Teenage Growth and Development - Term Paper Example

Outline for an Essay on How to Raise Children on the Modern Day Thesis: Thus, considering the present situation, providing girls with information about the emotional and physical changes taking place in their bodies, creating curiosity and encouraging adventure is the most important thing that every parent needs to do to raise a daughter today. I. Informing girls about the physical, biological and emotional changes occurring in them. A. Tell them the difference between what they perceive from overload of information from outside world, for example: media and peers, and the reality. B. Give them proper orientation about their physical development and sexual urges and encourage them to behave responsibly. II. Give them a proper orientation about the importance in moving around the right social circles, right of privacy, self esteem. A. Encourage them to choose the right peers B. Make them learn independence and uphold their self esteem, while respecting their need for privacy III. Do not pamper her if parents have only a single child that is female. A. Giving into all the demand of a child will make her obstinate and parents must exercise caution in allowing children to be fashionable. B. She must be trained to be disciplined. IV. Conclusion: Will round up the paper by restating all the main ideas. How to Raise a Teenage Daughter in Modern Times Raising a daughter in present day is a great challenge because of the changing of diet, the difference of the technology, and the social environment. Also, today, sex is not a preserve of the marriage, yet it becomes an indulgence of most people. Thus, the challenges have been occasioned by the fact that the society is passing information that is not so appropriate for the healthy upbringing of the girls. The advertisements through the media, the scenes in the movies, the access to sexual content on the internet, connectivity, and friendships that are easily faked on the social sites have subscribed to these challenges (Gurian, 4). As a result, there has never been a bad time of raising a daughter than today. Teenage is a most important stage of girls’ lives. When they try to experiment and experience the real world at this stage, their characters will be featured by resentment and aggression. However, telling people to stop raising a daughter is impossible. The greatest challenge is helping their daughters through to process of transition from the puberty to adolescent stage. Thus, telling girls information about the emotional and physical changes taking place in their bodies, creating curiosity, and encouraging adventure is the most important thing that every parents need to do to raise a daughter today. Magical thinking, imagination and fantasizing are the elements that characterize the state of mind of girls when they are teenager (Braun, 8). Therefore, helping them to base their thinking on reality of the world, and doing away with their wishful thinking and handling their highs and lows is an important aspect of raising the daughter (Stern, 24). Since the girls’ bodies and physical looks start becoming an important consideration for girls when they are at this stage. Parents should help them to understand what is happening to their body, their emotions, and hormonal changes. Also, parents should try their best to make the conversation appeared as well as normal. Also, avoiding any chance of them being informed on the same from bad company is crucial (McCarthy, 7). When girls are teenagers, their sexual activities and desires starts accelerating. Thus, protecting the girls from interactions and socializations is the difficult thing that parents need to do. Any attempt to protect or discourage girls from their indulgence will be greeted with rebellion (Gurian, 4) which can also turns the relationship between the daughter and parents into an opposite situation if the problem is not solved well. However, isolating girls from others is not the perfect move because their social and interaction behaviors are fully developed. The parent role is also important because of showing the positive behavioral will help girls to having friends with the right people. Parents should really be careful about this because some consequences might change a girl’s future (Braun, 13). Also, during girls’ teenage stage, girls will try to be independence, and they will do anything to protect their privacy from everyone especially from their parents. As a result, devising strategies of remaining an important part of their every activity and move is another challenging work for parents (Stern, 28). Moreover, in fact that confidence and self-esteem issues affect girls when they are teenagers. This depends on how girls feel about themselves, which includes how they value their talents and abilities (McCarthy, 11). At this stage, the body shape, fashion, clothing and style, and material possession becomes a center stage of the girls thinking. Thus, parents should consider their ability to afford their daughters. For example, parents need to control the items that they will buy for their girls, and only purchase the most appropriate thing for girls’ style and fashion. If this problem is not properly solved, the time of raising teenage girls will become a war between the girls and their parents. This situation is worse, if the daughter is an only child of the family, since she perceives her needs as fundamental, which should be met without questioning (Gurian, 5). Under such a case, parents need to be cautious not to give in to every demand of their daughter, while ensuring they give them what is sufficient and relevant for boosting their confidence and self-esteem. This serves to make the daughter feel appreciated and thus fits in well in the company of her friends, which eliminates the chances of her falling trap into dirty tricks of gaining material possession that her parents did not provide in exchange for sexual affairs, which may end up damaging her self-esteem even more. The situation might be worse if the girl is the only child of the family. Because the only child can get whatever she wants and whenever she needs without questioning (Gurian, 5). In this case, parents need to be cautious not to give in to every demand of their daughter. When parents give everything that their daughter need, they are boosting their daughter’s confidence and self-esteem. When parents buy a thing for their daughter, they need make their girl feel appreciated. Furthermore, parents need to make sure that their girl fits in the right company of her friends, which also can eliminates the chances of her falling trap into dirty tricks that make her exchange the thing that her parents didn’t provide from sexual affairs which may hurt her self-esteem even more. There are several aspects that good parents need to help them to overcome the challenge of raising daughters today. Making teenage daughters feel loved and appreciated is a major step that makes parenting easier. This is important because the girls always listen to the person they feel loved, and they will respects the suggestions and decisions made by that person. However, when girls feel unappreciated to their parents, the feeling of being unwanted will most likely cause daughters to rebel their parents. Thus, girls will make decisions that are against their parents’ wish, which also may hurt themselves (McCarthy, 3) Monitoring what the daughter is accessing, watching, reading and practicing is important for parents to enhance their daughters’ mental and emotional health (Braun, 14). Since the individual watches and listens may change a person’s character, parents need to ensure that their daughter watch and listen to the things that will build their virtues. In addition, parents should spend quality time with daughters to find out what they concerns, needs, and emotions, to better help them to accept the nature of life. Also, parents need to set rules with their daughter. For example, parents should set rules of girls’ activities such as the time that she needs to come home, the time for homework and the place that girls will go when they hang out with their friends. However, parents need to do this through negotiation. I believe the parents don’t want to see rebellion and resentment from the daughters, which will not turn the relationship that between girls and their parents into a really bad situation. According to Gurian, “Supporting her emotional stability, through boosting her self-esteem and confidence is a vital aspect of raising a teenage or adolescent daughter (7)”. This can be enhanced by encouraging her to speak out her mind, while at the same time limiting the choices she has to make through parental guidance. As a result, girls will become more inclined to make better choices and are more likely to have a good relationship with their parents. Works Cited Braun, Ellen. “Teenage Growth and Development” Palo Alto Medical Foundation, 2001. 9-14.print. Gurian, Anita. “How to Raise Girls with Healthy Self-Esteem”. NYU child study center, 2008. 4-7. Print. McCarthy, Moira. “Developing Emotional Maturity: Helping Her Emotional Maturity Develop”. The New York Times Company, 2009. 3-11. Print. Stern, Joanne. “How to Handle Rebellious Teenage Daughters”. Psychology Today, 2011. 23-35. Print. Read More