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What Your Middle School Daughter Needs From You · Raising Daughters

• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Hello parents, not You're Tim Jordan here coming to you,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: having just finished a weekend retreat with middle school girls.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: And so I was sitting here today thinking about what
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: can I talk about this week on this podcast. I
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: thought it might be valuable to talk about what I
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: learned I have. I've a couple two three years ago,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: I think I did it. I did a recording of
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: three middle school girls after one of my retreats, and
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: they talked about what was going on for them, what
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: was going on for their peers. So I thought, though
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: I don't know, this weekend was so what's the word inspiring?
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: It's amazing to me all that those girls in this
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: teenager get going through so much stress, so much pressure.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Their lives are going much faster than my life when
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: when I was their age, and I think that's probably
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: true for most of you parents as well. And so
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: I thought I would just throw out some of the
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: things that I learned about what they're experiencing, because hopefully
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: it'll help you to understand your daughters a little bit better.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: The girls, as always had come to my retreats and things,
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: they're just girls. They're not troubled girls or problem girls.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: They're just girls, And I said this, and I think
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: it's really true. If I walked into any middle school,
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: just grabbed a bunch of girls the first ones I saw.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: That's just coming at one of our retreats. All different
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: kinds of backgrounds, all different kinds of families, all different
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: kinds of situations, but they do have a lot of
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: things that are in common. One of things I learned
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: again this weekend a lot of those girls have in
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: common is that they have a lot of them that
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: build up within them. They don't have very good skills
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: for understanding their emotions and expressing their emotions in healthy ways,
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: so they just build up and they build up, and
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: they build up, and they build up to the point
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: where now they're on overload, on overwhelm, and those feelings
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: start leaking out as symptoms, things like having a hard
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: time falling asleep, things like anxiety or depression, or being sad,
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: being stressed out, having bodies symptoms, stomach aches, headaches. I
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: also think having a hard time focusing it. I see
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: a lot of girls who get diagnosed with things like
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: add ADHD, and I think in a lot of for
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: many of them, not all, but many of them, what
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: they're showing us is symptoms of overload, not a diagnosis
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: of ADHD or add but just symptoms of overload that
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: they don't know how to take care of. We're not
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: doing a good job of teaching girls how to recognize theirs,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: recognize what those emotions are telling them, the meetings behind
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: those emotions, and then healthy ways to let those go.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: And also, a lot of girls told me this weekend
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: they have a hard time feeling safe enough to talk
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: to their parents. And I asked them why, and I
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: got some answers that I've heard before. I talked several
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: years ago in one of the podcasts about a concept
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: called the turtle and the hailstorm, and we actually talked
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: about this weekend with the girls. They thought it was
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: really funny and true. So the girls are the turtles
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: and their parents are the hailstorm, potentially and hopefully, and
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: you know, just by virtue of being a middle school girl,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: they start to want to have a little bit more
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: private time, alone, time away from their parents. They don't
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: want their parents to know everything about their lives. A
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: lot of younger girls will. They'll come home from second
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: grade and just are blabbing about their day and about
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: people and everything. But girls in middle school start to
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: want to have some privacy, some of their own life.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: That's why they want to start spending some time in
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: their rooms just without their parents. And so, as a turtle,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: they start to pull their their head back into their
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: shell a little bit, just because it's normal at their
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: age right now, that concerns their parents because they're not
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: sharing as much and they start to feel like I
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: don't know my daughter anymore. And plus because they're in
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: middle school and there's a bunch of stuff going on
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: in their lives, which I'm going to talk about in
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: the moment. They may come home from school not in
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: the best mood. They may be crabby. They may stomp
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: in the door, walk up to the room, and slam
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: the door, leaving their parents with what's going on? What's
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: wrong with my daughter? She okay? And then when they
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: try and talk to their daughter, their daughter blows them
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: off or says I'm fine, stop talking to me, and
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: so they don't. The parents don't hear much, so they
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: start to worry more, so they start to hail. That's
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: why they're the hailstorm. I e overreacts sometimes ask too
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: many questions, overworry, and so when they come across to
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: their daughters that way, their turtle reverts back to the
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: show more they could start, they don't poke their heads
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: out as much. They actually draw their heads back in
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: more because they're so overwhelmed with their life and with
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: their parents' questions. Or the other thing the parents do
