Roadblock #3: Other people call the shots.

When I do authenticity workshops with tween girls, I always ask them why it's so hard to just be them. The hands go up, because they know the roadblocks.

A tween girl knows what's generally accepted as cool and what isn't. She can go ahead and get a perm even though nobody else has one, but she better be prepared to be called everything from "Annie" to "Labradoodle." She collects stamps? I doubt she's going to admit that to the girls with iPods in their backpacks.

What the popular kids might think, even if they're not her friends, matters a lot to tweens. This is wrapped up in what's cool and what isn't, only on a more personal level. This isn't just the general coolness factor; this is about acceptability to the people who can control just how miserable her life will be. Teenage girls can be masters at this, handing down judgments in subtle ways. Tweens don't have that kind of finesse yet, so the decisions about who has fallen from grace are often expressed rather brutally. "You're not eating at this table. You smell." "Go away, Brainiac." "I don't know why I don't like you. I just don't." Anyone who says she would rather have someone tell her straight out how she feels rather than couch it in subtleties never went to elementary school.

A tween girl learns quickly to cover up anything that's going to make her the object of a Popular Crowd attack. This is not to say that if your daughter is a leader and has a lot of friends she's automatically cruel. Such a position merely offers up that temptation, which, again, we'll talk about in a later section. Just know that raw judgment runs rampant in the tween world and has a tremendous impact on authenticity.

Even if they don't worry about their peers in general, they often care what their friends might think. A BFF is a most sacred thing. So much of a tween girl's identity is wrapped up in that special mirror of a person. She knows who she is partly because of what's reflected back to her by this friend she can't live without. She doesn't consciously see it that way, of course. For her it's this-lose the BFF, and who will she sit with at lunch or giggle with in the restroom or call to find out what they're wearing today? She has a good chance of being left to go it alone, because BFF often takes the rest of the friends with her when she inexplicably goes. More on that in section four, where we cover girl politics. For now, just know that many tweens will hide parts of themselves rather than risk losing best friend status.

Roadblock #4: She has to hide certain things.

Every tween has things she thinks she has to hide. This applies to things she herself thinks of as "bad." It isn't just a matter of being laughed at or excluded. It's about "everybody" knowing what a horrible little person she is, in her estimation. She still sucks her thumb in private. She wets the bed. She has a learning disability. Her parents fight all the time, which she believes is somehow her fault. She has been sexually abused and she hasn't told anyone. She just somehow knows she isn't as good as other people and she would die before she would let anybody know it.

Many, many times, especially on the younger end of her tween years, a girl doesn't realize how much of herself she's burying just so no one will find out the "truth" about her. As a result of going underground, she is likely to act in ways that are in themselves "weird" to the rest of the kids, so that she's pushed even farther from acceptance and can't figure out why. Their saying she "is just annoying" tells her nothing about what she's doing to make her the class misfit.

Roadblock #5: She thinks she has to be perfect.

Not all tween girls are perfectionists. I'm sure there are some mothers who wish their daughters were, just for a day or two! It does look like that almost-perfect girl-child would be a dream to raise, but any mom of a junior perfectionist knows her daughter is in constant turmoil. "What if I spill something on my outfit? What if I don't make an A on the test? What if I make some weird noise when I'm laughing? What if I ask too many questions? What if I don't ask enough? What if I ask the wrong ones?" In that quest to reach an unobtainable goal, there's very little room for discovering what's real about her.

Roadblock #6: She's undeniably unique.

On the other end of the spectrum from the perfectionist is the tween girl who is so-um-untypical that even you, her mother, wonder how she's ever going to fit in. She's obsessed with fantasy or history and tends to live in a world of her own. She's incredibly bright and isn't afraid to tell everybody else how much they don't know. She's a little mystic or a mini-prophet and alienates people with her pronouncements about their doom. You love her, you even get where she's coming from, and you're sure her eccentricities are going to be of great service to the world someday. But right now you fear for her, and rightfully so. Though it would seem that the child who doesn't seem to care what anybody thinks is most herself, deep down she does care about acceptance, and that sense of belonging is going to elude her without balance in her life. She is the tween most likely to get in her own way.

Roadblock #7: She has a physical, mental, or emotional challenge.

