Raising Girls (Who Think For Themselves) with guest Dr. Tim Jordan
On this episode of Brainy Moms, Dr. Amy Moore and Teri Miller interview Dr. Tim Jordan, developmental and behavioral pediatrician and author of the book, She Leads: A Practical Guide for Raising Girls Who Advocate, Influence, and Lead. Dr. Tim specializes in working with girls. He shares how we can support their intrinsic motivation, how we can teach them to stop giving their power away, how to teach them to advocate for themselves, how to help them become leaders in their own way, and how to strengthen connections as a family overall. It’s an episode full of great strategies for raising girls who think for themselves.
A note from Dr. Amy: I’m a boy mom. But Dr. Tim’s advice to our listeners on how we can (and can’t) motivate our kids, how we can connect as a family by taking breaks from devices, how we should and shouldn’t use rewards, and how we need to gently nurture our kids’ exploration of their futures…it’s all gender-neutral advice. Boy moms will walk away smarter after this episode, too!
Read the transcript and show notes for this episode:
Raising Girls (Who Think For Themselves!)
with guest Dr. Tim Jordan
Dr. Amy Moore:
Hi. Welcome to this episode of Brainy Moms. I’m Dr. Amy Moore here with my co-host Teri Miller, coming to you from Colorado Springs, Colorado. Our guest today is Dr. Tim Jordan. Dr. Tim is a developmental and behavioral pediatrician who specializes in working with girls from grade school through college. In addition to being a physician, he’s an international speaker and consultant, blogger and podcaster, founder of Personal Growth and Leadership Development Camps for Girls, and is the author of six parenting books, including his latest, She Leads: A Practical Guide for Raising Girls Who Advocate, Influence, and Lead.
Teri Miller:
Welcome, Dr. Tim.
Dr. Tim Jordan:
Thanks for having me. That’s a mouthful, isn’t it?
Teri Miller:
Yeah. Well, you know, it’s the title and the subtitle. It’s all good.
Dr. Tim Jordan:
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Well, you’ve accomplished a lot.
Teri Miller:
Yeah. You can have it long. Well, we’d love for our listeners to hear about your book and the leadership principles that you’ve got in there for our daughters, but before we even get into that, I want to hear your story, if you could tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and what brought you to focusing your practice and your work solely on girls.
Dr. Tim Jordan:
Well, my original training, I’m a pediatrician but I did a two year fellowship called Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics. I did general PEDS for about two or three years and then decided it just wasn’t what I wanted, just for a lot of reasons. Mostly, I wanted more flexibility in my schedule. Back then, that was 30 years ago, I was tied to the beeper. It wasn’t a cellphone. It was a beeper. That’s how old I am.
I changed over. I started just counseling kids. I’ve done that for 30 years. About 15 ish years ago, I started seeing just girls, probably for a lot of reasons. My wife says it’s because when I was growing up, I had five younger sisters. I was nine and 10 years older than the youngest two. I was their second dad. My dad worked really long hours. I started taking care of girls, if you will, a long, long time ago. Girls in the counseling practice were a lot more interesting for me. They were “easier”. Some people would probably say, “Oh my God. You’re going to be talking to middle school girls. How is that easier?”
I think I’ve always been comfortable with girls. Also, we’ve been running personal growth weekend retreats and summer camps, this is our 31st year coming up, and so I’ve been sitting in circles with kids and girls for 30 years. Our curriculum and everything we did became more girl-friendly, if I can say that, in this era. A lot of the girls after a week of our summer camp, their favorite part was our morning circles talking about themselves and each other and sharing stories and crying and learning and all that. They loved that, they don’t have safe places to do that, whereas most of the boys hated it.
I think our curriculum became more girl-friendly, if you will. Boys need that social/emotional learning work as well. We just became more girl-friendly, if you will. That was also great. Once the boys were not there, the girls were a lot more focused … That’s not probably an awakening for you but it was just a lot easier because they weren’t so distracted, they didn’t care what they looked like, and they became even more focused, especially with our learning stuff. Beyond the learning stuff, we run around and we do goofy things. We’re a summer camp but the learning part is what makes us unique.
Teri Miller:
Wow.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Yeah.
Teri Miller:
So good. [crosstalk 00:03:38].
Dr. Tim Jordan:
I’ve been married for 40 years. We have three adult kids. Sorry. I interrupted you. [inaudible 00:03:43]. We have three adult kids. We have a daughter, Kelly, who is 38 and she’s married and she has our only grandkid so far, our three and a half year old grandson Louie. Then I have a son, TJ, 36, lives in Chicago. He got married last summer. He works with boys. Then my other son, John, lives in New York. He and his wife live in New York. He works in documentary business. He’s a producer of documentaries.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Fascinating. Yeah. Your books and your camps that you were just talking about, they’re focused on girls. You focus on leadership development skills, right? For girls. Talk to us a little bit about why that is so important, why parents should care about nurturing leadership qualities in their daughters, expand on that a little bit.
Dr. Tim Jordan:
For a long time, we’ve been talking about empowering girls and breaking ceilings and we want girls and women in more leadership positions and all. We don’t really … I read a lot. There really isn’t much written about how do you actually parent girls to that end? How do you “raise a leader”? By leader, I don’t necessarily mean being president of the United States, although, that would be wonderful. It’s more like just being a leader in your life, being in charge of your life, being in charge of yourself, your emotions, taking good care of yourself.
Dr. Tim Jordan:
What we found is that there are a lot of things that girls do … By the way, when a lot of women read that book, and you two have read it, maybe this will resonate with you, a lot of them say, “My God. I became so much more aware of what I didn’t get or I missed out on”, the conditioning that girls have gotten for a long time about not stepping out and not being too out there, not being too loud, and there’s still that good girl conditioning that still goes on today.
Dr. Tim Jordan:
I saw a lot of places where girls were giving their power away and girls weren’t advocating for themselves and girls weren’t resolving their conflicts directly. Lots and lots of things that I think would not allow them to grow up and be powerful women who were in charge of themselves and their relationships.
Teri Miller:
Yes. I think that’s so important. You talk about needing to redefine leadership and power. Tell us what do you mean by redefining leadership and power?
Dr. Tim Jordan:
Well, I ask this question of girls a lot in my retreats. We also have a school program, so I’m with groups of girls a lot. If I ask them who are the leaders in your school, they will say the student council president or the team captain or the queen bee, the most popular pretty girl in the school. If you ask them who are heroes? They’ll say first responders, soldiers, professional athletes. They mention all those kinds of things but most girls don’t fit those roles. Then they don’t see themselves as being a leader.
Dr. Tim Jordan:
What I want them to do is to be aware of all of the different places and ways that girls can show courage and be brave and be a leader and step up. Sometimes it’s not quite as loud … It’s not like George Bush standing on the aircraft carrier in his fake uniform saying mission accomplished. That’s the old masculine model of leadership and power. But there’s a lot of ways that girls show leadership that are not that.
Dr. Tim Jordan:
I tell them a story sometimes about there’s an old story about Buddha and one day he was sitting and talking to his followers and this angry general, for some reason, came up and starting screaming at him, yelling and screaming and shouting and cursing, and Buddha just sat there peaceful and calm, didn’t react, which, of course, made the general more angry. Then at some point, he drew his sword, he threatened to kill Buddha, he screamed more, Buddha sat there undisturbed, calm, until finally the general got frustrated and he put his sword back and stomped off.
