Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Girls Will be Girls: Raising Confident and Courageous Daughters
Girls Will be Girls: Raising Confident and Courageous Daughters
© 2003 by JoAnn Deak and Teresa Barker
Use both “what do you think and what do you feel “ when discussing things.
Girls in their teens have told me that they have been playing the part for so long they have lost sense of who they really are and what they really believe in. As one 15‑year-old girl said, “I don’t know if I like myself or not anymore, I don’t even know who myself is? Am I this person who pretends this and acts that? Where is the real me? Who am I?”
Girls, they say used to talk a lot about family events and travel. The girls place family in the top three categories of what is important. One seventh-grade girl said, “I wish my parents would spend more time with me. I know they love me but they are so busy and we hardly ever get to do things together.” There is no substitute for quantity. Family that spend a lot of time together bond, know one another, are able to see and predict when issues arrive and they have better communication. Meaningful relationships take time and emotional investment. The more time you spend with them and the more opportunity you have to get to know him or her better and to share moments that create closeness, underscores caring. Delay your twin daughters’ dating as long as you can. Sitting in a dark movie theatre or putting bodies together at a dance is not an effective way getting to know the other gender. It is an effective way to facilitate a physical relationship and physical relationships are too complicated and too costly at this young age. Dating and dances can wait until later high school years.
Groups of girls and boys interacting around some kind of activity are the healthiest relationship mode for this age range.
I always ask the women how many of them would want to be in middle school again. Over the years out of thousands of women, a total three have raised their hand. Your teen will believe you have no wisdom but keep acting like you do. Your daughter will pretend she isn’t listening to a word you are saying but keep talking because she is listening. Help prolong the part of her that is a child. Tuck her in at night like she is a little girl but treat her as a semi-adult during the day especially when others are present. Try desperately hard not to embarrass her in public but know you will be somewhat of a failure at this. Late teens or young adults call a halt to the building of the core when it is almost finished but they don’t dismantle the wall. Instead they drop the façade for many years, virtually forgetting about the core and how it differs from the façade. I can’t tell you the number of women hovering around the age of 50 who have said things like ‘I only wear comfortable shoes now’, ‘I can’t be bothered’, ‘I don’t go to cocktail parties anymore. My time is too precious’, ‘my husband says I have changed. I used to be so agreeable, so easy to get along with. Now I say what’s on my mind’.
What a teen tells her friend and the adults in her life may be, and usually is, quite different from what her core is all about. As parents and teachers we want to inspect the façade when it serves to protect the girl as she continues her core building behind it. We also want to create environments in which girls feel safe enough for them to be stepping clear of the façade and showing this core self in action. When the core is out in the open it is easier to help at how she should grow. Every girl has to deal with the fact that boys her age are primed by nature and not by culture to assume girls are or want to be completely sexually active. Every girl has to deal with the realities of sexual culture and its consequences whether she likes it or not. Sex is without a doubt a key crucible event of adolescence. How it is handled shapes and molds a girl’s reputation, social needs, and style of handling relationships in life. You can make your point that you value abstinence during these teen years without closing the door on discussions of what life is like for her and how she feels and what her moral code is becoming. Investing your energy in creating a relationship with your daughter in which sexuality is a comfortable topic of conversation will ensure your continued participation in her thought processes and your influence will be much more powerful.
Whenever I have a chance to talk with a group of high school girls one of the questions I ask them, “What percentage of the girls in your school do you believe are virgins when they graduate”. Usually they guess around ten percent and what girls believe to be true influences their decision-making attitude and behavior. But for many teen girls it is the extension of the dating and their expectations of being with a boy for more than a few days. In some ways the pressure experienced in middle school to dress like and talk like and follows the group only now ratchets up several notches into the sexual world. Teen and screen media screamed to girls that having sex is fun, is expected and cool. Combine immature frontal lobes with hormones that affect body sensations, hormones and social pressure say yes but the frontal lobes are not strong enough to resist or wise enough to argue.
