s much easier to practice self-care in lots of different ways, including with sexuality if you love yourself, you care about yourself and you know you deserve the best there are many things. That’s another whole episode about how you learn to love yourself. I’ll do that sometime in the near future.

It is important that we love them for who they are. It’s good for them to find interests and passions that they like to do and to pour themselves into because then they feel a sense of fulfillment. They feel a sense of, “This feels good to me. This is something I’m good at.” That’s one of the most important things I think as you’re in those high school years, is having that sense of, “I’m learning to find myself and what I like and I get a lot of happiness, joy, and fulfillment from whatever it might be, rock climbing, painting, reading or whatever it might be.” Anytime they set a boundary and take care of themselves, there’s a whole different feeling they have after that than when they don’t. Like when they come to that fork in the road, there are times when they make a good choice.

They hear and feel the alarm. They feel that gut intuition and they follow it. There’s a whole different feeling that comes from that. I want them to tune into that feeling. That feels a lot better. That feels like, “I trusted myself. That was a good choice. That gives them confidence.” That’s another muscle they need to practice over and over, muscle memory. There’s a difference between the times when they take care of themselves and when they don’t. When they give up themselves when they don’t want to, they set a boundary and they do. That good feeling they get from that might be their future motivation. I hope this helps. It’s a lot of information, but take it piece by piece.

The best teacher you have is your daughter. Listen to her. Listen to where she’s at with things. Listen because you also will hear things where she might be spending too much time believing things that aren’t true. There may be some beliefs she has about herself that she needs to reframe. I’d listen to her. I’d ask her what her thoughts are about sexuality. What are her boundaries and how does she take care of herself when she’s out and about? Have her learn to articulate those things. It’s helpful. Sometimes you can add a piece or two of some of your wisdom and experience. I want them to start accessing, “What do I do? What’s right for me? How have I taken care of myself?”

If they can explain all that to you, that should give you more confidence that when she goes out to a party or something, she’s going to take care of herself. It’s one thing for them to say, “I’m fine. I know what I’m doing,” and it’s another thing to say, “And this is how I take care of myself.” Teach your daughters to give you that information so you can have an easier time letting go. Thanks so much for reading these episodes. I always appreciate you passing them on. I will be back here with another episode. Thank you for stopping by.

 

Important Links

• Episode – Spiral Of Beliefs: How Girls Can Redirect Limiting Beliefs About Themselves
• The Defining Decade
• Here’s The Average Age People Lost Their Virginity In Each Decade
• BedBible.com/Virginity-Statistics/
• Refinery29.com/en-us/College-Virgin-Average-Age-Losing-Virginity
• Episode – High School Girls Discuss Today’s Dating Scene