She needs her sleep.

Tweens should get at least nine (count them!) hours of sleep every night, but according to a study reported in Newsweek, only about 15 percent get that much. "A full quarter get less than six."10 What possible reasons could there be for that? Girls tell me it's due to too much homework to do after the afternoon's activities, too much going on in the evenings at home (noise, activity, general familial chaos!), not winding down before going to bed, and stressing over things while trying to fall asleep. Yikes. That sounds like half the adults I know.

She needs downtime.

Breaks during a tween's day are practically unheard of. School requires nonstop concentration. After-school time is packed, and when she does get home she has to get right to her homework and possibly even chores. Adults in the workplace would picket if they had to give up their coffee break, but we expect our kids to work all day, as if we're afraid a moment without something specific to do will lead them into trouble or allow them some boredom. Can't have that. Seriously, downtime is essential, especially for a girl grappling with her menstrual cycle, her changing body, and her all-consuming relationships. Basically, she needs a break. A lot of breaks.

Watch out for stress.

Stress is the new S-word. And for tween girls, who are ultra-aware of everything that goes on with the people around them, the big S is very apparent. Even without anyone telling them, they know when their parents aren't getting along, when money is a problem, when job security is threatened, or when something bad's going down in the extended family. They pick up tension the way a black dress picks up lint, and they carry it around with them, on top of all the other things they're worried about, age appropriate or not. A tween girl doesn't yet have the inner resources or the practice in coping with that kind of stress, so it may show itself in sleep problems, mood changes, dropping grades, and differences in appetite. Since some of those things can also be attributed to just plain puberty, it's easy for a mom to miss that her daughter's stressing out.

Be aware of the "body bullies" that lurk out there.

As if it weren't hard enough just being a kid, today's tween girl has to learn about things that frankly even most adults have trouble wrapping their minds around. Illegal drugs. Alcohol. Tobacco use. In many schools, alcohol and tobacco are easy for eleven- and twelve-year-olds to get their hands on. Many kids first experiment with drinking and smoking in fifth and sixth grades. One in every ten children ages ten through twelve tries drugs (usually marijuana). Girls are equal in number to boys when it comes to becoming addicted.

The average tween girl sees 40,000 commercials a year on TV; that's 666 hours worth, and 466 of those hours show people looking and acting sexy over things like cars, deodorant, and frozen dinners.11 It's a no-brainer that that can affect her thinking about her own body.

Then there's the sexual predators and Internet stalkers. It's very hard for some tween girls to keep perspective and enjoy the rest of their childhoods without constantly wondering if that boy in her class who seems nice but dresses a little dark is going to bully her online, or whether she's ever supposed to trust an adult male without seeing a complete dossier. The job of boundary keeper is yours until she learns how to maintain her own safety zone. Some girls freak out at all the evil out there, and need help in getting their confidence and equilibrium, while other girls act as if there's no danger at all, and need to learn balanced wariness. You'll want to know where your daughter is on that continuum, and respond accordingly.

Did I say earlier that the physical care of your child was one of the easier parts of raising a tween daughter? Silly me. Truly, though, the principles for the care and feeding of your daughter really are simple. Perhaps not easy, but simple. Let's start, as always, with the wisdom of our Father.

From the Ultimate Parent

"Make yourselves holy for I am holy...I am God who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Be holy because I am holy."

Leviticus 11:44-45 You won't find me quoting Leviticus very often. Really-"When a woman has her regular flow of blood...anyone who touches her will be unclean till evening" (15:19 NIV)? Wow.

But I have to admit, nothing was left to chance in terms of health and wellness for the children of Israel. Six chapters of Leviticus are dedicated to what is "clean" and "unclean." All of chapter 11 describes in minute detail which foods are to be eaten and which must be "detested" lest the person be "unclean until evening," or, in the case of eating blood, cut off from the people (17:4). Chapter 12 explains how a woman is to be purified after having a baby. In chapters 13 and 14, they could find everything they ever wanted to know about skin diseases and mildew. If they needed to look into unclean discharges, the information was in chapter 15. (Yes, I'm aware that the Scriptures weren't divided into chapters back then!) While most of us aren't going to give up lobster (11:10-11) or force people with psoriasis to cry out "Unclean! Unclean!" and live alone outside of town (13:45-46), we can appreciate the fact that God wanted his people-and us-to live long and healthy lives, free of sickness and disease. I think we can also agree that the precise instructions (11:4-8 being a prime example) reflect God's desire for us to be mindful of the divine presence and influence in every detail of our lives. I don't see that as restrictive or punitive-"Don't touch that Twinkie or you're sinning against the Lord"-but as an urging toward joy.