Just leave me alone, but don’t leave me alone tug‑of‑war happens so frequently with adolescent girls that it is a dizzying experience. In hindsight, and I think unpremeditated by my parents the core building part was the conversation at the dinner table. During and after dinner we shared our stories of the day. To this day it bothers me if someone jumps up after dinner to start doing the dishes or to pick up the phone. I still like to sit at the table after dinner and talk. One of the hardest challenges in parenting teens today is to have enough with them and enough conversation that occurs in the crises moment. A certain day or time is sacrosanct for the family like Sunday morning breakfast or the first two week of August for family vacations.
Ask, listen, discuss and decide together on as many issues as possible. Especially when you feel a knee jerk reaction coming on.
What do I love most about my mom? I just wanted to see her positive outlook on life. Her cup is always half-full if not full to the brim. She is usually able to find something positive in every situation. Reach for the stars and for the moon and remember that my heart will always be with you. In a very high percentage of cases the girls talked about their fathers’ sense of humor and how that helped them cope with life and also helped keep the father-daughter relationship healthy. When asked what they would change about their mothers a high percentage talked about such things as nagging less, worrying less, and mothers’ habit of focusing on every little mistake.
The hard part was keeping mothers’ from taking over the discussion by correcting the girls, interrupting them or getting heavily handed and trying to lead the discussion to the moral of the story they wanted to pound in. Some think that they cannot let their daughters express a thought without jumping. Once I heard that and became sensitized to it I realized how much I do it in everyday conversation in our home and I started trying harder to shut up and listen. Temperament is somewhat generic and is recognized almost from birth and is very resistant to change. The best way to analyze personality is on a typical day with the standard tasks - homework, cooking, shopping, discussing plans for the weekend or an upcoming event.
Some people are just born seeing the possibility when others see problems. Carol’s mother was a screamer and a harsh critic. Even when her temper was under control it was to hard watch their interaction. You could always when Carol’s mother was in the vicinity because Carol’s back would become very rigid. When she sat up straight she seemed to physically brace herself for her mother’s presence. How can I help you? My dad would fly home from business trips early just to be at my sporting event. I always look for him in the crowd until I saw his face I was not ready to play just knowing he was there made everything all right. Yes my Mom was there too but it was extra important to have my Dad there. I don’t really know why. Clinical observations and studies indicate that girls and women who have experienced highly critical fathers are very unlikely to have high self-esteem. It can take most of their lifetime for a woman to overcome the emotional scars and handicap to behavior achievement and life choices resulting from a domineering or critical father.
The thing I loved most about my father is he is always willing to help me. I like when he makes jokes. If there is something is bothering then he will me a hug and find a solution. My Dad is like one of my best friends; he watches TV with me, plays sports and helps me with my homework. If I could change one thing about my father I would change his temper. Sometimes he gets upset about things that are just not worth an argument. In general fathers do the active things with their children; playing, building things, and going to events. Generally mothers talked or read with their children. Girls and the women talk about how they did things with their fathers, how their father gave them the feeling that they could do anything. Schoolgirls frequently report that their fathers care about their grades, how well they do in sport. She talked about making a bookcase with her father in their garage when she was a preteen. Her father had matter-of-factly expected to be equal partner in building it and she had surprised herself by being just that. In both stories the fathers communicated inferentially not just high expectations that their daughter is competent and able to get the job done with an underlying high regard. Everything about the way they approached these girls assumed competence and communicated respect and the girls got the message. I will tell you why daughters drive father nuts because most men have never figured grown women out and here is this girl child and no matter how plain your policy was when she was little, suddenly one day she becomes one of them.