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: a lot that the girls told me this weekend they
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: hate is they go right to fix it mode, offering
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: suggestions and remedies and all kinds of ideas, when the
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: girls just sometimes want to be heard. And by the way,
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: that's not just true for middle school girls, that's true
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: for all of us. But it's one of the reasons
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: why these turtles pull their head back more into their
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: shell because sometimes their parents ask too many questions, go
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: to fix it mode, don't really listen, overreact, et cetera.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: And because they're back in their shell even more, their
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: parents notice these these symptoms, the parents get more worried,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: which causes them to hail more. And there's the pattern.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: The girls thought that was a funny way of describing it,
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: but they said it's true. That's how it feels for
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: many of them. The other thing that happens today is
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: because of the world we live in, there's so many
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: ways for girls to be distracted from their emotions and
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: distracted from themselves on their phones, social media, YouTube videos.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, dyada YadA. I don't want to
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: go into that on this particular podcast, but you know
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: the drill. And so what happens is because they're spending
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: so much time scrolling. And we asked the girls this weekend,
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: this past week and how much time do you spend
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: on your devices? We heard a lot of answers like
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: four hours a day, six hours a day, eight hours
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: a day. Oh my god, that's so much time distracting
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: themselves from themselves, from their emotions. Again, things tend to
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: build up. It takes time to be with yourself, to
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: know yourself. I thought I was thinking as I was
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: writing up this podcast, I was thinking of girls in
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: the past, like Anne Frank, who spent so much time
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: hiding from the from the Nazis. But what did she do?
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: She wrote in her journal and that became you know,
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: and Frank's diary. That there was a diary of Anne Frank.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: But it wasn't just Anne Frank who was writing. A
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: lot of girls did back in the day. That's how
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: we knew what was going on for girls back in
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: the thirties, forties, fifties is because they wrote in their
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: journals they took that time to be alone. And today
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: it's hard for girls to do that because there's just
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: no alone downtime because they are so very busy. And
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: that sounds like a cliche to you, forget about it,
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: it's true. Think about how much busier they are than
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: you were at that age. There's school days about the
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: same number of hours, but I think they get more
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: homework today, there's way more activities that they get involved in.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: They're pretty busy. And they did don't just go to
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: dance lessons once a week, you know, for an hour
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: and a half. Now they're on competitive dance teams, so
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: that's five days a week, and it's two or three
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: hours at a time. Sometimes it's in the evenings after
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: dinner sometimes, and of course there's all kinds of competitions
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: on the weekends, which takes up a lot of weekend time.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: Think about all those club sports teams, the traveling teams,
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: soccer and volleyball, all those sports, they're gone a lot
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: way more than my generation, and my generation is probably
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: older than your parents listening to this, but I think
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: it's probably the same for you. If you're right now
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: in your thirties, forties, fifties, My guess is you weren't
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: that involved in those kind of club sports that was
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: five days a week plus, you know, playing fifty or
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: sixty softball games in the summer. I don't think most
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: of us had that. They have few afternoons, few evenings,
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: few weekends where they're free to just chill out, to
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: be with their friends, to have downtime, and when they
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: do have that downtime, too often they're spending it in
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: their phone with their face smashed to a screen. A
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: lot of pressure, a lot of stress about being perfect,
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: about getting the top colleges, about and making the right
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: high school, about making their high school team, about making
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: their club teams, about winning national championships. And that doesn't
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: even count what happens sometimes in the home with their parents.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: Heard some stories this weekend, and lots of weekend retreats
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: I've been running now for over thirty five years, just
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: about the mischieft that their parents are sometimes in arguing
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: parents who are stressed out out in krabby, who lash
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: out easily. Parents who fight a lot, parents who threaten divorce,
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: parents who become separated, parents who do get divorced. Then
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: it's having to live in two households with two sets
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: of rules, and sometimes one household. The girls may not
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: get long with that parent, and the parent maybe may
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: argue a lot, that parent may yell a lot, and
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: so the girls don't want to spend time there that
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: maybe that parent has a living boyfriend or girlfriend they
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: don't that they don't like, but they're at the mercy
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: of their parents' lives. They oftentimes don't really get to
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: choose where they spend their time when it comes to
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: their family if their parents are still married, and of
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: course they're quote unquote stuck in that house. And a
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: lot of parents are stressed today as well, a lot
