The Girl in Her Teens

by Margaret Slattery

My observation the past few years of the social side of the girl in her teens, and especially the girl who has left school, has made me feel that if the opportunity to choose came to me as to Solomon, I would rather have the knowledge and power to give the young people of to-day sane, safe amusement than anything else I know.

The social side of the girl reveals itself not only in the desire to have a good time, but in the deep and ardent friendships formed during the teen period.

While she enjoys to the full the society of the group, the girl in her teens invariably has a “dearest friend,” who shares her joys, sorrows and confidences. This tendency becomes especially evident at sixteen and becomes more marked at the latter part of the period.

These friendships may be the source of greatest blessings or may mean the lowering of the whole tone of moral life. Both mother and teacher need to observe carefully the formation of friendships and be sure to encourage only the helpful ones. Public school teachers of experience can all testify to the rapid changes in girls which so often follow the development of a deep friendship.

I remember a girl of sixteen, dreamy, imaginative, and so much interested in her boy companions that lessons, home interests, and everything else were sacrificed. What to do with her, and what interests to substitute, were questions that both mother and teacher failed to solve. At a most opportune time a “new girl” moved into the neighborhood and entered school. She was practical, attractive, a good scholar, greatly interested in outdoor athletics. Because they were neighbors, the two girls were thrown much together. The companionship deepened into friendship. Soon the dreamy sixteen-year-old was playing tennis on summer afternoons, and reading aloud in the hammock afterward to rest. When winter came she suddenly decided that school and study were worth while, brought up all her averages, and made up her mind to try for college. Skating and the gymnasium made her a new girl. And all this transformation, fortunately for her good, came naturally and very rapidly through the influence of her companion. It comes almost as quickly in the other direction. Nothing can be more helpful to the shy, timid, self-conscious girl than the companionship of one who will encourage her and help her take her place with others in the social life of which she is a part.

Some of the bitterest suffering known to girls in their teens comes because they are “left out” and must go “alone.” The misery of being left to oneself is registered in that familiar sentence, “Oh, I don’t want to go alone!” The girl in her teens needs a “chum,” a “best friend,” a companion, and anything that the teacher can do to aid in the formation of helpful friendships is worth while, for the friends loyal and true through the teen age are the ones who in later years, when the need is deeper and friendships are tested, stand by. That there should be some way and place in which, surrounded by a Christian environment that makes for righteousness, girls in their late teens and just outside, who have no homes, or homes only in name, can meet and learn to know young men of the right sort is evident to all who have even considered the matter.

When the Great Teacher was here no need escaped his notice. All that he taught and did was in response to need. Many of the teachers of to-day are earnestly asking how far they can follow him in this great principle of his life.

When as teachers, interested in what we call the deepest things in the girl’s life, we are sometimes impatient with her light-heartedness, with the giggles and boisterous fun and “silliness” of the early teens, and the social tactics and sophistries of the later period, let us remember that the natural, healthy girl is “whole.” She is body, mind and spirit, and all three together make her a social being. All three speak in the passion to enjoy,—to seek pleasure. And the teacher of girls in their teens is as truly in the service of the living God when she boards the trolley car and accompanies her girls to the lake for a picnic supper after a day of hard work or study as when teaching them on Sunday the splendid principles that governed Paul’s life. She just as truly serves, some cold, rainy, February afternoon as, with two of the girls she wants to know better, she cuts out red hearts to decorate the room for the valentine social to which the members of her class have each invited a girl not specially interested in the Sunday-school as when she talks over on Sunday, “Serve the Lord with gladness,” for on Sunday she is telling them how to serve and on Tuesday she is showing them how through her own action. And they understand and are more willing to listen as she strives to impress upon mind and heart the facts and ideals that shall keep them steady, pure and true amidst all the distractions and temptations of the world’s good time.

If the teacher once catches a glimpse of the significant fact that a girl can not play wrong and pray right, a new realization of the importance of the social side will stir her to action and send her out to seek help from all who are willing to aid in the solution of the world problem, of how to satisfy the social nature in ways that make for character.