When he was gone, his followers said, “Why did you not say something? He was screaming. He was threatening your life. You sat there. You didn’t do anything.” Buddha said something, which is really powerful. He said, “If someone offers you a gift and you refuse to accept it, to whom does the gift belong?” His followers said, “Well, the person who offered the gift.” He said, “That’s right. It’s the same way with people’s anger.”
A girl who doesn’t respond to teasing, a girl who knows how to manage their own emotions, and they learn that I’m responsible for my feelings, I’m responsible for my actions and my reactions to things, I don’t ever blame people for those parts, that’s one way that they can keep their power and be powerful.
They need to see that if you’re the kind of girl who brings the class together, if you’re the kind of girl who is the confidant, all your friends come to you because you’re the mature girl who is a good leader and you’re safe, if you’re the kind of person who can advocate for themselves, if you’re the kind of person who is willing to put their ideas out there, there’s all kinds of ways that girls are showing leadership that maybe aren’t quite so noticed, so we need to notice them and acknowledge them for those ways because if they’re acknowledged for those things, they start seeing themselves as leaders and thus it’s much more likely they’re willing to step out and be a leader.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Absolutely.
Teri Miller:
So good.
Dr. Amy Moore:
You talk about three leadership qualities that are most in need today, being inner directed, have high social/emotional intelligence, and being assertive. Can you talk a little bit more about that idea of being inner directed and how parents can help guide girls to develop that quality?
Dr. Tim Jordan:
Yeah. It’s really important for girls to … Inner directed, to me, means … For instance, I ask girls what kind of grades do you want? In my counseling practice, I’ll say, “What kind of grades do you want?” They’ll say, “Well, As”, like, you idiot, right?
I’ll say, “Why do you want As?” They’re like … I get one of two answers. One answer is oftentimes, “Well, I want to get good grades so I can get into a top college” and I’ll say, “Why do you want to get into a top college?” “Well, I can get a good job.” “Why do you want to get a good job?” “So I can make a lot of money.” They’ve been hammered with that little narrow path and that’s the way, so that’s like, “I’m just following the path that people have been telling me.”
The other half say, “Uh, uh …” They don’t know. They’ve never really thought why do I want to get As? What do I want in school? Why do I want to play soccer? Why? Why? Why? We don’t do that enough. All along the way, no matter how old your daughters are or sons, for that matter, no matter how old your kids are, it’s good to start asking them what do you like about that?
My wife and I were in Canada a couple years ago teaching a father/daughter, like a three day weekend retreat, these are seven, eight, nine year old girls and their daddies and they’re from all over the United States and Canada. We were talking to the dads about how to make sure your daughters are self-motivated, blah, blah.
We were talking about asking them questions like why. Then we did a session with the dads and the daughters together and this one little girl was sitting in the front row with her dad, sitting on his lap, so I said, “Let me show you what I mean by that.” I said to the little girl, I said, “What’s your favorite thing in the world to do?” She said, “I love to dance.” I said, “Why do you like to dance so much?” She said, “Well …” You could see she paused and thought. She said, “I like it …” She said, “When I first started doing dancing, they would tell us what to do so if I’m out there trying to follow the steps, they’d tell me” but eventually she said, “I just start doing whatever I want. I start to create my own movements” and stuff. She said, “I love being in control.” Everybody laughed. I was like, “Good for you.” That’s her inner, intrinsic, internal motivation.
No matter what your kids … Whether it’s art or theater or whether it’s soccer or whether it’s schoolwork or grades or activities, if we start asking them, “What do you want? Why do you like that? What’s the feelings that you get from that?” and they tell us, we can mirror that back and then they internalize that and that is always there for them.
Dr. Tim Jordan:
They won’t need us to stand next to them in their dorm in college, patting them on the back and telling them how great they are. They’ll start learning to think for themselves. There’s a hand-off along the way, not the day they walk into college but all the way through high school for sure, where they need to start knowing what’s best for them more than we do.
Now I tell them, if your parents say, “What about this?” And they give you suggestions, I would listen. If your school counselor says, “I think you should” blah, blah, blah, I say, “Listen but then go home and go to your room and close your door and sit down and say, ‘But what’s right for me? What feels right to me?” Start being able to get in touch with and access their intuition, their heart, whatever you want to call it and start making decisions from that place as opposed to I want to please people, I don’t want to disappoint people. They’ll make decisions socially because they don’t want to make people angry or disappoint people or get people mad at them or lose friends.
They’re making decisions based upon all that stuff as opposed to what do I want and what’s right for me? That’s one example.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Can you expand a little bit on what happens then when parents bring rewards into this scenario? Does that impact them? [crosstalk 00:12:58].
Dr. Tim Jordan:
It ruins everything. It ruins everything. No. It does, because it distracts them. There’s a whole body of research that would back up that. My two favorite authors, if your listeners are interested, one of them is Alfie Kohn, K-O-H-N. He wrote some good books, lots of articles starting like 20 or so years ago but even up until the present moment. One of his famous books was Punished By Rewards.
The other more recent book was by Daniel Pink called Drive, also put together lots of research, you’re nodding your head so you’ve read the book I guess.
Dr. Amy Moore:
It’s on my bookshelf.
Dr. Tim Jordan:
He also gathered research that shows that everything that our kids do, and that we do, by the way, everything we do has in it a reward, a job well done. Like that little girl, “I like being in control. I like to make up my own steps.” There’s intrinsic good feelings that no matter what we’re doing. When we start to give kids things like rewards or they’re too worried about punishments, they’re distracted from that internal intrinsic, their reasons, and they start doing it for those.
There was a good study. It was in Alfie Kohn’s book I read a long time ago where … You may remember this. They wanted to get kids to read more and so the schools got this really “good idea”. They said, let’s make a reading contract at the beginning of the semester and the kids might say I’m going to read four books and if at the end of the semester they had read four books, they got a free personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut. People were like, “What a great idea. We’ll motivate kids to read” and blah, blah.
What they found, which is not surprising, is that the kids who were readers read like 20 books, they didn’t care about the pizza, but the kids that they were really trying to reach, to motivate to read, they read four books, the simplest books they could find, and then stopped. [crosstalk 00:14:53].
When parents say to me, “How do I motivate my kids?” I say you’re asking the wrong question because you’re still in charge, you’re still trying to do it for them. As opposed to saying, how do I support my child’s intrinsic motivation? How can I help them get in touch with that and have that be what guides them and motivates them? When kids are allowed to pick and choose and given more autonomy with things, they’re more engaged, whether you’re talking about schoolwork or soccer or drawing or theater, whatever it may be, they’re more engaged and if they’re more engaged, they will keep going, they will persevere through obstacles and then when they reach the end zone, it’s their touchdown dance, it’s their thing, and they’re way more fulfilled.
If mom and dad are complaining and crabbing and micro-managing and reminding them 20 times a day to do their homework, if they get a good grade, who owns that? It’s not really their deal. They don’t get as much from it.
Teri Miller:
Yeah.
Dr. Amy Moore:
You’re not suggesting that we stop giving high fives and praise, verbal praise for a job well done. You’re saying we shouldn’t be paying our kids to get good grades or buying them a new bike because they had three touchdowns or whatever.