It's a jungle out there for tweens with physical disabilities, difficulties with learning, and behavioral conditions such as ADHD. Being true to self is harder for no one. No one. They live in a world that is still uneducated in how to accept them as the "regular people" they are. They have special needs, are in special education and special programs, but their peers don't treat them as special. They treat them as anomalies. It's the rare person of any age who can get past that to a real identity.

Roadblock #8: She's overprotected.

With the next few roadblocks I know I'm treading into delicate territory, because you're very likely to think I'm telling you what you're doing "wrong" in your own house. Truly, I'm not. I am only offering up what I've learned and what people far wiser than I have determined, just so you can examine what you're doing and see if it might need to be tweaked. I'm operating under the assumption that you wouldn't be reading this book at all if you weren't looking for ideas and support-and this is meant to be both.

So here goes-there are things that frequently happen at home which can be barriers to a daughter feeling confident to be who she is. I'll start with the danger of overprotection.

I'm not talking about refusing to let your daughter watch R-rated movies or walk to her friend's house a half mile away or wait for you outside the dance studio alone in the dark. That sounds like responsible parenting to me. So does monitoring her Internet usage and checking out the parents when she's invited to spend the night at a new friend's house. I especially love it when moms allow their daughters to be little girls for as long as they want to-playing with dolls, playing dress-up, pretending to be Superwoman, sleeping with her soccer ball. To me, that's the kind of protection a girl needs from her mom.

The kind I'm referring to is "protection" from making choices. We've touched on this before, but I want to make it plain. We know we have had to struggle and fail and even suffer at least a little in order to grow into our truly mature selves. (If you're like me, you're still doing it.) But it's easy for us to forget that our kids have to do the same thing. We cannot do it for them, any more than we can continue to brush their teeth for them. What we can do is teach them how to make decisions. We do them a disservice if we make every single choice on their behalf.

That has a huge impact on their perception of themselves. A tween girl who is constantly told what to wear, what to read, what activities to participate in, which girls to be friends with, and how to spend every minute of her time-all things she could appropriately have some say in without the results being catastrophic-will be insecure about her own preferences and tastes and ideas. She will constantly look to you to make sure what she thinks is "okay"-and her peers will have a great deal more influence on her than you want them to, trust me.

Roadblock #9: She lives in a rule-heavy home.

No one is more aware than I am that you have to have rules at your house or chaos will reign and tweens already feeling entitled will try to take over the whole operation, and sometimes succeed. I've seen it happen, and it isn't pretty. I'm also a big proponent of setting limits early on. Parents who don't do that until their daughters are teenagers and are suddenly facing potentially dangerous choices will themselves face rebellion from kids who understandably say, "Where is THIS coming from?" So, yes, rules now. Definitely.

However, in many Christian homes I've observed, a well-intentioned attempt to raise godly children has stricter standards than a monastery. I can't say it better than Dan Allender, author of How Children Raise Parents: A conservative home characterized by stringent rules, clear consequences, and high demands on the children...often lacks warmth, humility, laughter, and tears. The children perform well, obey the rules, and succeed through hard work and perseverance. What they lack is passion, whimsy, playfulness, and vision.2 What they lack is the freedom to explore what makes them all they can be. The moms and dads are using the Bible like an instruction manual, their faith like a curriculum. It's all about the rules they think Jesus handed down (I have yet to find them in the gospel), rather than about relationship with God (which I have found there). I refer back to the Box example in chapter 1 (page 53). Some things need to be covered by hard-and-fast rules. Other things can be open for respectful discussion. Otherwise you run the risk of raising "generic" kids. No parent really wants that. Overprotection just erupts from the kind of fear we all feel when faced with raising a daughter in this day and age.

Roadblock #10: She is overscheduled.

We've been here before, so I won't beat a dead dog. Just know that in terms of blocks to authenticity, this looms tall. While we're wearing ourselves and our kids out giving them opportunities and providing them with a leg up, as it were, we're not giving them much time to process what they're experiencing and to figure out if it really reflects who they are. Once they're committed to soccer, piano lessons, tennis lessons, junior cheerleading, youth choir, and Wednesday night church programs, they often feel stuck with all of the above and deny any inner whispers of, "I'm sick of soccer," "I would rather read than take piano," "I think cheerleading is sort of lame." They won't let themselves be "quitters," "slackers," or "couch potatoes"-but by staying silent they become inauthentic and miserable and learn to do things that are supposed to be fun and aren't. Nobody shines under those circumstances.