Washing, cleansing, coming out pure and shining-that is a beautiful process.

Eating wisely and well and savoring every bite-that is a foretaste of heaven.

Stretching and strengthening and becoming vigorous-that is a reflection of God's own energy.

Resting, breathing deeply, succumbing to the softness of sleep-that is reminiscent of the first satisfying Seventh Day.

Taking pleasure in the care and feeding of our bodies is a tribute to the God who made it. So why not teach your daughter that washing her hair and munching on a fresh-picked apple instead of an Oreo and skipping just to skip is the glorious, godly stuff of real living?

"If you live by my decrees and obediently keep my commandments," we read in Leviticus 26, "you'll be able to go to sleep at night without fear. I'll get rid of the wild beasts...You will chase out your enemies and defeat them...I'll give you my full attention...I am God, your personal God."

The commandments are to be clean, to eat well, to exercise and rest and sleep, all in godly balance. The reward: freedom.

I think I like Leviticus after all.

Test Your Own Waters

Something a little different this time. Before you check out ways to improve the care and feeding of your tween daughter, it would be a good idea to look at how you take care of you.

To do that, keep track for a twenty-four-hour period of how you feed, exercise, rest, cleanse, and balance your body-and how you don't. This is going to be most effective if you jot notes to yourself throughout the day and evening and then go over them and assess.

As you look at the things you do and don't do for your health and well-being, for heaven's sake don't rake yourself over the coals about any of it. This is just a way to see what you might be modeling for your daughter-positive as well as could-use-some-improvement. Do I need to say again-she's watching you, Mom!

Going for It

So-how do you keep your tween daughter clean, active, well-fed, and balanced, especially when she's spending more and more time away from you, and when the world is constantly pointing her toward unhealthy options? Rather than tell you exactly what to feed her for breakfast (though should you need advice there I do name some resources for you), I think it will help you more to have some guiding principles that you can apply to your tween and your family situation. I offer you four.

Make health and wellness a priority, ahead of many others.

Ahead of a sparkling clean house. Ahead of the soccer championship. Ahead of straight A's. Even ahead of being at the church for absolutely every event. Put it right up there with her spiritual life and her authenticity and her acceptance of her beauty and her adjusting to the changes of puberty. There are several ways that can be done with your tween daughter.

First, the old USDA Food Pyramid for a healthy diet that we used to go by has been refined. Now you can go to www.MyPyramid.gov and personalize a plan for your daughter according to her age and level of regular exercise. It's perfect for fifteen minutes of mother-daughter time at the computer and will give her a stake in her own nutrition.

The two "food groups" not included on the Pyramid Plan are fat and sugar, but the guidelines for tweens are simple: no more than sixty grams of fat and no more than ten teaspoons of sugar a day. If you have a you're-gonna-have-to-show-me daughter, have her measure eighteen teaspoons of sugar into a glass of water and ask her if she would drink that (even a tween with a sweet tooth the size of Montana won't do it!). Then tell her that's how much sugar there is in a twenty-ounce bottle of soda. Ewwww. A convenient rule of thumb is not to eat anything with more than four grams of sugar per serving. (She's likely to become an avid label reader. Sorry about that.) Just be sure to emphasize that her Pyramid Plan is for feeling great, not for getting as skinny as her BFF.

Consider not having some or any of these in the house: soda, any processed foods with sugar as the first ingredient listed on the package, crackers and chips containing hydrogenated oil, snacks and cereal made with corn, and store-bought cookies. If that cleans out your entire pantry, start small, eliminating one source of empty calories and replacing it with something healthy and just as yummy. For item-by-item alternatives, check out page 77 of Body Talk-with your daughter, of course.

If she sets up a howl because you're tossing out the junk food, observe her over a few days to determine whether she munches when she's nervous, upset, or unhappy. Since saying, "You're just snacking because you failed your math quiz-give me those chips" is going to drive her hand back into the bag, try simply using your tried-and-true talk technique for finding out what might be going on with her. You could be saving her from a future of feeding the things she buries alive.12 It's not only the right food that makes good nutrition attractive. It's the environment it's eaten in. Sitting down together on the floor around the coffee table in the family room with vegetable soup and whole grain bread is every bit as good as gathering in semiformal dress in the dining room for roast chicken and organic asparagus. The only necessary environmental ingredients are family and focus. No TV, no movie in the DVD player. If a media-obsessed group starts into withdrawal when you turn off Nickelodeon and serve the chili, try an around-the-table fun thing. Everyone tells their high and low of the day. Each person answers the question of the evening-what did you see today that was purple? What made you LOL today? Did you witness somebody going out of their way to do the right thing?