Teri Miller:
Or grounding them when they don’t.
Dr. Tim Jordan:
Well, I am saying in a sense I think there’s been too much of the external, the praise-y kind of stuff. Because, again, that’s more like then our kids end up doing things to please us or to not disappoint us, to avoid a punishment. Those are low levels of motivation. A high level is you sit down with your kids, for instance, at the beginning of the semester and say, “What are your intentions for this semester? For this school year?” And let your kids tell you, “What do I want socially? Maybe I want to make a few new friends” or, “Maybe I want to branch out” or, “Maybe I want to try some new activities” and you may say, “How do you want to do with your learning? What’s your interests this year?” “Well, I’m taking this one class in art and I really like art, so I’m looking forward to that.”
Dr. Tim Jordan:
You might say, “What kind of grades do you want to get?” If they say, “I want As”, I would say, “Why?” Let them say to you, these are my intentions, this is what I think I want. Then you can check in with them all along the way, every week or two, and say, “How you doing? You said you wanted this or that, how are you doing with that? You said you wanted to branch out with friends. How’s that going?” If you’re stuck, then you say, “What could you do about that? Let’s brainstorm.”
It doesn’t mean you fly to Hawaii for the semester and say, “I’ll see you in December when the report cards come.” You’re saying, “I’m here. I’m not going to micro-manage you. I’m not going to check that online computer thing every five minutes and say, ‘Oh my gosh, you got a C on the quiz last hour.” Parents are really … It’s hard not to micro-manage when all that information is available. I tell parents I wouldn’t even look at those things, I’d rather you sit down with your kids and say, “Show me your work. Show me how you did in the last two weeks” and let your kids explain to you what they’re learning and if they got a good grade and they’re excited, say, “Why is that so important to you?”
To me, that’s a way better long-term way to help your kids become self-motivated for all those reasons I mentioned before.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Absolutely. Yeah. I don’t even have a password setup for that parent portal.
Dr. Tim Jordan:
Good for you.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Just decided I’m not even going to look at it.
Dr. Tim Jordan:
It’s hard not to look and if you look and you see one little bleep, it’s like what am I going to do about it? A lot of times those things on that portal are behind anyway and it’s out of … I agree with you. I wouldn’t even look. I’d much rather you have conversations with your kids.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Yeah. Absolutely.
Teri Miller:
Well, this is all incredibly timely for me, personally, and I want to challenge our listeners, you’re a mom, you are a woman, my listener, and whether you have daughters or not, I want to suggest that this book could be incredibly powerful. I’m 50 and I’m reading through your book, I printed it out about three weeks ago or so, and I’ve got to just chapter two, I’m not too many pages into it and I was sobbing over the section, The Good Girl Conditioning.
Teri Miller:
I started reading this book about … I have five daughters. I am reading this book like, “Yeah. This is great. I want to encourage my daughters. I’m going to lift them.” My daughters that are grown, my daughters that are still at home. I mean, my oldest is 27 and my youngest is nine, both girls. Really have that in mind. I’m reading this for my daughters.
Teri Miller:
I get to, what? Page seven? Good Girl Conditioning. Let me tell you, it was my heart that needed work. I was sobbing thinking about the conditioning I received, and I am not just talking childhood, my entire life, most of my years of motherhood, of being a good wife, a good girl mom, a good girlfriend, all those good girl conditioning things that the world tells us are true about us, and the external, what you’re just talking about, external motivation instead of intrinsic motivation and how much of my life has been shaped by external motivation.
I need to get good grades, I love that that kid said … Or you said an option is to get good grades to go to college to make more money, because I would have said, “I need to get good grades so I don’t get in trouble, so I please my parents, so that I am the good girl I have to be.” I would have said … That little girl that you talked about, I was the dancer, I would have said, “I dance because people clap, because people like it.”
Again, it was all external motivation. I think it’s so powerful for us as moms, as women, to read information like this and realize that we can make this experiential for us. Listeners, you don’t just have to read this and think this is knowledge for my daughters. This could be life-changing for me.
I love that in your section on Good Girl Conditioning, you then move onto Carol Dweck’s the Growth Mindset, the change possibility, growth mindset instead of fixed mindset, that I may have started badly but I am going to end well. That’s what I can think now as a 50 year old woman, I [crosstalk 00:21:55]. Okay. Whatever. 51. Almost 52. You know, approximately [crosstalk 00:22:02].
Dr. Tim Jordan:
She’s trying to be a good girl. [crosstalk 00:22:04].
Teri Miller:
Approximately 50. But just that I can make that transition. It’s never, never, never too late. If I don’t begin making that transition from external motivation to intrinsic motivation, how can I possibly teach that to my daughters? It’s got to start with working on my own heart and my own issues, so bravo. This is big powerful stuff.
Dr. Amy Moore:
I don’t resonate with the Good Girl Conditioning experience. Can you talk about that, Dr. Tim? What is that? Why is it such a bad thing?
Teri Miller:
You were a naughty girl.
Dr. Tim Jordan:
I’ve seen lots of you before. It’s interesting. It’s the year 2021. I guess it’s okay to say that in your podcast. At my retreats sometimes, I’ll ask a group of girls, say, in high school, maybe 20, 25 girls in the circle, I’ll say let’s make a list of the qualities of a good girl. A good girl is a girl that all your parents, your teachers, everybody wants you to be. We may think we’re way beyond that, women’s liberation and all that, we should be way past that.
They’ll make that list of things like not too much, please people, always be happy, not too loud, not too out there. They’ll make the same list I think women would have made 30, 40 years ago. It’s that conditioning that says you’re supposed to be this way, not too much, not too out there, lead from behind, make sure everybody is happy, put other people’s needs before yours. There’s just a whole list of those kinds of things.
They’re not bad. It’s just that if that’s how you’re leading most of your life … Let me give an example. If I ask a room full of girls in high school or an audience full of women like you all, I’ll ask them how many of you, if one of your friends says, “Hey, where do you want to go out to eat tonight?” I’ll say, “How many of you is your automatic first answer, typically, ‘I don’t care”? Most of the girls, almost all the girls, and most or almost all of the women, raise their hand. They’re like, “I don’t care. Whatever you want.”
Dr. Tim Jordan:
It’s not wrong. It’s just that if that’s your automatic … I tell the girls, what you’re teaching people is that what you have to say and what you want and your needs are not very important, that their needs are more important than yours and, therefore, you’re not important.
You’re always teaching your friends how to treat you. If you’re teaching them that you don’t really care and they can do what they want, then they’re going to walk all over you, they’re going to use you.
I teach them to do little experiments because their fear is if they say, “I really want to go to this movie”, the world will explode, people will be mad at me, they’re not going to want to be my friend, or they’re going to spit in my food, or whatever it may be. I say, “Just do some little experiments. Next time you go out to a restaurant, for instance, and the waiter says, ‘What do you want?”
This was my issue a long time ago until I did personal growth, I was a good boy in my family. I had two older brothers who were naughty and did all kinds of naughty things, maybe like you, Amy, and then I had five younger sisters, and so I became a good boy because I didn’t want to get yelled at. I didn’t want to get what my brothers got, all that screaming and yelling and everything else in my house. I had a hard time asking for what I wanted.
