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Transforming the IDK Girl
The IDK Girl needs to know that they have a voice. She needs to know that even if she makes the wrong choice, at least they are making a choice. The IDK Girl needs to find the confidence to fail. Failing is difficult. But failing forward is a positive experience that can lead to better and more wise decisions in the future.
Failing forward* means that when you fail (not if you fail–but WHEN) you learn a lesson from every failure. Those lessons will build your confidence, bring you closer to wisdom, allow you to change and refine your ideas, thoughts, opinions and purpose.
The IDK Girl needs to know that her friends opinions don’t mean everything. She needs to know that sometimes, her friends will not like, or even hate her thoughts, and that’s perfectly okay. She needs to know that she doesn’t always have to be like everyone else, because she was not created to be like everyone else.
Her confidence should remain in the absolute truth found solely in her identity in Christ. Because Christ created her as a masterpiece, because she’s the apple of HIS eye, because he formed her and created her for a purpose, that is why the IDK Girl can like pineapple on her pizza, or wear Tom’s shoes even if everyone at school says they look like slippers, or help the “dork” with his backpack.
The IDK girl needs someone like YOU pointing out the truth of who she is so that she can become all that God wants her to be. And the more you move yourself from an IDK Woman, the more you are a living example of the truth of God’s love living in and through you.
Are you an IDK girl?
How do you encourage your tweens and teens to be confident in who they are?
*Failing Forward is a concept originated by John Maxwell.
The Fears of the IDK Girl
The “I Don’t Know Girl” evolves quietly and slowly. As kids face more and more pressure to be accepted and perfect, and more and more rejection if they do something wrong, their ability to make decisions slowly dwindle. The “IDK Girl” struggles with self confidence which encourages individuality.
The fear of making the wrong choice will lead to the possibility of being ridiculed or looked down on. If a teenager says, I want to eat _______ and her friends don’t like that idea, then maybe she will feel like an outcast.
If she likes something on her pizza like anchovies or pineapple, she may hear judgement, she may hear, “gross!” If what I like is gross, then what I am is gross, perhaps??
If the IDK girl wears the wrong thing to school, she fears not measuring up. The WRONG shoes, a shirt NOT bought from the RIGHT place, a purse NOT costing $200.
The pattern here: teenage girls want to fit in, even at the expense of not having their own identity. I see a growing pattern in girls working hard to create a NON-identity, simply wanting to blend in, even mortified if they stand out in any way. Individuality comes at a high price. But so does not being yourself. Constant fear ends up controlling every thought of the young girls of the Y generation.
Fear of rejection
Fear of failure
Fear of judgement
Fear of ridicule
Fear of being alone
Have you experienced girls being judged for trying to establish their individuality?
Introducing the IDK Girl
An American teenage tragedy is the inability for a young girl to make a choice. In our society we are inendated with choices. There are five thousand ways to order a cup of coffee, 100,000 thousand different slushy choices at Sonic, 200 options in toothpaste. But somehow, the ability for young girls to be sure of what they like or don’t like is increasingly prevalent.
My daughters and their friends would rather me wear my leg warmers from the 80′s a belt out a Debbie Gibson hit while playin with my rhythm ribbon than listen to my “I Don’t Know Girl” lecture. An “I Don’t Know Girl” is a young lady who lacks the ability to make a decision with confidence. Her answer to every question is, “I don’t know,” or “I don’t care.”
The decisions faced aren’t difficult. Simple things like:
What do you want to eat?
What movie sounds good?
How do you like your pizza?
Which the answers are normally something like:
It doesn’t matter.
I don’t know.
Whatever, I don’t care.
I know it is seemingly insignificant, but to me, every simple decision a girl can make with confidence will lead to bigger, more important choices made with confidence. A girl can learn to have confidence in her decisions by making them. It requires them to step out on a limb, believing in themselves and what they like or don’t like has value.
Do you experience your tweens and teens becoming “IDK Girls” ?
