Honor the Girl

Think of your teen daughter. Imagine you are her, for just a day.

You get out of bed, put your Ipod on shuffle and listen to lyrics that, well, they are so degrading to girls I can’t write them. On the ride to school, you pass billboards showing beautiful, thin girls selling products or being the object of a man’s attention and wonder if you need to lose a few pounds or be sexier. At school, your girlfriends gossip in graphic details about their sexual encounters over the weekend and you worry that you haven’t had sex with enough guys. At home you turn on the TV and watch guys paw scantily clad girls in music videos. You worry that maybe you are not pretty enough for a man to want to have sex with you. You log onto MySpace and are greeted with comments from girls at school telling you that you are “Ugly and should die.” An instant message pops up from a Facebook friend, asking if you will give him head the next time he sees you, even though you hardly know him. You write back “Hahahaha” but feel offended. Another friend sends you a link to a free porn site he is watching. Curious, you click on it. You watch two men slap, spank, spit on, and insert themselves into every orifice of the girl who sounds like she is enjoying it, but you aren’t quite sure. Should you be letting your boyfriend do those things to you? Is that what he wants? You are a bit aroused but feel dirty all at once. Before you go to sleep, you thumb through the latest magazine and read about the ten top things guys wish you knew how to do in bed and wonder how you measure up. Worried, you wonder if you your guy will leave you if you can’t do all ten things. Maybe the next time you are with him you should have a few shots of tequila to be more courageous to making him happy.

How are you feeling right now? Maybe you are incredulous. This can’t be reality, can it? Unfortunately, it is the reality many of our girls face, day in day out. Imagine how confused, overwhelmed, disrespected and unsure of themselves the world makes them feel.

How did our world get this crazy for teens? Garbage. Not the kind filling our landfills, but rather the kind that fills our hearts and minds. We have come to use the garbage of sex and violence to get people to buy things or to “buy into” things. Sex can be an amazing, intimate act between people, but we have debased it just one of its facets: lust. We’ve lost our moral compass as well as the map to human kindness, empathy and compassion. The world is in an economic crisis as well as a human crisis. But, there is a way to clean up this mess. It just takes three words: Honor the Girl.

We are focused on saving Mother Earth and turning around our economic woes. Global warming, sustainability, economics, are all buzz words of the day. But we are ahead of ourselves. To save Mother Earth and our economy, we start by saving the MOTHERS of the earth. They in turn will help save us all.

Girls can do the one thing that men cannot. Women have babies. What we teach our teen girls today are the lessons we will deal with in her children tomorrow. At the moment, the lesson teen girls are learning is that to be valued, to be loved, you must be, and I apologize, I know of no other word to use, F*@k-able. What types of mother’s are we creating when the F-word is what we honor? We are creating mothers who carry psychological damage and have low self-respect from today’s constant bombardment of messages and images that disrespect her. That gets passed down to the next generation in many ways. We will all pay an enormous price for that.

Helping teen girls respect themselves will help heal our world’s woes. The balance of estrogen and progesterone in girls’ brains hardwires them to be the nurturers. Women bring peace and solace when you honor and respect them for being the amazing, powerful people they are meant to be.  Let us respect the feminine energy for what it is, life bearing, as opposed to corrupting it to being simply a source of gratification for a man’s sexual needs.

Teach girls to respect themselves and you teach them how to help the next generation respect themselves and others. And so it will go. When people respect themselves, they are less prone to behavior that is destructive to others or self. That creates calm communities that have more resources for solving big issues like economic woes, or finding solutions to helping the planet thrive.

Think how many of our worlds ills could be cured if mother’s simply had less wounds from growing up in a culture that disrespects them. Think what could happen if every mother had enough respect to teach her children that they must respect others, and they should never kill another mother’s child. What if that message stuck?  Perhaps the next generation will look for peaceful solutions instead of waging war.  The wonderful possibilities of where we go as human beings and the future of our planet depends on whether or not we learn to Honor the Girl. It’s that simple.

Dr. Jenn on Divine Caroline

Dr. Jenn appears on Divine Caroline:

Hyenas: Teen, Mean, and on the Prowl

By Jennifer Leigh, PsyD

Teenagers are having sex earlier and with less emotional attachment than ever before, and this means life isn’t getting any easier for their parents—or for the teenagers themselves.