Also, because if I asked my mom for a new pair of football shoes, because I was wearing my older brother’s shoes that were two sizes too big and had holes in the bottom, she would say, “Who do you think your father is, Nelson Rockefeller? You think money grows on trees?” I got this whole litany of if you were a good boy, you wouldn’t ask.
Anyway, I had a hard time with that. I started with things like ordering off the menu, which would make my wife cringe because she was a good girl. They would say, “What do you want to eat?” I would say, “Actually, do you have angel hair pasta? I don’t really like the big fat stuff.” “Oh, yeah. We have that.” “I love sun-dried tomatoes. Could you put some of those on there?” My wife’s over like, “Oh, please don’t … Who is looking at us? Who is watching us?”
What I learned with that experiment was the waiter would go off, he’d come back with just what I asked for, I loved it, I was so happy, I gave him a big tip and everybody was happy. I tell them do little experiments where you ask for what you want. Just say, “Actually, I’d really like to go to this place” or, “I’d like to watch this movie” and then see what your results are and 99 times out of 100, people are like, “Okay.”
They have to start creating different evidence that says it’s okay to speak up, it’s okay to advocate for myself, it’s okay to have an opinion. It’s okay to have needs. I’ve seen so many girls who put other people’s needs before theirs.
Sometimes there’s a reason. I saw a girl yesterday who has a sister who has Down Syndrome. The whole energy of the family was around her older sister. She had heart disease and she needs lots of special care. This girl learned early on, “My sister’s needs are more important than mine” and sometimes they were, because she was going into heart surgery or something, but what this girl decided from watching all that was, “My sister’s needs are more important” and then, unfortunately, that extended to, “Therefore, I shouldn’t even have needs. If I was a good girl, I would make sure everybody else’s needs are handled before mine.” She’s depressed because she’s not asking for what she wants, she’s not getting her needs met.
Anyway, I think it’s really important that you become aware of any good girl conditioning you might be still following and then start doing some experiments and start doing it different, so that you end up getting what you want and having the life that you want and taking care of yourself and setting boundaries.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Great.
Teri Miller:
Good. I’m going to take that advice and pass it to my daughters.
Dr. Tim Jordan:
You do it.
Dr. Amy Moore:
You do it, girl. One of my favorite topics as a psychologist is connectedness and the importance of being connected. You wrote an entire chapter called Connections. You talk about the ways that we can teach our kids to be more fully present and connected and one of the ways is by taking breaks from devices. I love this quote, “We all become so preoccupied with what’s happening out there, that we have no time or energy left to focus on what’s going on within.” Talk a little bit more about that.
Dr. Tim Jordan:
Yeah. I see girls all the time in my counseling practice. I had one a couple days ago. She was tearing up and I was talking … I can’t remember what we were talking about but she started crying a little bit. I said, “What’s going on? What are you feeling?” She said, “I don’t know. This happens all the time. I’ll be at home and all of a sudden, I start crying and I don’t know why.”
If I’ve heard that once, I’ve heard it 1000 times from girls. I think it’s because they don’t want to feel sadness or hurt or disappointment or things like that or their anxiety. They don’t want to think about the negative things going on in their lives and so they just stuff it. They get busy from it or, in this day and age, they get distracted from it. They just pull out their device and they start scrolling or they watch a YouTube video or whatever. It works. It distracts you in that moment from feeling things.
The problem, though, is it comes home to roost because those things, those emotions, those little hurts, those little thoughts they build up. I’ll go through a whole list of questions I’ll ask girls, I’ll say, “Do you know how it feels when you get on that overload overwhelm?” They’re like, “Oh, yeah.” I’ll say. “For some girls, it starts leaking out as stomachaches or headaches, having a hard time falling asleep.” The first time all day, you turn out the lights, hopefully there’s no device in the room, which is another story, and so all that stuff comes bubbling up. Anxiety, feeling blah, losing their motivation, being distracted, being angry, snapping at people or snapping at yourself. There’s a cost when things build up. I want them to be aware of that.
Those devices aren’t bad. It’s just that if they use them to distract themselves, that’s a problem. When girls come to our weekend retreats and summer camps at the check-in table, one of the first questions is where’s your phone? They’ll pull it out like [inaudible 00:30:13] or a pod or something and we’ll say, “Hand it to your dad, hand it to your mom.” “I need it for an alarm clock.” They have this whole list of why they have to have their phone, alarm clock and music to fall asleep. I’ll say, “I got it. Mm-hmm (affirmative). Hand it over.”
Just for a week or a weekend. Here’s the interesting thing. I’ve been doing this for the last half dozen or so years. At the end of the week of camp with no electronics, I ask the girls, I’ll say, “How many of you missed your phone?” The answer is none of them missed their phone. When their parents show up, they want their phone back but when they’re there at the week, they don’t miss it. They say it actually was kind of nice, so less stressful, so less worrying about stuff, I didn’t have to worry about that for a whole week, it was really nice having a break from it.
That’s a lot better for them to experience that and then start taking care of themselves as opposed to their parents trying to make them turn their phones off. I also think that … My experience with girls … I have a whole hand of readiness signs to look for in our kids, in our daughters that says they might be ready for devices and, especially, social media, because I see so many girls today who get those devices in late grade school, in middle school. I just don’t think they’re ready. Are they able to take care of themselves with their friends? Are they embroiled in drama? Do they allow words to hurt them? Do they compare themselves a lot? Can they set boundaries? How’s their impulse control?
There’s a whole list of social and emotional responsibility things that you can start looking for in your kids that says they might be able to handle that. If they’re not handling those things without social media, it’s going to be a disaster when they get social media. It just amplifies all of it.
I tell parents I don’t think your daughters are ready for social media until, at least, high school and with a good track record of self-responsibility, impulse control, taking care of themselves with their friends, et cetera, et cetera.
I think when those devices are around, sometimes … We’re having two weekends … Not this weekend, the next one, we’re having a bunch of the high schoolers over to have a campfire in our backyard, girls who went to camp last summer. One of the things that we’ll do is we’ll have a basket at the front door for their phones. That’s something that they’ve taught us over the years and they’ve asked for because, otherwise, if they’re sitting around talking in a circle and everybody is laughing and then one person whips out that phone, all of a sudden, everybody’s got their phone out and then they’re sending pictures and then they’re not present with each other.
That’s why at camp I want them to internalize this feels good to actually talk to people and when we’re walking down to the lake, we’re talking and when we’re sitting at meals, we’re talking and we have each other’s full attention.
This is true for adults too, by the way. It’s not just our girls, our middle school/high school girls. It’s good for them to have experiences where they experience that so then they feel the difference and they can choose it because they know it’s one of those ways to take care of themselves.
Dr. Amy Moore:
How can parents create those experiences? They’re not going off on a retreat any time soon. How can we do that without sounding like a nag?
Dr. Tim Jordan:
You can at the dinner table. Have a little family meeting. You can say, “I want to talk about how much time we’re all spending”, not you’re spending but we’re all spending on our devices and I want to make some agreements about when, how, and stuff. I don’t want to just have some rule. I want to hear what you guys think.
Dr. Tim Jordan:
I know from lots of experience that girls who complain a lot about their parents being on their phones a lot, doing work at home and doing work at the dinner table and taking calls when they’re outside kicking a soccer ball around, parents are hooked to those devices just as much. The family can make agreements about maybe no phones at the dinner table or the breakfast table or the lunch table. They might make some agreements about not having their phones when they go outside to shoot hopes. They might have some agreements about not having their phone in the car or [inaudible 00:34:27]. I think those movie things in the backseat of the car is one of the worst things besides the school hotline things.