Sharing a meal together can take on a spiritual feel, probably because the Supper has such a central place in our worshipping lives. Eugene Peterson, translator of The Message and devoted family man, writes, "Given the prominence of meals in the Jesus work of salvation, it is surprising how little notice is given among us to the relationship between the Meal and our meals."13 Coming together, the way Jesus did with his discipled family, to share conversation and good food and yourselves is to open all of you up to the unhurried, unforced rhythms of grace. Who isn't going to thrive with that in the house? Can the schedule be adjusted to invite that in at least a few times a week?

Taking your daughter grocery shopping for the family meal brings her closer to owning her nutritional health, especially if she helps plan the menus. If, as she's cruising up and down the aisles with you, she asks for the cereal with the marshmallows in it, you can ask her, with a grin, where that fits on the Pyramid, and let her make a better choice that does. When you get home, invite her to help with the preparation, which is a great time for some of those talks in the last chapter. I know-all of this is going to slow you down, and you have things to do. But since you're looking at rearranging the priorities...Again, even if you make this happen just a few times a week, that's healthy progress.

Make sure she's drinking enough liquid, which is about 64 ounces a day depending on weather and how much she's exerting herself. You can try having her drink a glass of H20 before she has that juice she's reaching for. When she hollers she's hungry, give her water as an appetizer, since hunger pangs are just as often a sign that she's thirsty as that she actually needs something to eat. Tell her that her body is 90 percent water; tweens love facts they can spout at the next gathering of the BFFs.

Insist that she get enough sleep-no matter what. "Enough" means she's wide awake and alert within fifteen to thirty minutes after getting up, even if she isn't a morning person. Going to bed and getting out of it at the same times every day will help her settle into a natural rhythm-and the more routine a mini-woman has in an unpredictable world, the better. Help her establish an unwinding routine before she climbs into bed so that she can fall asleep within a half hour-be it a hot bath, a protein snack, or writing in a journal. Bedtime prayers and then some music and she'll probably nod off long before that half-hour mark.

Falling asleep to the TV is not a good idea. In fact, any disturbing media within two hours of her head hitting the pillow can lead to disturbed sleep. Exercise just before she turns in will keep her from sleeping at all until her body settles down. If she lies awake for longer than a half hour every night or is plagued with frequent nightmares, it's time for another gentle what's-going-on probe.

Be attentive if her level of activity slows way down in her tween years. If she spends more than two hours a day playing video games, sitting in front of the computer, watching TV or movies, or reading, she's more sedentary than is healthy for her age. She already sits for a lot of her day in school, riding in the car, and doing homework. Much more than that and she's not burning enough calories to keep her body running in good condition. If she wants to curl up with a book, have her walk the dog first. Let her watch TV-while she's resting up from a wild game of hide-and-seek.

Remember that even if she's an athlete, she's still a child.

In terms of health, that comes into play most directly if your daughter is involved in organized sports. As we've pointed out, sports can be unnecessarily hard on her little body. The upside is that with the kind of information found in this chapter, you're equipped to monitor her involvement and step in when you see that something isn't good for your child. While you can explain your decision to her, this is a situation where you are completely in charge of the choice. Modeling how you make it and carry it out will teach her more than you'll probably know for some time. In addition to what we've already touched on, consider a few more things.

A girl should be seven or eight before you enroll her in organized team sports; girls under seven aren't usually physically ready for contact sports or perhaps emotionally prepared for winning and losing on that level.14 Long-distance running-more than half to three-quarters of a mile at a time-should be put off until her teen years.15 If she's passionate about a sport-and some tween girls truly are-be sure she's being coached by someone who knows that girls run, jump, and land very differently than boys and need to be taught how to do those things safely; any sport that involves changing direction quickly-like soccer or basketball-puts her at risk for ACL injuries in her teen years if she doesn't learn proper techniques now, particularly if she plays that same sport year round. In fact, it isn't safe for her to play back-to-back seasons of one sport without a break and without pursuing other kinds of exercise as well. Overuse injuries in the teen years usually follow repetitive use in the tween years.

