This book aims to make the adolescent’s journey just that bit safer, kinder, and better supported – so parents and teens can enjoy the teenage years more.
The teen years are tough – for teens and for parents. Many parents dread the moodiness, dishonesty, preference of friends over family, exam stress, and the push for greater independence. Mothers have a pivotal role to play; this is a guidebook for parents and mothers of girls in particular as they navigate the rocky teenage landscape with their daughters aged 8 to 18. It aims to help them embrace the potential of their child’s teenage years by marking this time of growing maturity for girls and celebrating it with them. We celebrate birth, marriage and death, but this important life-transition from child to young adult is nowadays rarely acknowledged within an appropriate community.
What was your favourite thing about writing this book?
Knowing that I might have found a way to reach more girls. While I wrote I thought about all the people who care about our growing girls and felt full of optimism for how this book would share what I’ve learned to help make growing up that bit easier for everyone.
How important is the topic in this book to you?
You know when you realise that you’re really good at something because it’s been important your whole life, so you’ve been working on it forever without always realising it? That’s how I feel about the plight of girls as they grow through their teens. I can really help the girls and those who care for them. These girls are the mothers and creators of the future so when we enable them to grow up well, we’re helping all future generations. That’s exciting to me.
What is your favourite drink to consume while writing?
I don’t drink enough. Always on at my children to take their water bottles wherever they go and then I forget my own. Much of this book was written in my campervan while my children danced, played football or learned Spanish. I could have made myself a cup of something herbal but I’m very focussed when I’m writing and it never felt like I could spare the time to put the kettle on.
Do you have any bad habits while you’re writing?
I twiddle my hair while I’m thinking. My mum would hate to know that this childhood habit lives on!
How did you research this book?
The seeds of this book took root while I worked as a counsellor to distressed teenagers thirty years ago. I wanted to find some way of helping that would be preventative, so teens wouldn’t end up needing to starve, cut or harm themselves in other ways. My studies at Cambridge University into child psychology gave me a good foundation but it was years of working with young people and raising my own family that really taught me what was needed. It began small, writing articles for parents on my website and running year-long groups for preteen girls. In a relatively short time my waiting list for Girls Journeying Together groups was over-flowing and mothers were pressing me to write down what I was saying. I realised that the need was greater than I could meet on my own, so I now train women from across the world to deliver Girls Journeying Together groups and I gathered my thoughts into a book.
Do you have any recommendations for books which are similar to yours?
Steve Biddulph’s Raising Girls and 10 Things Girls Need Most
What was your favourite thing about your teenage years?
Sex. No I can’t say that, not publicly. In my teens I loved learning about how a dynamo worked, having boys notice me, staying out late and eating chips with my mates, doing somersaults, skinny dipping in the river at midnight, listening to Radio Luxemburg, dreaming of travelling the world, sleepovers with my best friend and the flapjacks her mum baked.
Would you consider yourself a feminist? If yes, do you know how old you were when you realised you were one?
Yes, of course. How could I not be a feminist, when feminism is the belief that women and men should have equal rights and opportunities. I was born a feminist. Talking to girls, it makes absolute sense to them that they should have equal rights and opportunities to everyone else, why shouldn’t they?
Which women do you think are good feminist role models?
Any woman who is living true to herself is a good feminist role model. Any woman who is true to her beliefs and values, who cares more for herself than what others think, and who has the courage to follow her own path. Good feminist role models live next door, serve in the corner shop, teach our kids, might even be your best friend. Some good role models are on the television, but the best ones are those that you can reach out and touch. Real women who are living their lives admirably.
About the Author
Kim McCabe is the founder of Rites for Girls. As the originator and facilitator of Girls Journeying Together groups, she offers guidance to preteen and teen girls and simultaneous support for their mothers. In training other women to facilitate these groups, her dream is that every girl grows up expecting to be supported and celebrated in adolescence. Kim was commissioned to write a section in Steve Biddulph’s latest best-selling book, 10 Things Girls Need Most: To Grow Up Strong and Free.
Kim is a home-educating mother of two boys, one girl, two cats and a colony of aloe vera plants; she is wife to a Kiwi, daughter to itinerant parents, friend to a cherished few, and lover of time alone, too. She lives in the Ashdown Forest in Sussex. She sometimes shouts at her children, accidentally steps on the cat’s tail and forgets to water the plants, but she loves her work, her family and her life. She has always had deep affinity with teenage girls, and by sharing her wisdom and compassion she infects the reader with her enthusiasm for this life stage.
