These are the same minds that too often confuse the dependence of infancy for love. The girl, who fails to find her own self-esteem and is dissatisfied with her perception of the esteem of others, seeks to create a person who will fill this need. The result is too often teen pregnancy. How quickly does the girl who thought she would have a baby so someone would love exclusively her discover the egocentric world her in which her baby lives? The teenage mind no matter how bright, no matter how precocious is still an immature mind subjugated by the ebb and flow of estrogen and testosterone.

Sometimes the truth hurts. Life is always hard. “Everybody” is never going to like you. And, Elvis really is dead. What corrupts the innocence of childhood is the fact of life. We are all compelled to move forward from the fantasy to the reality. When the teenage mind recognizes this shift occurring and attempts to rationalize it, you end up with things like wearing pale white makeup, jet black hair and the monotone recital of death dirges formatted as haikus. The guidance of an adult mind, the parental mind, can make that journey from the fantasy of childhood a transition to the wonder of reality. The world that we live in has more magic than any concocted or naïve version of it could ever have.

In short, (I know, it’s a little late for that) consider the lily. Then, let’s consider our daughters and let them know the true beauty and wonder that they are … just as they are.