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Growing Up Duggar: It's All About Relationships

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Education
Saturday, March 30, 2013

Growing Up Duggar: It's All About Relationships

Author: Jill Duggar | Language: English | ISBN: 1451679165 | Format: PDF

Growing Up Duggar: It's All About Relationships Description

About the Author

Jana, Jill, Jessa, and Jinger Duggar appear with the rest of their family on TLC’s 19 Kids and Counting, which airs five times a week and is now in its tenth season. The Duggars have appeared on such national TV shows as the Today show, Good Morning America, The View, Inside Edition, Jimmy Kimmel Live, and more.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Growing Up Duggar

1



YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH YOURSELF

Getting to know and love the girl in the mirror


I will praise Thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

—Psalms 139:14

WHEN OUR PARENTS WERE planning to build our current house in northwest Arkansas, they asked us kids how many bedrooms we thought the house should have. It was an easy question for us to answer: we wanted to be together. So, upstairs in our house today, there’s one big room for all the girls, one big room for all the boys, and our parents’ bedroom with an adjoining nursery.

Jana and I (Jill) sleep in double beds with our youngest sisters, Jordyn and Josie, and the other girls sleep in twin- or youth-sized beds. It’s always an exciting time when the littlest sister gets to move from the nursery to the “big girls’ room” with us, although they’re always free to toddle back to Mom and Dad’s room if they need to. We love the late-night conversations and falling asleep each night surrounded by our sisters.

One night a few years ago as I was putting my retainer in my mouth at bedtime, my sister Johannah, then probably five or six, asked what it was. I told her it was something I slept with to help keep my teeth aligned now that I didn’t have to wear braces anymore.

“Can I wear it?” Johannah asked.

We Duggars do love to share a lot of things but, thankfully, dental appliances aren’t among them. I smiled and told her no, it was made just for me and it wouldn’t fit her mouth at all.

Thinking about that conversation later reminded me that we can’t conform ourselves to other people’s molds. But we try sometimes, don’t we? It’s inevitable that human beings, particularly teenagers and especially teenage girls, go through times when they may try to remake themselves into something, or someone, they’re not. Every girl has a tendency to compare herself to other girls, noticing how they dress or style their hair, how much they weigh, how they talk, the words and phrases they use, and how guys respond to them.

You may think that kids like the Duggars, who are homeschooled and don’t watch TV or read secular magazines, are immune from feelings like that, but we’re not! We’ve experienced some of those same negative feelings about the girl in the mirror that you may be feeling right now or have felt in the past.



Jinger didn’t seem to mind when we visited a dude ranch and deputies Jessa, left, and Jill took her into custody.

All of us have gone through times when we’ve felt we needed to lose weight. And we’ve all looked at the girl in the mirror and sometimes found things that just didn’t seem to measure up.

Are you going through a time in your life when you’re being critical of the girl in your mirror?

ACCEPTING THE GIRL IN THE MIRROR


THAT’S HARD, ISN’T IT? You’ve looked at that girl in the mirror all your life and had made friends with her, and then one day you look at her and notice the blemish on her forehead or the nose that isn’t as cute as your friend’s nose. Maybe the girl who seemed just fine yesterday now seems too short or too tall, too thin or too heavy. Maybe her clothes, the ones that were your favorites yesterday, seem completely wrong today. And that hair. It’s ridiculous!

Suddenly the girl who looked just fine yesterday seems like a total loser today compared to those cute girls at the mall . . . or your school . . . or your homeschool group . . . or even your church.

So then what happens? You reject that girl in the mirror, and in your heart you worry that she’ll be rejected by others, too, including those you admire. Fear of rejection is one of the major problems facing teenagers and young adults today. It affects almost all of us, including the Duggar kids, at one time or another.

For example, I (Jill) can remember a Sunday morning when we were getting ready for church and I went through multiple outfit changes because I was trying to measure up. The night before, I had stood in our closet for at least ten minutes trying to decide what I would wear the next day. (Ever been there?)

Finally I chose an outfit I thought was suitable. I took it upstairs and laid it out so it would be ready the next morning. But when I walked out of the bathroom Sunday morning, dressed and ready to go, I noticed how great Jessa looked wearing an adorable outfit she had recently found at a thrift store. Plus, she had the cutest aviator sunglasses perched on her head and a stylish leather bag slung over her shoulder. Suddenly the outfit I had chosen for myself the night before seemed totally wrong. I wanted to look as cute as Jessa did.

So I hurried back downstairs to the closet and stood there for what seemed like another ten minutes, trying to find something to wear. Then I heard Dad’s voice over the intercom saying, “Everyone hurry up! It’s nine forty, and the first vanload is leaving for church.”

I grabbed a skirt off the rack and tried it on, but then I remembered that the shirt I usually wear with it was dirty. I hurriedly put that choice back on the hanger and found a cute denim skirt—only to realize the zipper was broken. I was growing more frustrated and about to settle for the original outfit I had put on that morning when my eye landed on a brown-striped skirt. Perfect, I thought. Why didn’t I think of this in the first place?



While we sometimes do the shopping for our family at warehouse stores, our favorite place to shop for clothes is thrift stores.

But then I had to change my shoes to go with the skirt, and—or where were those sandals that looked so great with this skirt? I finally rushed out of the clothes closet and around the corner to the bathroom mirror. Oops! With all the changing, my hair had gotten messed up. I hurriedly worked to restore order to it and then discovered we had run out of hair spray in that bathroom. Running to another bathroom to grab some, I could hear the car horn honking as the second load of churchgoers waited for me.

