Kim Camp - Shes Twelve Going on Twenty: Nurturing Your Daughter Through the Tween Years

Shes
Twelve
going on
Twenty

2000, 2013 Kim Camp

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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the New American Standard Bible, Copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org)

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version. 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked PHILLIPS are taken from J. B. Phillips: THE NEW TESTAMENT IN MODERN ENGLISH, Revised Edition. J. B. Phillips 1958, 1960, 1972. Used by permission of Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.

ISBN 978-0-8499-6487-9 (TP)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Camp, Kim, 1963

Shes twelve going on twenty / Kim Camp.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographic references.

ISBN 0-8499-3759-0

Teenage girlsReligious life. 2. Teenage girlsConduct of life. 3.

Mothers and daughters.

4. ParentingReligious aspectsChristianity. I. Title.

BV4551.2.C32 2000

248.8431dc21

99-059373

CIP

Printed in the United States of America

13 14 15 16 17 RRD 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Introduction
Defining the Dream

Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass.

1 THESSALONIANS 5:2324

S pirit. Soul. Body. The words are familiar to adultswe hear them all the time. But what do these three aspects of human life mean to young girls? How can our daughters relate to God and to other people spiritually? How can they understand the importance of feeding and tending their souls? How can they honor their bodies and see them as Gods house on earth, the temple of the Holy Spirit?

Moms and their girls sometimes have a hard time being, and staying, close to each other. One mom told me that some alien something took over her daughter from ages thirteen to seventeenand then suddenly she got her daughter back. How much I could relate! When I was a teenager, there were times my mom would say I was that kind of daughter. Years later, I became comfortable being the confidante of other womens daughters, someone girls could trust with any kind of information. My goal was always to help daughters communicate with their mothers in a loving and nondefensive way. I also encouraged moms to give their daughters the freedom to share openly without feeling threatened.

I do think that it is important for girls to have other positive role models in their lives, and I felt very grateful to be one for so many girls. But once I had childrenincluding two daughtersof my own, my role shifted. I changed from being a confidante to being a mother.

For fifteen years, I had the incredible privilege of counseling and discipling junior high and high school girls through church and other organizations. But after my fourth child was born, I realized the ultimate act of discipleship for a mom is leading her own children. I felt like I knew firsthand about being the liaison between a young girl and her mom, but to be the mom myself seemed a bit scary. I anticipated a rocky road and began to wonder how it would be to switch roles. Would God provide someone for my girls like I had been for other peoples daughters? I didnt want the same scenarios to happen with my girls that had transpired with so many other moms and daughters.

My oldest daughter was just about the age of the girls Im talking about in this booknine years oldwhen I originally wrote the manuscript. The thought on my mind then was, how can I keep her as close to me as she is today?

Around that time, she showed me where to find the key to her diary, and asked me to make sure no one reads it except her dad and me.

Why is it okay for your parents to read it? I asked. You can keep it just for your private thoughts.

Because you are my parents, she said, and you know everything about me anyway.

Theres still a lot of trust between moms and daughters at age nine. But the more I talked to girls, the more I realized that things can damage trust during the perilous passage of adolescence. As mothers, its vital to focus faithfully and diligently to keep our daughters confidence and remain trustworthy in their eyes.

In all my conversations with adolescent girls, Ive learned how important it is for our daughters to have privacyto enjoy thoughts and conversations that are theirs alone. Yet within that freedom, they also need to feel free to talk to us, knowing that they can express anything, no matter how scary it may seem, and still receive our love, not our condemnation.

As my relationship with peoples daughters created a platform, it led to opportunities to speak at their PTA meetings, youth groups, and parent conferences. After becoming an author, the doors opened to speak regularly throughout the country to school and church groups made up exclusively of junior high and high school girls. These opportunities provided the chance to survey hundreds of teenage girls, read their responses, written in their own words, and write about what they consider to be the most important issues.

Theyve talked to me about their lives, their problems, their fears, and their dreams. And theyve talked to me about their mothers.

Thirteen-year-old Amanda asked me a question that I bet Ive heard a hundred times: Why is it that everyone can understand me better than my own mom?

For years I had wondered why adolescent girls and their mothers have so many problems. Have you wondered about that too? Believe me: once I had daughters of my own, I was more committed than ever to finding the answer.

Of course, sometimes girls forget that their moms are people too. People with schedules and commitments. People with hopes and dreams. People with strengths and weaknesses. People to whom God has given the enormous responsibility for the well-being of their sons and daughters. Fortunately, He has always made His wisdom available to mothers, as well as a little extra bonus of mothers intuition.

A number of books, including a bestseller called Reviving Ophelia, Power, I hope that wemothers and daughters alikewill work together to develop God Power in our lives, because our greatest potential will always be found in Christ.

So, in the pages that follow, we will explore the best possible ways to communicate with our daughters on such topics as peer influence, music and the media, competition and conflict with friends, drugs and alcohol, sex and purity, and diet and exercise (including eating disorders). This book was born with the hope that as Ive been seeking answers as a mom, I would be able to share the invaluable lessons Ive learned, not only from some very articulate young girls, but also from insightful and gifted role models who have helped to shape my own view of parenting. One of those role models is Ruth Bell Graham.