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The Girly Guide
Surviving Your Female Tween By Kendeyl Johansen
"If I ask my 11-year-old daughter, MaKenzie, if she wants to go to a movie or out for pizza on the weekend she'll want to go to the mall," says Janie Sutton of Las Vegas, Nev. According to Sutton, MaKenzie is a master of the third alternative: If given two choices, her daughter always comes up with a third. "It makes me crazy sometimes!" Sutton says.
Testing limits and trying to get "their way" are common practices for female preteens. But with a little understanding and patience, it's possible to embrace this and other tween behaviors.
"Preteens are reaching for independence, and girls especially are difficult for parents to raise due to the way the media presents clothes, makeup and body shapes," says Bonnie Harris, M.S. Ed., author of When Your Kids Push Your Buttons: And What You Can Do About It (Warner Books, 2003). "When we see our daughters being influenced by the media or other outside influences, it really pushes buttons we're afraid of what's ahead for them and for us."
Harris encourages parents to control their buttons (fears, judgments and criticisms) by uncovering why a behavior is so upsetting and then diffusing the button. For example, Anita Willoughby of Park City, Utah, made her tween daughter, Laurel, change out of a miniskirt, but later learned her daughter had taken the skirt to school in her purse so she could change.
"I was livid at first, but then I realized it wasn't the skirt that was making me so upset," Willoughby says. "I was worried about the image it was giving off and what the boys would think about my daughter."
She viewed things from Laurel's point of view and realized her daughter wasn't wearing the skirt to make her mad she was just trying to look fashionable. And Laurel, normally open and talkative, was so afraid of her mom's reaction she'd resorted to sneakiness.