It was nearly ten o’clock—church time—as I rushed out the door. Not exactly the way one would want to prepare for a morning of worshipping our Creator! And it all started because I compared myself to one of my sisters and felt that my appearance fell short.

It seems like such a trivial matter now, looking back on that morning, but it’s so typical of teenagers, especially young ladies. It’s easy for us to compare ourselves to others and think we have to be like them to measure up or to be accepted. But too often it’s impossible to meet the goals of perfection we set for ourselves, and as a result, we end up dealing with all sorts of destructive feelings: poor self-worth, lack of confidence, jealousy, discontentment, and so much more. Before we know it, momentary concerns about our outward appearance turn into lies about ourselves that swirl constantly through our minds, telling us, “I’m not good enough.” “I’m a failure.” “Nobody loves me.”

Ultimately, we lose sight of what’s most important: our inward character.

GIVING POWER TO OTHERS


FOR MANY YEARS, I (Jessa) couldn’t care less about what I wore and how I looked. I was the typical happy little Duggar kid, filling my day with homeschool work and playing with my siblings and friends.

But life changed for me when I was about twelve or thirteen. Whenever I was around friends outside our family, I became very quiet and self-conscious—really insecure about the way I looked, dressed, and acted.

I had friends who were really beautiful, and whenever we were together I compared myself to them and always came up lacking something. These critical feelings caused me to have a mistaken view of my friends and myself—thinking they were perfect and I wasn’t. I felt so ashamed and awkward that I couldn’t even talk to anyone about my feelings. I felt overwhelmed and stuck in that negative mind-set.

I remember during that stage of my life having mixed feelings when I was invited to a friend’s birthday party. I was eager to go to the party but overly concerned that I had to look and act just right. What a dilemma, worrying about what clothes I would wear, what I would say, what gift I would bring!

I can still feel those butterflies fluttering in my stomach as we drove up to the birthday girl’s big yellow house. I was excited but nervous at the same time. I was thinking about all the conversations I’d had with the girl and our friends that focused on outward appearance—who had cute clothes and who didn’t, whose hairstyle we wanted to copy and whose hair was always a wreck. The butterflies continued to churn as I arrived at the front door with another guest.



Our younger sister Joy is beautiful inside and out.

“Oh, I love your outfit!” the birthday girl said to the friend beside me.

She didn’t say anything about what I was wearing, so I immediately assumed she didn’t think my outfit was as perfect as the other girl’s.

Soon the party was under way, and I enjoyed all the games, but after we’d sung “Happy Birthday̶...
  • Product Details
  • Table of Contents
  • Reviews
  • Hardcover: 256 pages
  • Publisher: Howard Books (March 4, 2014)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1451679165
  • ISBN-13: 978-1451679168
  • Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
I bought this on kindle for my 11 year old as I figured she could surely come away with a few worthwhile words of wisdom from the Duggar girls. I have read both of the family's previous books, we watch the show, and I really appreciate many things I have garnered from Michelle and Bob in doing so. I almost gave the book to her without reading it myself beforehand, but for some reason I cracked into it first and I am glad I did. Although the premise of esteem and relationship building etc is very needed at a tween age, I felt some of the discussions on abortion and mentions of pornography also included were a little more mature of conversations than I wanted my daughter to run across in a book. Unfortunately they were mentioned enough that I felt it overshadowed the parts I would prefer her to focus on. As it's difficult to say, "hey I need you to skip these chapters", without opening the can of worms by explaining why, I am probably going to shelve this book for her until she is closer to 13-14. It is obvious, simply by their family structure that the Duggars are extremely anti-abortion, so I wish they could have left a lot of that out of the book if it was targeted to "girls". I really don't feel like my daughter needs a crash course on partial birth abortion which is also discussed in a few places. I wasn't expecting such a hot button topic to be a central theme of more than one chapter (if at all).

Without delving into which of their stances I personally agree or disagree with,I would like to mention the following: 1) this book goes far deeper into a politically charged realm than the books written by Michelle and Jim, 2) it definitively has a different "tone" than the other books.
I’ve never seen a Duggar TV show, read another Duggar book, nor anything else by the Duggars. So when I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review, I dived into reading with no previous opinions of the family.

The first thing I noticed was that even though the book is supposedly by four girls, it reads as if it was written by a single person. There is no difference in voice, expression, personality, or opinion. They even use the same odd clichés, such as “share our heart” (meaning to speak candidly). When I flipped to the Acknowledgments page, I discovered why. A writer named Charlie Richards is the actual author who penned the book after interviewing the young women.

This is not an insider’s look at a family of 19 and counting. Rather, it is a collection of events that happened while growing up, peppered with a whole lot of advice on how to be a good child and how to be a good parent. (Another indication that the book actually written by an older adult.)

The best audience for this book is teenage girls. They can glean wisdom from the Duggars, such as how to handle an annoying sibling, how to respectfully disagree with your parents, dealing with anger, managing peer pressure, forming opinions on opposite sex relationships, dressing modestly, and more.

A secondary audience is parents who can also pick up some good ideas. For example, on page 36-37 is a list of questions to ask your children in order to get them to open up and discuss life’s important issues. That alone could be worth the price of the book. Additionally, it might be helpful to read excerpts aloud to the family and then discuss your own responses to these situations.

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