But so that we can actually talk and sing nursery rhymes, if you have little kids, and connect. There’s all these little places where we could connect but we’re all distracted with our phones. If the family makes that agreement, it’s not a rule that they’re going to push against because they want it too and they understand why and they also realize the value of having their parents’ full attention at the dinner table.
Yeah. I really like that you’ve pointed that out, that that should be something that the family commits to setting those types of boundaries. Teri is fantastic at boundary setting with her phone. If I need something and I text her and say, “Hey, I need you to sign this form” or whatever, and she’ll go, “I’m with my kids right now. I’ll get to it this evening.” She’s very matter of fact.
Dr. Tim Jordan:
That’s awesome.
Dr. Amy Moore:
I respect that. I’m the opposite. If you need me, I’m here for you. I like that, that maybe I shouldn’t always be available.
Teri Miller:
I love that you’ve said that. I never realized that. Thank you.
Dr. Amy Moore:
[crosstalk 00:35:40] all the time [crosstalk 00:35:40].
Dr. Tim Jordan:
You were probably one of those mature kids … I see a lot of mature old soul kind of girls where their friends always come to them with all their problems because they’re really old soul, mature, solid kids, which is awesome except that they have a hard time saying no, and so they get drained because people will call them at 11 o’clock at night, “I’m so depressed” or, “I want to cut” or, “I’m suicidal” and then they can’t not keep checking their phone all night because, “My friend is depressed” or whatever and so they have a hard time setting the boundary and taking care of themselves as well. They don’t have the experience or the wherewithal to understand that you’re not going to be very helpful to people if you’re drained.
The other thing that those girls say to me a lot is a lot of times they’ll say, “I’m there for all of my friends but my friends aren’t there for me. It’s not reciprocal.” I have them take responsibility for their part, which often times is their friends look at them, they’re all together, and they’re the mature kid who seems like they have their whole life together and often times they haven’t shared much so their friends just assume that they’re okay and/or they haven’t set a boundary like you have, Teri, that says I’m not available right now, I need to take care of myself tonight. If you haven’t talked to your friends that your needs are important too then a lot of times they’ll just keep stepping on them or just keep calling or keep whatever.
The other thing, you read this in the book, girls have a hard time setting boundaries because they confuse assertive with aggressive. Just setting a normal, reasonable whatever kind of boundary, a lot of girls say, “I wouldn’t do that”, why not? “Well, that’s being mean” or, “That’ll make somebody mad” or whatever and so they don’t even do just normal kind of boundary setting because they haven’t really learned the difference between being assertive versus aggressive. That’s part of that good girl conditioning is if you’re too out there then people will think you’re the B-word or you’re bossy or …
I had a girl who came to see me … This story may or may not have been in the book but I saw her when she was in high school. She was a senior. She was having a hard time … It was around this time about two years ago, two or three years ago, and she was having a hard time making decisions about college, about where to apply, all those kinds of things and so she was procrastinating and then she got all stressed out.
I came to see her and she had a hard time making decisions, and so we talked it through. What we came to … To make a long story short was she remembered back in third grade, she went to the parent/teacher conference with her mom and she was sitting in the back of the classroom and her and her mom were talking. She overheard the teacher say to her mom, “Your daughter is very bossy and if she doesn’t change her ways, she’s never going to have any friends.” It hit this little girl like a ton of bricks, like, “Oh my gosh” and so from that day forward, she was extra careful not to step on anybody’s toes. She didn’t want to ask for what she wanted because she was so afraid people were going to judge her as being bossy, that she wouldn’t have friends. She stopped advocating. Now here she is, an 18 year old girl/woman and she doesn’t know how to take care of herself in that way.
At camp, we do role playing. We’ll have them set some sort of a social scene that’s common and where somebody needs to set a boundary and then we’ll have one group act out doing it passively, another doing it aggressively, and another doing it assertively, so they actually can see and feel the difference. We talk about how it’s not being mean. It’s taking care of yourself. We tell them, if you set a boundary and your friend gets upset and stomps off and they don’t want to be your friend, what they’ve taught you isn’t that you were mean and bossy. What they taught you is I’m just a lower level friend, I’m not very mature.
If you had a good friend, a mature friend, and you said, “You know what? You’re stepping on my toes. I would appreciate … It just feels disrespectful.” A good friend would say, “I’m so glad you told me. I didn’t realize. I’m glad. I’m glad. I didn’t realize that.” If it’s somebody who says, “Nah nah nah” and they stomp off and whatever, they’re saying something about themselves, not you.
Teri Miller:
So good. Oh my goodness. That story was in the book.
Dr. Tim Jordan:
Was it? Okay.
Teri Miller:
I have it highlighted in my copy here. I have that story highlighted because I thought it was so impacting. I wrote notes beside it about my oldest daughter, Brianne, because she spent many years being … We just talked about this in another podcast interview. For many years in her probably childhood but definitely her teenage years, she’s adopted so she was not with me during that time for me to help her through this, but she was told she was bossy and she was ostracized and the other girls in the children’s home said she was mean and they pushed her aside because she didn’t just follow along with them.
It was later then, as she came into our lives and we were able to just love on her and encourage her, because what I saw in her as she was set apart from the other girls is she had so much conviction and strength and focus and clarity and the word that we used for her a lot is, “You are a go-getter. Honey, you make things happen. You are a spitfire.” It was that difference of it’s the same action, the world can call it … Especially, because she’s a girl, the world can call it bossy or we can help her see that she’s a go-getter and that she’s a spitfire.
Yeah. You speak to that. I love that. You talk about how good leaders are often lost because they are misunderstood and mislabeled. Yeah. You’re speaking to that. Tell us even more about that, I get that, the difference between assertive and aggressive. What else are we seeing in leadership in women that can tend to be mislabeled and misunderstood?
Dr. Tim Jordan:
Well, there’s been lots of studies and things that show that … This is going to sound cliché but it’s still true. If a woman in the workforce is being assertive and is being out there, that many times they’re labeled the B-word. If a man said the exact same thing, they’d say, “What a strong leader. He’s very powerful and all that.” There’s still that. It’s better but it’s still there.
You did a great thing for your daughter, which is you reframed for her, “This is what you’ve been told” or, “This is the labels” [inaudible 00:42:27] or a mean girl or a bossy … The other way of looking at it is you’re just powerful. I see a lot of young kids who are powerful and I say they have rough edges that need to be a little bit smoothed out, they don’t need to be squished, labeled, and medicated. What they need is, yeah, sometimes they do overstep their bounds but that’s how you learn, right? That sometimes you may need to come across maybe in a different way. It doesn’t mean you don’t come across, it doesn’t mean you don’t advocate. It just means you have to know who you’re talking to, you have to be sensitive to other people’s needs as well.
It’s a process to learn that. It’s a process for all of us to learn how to manage ourselves, how to influence people. I talk in the book I think a little bit about win/win negotiation, how to create win/wins. We teach the girls … A lot of girls, and I think women, and you guys can say yes or no, maybe not you Amy because you were the mean girl, a lot of girls [crosstalk 00:43:26].