Hate What He Hates
This is a truth that I’ve known too well my entire life. Now as a grown woman, I experience it in such a different capacity, with a different type of heartbreak. This past Saturday when I put my two kids on the plane to go visit their dad, I had a Holy Spirit revelation of the true meaning of God’s words, “I hate divorce.”
I’ve always known that God hates any of his laws to be broken. But marriage is the only place in the Word, when speaking of divorxe that God actually uses the word Hate. In divorce is the death of so many things,. Family is the very foundation of the spreading of the Gospel. When the family breaks down, so does the truth of His sacrificial love.
But God isn’t merely so selfish that His only concern would be himself. (Even though the spreading of the Gospel is really His love for you and everyone else.) For the first time ever, I experienced God’s cry of compassion in the words, “I hate divorce.”.
As I dried my daughters tears with my arms wrapped around her, the grief in my heart cried out the words, “I hate divorce.”. Hugging my growing baby boy, with my kisses smudged all over his face, the anguish in my heart seeped out, “I hate divorce.” Not selfishly, only because I was going to miss my kids, but I felt their hurt, I saw their pain, I tried to grab a hold of their fear and frustration of leaving one world behind to live temporarily in another. I hate divorce.
It was the compassion of Christ that has lived in me all week, remembering how hard it is to be a child of divorce. Giving my guilt over to God and trusting that He will make all things right. Trusting that my children won’t have to forever live with the consequences of the sins of their parents. I hate what He hates, I love what He loves. Do you?
How do you….
How do you motivate kids to action without rewards, discipline or bribes? Especially if they don’t see things your way? I’m not talking about doing the dishes, or cleaning a room. I’m asking about life changing character changes, disciplines of studying or reading the word, re-prioritizing their life to not watch so much tv or play so many games.
What do you do to motivate kids into action?
D.I.V.O.R.C.E.
Memorial Day
REPOST FROM A FEW YEARS AGO…
With Memorial Day here, we think of all the soldiers who have tread foreign soil to protect the freedoms of this country. My husband is a soldier and veteran of Desert Storm–I’m grateful to him and all men and women who have sacrificed a piece of themselves for our comforts.
I’m also grateful for the mother’s and children–and the father’s and children–who are left here in America, fighting a different type of battle–the battle of single parenthood.
Children of deployment are often faced with the same struggles as children who experience divorce or death. Although the circumstances are different, these children are left in single parent households. They endure the same stress.
They also face a different stress, with the threat of war and death. They are often left confused, with images of CNN clouding their imaginations. It seems there is an overwhelming sense of fear in these children, so they struggle to feel safe in their environments.
Children of deployment need compassion and love. Their devastation is real, and their fears need validation. Keep the lines of communication open, and explain to them age appropriately the importance of freedom in our Country. I encourage you to use this as an opportunity to teach them about the Sovereignty of God–that HE is completely in control.
To the moms and dads raising their children while their spouse is across the waters–Thank you for your love. Know that you are thought of and prayed for! And may the LORD bless and keep each child who unknowingly sacrifices a part of their childhood so that we can maintain our liberty!
A FEW THOUGHTS SINCE THEN…
I have been through a deployment with five kids since I originally posted this. There are emotinal and spiriutal complexities a child goes through during a deployment that linger for months, and maybe even years. My children wept, and feared, and prayed for their dad. Even months after my husband came home from war, my kids randomly comment about fear, death and guns in relation to their dad’s year long deployment. Kids need time to process it all. Give them what they need.
Do NOT Enter!
Too bad, I’m comin’ in anyway.
That’s how I feel about my kids worlds. No matter how they push me out, I keep pushin’ in! I have to. If I don’t go into their world, they just may never come into mine.
