A few mothers and I were "supervising" (read, sitting on the deck drinking champagne) and the talk turned to what we were like at that age. I can never remember having long legs nor wearing too many bikinis past about the age of 12. But I do remember having a tight group of friends and spending similar afternoons in the summer sun, tanning ourselves and gossiping and praying that school would never start again.

Being a teenage girl isn't easy (any mother of a teenage daughter will tell you that) and I was dismayed this week to read colleague Sherryn Groch's story about the "burn out" amongst Canberra teens.

According to a recent Mission Australia report, young Canberrans are more likely to struggle with stress than the average Australian teen.

A survey of more than 24,000 young Australians aged 15-19 years revealed almost half of respondents in the ACT said coping with stress was a major personal concern. Two thirds of those respondents were girls.

Sherryn spoke to 18-year-old Asha Clementi, who admits to struggling with her mental health during high school.

"I'm burnt out ... young people, especially girls, have so much thrown at us," Asha explained.

"You have to look amazing, there's pressure to be social, to get a really high score, to be good at science or languages, and then to buy a house, and just to manage everything at once.

"[We're] expected to be these perfect young women, these perfect girls."

Perhaps I can say this with the condescending wisdom of old age but Asha, no one expects you to be anything. Sure you probably feel "pressure" from school and home and, more likely than not I'm guessing, you probably put a lot of pressure on yourself to "be" what it is you think you should be.

Here's an idea. Be Asha. I don't know you. I can only assume you're not that dissimilar to my own daughter and her friends. I'm familiar with your school. I get angry at your school sometimes, attending nights where I watch a presentation whose message is pretty much you're stuffed if you settle for being "good enough". We shouldn't be telling our kids that. Our daughters or our sons. Be good enough.

Young people don't like to hear it, but we all faced the same pressures as teenagers. Did Damian like me? Why, even though I spend lunchtime slathered in Coconut Reef Oil, will I never be as brown as Leanne? Or as slim as Veronica, or as smart as Donna? We all wanted to do well at school, get good marks. We wanted good jobs, some money, some independence, to meet a nice boy. We wanted to get on with the whole adulting thing just as much as you did. None of our lives turned out how we thought they would. Some of us are much more successful, whatever that definition is, than we dreamed we would ever be. Some of us are languishing still. At 50.

Are there more pressures on today's teenagers? Sure, social media has changed many things. But way before Snapchat was even invented teenagers still gossiped and bullied and bitched behind each other backs. Before Instagram, we all had friends whose lives seemed much better than ours. We all struggled to fit school and sport and being social into our 16-year-old lives. We didn't realise how good we actually had it.

This sounds like a terrible "back in my day" lecture from your mother.

Your mother. I'm sure she's a lovely woman, but please tell Asha she's ok. That she makes you proud, that since the day she was a little baby she's filled your heart with joy. That it unnerves you somewhat, to see what a remarkable young woman she is becoming, and that nothing she feels as though she has to do actually matters in the end.

Sitting on that pool deck last weekend surrounded by some of my best friends - and isn't it an amazing thing when you actually love the mothers of your daughter's friends - we joked about getting into the pool with our girls. The girls gave us the eye-rolling look of don't you dare, and we laughed and stirred them up, our afternoon as fun as theirs four good decades down the track.

All I hope for my daughter is that she reaches a place where she's surrounded by other good women, content in her skin, content with her life, happy and confident, daring the other mothers to jump in the pool.