Last week I had the fun opportunity to attend our church's girls camp. This is a camp for girls ages 11 through 18 that our church puts on every single year. And I've had the chance to go up to this girls camp as a leader for many years in a row now. But this year was especially fun because all three of my own daughters were up at Girls Camp for the first time ever.
It was so much fun and the girls learned so much, had such a great time, and grew so much in just the short week that we were up there. And I wanted to spend this podcast today talking about some of the things that I observed as I was up there with a hundred plus girls and their leaders. And as I was able to have some conversations about these youth today and the things that they are facing, the challenges that they face and how they're handling them and how we can really help our youth to thrive in this world that we live in today.
So the theme of this girl's camp this year was from the scripture, Philippians 4: 13, and the scripture says, "I can do all things through Christ, which strengtheneth me," and I loved this theme.
I love this scripture. Anyway, but I loved this theme because it really brought out my first observation, which was that we need to let our teenagers do hard things. This is essential for their growth. As we went throughout the week, the girls had opportunities to do a lot of things that were really challenging for them.
Some of these girls are 11 years old and it was the first time they'd ever been away from their families, and just being there was hard. It was hard for them. They missed home, they missed their mom. They didn't have like a phone where they could just call. We didn't have service up there. So they really had to be on their own for the first time.
And that was a hard thing. We let the girls go repelling and some of these girls. It's really scary to allow yourself to back yourself up over the side of a cliff. And you don't know what's on the other side, you're just gonna go down. And that is really terrifying for some of these girls. And so they had to do this really hard thing of trusting their leaders and trusting the rope and walking over the edge of a cliff in the most safe way possible, to go repelling.
Some of the girls had the opportunity to go on an overnight backpacking trip. There were two different overnight trips they could take, and one was about six miles of backpacking and the other was about 15 in two days. And they're not used to going backpacking.
They're not used to walking a long distance uphill with all of their gear on their back, but they were willing and able to do this hard thing. And when they came back, when they came back from all of these experiences and when they reflected on their week, I know that as these girls looked back at the hard things they were able to do, they felt a sense of accomplishment.
They felt a sense of pride, and they learned that they can do hard things, even things that they didn't think they ever could really do. They can do those hard things and when it gets hard in the middle, they can keep going. And this is such an important skill that I think all of our teenagers really need to learn.
We have to step back and allow them to have some experiences that are hard. Now, as a parent, this is a really challenging thing to do. It makes sense to us logically, but emotionally, it's really challenging to allow your child to go through something that's painful and hard. One of my responsibilities up at camp was to help with repelling.
So for the first half of the day, I was up at the top of the mountain. I was the one hooking them into their gear, making sure everything was safe and secure for them, and then coaching them and teaching them what they needed to do to repel: the logistics of, you know, back up, back up, lean back, keep your legs apart, all those things.
And so I got to watch these girls go through probably the most challenging part of repelling, which is backing up to the edge of a cliff and trusting the rope and trusting the person telling you what to do and allowing yourself to go over the edge.
And some of the girls got to the edge and that was as much as they could do: that was really a challenge for them just to get on the rope and back themselves up.
And some of them went over the first little ledge and then they decided it was too much and they wanted to come back up. And so we helped them back up.
And some of the girls through tears decided to go the whole way, even though it was really hard, even though it was really, really scary.
The second half of the day, I had the opportunity to be at the bottom of the rope. I was the belayer, and I got to be down at the bottom cheering these girls on as they came down the face of this mountain, and as they got to the bottom and felt that sense of accomplishment.
And so many times, as these girls got to the bottom of the mountain, as we unhooked them from all these ropes that had been keeping them safe, I was brought to tears seeing the sense of accomplishment and joy and relief on these girls' faces.
When we allow our kids to do hard things, truly hard things that really stretch them, that really push them, that really feel scary to them, their confidence grows in a way that can't be replicated anywhere else.
The different levels of self-confidence in these girls was something else that I observed and really wanted to talk to you about today.
I'm sure it won't surprise you that with more than a hundred girls in the same place, at the same time, not getting enough sleep and eating different food and away from their home and routine, there is always a fair amount of drama at Girls Camp. Just your typical stuff, nothing major, but I noticed the difference between the girls who have a sense of self-confidence, a real understanding of who they are and what they stand for and what is important to them.
Those girls were not the ones involved in the drama very often, those girls, when drama came their way, could handle it and overcome it and move on. We need to instill our teenagers with a sense of understanding of who they are, with a sense of their worth and their value. Because when they know that worth and that value, they do not have to look for it outside of themselves.
If they have friends that are making different decisions, different choices. If they have people that are being unkind to them, they can fall back on that knowledge of who they are. That confidence that they are worthy, that they are valuable, and that they are good.
There are so many ways that we as parents can influence this and help our teens build their self-confidence. And I won't get into that here because I've actually done multiple episodes on how to do that here on the podcast. You can go back to episode 31, has five tips for Raising Competent teens. (https://jenbelltate.com/5-tips-for-raising-confident-teens/) And then inside of my Enjoy community, I actually have an exclusive bonus episode with more ways to raise Confident teens. And I have some workshops on how to really build your teens confidence as well. So lots of resources for that. (https://client.jenbelltate.com/membership)
But that is something that we need to be focusing on as parents, is building our teens sense of self-worth, self-value, and confidence in themselves.
The final observation I wanted to share with you from my week up at Girls Camp was inspired by a conversation I had with another mom who has a teenage daughter who is really struggling to make good choices right now.
We were talking about teaching values to our teens and how important it is to teach them values that will keep them safe, that will prevent them from going down roads that could be very painful and challenging and really hard to recover from.
And while I am a huge proponent of values-based parenting, of teaching our teenagers values, of keeping them safe, of helping them to adopt values that will serve them in their lives, I shared with this mom that I think we have to take a different approach than what we might have taken 10, 15 years ago, or the approach that was taken with us when we grew up.
Because our teenagers are living in a world that is completely different than the world we grew up in. It is completely different than the world was even five, 10 years ago. We have to approach our teenagers today with a different level of care and concern and consideration than has maybe ever been necessary in the history of the world.
These kids are under attack daily. The things that they deal with didn't even exist 5, 10, 15 years ago. Their lives are basically a constant state of fight, flight, freeze, because at any given moment, something that they do or say could be captured on camera or video and shared with the whole world. The level of comparison and expectation for these kids weighs heavily on their shoulders.
And so we as parents need to take a different approach. We cannot add to this stress, we cannot add to this expectation. Instead, we need to be the safe place. We need to be the refuge from the storm for our teens. I would love to do a whole other episode on this concept because I am so passionate about it, but I hope that these simple observations will really help you in your parenting.
We need to let our teens do hard things. That is how they grow. That is how they develop self-confidence. As parents, we need to be actively building their confidence in themselves and building their self-worth. And we need to be the safe place for our teens. We need to be their refuge from the storms of the world.
And when we are, they will want to follow our example. They will want to listen to us. They will want to do the things that we are teaching them.
If you want more help applying all of these principles in your parenting and with your teenager, this is the kind of stuff we are learning inside of the Enjoy community, and I invite you to join us in there where we can support you even more.