Dr. Amy Moore:
I’m going to wear that label forever now.
Dr. Tim Jordan:
I have definitely labeled you. A lot of girls have a hard time handling their conflicts directly with the other person. They’re so afraid of ruffling feathers and having the other girl be mad at them, “I might lose her as a friend. If I lose her, she may take the whole group and then I’ll have nobody.” That’s been wired in for 100,000 years that being in a group was protective in prehistoric, dangerous times. Being kicked out of the group meant you didn’t survive because you couldn’t manage it alone.
There’s a wiring that says maintain social harmony, don’t upset people, you need to be together. For some girls, that unfortunately means giving up what they want and not asking for what they want and not setting boundaries, all those kinds of things.
They just need to be aware of that. There is some wiring there. That doesn’t mean you’re at the mercy of it. It just means you just need to be aware and it’s okay to take care of yourselves. It’s okay to ask for what you … You know, set boundaries, et cetera.
I also think it’s really powerful if you’re watching a movie with your daughter or a TV show or they may come home from school with an example of some of their friends or you may see something when you’re with your kids, to use those indirect lessons that say, “What do you think about what you just saw? How do you think she could have handled that differently? What do you think about the girl who was being powerful? She was being labeled as a mean girl. Do you think that was being mean? Maybe she was being disrespectful. How could she have done that different but still gotten her point across?”
Indirect lessons are so valuable because the spotlight is not on them. It’s not about you. It’s about this TV character or a movie character or somebody else in your social circle. I always tell parents use those lessons. There’s stuff in the news. There’s stuff all over the place where you can use those lessons.
There’s very good research that shows when you sit down and watch movies and TV with your daughters, it’s protective. It’s protective against body image kinds of issues, objectification. I also think it’s protective as far as having them see things in a different way and giving them a different perspective and having them question things and question images and question what they’re seeing so they can start to form in their minds what they want for themselves.
Teri Miller:
I want to shift if I can to the opposite end of the spectrum. We’ve talked quite a bit about maybe the young girl that’s been labeled bossy, who has really got a gift of assertiveness and strength and power and I get that, I’ve had that in one of my daughters.
I have another challenge. I’ve got a younger daughter, just turned 13, her name is Serene. You can image … She was that from the womb. She is … If you were doing personality profiles, she is an S type personality on the disc. She is nine Enneagram. She is a peacemaker. She likes to please people.
You gave the example of where do you want to go out to eat? I really see in her, in her spirit, it’s not a forfeiting or a giving up of her opinion, she truly doesn’t care. She truly does … She’s not real passionate about food or which movie she watches or, “Which stuffed animal do you kids want to play with?” She’ll go, “I like them all.” You know? She’s just very laid-back.
How do I help Serene … I don’t know. When that’s her natural bent, how do I help her step into intrinsic motivation, her own strengths and power, her own opinions, when it seems like deep inside she’s just Serene, she’s just [crosstalk 00:47:41].
Dr. Tim Jordan:
Yeah. I would acknowledge her temperament. Her temperament is one of her super powers, being flexible, caring about other people, being sensitive to other people’s needs. That’s a super power. That’s awesome. That’s a form of being a leader. That’s a form of being powerful. I would acknowledge it as that. There may be a lot of things where she’s like, “I really don’t care.” Good for you. That’s okay.
I would make sure on the places where she does care, there may be some other places where it might be important for her to think for herself or decide for herself. I would help her become aware like I do with girls, that when you tell people, “I don’t care” or, “I don’t know”, what you’re teaching them is that you don’t care about yourself, that your needs aren’t important.
I would want her to have that awareness. It may not be about what stuffed animal or what restaurant or what movie but on some things that might be more important. There are decisions she’s going to be making as a 13 year old when she’s out with her friends. I want her to know that it’s important for her to still be in touch with what’s right for her and what feels good for her and if she checks in and says, “I really don’t care”, then she can say, “I don’t care.”
I often teach girls if they need some practice, I say, if you need to even walk away from the situation and say, “Can you just wait a second before I let you know what I want?” And then go sit in a bathroom stall or go someplace and say, “Okay, slow down. It’s okay. Relax.” Do you care? Is this important to you? Is it not? What do you want? If the answer is, “It’s okay. I really don’t care” and if that makes her happy, good for her, I feel good about that, then you come back and say, “Whatever you want.”
I still want them to learn that their needs are important also. Not just now in that moment but in the big picture, that the cost of not taking care of yourself, especially with the big things, is resentment and not getting what you want and then blaming other people, maybe not when she’s 13 but those experiences can accrue to the point where then people are bitter and resentful and blaming and not taking responsibility or taking charge of their life.
I think it’s two things. First of all, I would acknowledge her for being the kind of person who is really sensitive to other people’s needs and it’s really great that she’s flexible and I also want her to make sure she keeps checking in with is it really not that big a deal? If you’re saying that because you don’t want to make people mad, that’s a different story. If you’re saying it because I don’t really care, good for you. If you’re saying it because if I voice my opinion, they may get mad at me, they may go away, I may lose a friend, whatever, then we need to talk about that part.
Teri Miller:
Okay. That’s so good. Thank you.
Dr. Amy Moore:
We need to take a quick break and let Teri read a word from our sponsor, LearningRx. When we come back, that last topic has now given me pause, I want to know if we create a generation of alpha females, then what do we do about conflict resolution? If we’re all alphas, right? Let’s talk about that when we get back from the break.
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Dr. Amy Moore:
And we’re back talking to Dr. Tim Jordan about nurturing leadership qualities in girls. Here was this big red flag that I was just envisioning, all these girls leaving your training and being alphas now because they have all of this power and leadership skills and what if everybody went to one of your leadership camps and developed all of these leadership skills? We can’t all be the alpha, right? What happens? Do we have to teach conflict resolution then?
You’re doing what a lot of people do is a leader looks like this, alpha, in charge, that old … I’m exaggerating what you said but that old model of the one who is in charge, the loudest one in the room, the one who is pounding the table, that we think that’s what the leader is but in reality, there’s so many ways that leaders look. Like that Gandhi story for instance.
Being a leader … For instance, if there’s a conflict, being a leader isn’t the person who comes in there and says, “This is the thing. I’ve thought this through. This is the solution.” A leader also can be powerful by being empathetic, by also being interested in the other person’s point of view, getting in their shoes, trying to see it from their perspective, trying to understand what are their needs in this?
The other half of that is I also need to put my needs out there so they understand and we can’t get a win/win so we all walk away saying, “Feels good. We’re friends. That’s a good solution.” We can’t get that if we’re not telling each other what we want and listening to each other. You can’t create a win/win unless both sides have some interest in the other person’s needs as well. That’s a great leadership skill.
It’s not as flashy and loud and whatever but if we’re going to get in our country, in our schools, in our daughter’s friendships … If they’re going to have more peace and quiet and more connection, then they’re going to need to learn how to resolve conflicts peacefully where they get in other people’s shoes and see things from their point of view.
That doesn’t sound like an alpha thing but it is. That means you have to be really mature, you have to have the bigger picture in mind. That’s a very mature powerful mindset, if you will, or a skillset to have that for yourself.