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: of money stress. I think about how expensive it is.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: I have three children, and I have five grandchildren, and
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: the oldest grandchild, our grandson, as eight, and then it
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: goes from there down to four and also a toddler
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: and then a couple of babies, and daycare is so expensive.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: I'm sure it's never been cheap cheap, but it's way
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: more expensive now than it used to be. That puts
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: a tremendous stressor on parents to be able to afford
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: that and make decisions about are both parents going to
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: work full time? And that sometimes causes some of the
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: stresses in the marriage. So there's a lot of going
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: on for parents today as well as their kids, and
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: a lot of times that filters down to their kids,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: who then become with the mercy of their parents' emotions
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: and their parents' lives, if you will. I've also noticed
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: how in this day and age, most girls I work with,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: and this is true of the girls last weekend, most
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: of them are very uncomfortable being alone alone and it
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: alone and with themselves, without a screen, without all the noise.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: They have not learned how to be alone without being lonely.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: Their alone time is full of distractions. So to ask
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: them to turn off the phones and turn up the
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: TV and and to just be with themselves and to
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: be quiet is tough. It's a hard sell because they're
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: not used to it. They're much more outwardly directed as well.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: They're outwardly directed meaning so many externals like grades, awards,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: being on the best teams, winning trophies, winning national championships,
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: patting their their high school resume for college, uh, striving
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: to get into a top college, all the achievement kinds
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: of things. There's less focus in this day and age
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: on things like social emotional learning. We talk less about
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: growing up. We talk more about national championships, and they're
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: not learning coping skills because they're so busy. There's just
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: no time and that costs them over time, especially the
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: part about not knowing themselves. I think kids today have
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: lost the art of reflection, contemplation, soul searching, knowing how
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: to check in with themselves, to know how they're feeling,
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: what they're feeling, what those emotions mean for them. Girls
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: don't journal like they used to in the past. A
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: lot of girls in the past would write letters. So today,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: in this day and age, when you're alone, you have
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: so many other distractions like your phone, TV sets, social media, iPads, YouTube,
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: just on and on and on. Right, But that's not
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: soul searching. That's just distractions. One of the reasons why
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: I started our camp thirty five something years ago, so
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: I want kids to be able to get away from
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: all of that and be outside and be in a
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: retreat kind of setting where they could spend some time
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: thinking about who am I and what's going on for me?
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: And how am I feeling? What do I need? Learn
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: how to take care of themselves, learn some healthy coping skills,
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: and they get a chance in a very safe environment
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: to express things that they normally don't feel safe expressing
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: things they've been holding on to. And because of the
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: reasons I mentioned earlier, they don't even sometimes feel safe
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: sharing some of those things with their parents. I want
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: them to, but a lot of times they don't because
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: of what I explained before. So they come to eat
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: like a weekend retreat like they did last weekend. And
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: our staff is amazing. Everywhere I looked around the circle.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: We had nine staff last weekend, and all of them
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: were ex campers, and all of them were in their
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: kind of middle to late twenties. I think a couple
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: of them were in their early thirties. These are women
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: who came through our camp process, if you will, very
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: socially emotionally intelligent people, and so they're good at knowing
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: how to create a safe environment for girls. And when
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: we do that for these girls, they open up and
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: they talk and they express their emotions, they talk about
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: things that they don't feel safe enough to talk about
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: with their friends or even at home. Sometimes a lot
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: of pent up emotions, a lot of worries anxieties. They
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: feel heard, they feel understood, they feel loved, and that
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: frees them up to relax, to be a kid, to
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: be themselves, to laugh and play and giggle. It it's
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: like if you look at them and they walk in,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: you look at them, you know, twenty four hours or
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: whatever later. It's the same way with our summer camps.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: Then we have a whole week, which is even better.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: Once you see them after they've sort of let some
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: things go, they let down. It's like what it looked
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: like a stressed out you know, forty year old who
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: walks in the door at the start of camp, now
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: looks like a kid. They can act like little kids,
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: you know, in a fun way. They need supportive adults.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: They need supportive environments like that. I remember when I
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: was a kid growing up in our neighborhood. I knew
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: all the neighbors, my parents' friends, and because because we
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: had more time, there were television sets when I was
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: a kid, but there wasn't all this other stuff. And
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: so we're outside a lot, you know, roaming the neighborhood
