Why Your Daughter Won’t Try New Things (And What Helps)
What the 2026 State of the Girl report says — and what it looked like in my own life
By Allie Evans — BSW Intern at Austin Therapy for Girls and BSW student at Texas State
You’ve probably had this moment. You ask how her day was and get “fine.” Her phone is face down on the couch, or she’s texting three people at once and still tells you she has no one to hang out with this weekend.
You want to help. You’re just not totally sure what would.
Hi — I’m Allie, the BSW intern here at Austin Therapy for Girls and a social work student at Texas State. I’m not a parent. I’m also the youngest person in this office by a comfortable margin, which means I’m still close enough to being twelve that I remember it in my body.
So in July, when Girl Scouts of the USA released their annual State of the Girl report, I started reading it for work. I ended up reading it for me.
Some of it is hard to get through. But the biggest finding isn’t that girls are struggling. It’s that they’re creative, ambitious, and paying very close attention — and that connection, not stricter screen rules or a better parenting strategy, is what actually helps them thrive.
Here’s what stood out to me.
It starts earlier than most of us expect
Not middle school. First grade.
- 64% of girls ages 5 to 7 said they feel lonely.
- 89% of that same age group had skipped something they wanted to do — the birthday party, the audition, raising their hand — because they weren’t sure of themselves.
- 52% of girls ages 8 to 10 are already critical of their own bodies. By 11 to 13, half wish they could change something about how they look.
I sat with that 89% for a while. Almost nine out of ten six-year-olds have already talked themselves out of something.
If your daughter is little and already says “I’m bad at that” before she tries, you’re not imagining it, and you didn’t cause it. It’s starting young for a lot of girls.
The phone isn’t the whole story
Social media has been all over the news the last few weeks, and I’m not going to pretend that’s nothing — I’m from the generation people usually blame for it. Unlimited access to a screen can absolutely do a number on a girl’s self-esteem. But somewhere between the group chats and the texts left on read, there’s more to the story.
Technology is woven into her friendships in a way it never was in yours. Half of girls ages 10 to 12 say most or all of their friends are on social media. Even among five- to seven-year-olds, one in five believe they’ll miss out if they aren’t online.
But here’s the part that surprised me. When girls ages 5 to 13 were asked how they’d actually rather spend their time, 65% said something creative, 59% said playing outside, and 59% said time with their families.
They named art classes, music, and sports. And the reason they aren’t doing more of those things isn’t preference — it’s cost and access.
When it looks like she’d rather be on her phone than with you, a lot of the time she wouldn’t. The phone is just what’s available.
When I think about connection in my own girlhood, I think about the barn. Horses have this way of drawing out the most authentic version of a person, even someone who’s sure they’re immune to it. My longest friendships were built cleaning saddles in a dusty tack room and shoveling manure. Not glamorous. But something about being surrounded by other girls who were just as sweaty and dirty and disheveled as I was made it impossible to be anyone but myself.
What actually gives her courage
This is the finding I keep coming back to. More than half of girls say they’re more willing to try something new when a friend is with them. Among the youngest girls, ages 5 to 7, it’s 92%.
Not more confidence. Not a pep talk. A person.
I started riding because of my cousin. She’s a little older than me, and the barn was an hour and a half away, so we carpooled—three hours in the car together on top of the lesson. I was scared. I remember that part clearly. She just looked at me and said, “No, we’ve got this.” And of course, she blasted Taylor Swift’s Fearless on the way. Thanks to my cousin, I became a Swiftie for life. More importantly, I think she taught me what it feels like to have someone beside you when you’re scared—someone who doesn’t talk you out of the fear, but makes you believe you can do it anyway.
Honestly, a lot of what got me through that first lesson was wanting to look cool in front of my very cool cousin, even though I did not feel cool. We rode together that day and I was hooked. We went every single week after that.
Eventually she stopped riding, and by then I had my own little group of friends at the barn. Later, one of them moved to a barn closer to my house, so I followed her there — and made even more friends. I still have them.
That’s an entire life that came out of one older cousin saying “we’ve got this” in a parking lot.
What caregivers can do to support connection
There’s a second person in that story, and it’s my mom.
She grew up riding horses. She’d had her own version of the barn, and she wanted it for me — she’s the reason I ended up in the car with my cousin in the first place. Once I fell in love with it, she just kept finding ways for me to keep going.
She dropped me off at eight in the morning on Saturdays and let me stay all day doing chores. She’d order pizza. She drove me to lessons and then to horse shows, and she sacrificed the cleanliness of her car and her house for years without ever really complaining about it.
