Teenage girls feel 'silenced and squashed' - author

Teenage girls have a message for their parents and the rest of the world; we're smarter than you think we are. So says Chelsey Goodan who tutors girls in their teens.

Goodan is on a mission to deliver that message from her students, that too often teenage girls feel dismissed as dramatic, mean or shallow, she told RNZ's Afternoons.

After 16 years of listening to their concerns about beauty, shame, people-pleasing and friends, Goodan offers advice for parents and caregivers in her new book, Underestimated: The Wisdom and Power of Teenage Girls.

Two strong themes emerged from her conversations with teenage girls, she said.

"One is how judged they feel. They just feel criticised by society, parents, teachers, peers, like they just can't do anything.

"Whatever they're wearing, what their grades are just they feel very judged."

Being allowed space for their feelings is another, she said.

"They are so stereotyped and dismissed as just having big feelings as if it's a negative, bad thing.

"Instead, they end up silenced and squashed. And they push that down deep inside of them, which creates this scream, if you will."

Her main advice to parents was listen to their daughters without judgement.

"They don't feel heard, they feel misunderstood. And it's their hope that their parent will seek to understand them first, rather than jumping in to fix them to give their them their advice or quickly slap positivity on a difficult situation.

"Lots of times a girl just needs someone to listen and reflect back what's going on for her."

Adults consistently underestimate teenage girls, she said.

"Across the board I see adults underestimate the intelligence and the ability for a girl to engage in really intellectual conversations around these seemingly harder concepts,

"But they totally understand these concepts and want to talk about them and want to unpack them and share their thoughts."

Teenage girls also feel under intense pressure to be perfect, she said

"It's a response to trying to give girls competence which is a really good intention.

"But how they've been experiencing it is, if they are perfect in school, or they get into a good college and they get perfect grades, that's what makes them have worth and value in the world.

"They've tied their sense of self-worth to it so intensely that the pressure is too much."

Parents fear social media, but she said, trust girls to make good choices.

"Probably my biggest advice is involve your daughter in the conversation, because then it's going to be different for every girl and every dynamic.

"I have a good amount of girls I know who do put their phone away by their own choice at night because they don't want to be looking at their phone, it wasn't forced on them by their parents."

Girls also have a strong awareness of the kinds of accounts they follow, she said.

"And this is where we underestimate girls, I mean the content I know they want to see it has a lot to do with mental health, psychology, feminism, social justice, racial justice.

"They're really into those topics. And there's a lot of social media content that actually is really cool and engages them on that."

She also sees wisdom in the girls she tutors about bullying behaviour.

"When I talk to a girl about a mean girl, that might be being mean to her, I say, what is that girl's home life? What are her parents like? And the girl usually knows something's not always great going on at home. I go, 'do you think she's functioning out of pain?' … the girl would be, 'Yeah, that sucks for her, I feel bad for her.'"

This innate compassion is another way teenage girls are underestimated, she said.

"A girl might be a bully, because she's dealing with some pain at home, the girls really get that and can detach and not take it so personally.

"And again, that's where we're under-estimating this new ability of them to have care and compassion and empathy."