“What do you like to do for fun?”

I often pose this question to the over-scheduled and stressed out teenage girls who come into my office. Some give me a look as if to say the last time they did something seemingly fun and frivolous was a spontaneous trip to the ice skating rink years ago. Others spend their little free time hanging out with friends, and acknowledge how teen girl friendships can vacillate between being incredibly supportive and being remarkably stress-inducing – sometimes simply depending on the week, day, or even minute.

In the April 2013 edition of Town and Country Magazine, Girls star Allison Williams admits, “I put so much pressure on myself to be perfect. Between homework and sports and drama and being social, I slept about four hours a night through high school and college.” Even today, she readily accepts that she is still her “own worst critic.” Her revealing insight exposes what so many teenage girls experience yet few openly discuss – so many run so far, so fast, for so long that they begin to feel as though they are running on fumes.

Facebook COO and bestselling author Sheryl Sandberg famously notes how women will never close the achievement gap until “we close the ambition gap.” She encourages young women not to slow down but instead, to lean forward and “keep the pedal to the metal.” While the conversation on women and work has certainly gained an enormous amount of conversation and controversy, we often overlook how this entire lean in/lean back/fall flat debate impacts the generation of talented teenage girls who currently feel as though they are running themselves ragged.

The problem is not that young women lack ambition, determination, or drive. Instead, it is as though some of them are leaning in so far they might fall over. With single digit acceptance rates at some of the most competitive colleges and seemingly scarce entry job opportunities in a tough economy, it can become easy for today’s teen girls to slip into a cycle of perfectionist achievement based on a combination of fear and self-doubt. Somewhere along the way, the message that “You Can Do It All” has somehow been translated by many teenage girls to mean that they need to maintain a standard of “effortless perfection,” according to a report released by the Duke Women’s Initiative.

The over-stimulation of messaging and cluttered news feed from technology and social media sites is an often-overlooked contributor to this trend. A report from the Kaiser Family Foundation reveals that teens between the ages of eight and 18 spend 7:38 hours using some form of media per day (nearly 53 hours per week) and teen girls send an average of 4,000 text messages per month, according to the latest Nielsen data. It can be exhausting to think of all the different platforms girls typically use to communicate, interact, and socialize – they can read and share postings on Facebook or Tumblr, scroll through photos and comments on Instagram, watch an inordinate amount of videos on YouTube, and, most recently, send photos and messages through Snapchat.

Girls are relational, and are more likely to use social media to socialize (boys tend to be more likely to use data for gaming). In the online world, someone is always doing more than you, in a better way, and looks better while doing it. Social media can create a hyper-intensity of anxiety and expectations, as girls can often end up comparing their reality to someone else’s highlight reel of accomplishments. A 2011 report from the American Academy of Pediatrics classified a new form of depression as “Facebook depression,” which it defined as “depression that develops when preteens and teens spend a great deal of time on social media sites, such as Facebook, and then begin to exhibit classic symptoms of depression.” The time spent on social media can contribute to feelings of never feeling good enough, as well as an endless cycle of feeding off external validation rather than allowing time for internal reflection and personal growth and development. The teen tech addiction also contributes to the vicious cycle of trying to constantly do more and be better and bigger than ever before, without stopping to reflect on internal values, personal purpose and overall wellness.

Unfortunately, the effects of taking on the journey of life with the intensity of a sprinter can be utterly draining. As these teenagers move into young adulthood, these enthusiastically ambitious girls may barely have enough energy to broker a seat at any table, much less take on the challenges related to juggling work and life commitments.

If we really want to promote sustainable ambition for our next generation of women leaders, we need to shift the conversation and include the importance of overall wellness. For instance, although the National Sleep Foundation suggests adolescents get between eight-and-a-half and nine-and-a-quarter hours of sleep per night, more than 70% of teen girls admit to getting less than eight hours of sleep a night. The effects of sleep deprivation on emotional, mental, and physical wellness are well documented, and many girls fail to make time to adequately rest, reflect and recharge. Sleep hygiene is a term used by doctors to communicate how they must now teach people to get more sleep, and I would argue that social media hygiene – that is, learning how to have cleaner, less overwhelming social media experiences, is also crucial for overall wellness.

