Beyond the Dragons

Centuries ago, dragons were drawn on the map where the unknown stretched out, waiting to be discovered. We are beyond the dragons now, as girls become more violent. The increase in violent crimes committed by teen girls in on the rise. Not a little, a lot. I just read about two girls who brutally murdered a teacher. It’s one of many stories I’ve been reading about and my heart aches.

When did taking on the worst of men’s behavior, violence and promiscuity, become the badge of honor girls think they need to wear?

I’m sad our world encourages teen girls to go against the way their brains are wired. Like it or not, the female brain is wired differently than the male brain. Women are the nurturers. We are the mothers, with that fierce, proud mother energy that gives life. We are not usually cold hearted murderers. So what’s happening to our daughters that is turning more and more of them towards violence? No one knows for sure.

This much I do know for certain. Our teen girls need help. Someone needs to stand in the crowd and shout, “The Emperor has no clothes on.” Someone has to start the conversation about what is happening to our daughters and begin to look for answers.

Guess what? “TheEmperor has no clothes on!” I’ll be the one to start the conversation.

We are in uncharted territory. Our girls need our help.

We need corporations to stop dishonoring girls by selling us sex and violence against women. (CW, we need better programming than Gossip Girl!!!) We need artists who write, sing, paint, etc. to stop dishonoring girls in their creative endeavors. We need everyone who is brave enough to say the cultural Kool Aid is poison to stand together and HONOR THE GIRL!

Will you stand with me and add your voice against the riptide of cultural currents and help teach the world to honor the girl?  The future of the world depends on whether or not we learn to honor the girl. It’s just that simple.

Best

Dr. Jenn

ParentingTeen Girls Made Simple

Parenting teen girls has never been harder. Today’s world if full of outside influences you have no control over. Text messages, Facebook, the Internet, YouTube…the list goes on and on. The old rules of parenting are obsolete in today’s new world. Parent’s are often overwhelmed and feel under-skilled.

There is help. What if once a month you received a new parenting teen girl skill in your inbox? You’d start to learn the new skills needed to help navigate your daughter safely into adulthood. That help exists at http://www.honorthegirl.me   The site is getting a complete make over soon, same great content plus more and a whole new look and feel to match our mission/message to honor the girl the better the world.

Honor the Girl is growing. In addition to the membership parenting information, Honor the Girl is working with some big organizations to help moms across the nation. Stay tuned for all the details. I’m unveiling the first Honor the Girl consumer product for inner beauty after the first of the year. I’m so excited about this new innovative product that I have my team working overtime to get it on the shelves so you can begin to polish your inner beauty until you glow from within and even  light up others around you for the better.

Honor the Girl to Better the World. ™  That’s what we are doing here. Hope you will join us!
All best,

Dr. Jenn

Women’s Depression Rising!

CNN aired a segment on October 6th about  the increase of depression in women.  Men, on the other hand, are showing an increase in happiness. Why the unfair tumble in female happiness? An author and life consultant suggested that women don’t know how to “live in the moment” and that happy women look for the moments that make them happy and try to string those moments together.  Poppycock!

I’m usually not outspoken about other people’s research, however, I don’t for one minute believe that women have suddenly lost their ability to find happiness in the moment. I believe the happy moments are fewer and farther between for women.

The world doesn’t respect women and that disrespect is more and more blatant. Don’t agree with me? Turn on your teen daughter’s favorite radio station and listen to the lyrics.

Think the message that she is worth only getting on her knees to make a guy sexually fulfilled is respectful?  Think the advertising for Abercrombie and Fitch and other retailers showing teen girls as teasing half-naked little pixies is respectful?

Google “free porn” and see what A LOT of our teens are watching. Those videos shape the way guys think about girls on all levels. They shape how girls think about themselves as well. Think it’s a respectful message?

 I could go on and on… 

When the world you live in reduces your value, how many peak moments are going to come along to spike your enthusiasm for life? By the accounts of teen girls I talk to, not many. It’s not much different for the moms I talk to.

People, I’m mad. I’ve listened to teen girl and their moms for a long time and the stories keep getting more depressing. It’s NO WONDER WOMEN ARE DEPRESSED! When we aren’t honored as human beings who bring more to the party than just our sexuality, it’s tough to be exuberant about our lives.

Teen girls and mothers need help.

I wrote the book “Laid or Loved? The Secrets Guys Wish You Knew About Being a Dream Girl Instead of a Just-In-His-Jeans Girl to help our teen girls, but mothers tell me it is helping them as well.  I can’t change the culture overnight, but I am doing my best to help one girl, one mom, one family at a time. Maybe if our teen girls learn that they don’t have to drink the cultural kool Aide we can change things. Maybe we can learn to Honor the Girl to Better the World.

For more information click here and find out how you can find parenting solutions for today’s teen girls, and hopefully feel better about yourself if the process. That equates to more happiness!

I’m here for you and your teen. Call me if you want to vent. I’m listening.

My new office in New York:
2 Overhill Road Suite 430 (by appointment only) Scarsdale, NY 10583  Phone 914 574 5617

All the best, and more happiness to you,

Dr. Jenn

Self-Control. Can Teens Learn It?

Teens are famous for being impulsive and difficult to live with. Blame it on their raging hormones, right?

 Not totally. Their brains play a role in the behavior we label as “typical teen.”

Teens  often use the limbic system of their brain, the area responsible for in the moment survival, rather than the prefrontal cortex, the “CEO” of the brain to make decisions. The prefrontal cortex doesn’t mature until the late twenties, so it’s not a conscious choice to use a less than stellar steering wheel for their lives.

