The Edge of Adolescence

The Edge of Adolescence
“For over a century, the edge of adolescence has been identified as a time of heightened psychological risk for girls. Girls at this time have been observed to lose their vitality, their resilience, their immunity to depression, their sense of themselves and their character.”
Lyn Mikel Brown and Carol Gilligan: Meeting at the Crossroads
Last week my oldest daughter slid down hill. It started with finding out that she was occasionally cutting (“ditching”) her first class in the morning. This was discovered when someone caught her and a friend off campus during that school hour. I could make a case for middle schoolers not being in school with high school students – particularly in the sixth grade, when all of this newfound freedom is dizzying. But I will save that for another day.

It ended on Friday afternoon with a phone call from the Vice Principal telling me she had been suspended for calling another girl a bad name, the same girl she was cutting school with the weeks and months before. My daughter has been most of the last few years, quiet, introspective. Prior to the volume of homework she has had this year, she read voraciously – mostly long novels with big stories. Her friends were three sometimes four girls who formed this bond early in the school year. A few falling outs during the year were nothing like what happened on Friday morning. This small group of friends imploded, leaving all of them with suspensions and I am sure some hurt feelings.

Girls – we hear it from principals all the time – take up a lot of school discipline time. They fight over friendships; their breakups with their friends are painful and cruel and maybe last a day or two. They talk about each other, they cast aside friends they pledged their devotion to just the week before. One minute they are in love with life and the next they are painfully sullen. My younger daughter, when happy, can bring light and joy into a room, when she is angry, she can suck the life out of a place.

As a mother, I was stunned by the turn of events in just a week. I knew that she had been struggling with the class, but never in my wildest dreams thought she was skipping the class. For one, I thought the hallways at school were patrolled better than that. The suspension took my breath away for a brief moment after a week of bad news and head scratching. And yet, as I thought about it, my eldest has found herself more of a follower than a leader. Even though she says she knows everything she needs to know about leadership (in response to why she doesn’t need to be in Girl Scouts anymore), she has proven to me this week that I need to get her back involved – and find her some additional adults with whom she can connect.

After I righted myself, I asked her to write me an essay about friendships – what she looks for in a friend, what she feels like when she is friended and what it feels like inside when she is a friend to herself. Her answers weren’t that introspective; in fact, they were very behavioral, which caused me to ask some follow up questions. We talked about her inner compass. Did she feel it? Did she listen to that inner voice? When her friend wanted to leave class, did she hear that voice?

When we were talking I realized that she really didn’t have the ability to override the friends’ voices. She may have the moral and ethical reasoning, but that voice, that inner compass, was being drowned out by peers. I shared with her a couple of times I wished as a girl, that either my mom stepped in or I invited her in. I told her she may not always know what to do – but I wondered if she might want to think about asking me to help sometimes. At least, inviting me into those moments when she is hearing the voice, at least a nudge from the inner compass, but really feels pulled in another direction.
It seemed to shift something for her. Maybe some weight she has been carrying. I reminded her that 12 is not really that big, that even though she feels “old” she is not very. I got the sense that this was somewhat of a relief to her.

As a mom and a Girl Scout – I know that Lyn Mikel Brown and Carol Gilligan are right. This edge of adolescence is a challenging time. It is a time when girls need Girl Scouts – a time when moms also need Girl Scouts – as we shepherd our daughters through this rocky road of adolescence.