Teenage girls have double the rates of depression and anxiety as their male counterparts, and are twice as likely to be bullied online as boys. Many college student affairs officers at top-ranked colleges are seeing more and more college women are struggling with increasingly complex mental health issues. The meanness that is prevalent in teen girl culture often stems from an internal sense of emptiness, and its effects are pervasive. A 2011 CDC survey of ninth through twelfth graders revealed that a third of girls admitted feeling so sad or hopeless for two or more weeks that they stopped doing some of their normal activities. Nearly one-fifth of teenage girls admitted to seriously considering committing suicide.

Parents, educators, and girls themselves need to collaborate in order to create a healthier culture. Online socialization is an integral part of these young women’s overall life experience, and we need to actively address how to find positive ways of interacting and interfacing with technology to create healthier overall experiences. Spending a little more time at the skating rink and a little less time online could be an important first step. Because once this generation of teen girls is able to actively overcome the external expectations and internal pressures for unobtainable perfection, we can finally work to close any remaining gaps, ambition or otherwise.

A version of this was originally published on the Broad Side.

Being a High School Junior can be so stressful! Last week, I wrote a short “Open Letter to High School Juniors” that was featured in the Huffington Post’s College Column.

“I sense you may be a little stressed. Spring of junior year can be a whirlwind of expectations and obligations; and it can seem nearly impossible to concentrate on homework, grades, standardized test scores (here’s hoping you get an easy Critical Reading passage!), prom, extracurricular activities, meaningful summer activities that will set you apart in the college admission process, and the fact that your [fill-in-the-blank] teacher rarely gives advance notice for [quizzes/tests/projects worth half your grade]. Maybe the person you wanted to go to prom with is going with someone else, or perhaps you are really struggling in your advanced math class. Clearly, you have a lot on your plate….” Read More Here!

I am so excited to be speaking at Menlo-Atherton HS next week about “The Culture of Perfectionism: What is Really Stressing Us Out, and What We Can Do About It.” Several hundred people have already signed up, and space is limited! If you would like to join, be sure to go here and register.

We often overlook this inner fear and anxiety that bubbles up when we try to live up to arbitrary external expectations and create a image of effortless perfection. For young people, the challenges can be particularly painful – with increasing academic expectations, online socialization, media objectification, and the myth that we can and should be able to do it all the time wears so many students (and parents) out.

It doesn’t have to be this way! And it shouldn’t be this way – in both my books, That Crumpled Paper Was Due Last Week: Helping Disorganized and Distracted Boys Find Success in School and Life and the latest The Myth of the Perfect Girl: Helping Our Daughters Find Authentic Success and Happiness in School and Life, I discuss how we can shift the paradigm to promote personal purpose, meaningful engagement, and overall wellness.

We’re expecting a great turnout for the event – several hundred people have already signed up, and I am really looking forward to it! I hope you can join!

I feel as though spring came a little later this year. Because even though spring technically began on March 20th or so, it’s been cold, rainy, and snowy well into April (sorry NYC!)

The other day, I was working with a high school freshman who had some out of control binders – fifty or so papers stuffed in the front pocket, some papers in the wrong binders, others crumpled at the bottom of his backpack, and yet others in digital disarray on his iPad (his school has a one-to-one iPad program). I proclaimed the beginning of our session Spring Cleaning Day, and we devised a system together and he set off to work.

A mere forty minutes later, he looked relieved and kept commenting on how less stressed he felt – just by organizing his binders and going through his planner and his school-issued iPad. Even though students often put it off (and let’s face it, the trunk of my car should have been cleared out long before last weekend…) the feeling of completion is, well, amazing. Maybe not chocolate chip cookie dough worthy, but amazing nonetheless.

A few tips to make spring cleaning more manageable:

- Make it fun. Schedule a time in advance and get everyone involved. I generally say two hours is the max before focus starts waning and you sit down with old photos and start posting on Facebook. Figure out beforehand what is to be tackled – closet, drawer, backpack – and get all the materials in place. For teens, maybe having a friend come over, putting on some loud music and organizing together can create make it a more collaborative effort. When I was in college, I used to have my best friend come over and sit on my roommate’s bed whenever I was trying to clean the room. I needed to be doing something other than just focusing on the sorry state of my dorm room.

- Keep it manageable. Simply focusing on one drawer or one cupboard or one bureau (and not the entire room at once) can make things seem a little more do-able. If you have time, and get to something else in the time allotted, bonus. If you don’t want to, NBD. You’re done.

- Have the right supplies. Sometimes organizing a closet or cabinet can seem impossible, or it can quickly revert to old ways. I refrain from spending excessive time at Target or the Container Store because they have such amazing options that I can go overboard, but creating a simple storage system can at least give everything its place and allow re-grouping to happen more easily.