Roadblock #11: Her parents expect too much of her.

It is true that kids, especially tween girls, will rise to the occasion, so to speak. When we raise the bar, they step up and show us all. To a point. Your daughter is already living in a time when average is a bad word. Competition for college acceptance, and even more so for scholarships, has become fierce, and parents are paddling like mad to get their kids up to the front, ahead of everybody else. The demands on the kids can easily become too much, and they lose themselves in grades, trophies, certificates, ribbons, honors, and awards. Everything they are is displayed on a shelf or the refrigerator door. No parent means for it to happen. We all know there's more to them than that. But do they?

Roadblock #12: You are too concerned that she isn't fitting in.

This can get confusing. Above I said that when a tween girl is truly-what did I call it?-"untypical"-that can stand in the way of her finding out about all that she is, and it can separate her from her peers, which deep down makes her unhappy.

Now am I saying that your worry about her being separated from her peers can also keep her from being all that she is?

Yes, but I'm talking about worry that creates a barrier of its own. I learned about this when I researched ADHD in girls for a teen novel I wrote. Experts say that too often when mothers see their daughters aren't fitting in, due to their being "different," they panic and "unwittingly send their girls the message that their differences are a weakness and a cause for shame."3 Rather than helping them to achieve balance while seeing themselves as "gifted non-conformists,"4 anxious moms may try to erase that ultra-individuality altogether. They can't pull it off, but the trying can do some damage.

Roadblock #13: Her brothers and sisters get in the way.

While sibling rivalry is as inevitable as a dog fight when you have only one bone, it can be tough on the development of individuality if brothers and sisters are allowed to put each other down however they want to. It's one thing to fight over whose turn it is to unload the dishwasher, and another to say, "You're still playing with dolls? What a baby." Or "Mom, don't let her wear that-I don't want my friends seeing me with her in that outfit. They'll think I'm a geek too." Thousands of reinforcements of "You're weird" can occur in a home where a girl is growing up and trying to be who she is.

From the Ultimate Parent

God pays no attention to what others say (or what you think) about you. He makes up his own mind.

Romans 2:11 I said earlier that the Bible isn't an instruction manual, and the Christian faith isn't a curriculum. There were times when I was raising my daughter that I wished that were the case, but I'm glad now that it isn't. How much more satisfying and meaningful-and at times memorable!-is it to come to understand the concepts found in the Word of the Lord and apply them to that unique little creature known as your girl-child? Somehow it makes the Bible even more miraculous when we realize that what it teaches works in every single unique individual's life, without forcing all of those lives to look alike.

There are several passages of Scripture that speak to the issue of overcoming the blocks to authenticity.

The first is the one we opened this chapter with: "There's trouble ahead when you live only for the approval of others, saying what flatters them, doing what indulges them. Popularity contests are not truth contests...Your task is to be true, not popular."

Luke 6:26 Jesus understands what tweens are up against. He also points out to us as parents that we constantly struggle with the same thing. Which to me means that we need to offer our girls compassion when they start "living for the approval of others." As women, we are the best equipped to "get" that being true and being popular aren't likely to exist together, and we are the best equipped to help our daughters figure out which is most important. Just knowing that of course it's more godly to be honest than well-liked doesn't automatically make it easy to live that way. But Jesus says here that it's possible. We can show them how.

If we actually know how. Jesus doesn't fail us there either. He spells it out clearly in Matthew 5:14-16.

"You're here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We're going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don't think I'm going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I'm putting you on a light stand. Now that I've put you there...shine!

Keep open house; be generous with your lives."

The light he's talking about is reflected light from what he's given us-not what we try to be to stand out. I see in this passage three things you can instill in your daughter.

Never hide who you are.

Never hide who you are-not by refusing to raise your hand in class so people won't think you're a brainiac, not by holding back in choir so people won't call you a show-off, not by crumpling up your drawings because somebody might say they're stupid. As a mom, your encouragement (not your pushing), your honest praise, your help when someone does call her a name, will make it safe for her to come out from under that bucket. The happy by-product: this will make her more likely to share her faith effectively, something she won't be able to do if she's ashamed of who she is.

Shine as brightly as you can.