The Girl in Her Teens

by Margaret Slattery

Very early in her teens the girl begins to pencil upon her face the first tiny lines which in later years, grown deep and heavy, will mark her discontent. There are so few faces that show their owners have learned to be content.

A sixteen-year-old girl friend of mine the other day said in a discouraged way, “Well, I wish Frances’ mother felt differently about their home. Her mother is such a lovely cook, and their house is neat and pretty, too, but she will never let Frances have any of the girls to dinner because they haven’t a maid. She wouldn’t let even me go upstairs to Frances’ room, and I know it must be so pretty by the way she describes it. It is too bad; we just love her, and we could have such good times. She can’t accept our invitations very often because her mother won’t let her entertain us. It is just too bad.”

The girl was right. It was “too bad” to deprive Frances of the society of these girls, who, though they came from homes where more money was expended, would have so enjoyed her simple hospitality.

Although not meaning to do it, her mother is teaching Frances to place wrong values upon things, and her life will be narrowed and made more and more unhappy because the living-room is small, and the floor not of hard wood, but painted around the outside of the rug, and she will come to believe that happiness consists of possessions. When she marries, like thousands of other girls she will be unhappy unless her own new home is perfect in equipment from the start, she will want the new, “up-to-date” things faster than her husband’s salary can supply them, and the long line of misery that follows may easily be hers.

If, instead, her mother could demonstrate that a neat, clean, and therefore attractive home is a fit place in which to entertain any friend by welcoming her daughter’s friends for a good time, how quickly for that girl things would assume their right places in the scale of importance. We can help her to be happy and content by showing her in what very simple ways good times may be had.

If the girl in her teens grown to womanhood is to be comfortable to live with she must be trained to be kind. Kindness is born in unselfishness, and if we expect her to be unselfish, the days of her teens must be her training days. She must be carefully guarded from daily association with women who speak cynically of life, and shielded from close contact with those whose conversation is invariably the criticism of their neighbors. She must be led to let her heart speak—the heart is rarely unjust and seldom unkind. Her thoughts must be continually turned, as were those of Frances Willard and Alice Freeman Palmer, toward her neighbors in need, until a world-sympathy is born in her, and the joy of helping makes her keen to help. The girl to whose lips almost involuntarily spring the words “Let me help you” will not find it so easy to utter the cutting word or the phrase that leaves a sting. A real interest in “the other girl” will tend to make her unselfish.

If she is comfortable to live with she must be thoughtful. Thoughtfulness also has its birth in unselfishness. The girl wrapped up in thoughts of herself has little time to be concerned with others, and demands invariably that she be the center of the circle. She does not make others comfortable and is not good to live with.

The girl who is good to live with in the world of the everyday, shares her joys and pleasures with the family. How many times I have seen a tired mother forget her cares listening to the recital of her daughter’s “good times”! Her petty little annoyances, her disappointments, she keeps to herself.

After all, when we sum up the qualities of the girl in her teens which endear her to every one, and make her good to live with, we can put them under the one word unselfish. If she is this, then she will apply herself to her studies; she will remember her mother’s burdens and not add to them; she will think of all she owes to her father and show her gratitude to him; she will be a helpful friend to the boys and girls with whom she associates, and she will have a good time, as the unselfish girl invariably does. By frequent illustrations taken from life, the Sunday-school teacher may hope to make her see how true these things are. An absolutely unselfish girl may be, as those in their teens say she is, “impossible,” but the impossible can be made wonderfully attractive by the teacher who can picture the girl in her teens at her best.

In her life in the everyday, no matter what her circumstances may be, the girl is constantly tempted to live below her best. The temptation to be disagreeable about the household tasks that fall to her, to forget the errand she is asked to do, to be careless about her room, to leave things for her mother to look after and put away, to be impatient with younger brothers and sisters—all these things are so easy. Not to yield to them requires constant watchfulness and struggle, and the word of warning on the part of the teacher, through story and illustration each Sunday, helps the girl see these faults in all their miserable littleness.