She never sat me down for a talk about my self-esteem. She just drove.
If you’re looking for where to put your energy, here’s what I’d say from the other side of it:
- Protect one thing she’s not being graded on. Not the club team, not the GPA. The thing she’s mediocre at and loves anyway.
- Say yes to the logistics. The ride is the intervention. So is the pickup, the pizza, and letting her stay the whole day.
- Look for the place, not just the activity. What made the barn work wasn’t the riding. It was the tack room, and the other girls in it.
- Watch for quiet, not drama. The slow drop-off from something she used to love is usually the earlier signal.
- Say what you saw her do, not how she looked doing it. “You kept going when that got hard” lands differently than “you look so pretty.”
One last thing
I don’t have kids, and I’m not going to pretend I know what your Tuesday looks like. But I was one of the girls in this report not that long ago, and what made the difference for me wasn’t a rule or a lecture. It was a cousin in the passenger seat and a mom who kept driving.
You don’t have to be the one who fixes it. You just have to be one of the people who keeps showing up.
Written by Allie Evans, BSW intern at Austin Therapy for Girls. Edited and reviewed by Shayna Barksdale, LCSW-S, founder of Austin Therapy for Girls and author of Pink Chaos: Navigating the Mother-Daughter Relationship with Your Tween.
Austin Therapy for Girls is a boutique practice on Menchaca Road for tween and teen girls and the parents raising them. If any of this sounds like your house right now, we’d love to talk.
Sources: State of the Girl 2026, Girl Scouts of the USA
Questions parents ask us
How can I tell the difference between normal stress and anxiety in my daughter?
Stress has an end date. Anxiety usually doesn’t. Ask her how she’ll feel when the thing is over — if she can name the finish line, “Friday, after the test,” that’s stress, and stress is survivable and even useful. If she can’t name one, or the worry keeps moving on to the next thing the moment one is done, that’s closer to anxiety and it’s worth a closer look.
What do I do if my daughter won’t talk about her day?
Change the setting before you change the question. Most girls open up side by side rather than face to face — driving to practice, folding laundry, lights out — because there’s no eye contact and no pressure to perform an answer. And ask what she needs before you start helping: “Do you want help with this, or do you want me to just listen?” It takes five seconds and it prevents most arguments.
How do I know if my daughter needs therapy?
The clearest sign is that her world is getting smaller — she’s dropping activities, friends, foods, or places she used to be fine with. Other signs: mornings have become a battle, sleep has changed and stayed changed, she says hard things about herself even in a joking voice, or your family’s schedule has quietly reorganized itself around her worry. If any of those have been true for a few weeks, that’s enough to make a phone call. Therapy isn’t a last resort, and it works faster when she isn’t already in crisis.
If she is talking about hurting herself or not wanting to be here, don’t wait — stay with her and get help the same day. The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available by call or text, 24/7.
Free download: the Stress and Girls handouts
We made a set of one-page handouts on stress in girls — what it looks like, what to say, and when it’s more than ordinary stress. One page for each person in her life. Free to print and share, and there’s no form to fill out.
- For parents & caregivers — what’s actually stressing her by age, the ten minutes when she opens up, and a word-for-word script for the hard conversation.
- For girls — five tools she can use in sixty seconds, written straight to her, with nothing in it we’re selling.
One thing worth knowing before you read them: stress has an end date, anxiety usually doesn’t. If she can name the finish line — “Friday, after the test” — it’s stress. If she can’t, it’s worth a closer look.
She’ll try the hard thing if she’s not doing it alone
That’s the whole idea behind our fall Glow Girl groups. A small group of girls, working on what’s actually hard — walking into a room, starting a conversation, having an opinion out loud, surviving a friendship that went sideways. It isn’t a lecture series. It’s practice, with other girls who get it.
- 4th & 5th grade — Mondays, Oct 5 – Nov 9, 5:30–6:45 pm, with Molly Mead, LCSW-S
- 7th & 8th grade — Sundays, Sept 20 – Nov 1, 4:30–5:45 pm, with Shayna Barksdale, LCSW-S
- 9th grade — Sundays, Sept 20 – Nov 1, 6:00–7:15 pm, with Shayna Barksdale, LCSW-S
Six sessions, $450 total, at our South Austin office off Menchaca Road. The groups stay small on purpose, which means they fill.
We’ll call you back. Or reach us at 512-981-LCSW.