This can be a difficult task, when our already filled To-Do list is 3 days overdue, and nothing is getting done. I find when I’m most disconnected from my kids is when I’ve failed to really see what their world has to offer. And it normally has to offer ever aspect of their life I want to be a part of. Their friends, their fears and their faith. These are things I want to be able to teach them and guide them through. But they won’t open up to me about those very important things if they are too busy trying to just fit into my schedule, my life, my busyness, my world.
A child feels safer in his or her world. For my kids, this is mostly their room. Their room is their safe place. They talk or text their friends in there, watch tv, play video games, hang out with their BFF’s. Their bedroom is their town hall, where action, decisions and laughter take place. Most parent’s fear this sanctuary, feeling it’s invasive to go in, or too dirty to sit in. We want to be invited in, but sometimes we must just burst in–nicely, of course.
In the student ministry I help lead, the safe place for the girls is the couch. All 7 or 8 of them will find away to pile on each other or within a very close proximity of the couch. The all sit there, week after week, and in the comfort of sinking into the cushions, they find a safeness to learn about Jesus. I sit on the opposite side of the room, normally. But soon, when I see they are feeling really safe, I will invade, most likely plopping right in the middle, with a few piled on top of me. And it is there I will ask:
Who are your friends?
What are your fears?
What about your faith?
It’s not that I must trust them, but that they trust me. They must trust me for the littlest to say: read a book to me. For the oldest to say: Mom sit on my bed, let me paint your nails. For the charming one to say: mom I know why my relationship with my friend isn’t working.
They must trust me to say: Ms. Tiffany, do you want to see my room. Or will you pray for my friend, he’s in a lot of trouble. Or my family is falling apart and I don’t know what to do.
I will enter into their world, because in the end, not only do they want me to, but they need me to. They need to feel safe, and loved and connected. They need to know that you will never stop banging on the door no matter how many times they say no. So with every “Do Not Enter” I might simply say: Not Now, perhaps, but Someday Soon!
Every Girl Knows…
So, some of you already know that my daughter messed up her foot this past Friday. She was skateboarding barefoot. I know, I’m such a good mother, right?
My husband walked in from work, then had to rush to take a shower so we could scoot on over to the Emergency Room. We live in a fairly unpopulated area, so we wheeled her right into triage.
“What happened?”
“Are you allergic to any medications?”
“On a scale from 1 to 10, what level is your pain?”
“How tall are you?”
“How much do you weigh?”
Stop right there. My daughter couldn’t stand on a scale, so they asked her how much she weighed. My daughter kindly replied, “I don’t know.”
Gasp. The nurse smiles and responds, “You don’t know? Every girl knows how much they weigh.”
Well, not my daughter. For a short moment pride welled up in me that my daughter is not preoccupied with her weight or pant size. With 13 year old girls, that’s not always the case. Most girls her age are acutely aware–even painfully aware–of how much they weight, what size they wear, how long their hair is, how much make up to wear
Don’t get me wrong, my daughter is the girly of the girly-est. She talks about her hair so much sometimes, I just want to sneak into her room at night and shave it off to prove a point. Ooops…Did I say that out loud?
But what struck me most was this, there is an expectation in our society for women and girls to be focused on their weight. It was like this male nurse accepted the fact that all women not only do, but should, be totally aware of how much they weigh.
I know that the media and the TV and the magazines and music videos and everything else in our society can be blamed. But when are we going to have the courage to look in the mirror? Not to size ourselves up, so to speak. But to take responsibility as mother’s and mentors and leaders. We can’t go shopping with our girls and say, “I’m so fat, I can’t fit these jeans” and not expect that to skew our child’s self-image. We can’t say things like: I look horrible, I hate my hair, I need to lose weight, I wish I was skinnier and not think those words won’t permeate the very soul of our already wounded daughters. We can’t honor and envy super models and actresses and then expect our children to live any differently.
Making change in our daughters, our young women, our small girls, we must first make changes in ourselves. It is only through Christ we will find wholeness and identity. It’s not about the weight of your body, but the condition of your heart. Every girl should know that!