Another quick thing, I think I mentioned this in the book. I want kids to put themselves in the shoes of leaders. One of the best ways to start seeing yourself as a leader is instead of complaining about, “Well, the soccer coach isn’t giving me enough playing time” or, “I don’t like this new rule the teacher has about whatever at school”, you can get into the habit of just complaining about things.
What you can do with your daughters is to say, “If you were the soccer coach, how would you handle it? If you were the teacher or the principal, how would you handle that issue at your school? If you were the president of the United States, how would you handle that? Put yourself in the Oval Office, how would you handle that? What’s your ideas?”
If they can start to problem solve as if they were the principal and the coach and the president or whomever, they’ll start to have that kind of a mindset. They’ll start seeing themselves as a leader more than a victim to things, a victim to circumstances. If you start to see yourself as a leader, you start thinking like a leader, and then it’s more likely you’re going to become a leader.
Dr. Amy Moore:
I love that.
Teri Miller:
I do too, that contrast with victimhood. Oof.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Yeah. Absolutely. What I’m hearing you say is there are different flavors of leadership and so what you exhibit as leadership qualities is directly related to your personality traits and your disposition and so not everyone is going to look the same and that’s great, right?
Dr. Tim Jordan:
Right. Right. Yeah. Exactly. I think we need to value these things. We overvalue the being in front of the group pounding and screaming and all of that. We overvalue that. We undervalue things like empathy and compassion and win negotiation and putting yourself in other people’s shoes. There’s a lot of really important powerful qualities of leadership that we don’t value enough.
What we’ve been trying to do for years I think, especially in the last 10, 20 years, we’re trying to get women I think to become leaders and we’re trying to smash them into the male model and trying to make them change to be more like these leaders and as opposed to saying, “Let’s look at how you’re a leader already. Let’s really widen …”
I read a really good book five or 10 years ago called the Athena Doctrine. Have you read that book? The Athena Doctrine. Athena, the goddess of wisdom and power. It’s a really good book. These authors, two authors went all over the world, I think 35, 40 cultures asking questions like what are the leadership qualities in your culture that you would say are more masculine versus feminine?
What they found all over the world was pretty much the same lists, which was interesting. They also found when they asked people in all those countries what are the qualities that you think your leaders need in order to make this a better world? Almost all of the qualities were more feminine qualities, the ones I just mentioned about being flexible and open-minded and empathetic and compassionate and leading from intuition and trusting your intuition and bringing people together and those sorts of things.
I think we just need to help our daughters become aware of those qualities that a lot of them possess and look for those qualities in leaders and acknowledge those, so they start to redefine that. Instead of trying to be like somebody that you’re not because you have a different temperament, personality, a different style, you can be a leader and not be loud.
Teri Miller:
I love that. [crosstalk 00:57:40]. I want to tell Serene that. I’m going to go home and tell Serene that. It’s easy to see my oldest daughter Brianne’s super powers but I need to go home and remind Serene that she has a super power too.
Dr. Tim Jordan:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s really important. The culture doesn’t either. Schools don’t. They like the ones who are the president of the student council, they like the good girls. They don’t like the rebels. Teachers don’t like the older version of Amy, if she was more strong minded, independent minded, those are “tougher kids”, and so they like … Teachers prefer the little good girls who sit there with their hands folded and whatever because they don’t make waves. They’re easier in a sense. We just need to all rethink all of that.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Yeah. Absolutely. I spent more time in the hallway than I did in class.
Dr. Tim Jordan:
Yeah. Plotting, probably plotting revenge.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Obviously, I got my act together eventually, right?
Dr. Tim Jordan:
But every little Amy out there needs to have their power acknowledged and channeled. Little Amy needs places to be a leader, ways to be in charge that are appropriate. I see some girls who exert their power by talking out or being disrespectful, ways that aren’t really serving them, but if they’re allowed to write a play and then direct the play in fourth grade, they’re the happiest kid in the world.
One of the best ways to give kids power, if you will, is to find places for them to be valuable. If you look at kids when they’re being helpful and valuable, they’re in hog heaven. That’s like when they’re at their best because they feel more grown up. They’re making a contribution. They’re making some change. They’re being helpful. They love that.
We need to start looking for those ways for them to channel all of that, because if it’s not channeled appropriately it ends up being mischief, a power struggle, things like that.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Absolutely. Teri and I were just talking this afternoon about the need to have a purpose. Of course, we think about that as adults but we need to think that kids need that need met as well.
Teri Miller:
Yeah.
Dr. Tim Jordan:
Places to be valuable. Kids like … I keep saying little Amys but kids who are powerful, independent, strong minded, if you give them places to be valuable or causes, they love to find a cause and then they’re all over it. Kids who can initiate … I know a lot of girls who started their own businesses when they were 12, online businesses, and so when they can pour themselves and their energy and their power into that, they look awesome. When they don’t [inaudible 01:00:22], things that aren’t so great like power struggles or rebelling or not doing well in school to show people you can’t make me. There’s lots of ways you can be powerful. It is being powerful and you are showing people but it’s not in your best interest.
Dr. Amy Moore:
You have an online course for parents, right?
Dr. Tim Jordan:
Yes. My wife and I created that course I guess about maybe a year ish ago. It’s about girls friendships and girls emotions. We sent some surveys out to all of our people who are on our list, like what do you want to hear most about? When it comes to parenting daughters, what are your biggest concerns? Those are two of the top three. The other one was social media and I’m almost done making that online course.
The first one was about understanding girls emotional life and also their friendship lives because a lot of parents feel like I don’t know what to do. They tell me all the time, I’m sure you get the same, Amy, in your counseling practice like, “I don’t know how to support her. She’s got all this drama going on” and so they need to understand what goes on with girls with their friendships socially and with them emotionally and then I give them lots of tools, these are some ways you can support your daughters and teach your daughters how to do their friendships different or handle their emotions perhaps in healthier ways.
Especially anxiety. I’m sure you find this too, Amy, in your counseling practice. There’s so many girls who are anxious. That’s always been … It’s been true a lot in the last 20, 30, 40 years. There’s data that shows girls are three to four times more anxious than boys once they hit middle school, high school, but I think since COVID hit, I think it’s gone even higher.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Yep. Absolutely.
Dr. Tim Jordan:
And not just girls in middle school/high school. I’m seeing more and more college women in my counseling practice struggling with anxiety and struggling with stress, struggling with pressures. That stress thing is a huge one. They aren’t being taught or they’re not learning good coping skills and they get themselves [crosstalk 01:02:17].
Dr. Amy Moore:
… they’ve lost their social skills.
Dr. Tim Jordan:
Yeah.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Right? Then I’m seeing this skyrocketing social anxiety, because we forgot how to interact.
Dr. Tim Jordan:
Yeah.
Teri Miller:
Except with emojis.
Dr. Tim Jordan:
Yeah. I don’t know … We have a moment for me to talk about something different?
Dr. Amy Moore:
Yeah. Absolutely.
Dr. Tim Jordan:
This goes along with this, this stress part. One of the things I think is causing girls maybe besides COVID the most stress is the fact that they’ve been absorbing from the culture, from their parents, from the educational system, from the college process, if they’re that far along, they’re absorbing this thing that says here you are at age 16 or 18 or even 21 and you should have your whole life figured out, you should know what college you’re going to, what your major is going to be, what your career path is.