No matter how much or how little she plays, put safety before winning. Don't let a coach push her to buck up and get back into the game when she's hurt or overly fatigued. Taking a hit for the team shouldn't involve endangering her body-she's not playing NFL football for millions of dollars a year.

As a matter of fact, put safety before anything in sports. Be sure she warms up before she starts practice, even if the coach doesn't require it. If she's practicing her sport on her own, insist she wear the same protective gear as when she's playing, including high-top shoes for basketball. If she's biking, inline skating, or skateboarding, make a helmet and knee pads a requirement. Safety in sports and physical activities is always inside the Box.

Never (and note that you haven't heard me say "never" very often in this book) tell her she needs to exercise to lose weight. Unless she is medically obese, health and strength are the goals, not some ideal number on the scale. She's going through puberty, so you really don't know that any extra fluffiness she has going on is totally the result of inactivity anyway. Just get her up and moving for fun and to feel great and enjoy everything she does in her daily round. If she's chubby, she probably gets enough grief about it from other kids. From you she needs encouragement to be healthy and whole.

If your daughter isn't athletic and you're concerned that she isn't getting enough exercise, don't push her into sports. Aside from the fact that organized sports aren't equivalent to exercise anyway, if being on a field or a court with a ball and a bunch of people depending on her performance isn't her, it isn't her. The benefit of self-esteem that sports can have for athletically inclined girls is reversed if a less sporty girl has to do something she's bad at three or four times a week. Help her find an activity she enjoys that will increase her heart rate for twenty minutes, suit her personality, and fit into the family's schedule and lifestyle. Together make a brainstorming list of all the things she could do, scribble through the ones that don't jive with those three qualifications, and then let her choose one. Then do what you can to facilitate it. The goal-oriented tween can try the personal fitness plan on pages 62-64 of Body Talk.

Deal delicately with the special health and hygiene challenges of puberty.

If you're a busy mom with multiple offspring and an overwhelming to-do list, it's going to be hard for you to stop and address each tween issue that comes up right then and there. It's good for a girl to learn to handle reasonable waiting, and she can do that if she knows that some undivided attention is forthcoming. You can actually even lessen the intensity of those issues by making your quick responses sensitive ones. Choose the gentlest way to address body issues. Rather than pointing out that it smells like something died in her tennis shoes and she needs to get them the heck out of the laundry room before they stink up the whole house, you could whisper for her to take her shoes outside and you'll explain why later-especially if fellow siblings are in hearing range.

Avoid bringing up what you know are embarrassing topics for her in front of other people. Just because the ride from school to dance class with all her friends in the car seems to you like your only opportunity to ask her if those pimples on her chest have cleared up, it won't seem like that to her. There has to be a better time, doesn't there?

Try not to invalidate how huge this is to her, even if you only have a second to address the issue. "Honey, I promise we'll talk about this tonight before you go to bed, but we really have to get going now" doesn't take any longer than, "It is just so not that big of a deal that some boy said you were fat. He's an idiot. Now get your cleats or we're going to be late for practice."

Don't expect her to instinctively think about all that you have going on instead of what she has going on. You can teach her to consider that, and she'll learn it, but she doesn't automatically know to do it yet. She's a kid. So "Can you not see that I am completely stressed out? Why are you bringing this up now?" won't teach her. "I wish I could stop right now and talk to you about that-I really do. We will absolutely do it later-but for future reference, if I'm already screaming at everybody, that's not a good time to ask"-that will.

Take the initiative to deal with matters of odor and hygiene when you do have some (relatively) uninterrupted time to give her. Then you can talk about daily bathing, clean clothes, deodorant, and baking soda in those tennis shoes. Like everything else we've talked about, approach it with a sense of fun and as part of the something-new-all-the-time path to womanhood. For example, you can suggest that she set up her underwear drawer with a pretty (or hip) paper liner and a sachet to celebrate those new bras. Get out the candles and the music for her first attempt at leg shaving (with you in attendance, of course). Body Talk provides a "That Is SO Me!" checklist on page 94 which lists all the pubescent hygiene areas. You can help her accomplish one small thing-and cheer the results together. No matter how busy your life, you always have time to smile at that little girl who won't be a little girl much longer.

Help her learn to pay attention to what her body needs.

The end goal is for your daughter to take care of herself in healthy, happy ways. Developmentally, she won't be able to do that completely for some years, but you can gradually move her toward that not only by the care and feeding you give her, but by the questions you ask her before you tell her what she needs. The better she gets at answering, the less you'll have to tell her.