And, don’t forget the trunk of your (or your child’s) car! It is amazing what long lost treasures can be found – umbrellas, books, favorite mementos, old letters… clearly an experience I am all to familiar with…

What is in need of a little Spring Cleaning in your life?

In the April 2013 issue of Town and Country magazine, recent Yale grad and Girls television star Allison Williams talks about her own internal struggles with perfection and how she was an overscheduled, stressed out high school student. She candidly admits, “I put so much pressure on myself to be perfect. Between homework and sports and drama and being social, I slept about four hours a night through high school and college.” Even today, she says that she recently learned to quell her need for perfection though she readily accepts she remains her “own worst critic.”

Photo credit: Blossom Berkofsky/

I am a big believer that kindness starts at home – and being constantly critiquing yourself can be seen as a form of personal meanness. It isn’t shocking to think Allison could easily have be one of the girls in The Myth of the Perfect Girl – there are so many issues for mothers and daughters around never feeling good enough and always struggling to achieve some semblance of effortless perfection.

Photo credit: Blossom Berkofsky/

For so many girls, this adolescent drive for perfection – and yes, sleeping four hours a night to try and get everything done as a teen is far from ideal! – will continue to impact them as they move from adolescence to adulthood. In many cases, girls begin piling on more and more activities and expectations, and need a trusted adult to help them find a semblance of healthy strategies and coping habits to deal with stress and pressures in school and life.

It would be great if we could all stop from being our own worst critics. What will you do to be nicer to yourself today?

This group workshop for girls focuses on all aspects of good health and overall wellness. The exercises are based Ana Homayoun’s book, The Myth of the Perfect Girl. The girls will reflect on their abilities and their interests, and learn different strategies for overall wellness and finding a sense of purpose and happiness in everyday life. We will incorporate fun and interactive activities, crafts, and discussions on the topics of organization, time-management, sleep and nutrition, the pressures of social media, and ways to create authentic friendships, and their own sense of personal wellness.

Workshop Dates:

Session 1: Monday, June 24^th – Thursday, June 27^th from 12:30 – 3:30pm
Session 2: Monday, July 15^th – Thursday, July 18^th from 1:30 – 4:30pm

Over the course of four days, this workshop focuses on helping high schoolers improve their expository and persuasive writing through individual and partner activities as well as group brainstorming sessions.  This workshop is a small group workshop, so space is limited. To sign up, click here!          

 Workshop Dates:

Session 1: Monday, June 10^th – Thursday, June 13^th from 1:30 – 3:00pm
Session 2: Monday, July 22^h – Thursday, July 25^th from 3:30 – 5:00pm

Our specially designed Motivational Organization & Time Management workshop for middle and high school students is the perfect way to start the new semester off right! It helps to calm students’ anxieties and allow them to develop skills to balance their schoolwork and outside activities. We offer this workshop in a small group setting, with a maximum of eight students per workshop. Space is limited – to sign up, click here!

High School Workshop Dates:

Tuesday, August 13^th from 10:00 – 12:00pm (Incoming Freshman)
Thursday, August 15^th from 10:00 – 12:00pm (All High School)
Saturday, August 18^th from 10:00 – 12:00pm (Incoming Freshman)
Saturday, August 25^th from 3:00 – 5:00pm (All High School)

Middle School Workshop Dates:

Monday, August 12^th from 10:00 – 12:00pm (5^th & 6^th)
Wednesday, August 14^th  from 10:00 – 12:00pm (7^th & 8^th)
Saturday, August 17^th  from 12:30 – 2:30pm (7^th & 8^th)

Over the course of four days, our Academic Writing Workshop focuses on helping middle school students improve their narrative, poetic, expository, and persuasive writing styles through individual and partner activities as well as group brainstorming sessions. This workshop is a small group workshop, so space is limited. To sign up, click here!

Workshops Dates:                 

Session 1: Monday, June 17^th – Thursday, June 20^th from 1:30 – 3:00pm

Session 2: Monday, July 22^nd – Thursday, July 25^th from 1:30 – 3:00pm

The workshop is a 4-session group workshop where students work on the basic foundations of Geometry and get the chance to work through the first sections of the material, so that they are prepared and ready once school begins.

Workshop Dates: Monday, August 5^th – Thursday, August 15^th from 3:00 – 5:00pm (Mon – Thurs Only)

This workshop is a small group workshop, so space is limited. To sign up, click here!