I started hearing that in high school girls maybe 20 years ago and then the last 10 ish years, I’ve been hearing it with lots of middle school girls. This summer, this last spring, we had a weekend retreat for grade school girls, third, fourth, fifth grade girls. We also had a week-long summer camp with girls in that same age group. They were talking about how stressed they were. Right? You’re like, okay, you’re in third grade.
We said what are you so stressed about? They didn’t say middle school, they didn’t say friends, even though, those sometimes are stressful. What they said was college and our future. These are fourth, fifth graders.
I get it because there’s so much pressure about knowing. These girls are in eighth grade, they’re like, “I’m so stressed out about college.” I’m like, “You’re in eighth grade.” They said, “Well, I had a meeting with my new soon to be counselor and they said, ‘What math are you going to take?’ I don’t know.” They say, “Well, if you’re going to be an accountant, you should probably be taking algebra one in eighth grade because if you don’t do that you won’t get on the track for the AP class …”
This whole line. They’re like, “I’m not even started high school and I’ve already got to tell you what my career is.” That’s not a one time example. I hear that over and over and over. They think I should know at age 18 what I’m going to be doing when I’m 50 ish or whatever you said you were.
I’m guessing that when you were 18, you didn’t know you’d be sitting … Well, of course, there wasn’t podcasts but you had no idea, right? I tell girls, interview every adult you bump into. I’ve been all over the world giving talks to some very successful business people at these retreats my wife and I do and talks, and I always ask them how did you get to where you are? What’s your background? I also ask them when you were 18, did you have any idea you’d be doing this? Nobody knew. Nobody went from A to Z but that’s what our girls think they should know. They’re at A, they should know.
They also believe from the culture that if you make one wrong decision, like the wrong college or the wrong major, one wrong decision, your whole life is derailed and you will never recover. Of course that’s not true. They think it’s true. That adds so much pressure to their plate, which besides just growing up and all that. They have all this pressure about you should have your whole life figured out. I always say interview every adult you bump into and say when you were my age, did you know? They hear over and over again, “Oh no. Of course not. I zig zagged here. I didn’t go A to Z. I went A, B, C, D, E.” You know? Had lots of stops along the way.
They need to hear that. I always encourage them, read biographies, read stories, because you’ll get lots and lots of examples of how people got to their thing, got to their purpose, got to their calling. It’s not a linear thing almost always.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Yeah. It reminds me when I was in grad school, I had a professor who I was trying to figure out what I actually wanted to do with my life, right? What else should I be? A school psychologist? I was listing five or six alternatives and I just don’t know which one to pick and I was in this just mind spinning, panic, “I got to know now. I got to know now.” He went, “Just drive a stake in the ground and do it and you can always do something else later.” Okay. I just needed somebody to tell me that.
Dr. Tim Jordan:
Yeah.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Right?
Dr. Tim Jordan:
Yeah.
Dr. Amy Moore:
It’s okay. It’s not a kidney. You’re not donating a kidney. It’s not permanent.
Dr. Tim Jordan:
I wrote a book for young adults, it came out about three years ago, it’s called Letters From My Grandfather: Timeless Wisdom For A Life Worth Living and one of the chapters I talk about my dot theory and my dot theory is … It’s like those connect the dot drawings. I’ll tell girls, I’ll say have you ever done those? They almost always they have.
The dots are numbered so when you look at that original picture, you had no idea what it was going to be, so you start connecting dots, one, two, three, four, five, and eventually enough dots would connect and you’d go, “Oh, it’s going to be a Christmas tree? Yeah. It’s a Christmas tree.”
I tell them the metaphor is that the picture is like the picture of your life, your calling, your purpose, what you’re going to be doing, your purpose for being on this planet. You don’t need to know the final picture. You don’t even need to connect dots. Dots, to me, are experiences that cross your path, that you feel drawn to for whatever reason.
It could be a class in school, it could be an internship, it can be a traveling experience, it can be a job, reading a biography, having a cup of coffee with somebody who is in a really cool job that you think you’d like to do? It can be being on a soccer team, being one of our camp counselors. Those are all dots you do because it seems like fun, I don’t know, I just feel drawn to it for whatever reason, not because some day I’m going to be sitting in a room doing a podcast because it just seems right for now.
I tell them that the way life works is those dots will connect for you. You don’t need to force it and they’re all trying to force it. I tell them those dots will eventually start to connect and at some point you’ll be able to look back and go, “Oh, it makes sense. Oh, I can see all the connections now.”
I tell them relax and let your life unfold. That’s how it’s supposed to be. It’s not supposed to be this, “I know this, I’m going to force it” and that’s it.
Teri Miller:
I think that it’s important for us to explain to our kids or help our kids understand that the next dot is not always the successful choice, because one of my kiddos has fretted … We’ve really tried to focus on the idea that those things that were thought of as a mistake were not mistakes. They weren’t failures like, “What a waste of time that I got that stupid job after school. What a waste that I went to college that semester and I wasted all that money on that subject I didn’t even care about.”
No. That was a dot that showed you what you didn’t like. It showed you a direction you didn’t want to go and that was great value because in that learning of where you didn’t want to go, you were going in the right direction. I don’t know. I just think that’s important too that every next dot is not the good choice or the right choice or the happy ending. Sometimes it was a crappy thing that worked out but it still led you along the right path.
Dr. Tim Jordan:
Right. It’s like Steve Jobs famously took that calligraphy class … He wasn’t even in college. He went to college but didn’t sign up for classes. His parents didn’t know. He was at I think Reed College in Oregon or somewhere and so he audited [inaudible 01:09:51] just go for a course and not pay and don’t get a grade? He went to this calligraphy class because it was interesting to him. He didn’t take a calligraphy class because some day I’m going to invent a computer and I’m going to need lots of different fonts and things. He did it just because.
You look back and go, “That’s interesting how that fits where he came from.” That’s why I tell girls it’s so valuable to read stories and read biographies and interview adults, whether it’s relatives around the Thanksgiving table or whether it’s your friends’ parents or whomever that you bump into. Just say, “I’m curious about how you got to where you are. What was your path?” Then listen and just go, “Oh, that’s interesting. That’s interesting you had no idea when you were 18.”
Dr. Amy Moore:
I love that. Okay. Well, we are out of time and need to wrap this up. Even though, I was a bad girl and I’m the mom of three boys, not any girls, I have loved this conversation. I do work with a lot of girls, so your insights have been fantastic. We would like to thank our guest today, Dr. Tim Jordan for giving us your time and your insights and your wisdom. If you’d like more information about Dr. Tim’s work, you can visit DrTimJordan.com and follow him on social media @DrTimJordan. We’ll put a link to his book She Leads: A Practical Guide for Raising Girls Who Advocate, Influence, and Lead in the show notes and on our website under the Brainy Books tab.
Dr. Amy Moore:
Thank you so much for listening today. If you liked our podcast, we would love it if you would give us a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. If you would rather watch us, we are on YouTube. You can follow us on social media @TheBrainyMoms. Until next time, we know you’re busy moms and we’re busy moms, so we’re out.
Teri Miller:
See ya!
Connect with Dr. Tim
Website: www.DrTimJordan.com
Facebook/Twitter/Instagram: @drtimjordan
Podcast: Raising Daughters with Dr. Tim Jordan
Buy his book: She Leads: A Practical Guide for Raising Girls Who Advocate, Influence, and Lead (Amazon Affiliate link)
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