The decorations are down. The relatives have gone. And the weeks of summer holidays are still stretching ahead. An ample reward for all of the intensity that’s just finished. Except – your daughter’s mood seems different. Quieter, maybe or snappier. Retreating to her room more, or she’s restless and can’t settle. Something has shifted over the holidays, and you’re not quite sure what it is.
The Christmas and New Year period brings a lot of intensity. From family expectations, social performances, disrupted routines, and constant stimulation. For adolescent girls already navigating the complexity of their changing bodies and shifting identities, this period can feel like being turned up to maximum volume with no way to turn it down.
The long weeks of January and a languorous summer seem like the ideal antidote to all of the aforementioned busyness, so it can be perplexing to wonder what’s going on with your daughter. Why is her excitement on hold? Or is it?
In this post:
- Why the holidays are harder for adolescent girls
- What needing space looks like
- How to help her reconnect without being pushy
- Understanding this developmental stage
Why are the holidays harder for adolescent girls
Your daughter is in the process of becoming separate and growing away from you – from the family unit she’s always known. This differentiation process is healthy and necessary. But Christmas, with its noisy intrusion,s demands the opposite: togetherness, participation, and enthusiasm for family traditions that might feel increasingly childish to her.
She is caught between wanting her own space and autonomy, and being expected to show up for extended family dinners, smile in photos, and engage with relatives who still see her as a little girl. Add in the social pressure from her peer group (who’s doing what, who’s going where, what is she missing), disrupted sleep, too much sugar, and the general overstimulation of the season – and you’ve got a good recipe for overwhelm.
Your daughter is processing a lot while locked in her own bubble, trying to work out who she is separate from who everyone expects her to be. She is not choosing to be difficult.
What needing space looks like
You might notice:
- She’s withdrawn but can’t articulate why
- She feels misunderstood and not heard
- She’s irritable over small things
- She’s either glued to her phone or refusing to engage with anyone
- She seems anxious but won’t talk about it
- She’s sleeping too much or struggling to sleep
- She’s lost interest in things she usually enjoys
Sure, easy to name it as just teenage moodiness, but it really is more than that. More a young woman on the threshold of early womanhood who’s lost her sense of self and at the same time struggling to find it again in a new developing self that’s still under wraps. Like a fresh painting slowly evolving.
How to help her reconnect
Your motherly instinct when you see your daughter struggling is to want to fix it, to ask lots of questions, and push her to talk to you. That approach will backfire with adolescents who are already feeling overwhelmed by external demands.
Example: Asking for hugs when she doesn’t want to and cajoling her anyway. (A small boundary violation right there denting her autonomy).
Here’s what can work
Creating pockets of low-demand time
Christmas tends to create intense family time or a period of high demand. To balance that out, your girl needs space where nothing is expected of her. Let her know that the next few days are hers to do with as she pleases. No plans unless she wants them. Give her room to breathe and reset, and to choose to join in on family plans made or not. This space can feel like a much-needed holiday without imposing conditions where possible.
Example: if she has 2-3 days to do what she wants, both at home or outside of it, you would expect her to be consulted and available. Of course, this will depend on her age and maturity and other considerations at the time.
Change the setting
Sometimes the family home itself feels like part of the overwhelm. The sameness and predictability can feel stifling to a young woman who is reaching for change in both broad and small strokes. A change of scenery can help. Suggest a drive to the beach early morning before it gets busy, or a walk somewhere new. Not a big family outing, just a low-key movement in a different space.
She might say no, and that’s fine. The offer itself shows you’re paying attention to her without expectation. Relax routines like breakfast or other meal times. It’s the holidays after all. Example: Make her a juice and knock on her door before just going i,n or text her if she wants one. Give her privacy and respect that.
Reframe your questions
Instead of: “How are you feeling?” or “What’s wrong?” Try these instead:
- “What have been hard parts of the holidays for you?”
- Or, “what have been the best bits so far for you?”
- “If you could change something about how we do Christmas, what would it be?”
- “What do you need more of right now? What do you need less of?”
These questions give her space to articulate her own answers and not assume she should just be grateful and happy.
Model what grounding looks like
You are her go-to model and she’s watching you more than you realise. If you’re frazzled from the holiday chaos, she is absorbing that energy. Show her what resetting looks like: go for your own walk, spend time doing something that settles you, acknowledge out loud when you’re feeling overwhelmed and what you’re doing about it. Example: Demonstrate a grounding breath back into your body and show her how you do it and how you feel afterwards.
Adolescent girls learn how to manage their internal states by watching the women around them. Be honest about your own need to find your centre again after the intensity of Christmas.
Understanding this developmental stage
Respect her bubble (but don’t disappear. If she’s retreating to her room, that’s fine – that’s her need to regulate herself in the only way she knows how. Don’t take it personally. Let her know you’re there when she’s ready, then trust she’ll come to you when she needs to.
Sometimes being close can simply be sitting in the same room doing separate things. Sharing the space without needing to talk, and knowing you are there if she needs you. Or driving her somewhere, playing her own music and no pressure to talk. Example: Making her favourite meal without announcement or expectation. Little surprises that show your love at work.
Help her distinguish between real and false connections
The holidays tend to force a lot of surface-level interaction – putting on a happy face, being polite, and engaging with people she doesn’t actually feel close to or sees a lot of. This is exhausting stuff and can make genuine connections look difficult when you feel like you’re having to fake it.
Help her understand the difference, even though a lot is going on. Real connection is when she is just herself on the inside. Whether she’s quiet, tired, unsure, whatever it feels like to her, so that it’s safe to be herself. Reassure her she doesn’t need to be “on” and be genuine yourself, so she sees what that looks like too.
How to practise this
At these very specific times of change and transition, it’s important for you as her mother to hold a tender and protective space around her as you see her struggle, to allow space for her to be by herself as she chooses, then come look for you to re-engage.
This transitional phase has already happened a few times in your daughter’s young life – when she was crawling and learning to first walk, wanting to be near you and wanting to be apart. And again, around 3 years old or so, the age of language and autonomy, wanting to be seen and heard. The push-pull of separation and togetherness. Growing her sense of self. The voice of perceived injustices or slights and her needs not being met fast enough – it happened then and it’s happening now in a similar way.
Your daughter is in another of these transitional, growing-up stages. She’s beginning to shed her family’s love and protection and turn towards the peer group, where she seeks to be better understood. She’s exploring an identity beyond daughter, sister or granddaughter – and that’s exactly what she should be doing.
In practice, it looks like this:
- Protecting her from more social obligations in these remaining weeks
- Not scheduling activities without checking with her first
- Accepting that she needs more sleep and alone time than usual
- Letting go of your expectations about what a “good” summer holiday should look like
- Trusting that this phase, too, will pass
The remaining summer weeks are an opportunity
Unlike the intense re-entry that happens when school starts immediately after Christmas in other countries, here you have time. Time for her to decompress, to rediscover what she actually wants rather than what’s expected of her, and to practice listening to her own needs and speaking them.
This is valuable preparation not just for the school year ahead, but for the rest of her life. Learning to recognise when she’s overwhelmed, understanding what helps her reset, knowing she can trust herself to find her way back – these are skills that will serve her well beyond adolescence.
It’s tempting to think that your role is to rescue her from discomfort or manage her emotions for her and make the ‘world’ out there kinder. But really, your job is to witness what she’s experiencing, validate that these experiences make sense, and trust her capacity to navigate it with your steady presence nearby.
She will find her centre again and discard the noise. She just needs the space and time to do it.