To read the rest of the article, visit Divine Caroline

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Dr. Jenn Featured in American Airline Family

Dr. Jenn was recently featured on the American Airlines Family website. Here is in excerpt:

Girl Power
By Jordan Rane

What’s it like being a girl these days? It may be a better time than ever, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy.

There are the pressures of acing exams, looking good, feeling better, brimming with self-confidence, and having the social life (real and “virtual”) to match. The pressure is on, and families have to collectively come together to guarantee girls a fighting chance.

A girl’s road to building an unshakable sense of joy and self-worth looks a little bumpier when you’re on it. And in fact, “there’s no one winning recipe,” says Jennifer Austin Leigh, PsyD (aka Dr. Jenn), a San Francisco-based life coach for teen girls and their mothers, and author of Girls, You Just Don’t Get It! What Guys Want You to Know About Love and Respect (Ignite Reality, 2008). “But there are things girls and their parents need to do if they’re going to grow into fierce, proud, wonderful women who truly love themselves.” Are you a girl? Or her mother or father? Would you like to know some of these things?

To read the rest of this article, go to: American Airlines Family

An outrageous Idea. I Hope You’ll Join Me.

These days it’s hard not to wake up and feel afraid. The news reports just continue to doom and gloom us to death. As I watch the TV shows, interviews and news about the current crisis, I am aware that the people “in charge” are mostly men.  Where are the women experts and why aren’t their voices being heard? Above and beyond that, what can women DO in this crisis to help our world create a new way of life out of the ashes we seem to be burning down to?

I have an outrageous idea. I hope you’ll join me.  History has shown us repeatedly that women united can move mountains. Well, we have a big task ahead of us. But we can do it if we stick together. Our task is to change our culture. Change it so that basic fundamental ideals are put into place, such as respect for ourselves and others. We can change our culture to encourage real face to face relationships, not just virtual ones. We can stop the sexual exploitation of our young girls.  We can bring focus on the well-being of ourselves and others. (And I’m not talking about money here!) And you know what? If we do that, our nation might just heal its economic crisis. Here’s proof.

The King of Bhutan decided that the welfare of his people was more important than his country’s gross national product. The byproduct of creating well-being was that his country became prosperous. They are not dripping in money, but people have what they need.  We can heal our economy if we turn towards each other and create healthy relationships.

Did you know that in just over a decade, it is predicted that depression will be the second leading cause of death? We have the chance, right now, as our world seems to be crumbling around us, to start over: to build something new, something powerful, something amazing.  It’s called the power of “Jen.”  It’s an ancient powerful teaching of Confucius.  Jen is simply bringing forth our own goodness  to completion and helping others bring forth their own goodness for the sake of our happiness. That in turn will create safer, more prosperous communities.

You can learn more about harnessing the power of Jen by forming a 4L club. It’s simple and it only take two hours a month. You ask 4 or 5 friends to join with you and you and your daughters ( or just you and your friends) get involved in changing your own happiness quotient and learning how to help others do the same. I have all the material you need. Write to me if you want to be a part of this grass roots movement to heal our country, regain a sense of self-pride, shed the sense of fear and dread over the headlines, and bring REAL CHANGE to your life, community and nation. It’s an outrageous idea. I hope you’ll join me!

ATT Smart Limits

Every day a parent asks me what to do about their teen’s texting. A lot of parents feel their teens are too tethered to technology. I agree with them, to a point. Teens need interaction with each other. It’s how they learn. So having friends on Virtual Social Networks (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter etc.) is now a normal part of life. (Make sure your child is old enough to handle online experiences before you let them sign up) Texting is here to stay and is fast replacing emails and phone calls. It’s simply too simple to use. We humans are lazy creatures. Teens are going to use technology and use it a lot .What’s too much?

When technology keeps your teen from having time to spend with real friends and real life or interact with the family, it’s time to set limits It’s also a good idea to curtail technology use if your teen is being harassed online. All technology should have time limits that allow a teen to get a good night’s rest. And of course, there are some places where technology just doesn’t belong, such as the dinner table, or certain social functions. Nothing is more embarrassing or rude than your child’s cell phone ringing as they are lowering Uncle Jack into this final resting place. There is a time and a place for everything.