One of the new buzz words from the neuroscience world is: executive functioning. It refers to the ability to order your thoughts, put things in your short term memory for future use, and to stay on task mentally, not something teens are able to do very well these days. (Many teachers are noticing that preschoolers are starting out their educational years with less executive functioning than previous students years past.) A recent New York Times article delved into a new solution for helping preschooler have more executive function and more self-control. Read the article here. That solution can help teens learn self-control as well.

The solution? Play! But not just any type of play, but rather dramatic, pretend play. Play has been stripped from our children’s lives at school and home and replaced with a heavy load of academics, organized sports and over scheduled lives. Play has gotten a bad rap as something silly, frivolous and without merit. Yet play is the womb for brain growth, happiness, innovation, stress regulation, and learning, among other wonderful things.

Teens aren’t keen to go back to playing dress-up-lets-pretend, (which is what helps little ones learn better) but they are, believe it or not, quite happy to use their imaginations and get their hands messy.  When given the chance to use their imagination to create, teens have a better chance to learn self-control.

The challenge for parents is to learn HOW to bring play back into their teens lives and how to play along with them at times. Even preschoolers need to be directed at how to play as it has been slowly removed from our culture so you can well imagine how challenging it is to bring play into the lives of our teens.

One place parents can learn more about the importance of play and how to add it to their daughters lives is at www.honorthegirl.me.  Part of the monthly subscription covers the topic of play.

As more scientists publish the positive benefits of play, and experts bemoan the loss of play in our lives, parents have the chance to learn more.

I’ll keep you posted about the latest reseach on play and how you can ues it to be a better parent, and how it can benefit your teen daughter.

All best,

Dr. Jenn

Moms Talking to Moms

Dr. Jenn created a social network so mothers of teen girls can share their thoughts, ideas and questions. It’s  hosted on ning and open to the public. You can go here to join and invite other moms to join and help support each other.

http://honorthegirl.ning.com/

Hope to see you there!

Moms,visit www.honorthegirl.me for support  and nurturing from Dr. Jenn each month, deliverd in your inbox.

Honor the Girl

Think of a teen girl. Perhaps she’s your daughter. Imagine you are her, for just a day.

You get out of bed, put your Ipod on shuffle and listen to degrading lyrics that encourage you to act like a lobotomized sex kitten for a guy.

 On the way to school, you pass billboards showing beautiful, thin girls  being the object of a man’s sexual attention to sell a product. You wonder if you need to lose a few pounds and 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.

 Back 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 guy to want you like that.

 You log onto MySpace and read comments from girls at school telling you that you are “ugly and should die.” An instant message pops up from a Facebook friend. He writes ”will you give me head? You write back “Hahahaha” but feel offended. You hardly even know the guy!

 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 at the same time.

 You click over to another site, and read the latest gossip about your favorite teen celebrity, and wish with all your heart you could be just as pretty, cool and famous as her.

 At dinner, you push your food around on the plate, barely eating, terrified you’ll gain weight.

 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. You worry your guy will leave you if you can’t do them all.  You decide the next time you are alone with him you’ll get drunk and try to make him happy.

 In the middle of the night, your best friend wakes you up with a text message. She wants to kill herself. Her guy dumped her after she slept with him. You’re scared she’ll really commit suicide. You text your boyfriend for help, but he sides with your girlfriend’s guy. Now you are in a text fight with your boyfriend. He calls you a bitch.

 Your boyfriend says he will forgive the fight if you send him a picture of your breasts. You don’t want to lose him so you raise your pajama top, snap the picture and hit send.

 The next day, your best friend is back with her guy, crisis diverted but your nude picture is now being passed around to everyone at school. Your friends are rating your breasts on their Facebook profiles. A few girls have status updates labeling you a whore. You wonder if you can transfer schools midyear and worry how you can keep your parents from finding out about the picture…

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 our daughters? Garbage. Not the kind in our landfills, rather the kind that fills our hearts and minds. We have come to use the garbage of sex, violence, and celebrity worship to get people to buy things or to “buy into” things. How do we clean up the mess? It just takes three words: Honor the Girl.

Helping teen girls respect themselves will not only help them, it will help heal our world’s woes. The balance of estrogen and progesterone in girls’ brains hard-wires them to be 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 reducing it to mere sexual gratification.

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 world’s ills could be cured if the world’s future mothers  had less wounds from growing up in a culture that disrespects and dishonors them.

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.

I hope you will join me in Honoring The Girl. My new website, www.honorthegirl.me goes live August 14th. My late grandmother’s birthday! Moms,you’ll find everything you need to learn how to honor (parent) your teen daughter, as well as ways to honor you own inner little girl! Moms are their daughters first line of defense in this anything goes world. I know to help teen girls, I must first help their mothers. It’s all there for you on the site.

Better TV filmed me hosting the roll out of Honor The Girl at Veronica Romano’s house in New York. (A shout out to her and her amazing family and friends!) I’ll post the segment as soon as the show airs.

Any questions on raising your daughter, or how to take better care of yourself as a mom, email me: Jennifer@parentingteengirls.com

I am here for you.

All best

Dr. Jenn

Honor the Girl Kick Off Party July 31

Honor the Girl, the grassroots movement to help teen girls learn how to have more self-respect and show respect to other’s in today’s “Girl Gone Wild” world, kicks off in New York at a Dr. Jenn PJ Party for MOMS! 

Better TV will have their camera’s rolling to capture the fun. Veronica, an amazing woman with a wonderful company that helps women keep their memories and photos together, along with teaching at F.I.T. will be our host.

The video will go up as soon as we get it so you can enjoy the fun too!