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: and the parents are out a lot, so we got
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: to know them. They knew us, and they also had
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: the ability to tell us to discipline us because they
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: knew us, but they also became sometimes confidence. There was
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: a young cool couple who lived down the street, Herban Jackie,
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: and they had a couple of little kids. When I
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: was kind of like in middle school high school agent,
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: so all the teens would go down to their house
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: and hang out on their front and guard. We'd be
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: sitting around and just talking with them, and they were
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: so nice and they would listen to us, unlike our parents,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: who in our minds didn't understand us, didn't listen, but
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: but they did. It was so nice to have someone
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: like that just down the street. I don't know that
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: most girls today that I work with have those kinds
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: of adults in their life, and I think they're missing out.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: They don't have safe places to openly share without feeling
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: judged or criticized. They don't want to disappoint their parents.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: Too often they complained to their parents interrupt them, their
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: parents make them wrong, or sometimes their parents make it
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: about them. Sometimes they get punished when they're honest. Parents
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: have a hard time sometimes getting in their shoes and
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: sing it. From their point of view, they oftentimes are
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: rushing to fix it mode. All that makes it harder
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: for girls to feel comfortable to share, and so they
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: hold on to it. They stuff it, and it builds up,
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: and it builds up, and it builds up and it
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: starts leaking out as all those ways I mentioned earlier
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: in this podcast. That's why they need safe places. Sometimes
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: it's in a counselor's office. I counsel girls in my
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: counseling practice. Sometimes it's a youth group. I know a
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: lot of girls who sometimes feel that comfortable in a
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: youth group. I have a high school group that meets
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: every two weeks throughout the school year, and the girls
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: like that. For an hour and a half every two weeks,
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: they get a chance to get out of their regulars
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: life just for a little bit, sit down the floor
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: in a circle and just be honest with each other,
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: support each other, call each other out. So valuable for them.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: There's something really magical about sitting on the floor with
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: your peers in a circle and opening up and sharing
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: your story. I've done that for over thirty five years.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: I did it for about eight years with adults. With
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: my wife and I had a long time ago used
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: to teach adult retreats. But then we decided was that
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: instead of waiting until people got to their forties to
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: talk about things that had bothered them back when they
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: were you know, in fifth grade or eighth grade or
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: whatever that had caused them problems, why not talk about
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: when they were going through it to teach them some skills.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: That's why we switched over to camps. We can retreat
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: in summer camps. We need to teach our girls healthy
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: ways to express their emotions. We need to encourage them
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: to take quiet alone time, not on the phone, not
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: on social media. But they'll pull out a journal and
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: write down their thoughts, right down, their feelings, right down,
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: things that they're excited about, things that they're worried about,
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: things that they want. I have a lot of girls
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: who who do the same kind of thing with poetry,
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: are writing stories, are writing songs, or with their artwork
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: in my office, I should make a take a picture
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: of the artwork on my wall in my office. Maybe
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: I'll do that for this podcast. I have probably about
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: oh I would say about fifteen ish, maybe twenty drawings
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: that girls have done for me expressing their emotions, and
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: they're amazing, and every one of them is different, but
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: it's a way for them to let go and express
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: and release and decompress. It's a way to blow off steam,
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: blow off emotions and allowing other things to come up.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: We taught the girls this weekend lots of rhythmic things
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: they can do to calm themselves down. I told them
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: it started when they were babies, when actually fetuses, when
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: they're in their mother's womb, they would hear their mother's
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: heartbeat and they'd be jostled around inside the womb. And
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: I think that kind of of that kind of jostling
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: and that and the heartbeat was the first rhythmic thing
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: that was calming. What do we do when a baby's
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: upset when they come out, obviously after they're born, we
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: rock them, or we put them our shoulder, we pat
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: their back, or we give them a pacifier. If you've
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: ever seen a baby who's fussing and crying, give them
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: a pacifier. When they first put in their mouth, they
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: suck really hard and fast like, and then it slowly
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: but surely slows down and they get into a rhythm
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: and they calm down. There's so many rhythmic things you
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: can teach your girls to do to calm themselves down
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: so they can access their inner world. Just walking is
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: a rhythm, running swing, sets of swinging, so if they
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: can learn to create some rhythmic things. Jumping on a
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: trampoline is another one. Just jumping up and down. We
