Your daughter is an A+ (or close to it) student. She studies hard and is an achiever. Like all teen situations, this one comes with its own set of issues. Working closely with your high-achieving girl can help her stay that way and not go astray or go too far.

High Achievers

Some girls lean toward high achievement (and some birth order experts claim first children who are girls tend more toward this than most teens). It's a good thing: all parents want their child to excel in school. But high achievement does not come without its own problems. First, girls who tend to get high grades may not have experienced failure properly. If you've never gotten, say, a C on something, you may grow to think that anything less than straight As will ruin your life. This can lead girls to push themselves too hard and having feelings of inadequacy, even when they are excelling.

Girls who are high achievers can tend toward perfectionism in other ways too. Thinness is one way: some highly ambitious girls work so hard on exercise and food limiting that they can go too far. (More on eating and image issues in Chapter 14.) Their expectation of “perfection” spills over to their bodies and skews their perceptions of their own bodies. Watch your high-achieving girl closely for such issues. These girls can also become controlling in other ways. Witness Reese Witherspoon's character, Tracy Flick, in the comedy Election. Flick was a caricature, but not so far from what can happen to girls who are set on winning it all.

Hiding Their Abilities

During middle school years and even high school years, the smart girl who is a high achiever may suddenly feel embarrassed by her smarts. Not all girls want to be labeled as a “brainiac.” They may fear the “nerd” label too, and suddenly hide from their friends their intelligence and even start to act “dumb” in some instances, still getting good grades but faking that they have no common sense around friends (particularly boys). Some girls even go as far as to stop trying in school. If you see a sudden grade slip from this type of girl, don't assume the work has gotten too hard. Talk to her about her abilities and help her find a way to embrace them. She's a lucky girl to have the gift of intelligence, and she needs to remember that.

Show her some examples of stars or athletes who are smart too. For example, Jodie Foster graduated from Yale, and Geena Davis was a “mathlete.” If you can encourage her to see that well-rounded people are those who know to use and celebrate their intelligence (and not flaunt it), she may just not mind being the “brainiac.”