Your Teenage Daughter Needs an Embrace at Home. If She Doesn't Find It There, She Will Look Outside

The short answer: a girl always needs an embrace, the emotional kind. If she doesn’t find warmth, respect and a voice at home, she will look for them outside, and outside is where the danger is.

I have listened to many parents over the years, and to many girls. One thing comes back so often that I now say it plainly:

A girl always needs an embrace. If she doesn’t find it at home, she will look for it outside. And outside is where the danger is.

I don’t only mean a hug, although hugs matter. I mean the emotional embrace: being held, being heard, being taken seriously. Friendship inside the house. A place where what she says has weight.

Whatever she is missing at home, she will go looking for. If she is missing attention, she will find someone who gives her attention. If she is missing respect, she will find someone who seems to respect her. Some of the people who offer those things outside are good. Some are not. A girl who is full at home can tell the difference. A girl who is hungry often can’t.

The mother’s part: a friend she can talk to freely

The mother is usually the first door. What a daughter needs from her in these years is not more questions. It is a place to talk without being judged.

• Let her talk to the end. Don’t jump in at the second sentence with advice or a warning. Hear the whole thing first.
• Never belittle what she says. “That’s silly”, “You’re too young to understand”, “That’s nothing” close the door faster than shouting. To her, it is not nothing.
• Keep what she tells you. If her words come back to her through an aunt, a sister or a joke at dinner, she will stop telling you. The only exception is danger.
• Tell her something of your own. A small story from when you were her age. It tells her you were a girl once too.

The father’s part: responsibility, and the words “you’ve grown up”

The father gives her something different, and just as important. He gives her standing.

• Give her real responsibility. Not only chores: a decision, a budget, a job that matters in the house. Responsibility says “I trust you”.
• Say it out loud: you’ve grown up, and you’re wise now. A girl who hears this from her father carries herself differently with everyone else.
• Ask her opinion, and use it. Plant in her mind, again and again, that she has a view and she makes decisions. Not that she obeys. That she thinks.
• Be the man she measures others by. How her father speaks to her, and to her mother, becomes the standard she expects from men later.

The part that belongs to both of you

Give her her value. A girl must know her worth and her standing in the family. This is what lets her deal with people with confidence, say no without fear, and walk away from someone who treats her as less.

Know her friends. Who they are, what they are like, who she talks to, in person and on the phone. Not by spying. By making your home a place her friends can come to, by asking with interest, by meeting their parents when you can. A parent who knows the friends usually hears about trouble early.

She is always beautiful. Tell her. That is not flattery and it is not hypocrisy. The world will compare her face and her body to others soon enough; home is the one place where she should hear, without conditions, that she is beautiful.

Don’t let her name herself. If she calls herself stupid or ugly, don’t argue and don’t agree. Bring it into a light joke, so she feels it was only a joke and nothing more. (There is a whole article on this below.)

Why this matters beyond the teen years

You are not only raising a daughter for this house. You are preparing her for the society that is coming: as a wife one day, perhaps a mother, a colleague in a company, a student at university. The way she lets people treat her there will be the way she was treated here. That is your picture, and the seeds you plant now.

A check for this week

Ask yourself honestly, and answer for your own home:

1. When did my daughter last tell me something without me asking?
2. When did I last ask her opinion on something real, and act on it?
3. Do I know the names of her three closest friends, and what they are like?
4. Did she hear this week, from me, that she is beautiful and that she is wise?

If two or more answers are “I’m not sure”, start with one of them tonight.

When it is more than a missing embrace

If she has pulled away from everyone for weeks, if someone outside seems to control who she sees or frightens her, or if she talks about hurting herself, don’t wait for her to come back on her own. Talk to her calmly, and reach her doctor or a school counsellor. If she is in danger, call your local emergency number.

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Next step

Plan the next talk. Check if it is the right moment, and get the first words to say to your daughter. Before you talk →