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: did that for a few moments at the weekend last weekend.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: We just have them jump up and down listening to music.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: Those are all things that they can learn to do
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: to calm themselves down and go inward, disconnected from themselves,
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: from their real life. Calm down and then say what's
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: going on inside of me. It's a lot easier to
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: do that when you're calm down. Otherwise you're operating out
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: of your amygdala and your emotions are blaring, and you're
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: trying to think through things through your amygdala as opposed
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: to your prefieral cortex. That's where a lot of girls
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: get stuck to and adults, by the way, we need
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: to be able to when we're feeling all those emotions.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: We need to be able to access the reasonable part
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: of our brain that can make better sense of it,
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: but that may take some slowing down, quieting down, doing
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: some of most rhythmic things until we can access the
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: prefereral cortex. So learning how to cultivate quite alone, time,
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: slowing down, disconnecting from the distractions. I tell girls, you
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: do know what's going on inside you. If you quote
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: yourself down and go inward, that means disconnecting from distractions.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: It means learning how to quiet yourself down and learning
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: how to know what am I feeling and what are
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: those feelings telling me? They need practice, they need skills.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: So I hope you encourage your daughters to find someplace,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: whether it's through counseling, whether it's through a school counselor
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: whether it's a youth group, whether it's a place like
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: my summer camps, my weekend retreats. They need to learn
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: those skills. I want them to share with you. I
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: want them to talk to you. So become the kind
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: listener who doesn't jump jump too quickly to solutions, rescue mode,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: fix it mode. They hate that, and by the way,
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: you probably do too. If you come to your spouse
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: and are feelings you don't want your spouse to go well,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: want to just try this, you're like, you're not listening,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: so become a good listener. That's what will cause girls
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: to feel safe enough to come to you with those
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: troubles that they're going through in middle school. There's so
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: much going on for them in middle school, so much growth,
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: so much change, especially in this day and age, with
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: so many distractions, so much information bombarding them, plus all
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: the stresses with all these select sports and club teams,
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: and you know, worries about top colleges and grades and
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: all that stuff. I want you to be that safe person.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: That means you have to be available and not distracted. Also,
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: if they see you all stressed out, and a lot
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: of girls told us this weekend they don't go to
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: their parents because their parents are too stressed out, they're
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: too busy, they don't have time. So you need not
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: only to let them know that you have time, but
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: that they see you in that way, just say I
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: need to share some things. When's a good time, to
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: allow you to do something rhythmic, for you to calm down,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: so that when you're sitting down with them, you're fully present.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: I hope this helps. I feel so blessed to be
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: able to have experiences like sitting down for a weekend
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: with middle school girls and listening to their lives, listening
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: to their stories, their trials, their tribulations. Their energy is amazing.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: It's unique, and they so need to be seen and heard, understood,
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: connected with. They need supportive adults. So I want that
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: to be you. I want that to be aunts, uncles, grandparents, teachers, counselors,
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: my cam counselors, whatever. They need people like that to
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: bounce things off of. So make sure you help to
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: create those sorts of connections for you daughters. I hope
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: this helps a little bit to understand what's going on
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: with your daughter. You might want to listen to this
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: podcast with her once you're done listening to this, just
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: because it might open up some conversations and also open
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: up the conversations for your daughters to say, you do
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: that sometimes I don't like it when you go to
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: fix it mode or you interrupt me, or you whatever.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: It might be a good one to listen to to
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: kind of get clear about how can I be there
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: more of my daughter so that she trusts me so
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: I'm a safe confidante for her past. This went on
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: to anybody you know who has a daughter who might
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: be in middle school, or grade school or high school.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: I'll be back with a brand new podcast in a week.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: If you have questions, if you have also ideas about
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: future topics, send an email to www dot dr Tim
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: Jordan dot com my website. Send me a message and
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: just say she would talk about blank. I would be
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: happy to do that, or any other any other kind
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: of feedback you may have that would be helpful for
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: me when I'm doing these podcasts. Also on our website
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: at www dot d R Tim Jordan dot com, you'll
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: see all kinds of information about my books and the
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: retreats coming up, and summer camps will be here before
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: you know it, so look for all those resources too
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: that might be of help to you. I appreciate you
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: coming by here and listening in every week. Thanks so
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: much for stopping by. I'll be back here in a
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: week with a brand new topic and a brand new podcast.