Parents ask me how they can set limits. First, you have to talk and listen to you teen about their technology use. Decide together on some boundaries and stick to them. Parents can always make use of a little known application ATT has. If your teen is an IPhone user, ATT offers a service called Smart Limits. You can control when your child sends or receives texts, and even block numbers they can dial or receive. It’s a good idea to let your teen know  if you are going to use Smart Limits, as no one likes to be dictated as to how they interface with their technology. However, Smart Limits is a smart idea.  ( I haven’t researched other providers so I don’t know what they have available for limit setting.  But you can ask what’s available.)

As a parent, remember that you still have the ability to ask (nicely) for your teen to TIO ~ Turn It Off! Technology use is like the use of anything else. It’s a privilege not a right. Make sure your teen is using it respectfully and carefully.

OMG! LAID OR LOVED? What Dr. Jenn??

When I researched the information for my self-help book for teen girls, it became VERY CLEAR that guys put girls into two categories. There are the girls who guys respect and will consider to be girlfriend “material.” Then there are the girls that guys don’t respect or take seriously. Those girls are seen to be good for only a casual sexual encounter. Or, as guys say, to “hit and quit.”

Obviously, all the things I wrote about, are ways that girls can find self-respect (not easy to do in today’s world!) and show it to others. I want girls to get loved, not just laid. And so, the title stuck. Laid or Loved? The Secrets Guys Wish You Knew About Being a Dream Girl Instead of a Just-In-His-Jeans Girl. And, the girls GOT IT! They loved the title! They wanted to read the book. However, parents weren’t too sure about it. They just saw the word laid, and didn’t read any further.

Read more

Saying Good Bye

Saying goodbye has never been easy. We are acknowledging a loss.  Most of us don’t like the pain that tags along with goodbye. Today’s headlines scream goodbyes. Goodbye to job security, to our 401Ks, to a sense of stability we used to have. The world is changing so fast, we keep saying goodbye to brands, products, stores, and a way of life we used to enjoy. We say goodbye to old technology that just recently was hip, cool and oh so new. We say goodbye to old standards of conduct, social expectations, dating rituals and morals. We say goodbye to the old-fashioned face-to-face time we used to spend with people who helped us grow, learn, laugh and love.

In all of these goodbyes, there is a hello to be said. Hello to more time tethered to our electronics, more time away from each other. More time isolated in our sense of connection in a virtual world.  I know, I am on a bit of a rant today. This is not my usual Dr. Jenn fare. But I am sad. I’ve said a big goodbye today.

I’ve said goodbye to something I loved. Something I had to let go of.  (Haven’t we all?)  I’ve also  said goodbye to a young girl who I didn’t know, but who represents all the girls I work with. She killed herself yesterday.  She had been bullied by friends online I am told.  It’s enough goodbyes. I want more hello’s. I want more people to talk to each other again. I want people to start caring about each other, thinking about how their actions either help others build themselves up or tear them down. I want people to be careful with their own hearts and the hearts of others. I know the headlines may not get better in the next few months, but we as people CAN. Right now, each of us can decide to be more loving. More caring of ourselves and our neighbors. We can say hello to a stranger on the street. We can extend a smile. We can reach out to each other and help us all deal with the  goodbyes we all are facing.

All it takes is just a simple mindfulness that we are all in this world together. We all cry, we all laugh, we all love. Can you stop for just a moment today, turn off your cell phone, take off your earphones and listen to someone who is standing or sitting right next to? Can you say hello? Can you say hello to yourself as well? Can you take the time to ask yourself: “What is true for me?” and “What do I really want?” then take the time to explore the answers?

One day you will say your last goodbye. Make sure you have said enough hellos along the way before you get to that last final wave of the hand.

Thank you for allowing me to just write with my heart today.  I appreciate all your letters that you send about my blogs. I hope you have a good hello story you want to share with me. Or write to me about a goodbye that you have said that you need someone to hear about.  I am, as always, listening.

All the best,  Dr. Jenn

Dr. Jenn’s Podcast – March 9, 2009