A father communicates a great deal in the way he responds the gender difference. He can use his daughter’s otherness as an excuse to distance himself from her; leave her to her mother; treat her as a why can’t a women be more like a makeover project or in another words criticize her way of knowing and being or he treat can her as an invitation to learn, be open about his ignorance and communicate a desire to understand and appreciate the female experience, most important her female experience. This connection is synergy investment. She is kind, interesting, fun to be around, and talented.
Hang in there even when a daughter says, “Oh, Dad!” with that tone, don’t let it push you away too far. Sometimes you have to blow ground but always come back and always keep talking and always keep doing things with her. For those fathers there is often a hard moment when they recognize their own patterns in their own complexity and see a daughter’s personality and temperament more objectively. Most girls can describe their own personality type and their father’s as well. I love how my father always says the wrong thing because he is my Dad and always makes me feel better. The fact that he is trying to help me lets me know how much he loves. He gives me advice on subjects that I know he could do nothing about and even if I don’t listen to what he says I know he is trying to help me. I talk with my daughter way more than I would think of doing with anyone else under ordinary circumstances because I know it is important to her; that’s her learning style.
Many fathers are still protective of their daughters. This can translate into controlling, critical, or driving behavior or daughters often perceive it to be that way. The older and more beautiful his daughter become more protective a father is because it is daughter becomes the more protective a father is because he knows what can happen as boys and girls enter puberty. He can force his daughter to react by taking dangerous risks and exercising poor judgment. A father’s seemingly minor critical or competitive comments which may have been meant as constructive and positive are often heard by daughters as more negative and deceptively critical. I see the deep hurting feeling of betrayal that girls have when fathers don’t show an interest in their lives or when they are unreliable.
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0786886579
© 2003 by JoAnn Deak and Teresa Barker
Use both “what do you think and what do you feel “ when discussing things.
Girls in their teens have told me that they have been playing the part for so long they have lost sense of who they really are and what they really believe in. As one 15‑year-old girl said, “I don’t know if I like myself or not anymore, I don’t even know who myself is? Am I this person who pretends this and acts that? Where is the real me? Who am I?”
Girls, they say used to talk a lot about family events and travel. The girls place family in the top three categories of what is important. One seventh-grade girl said, “I wish my parents would spend more time with me. I know they love me but they are so busy and we hardly ever get to do things together.” There is no substitute for quantity. Family that spend a lot of time together bond, know one another, are able to see and predict when issues arrive and they have better communication. Meaningful relationships take time and emotional investment. The more time you spend with them and the more opportunity you have to get to know him or her better and to share moments that create closeness, underscores caring. Delay your twin daughters’ dating as long as you can. Sitting in a dark movie theatre or putting bodies together at a dance is not an effective way getting to know the other gender. It is an effective way to facilitate a physical relationship and physical relationships are too complicated and too costly at this young age. Dating and dances can wait until later high school years.
Groups of girls and boys interacting around some kind of activity are the healthiest relationship mode for this age range.
I always ask the women how many of them would want to be in middle school again. Over the years out of thousands of women, a total three have raised their hand. Your teen will believe you have no wisdom but keep acting like you do. Your daughter will pretend she isn’t listening to a word you are saying but keep talking because she is listening. Help prolong the part of her that is a child. Tuck her in at night like she is a little girl but treat her as a semi-adult during the day especially when others are present. Try desperately hard not to embarrass her in public but know you will be somewhat of a failure at this. Late teens or young adults call a halt to the building of the core when it is almost finished but they don’t dismantle the wall. Instead they drop the façade for many years, virtually forgetting about the core and how it differs from the façade. I can’t tell you the number of women hovering around the age of 50 who have said things like ‘I only wear comfortable shoes now’, ‘I can’t be bothered’, ‘I don’t go to cocktail parties anymore. My time is too precious’, ‘my husband says I have changed. I used to be so agreeable, so easy to get along with. Now I say what’s on my mind’.
What a teen tells her friend and the adults in her life may be, and usually is, quite different from what her core is all about. As parents and teachers we want to inspect the façade when it serves to protect the girl as she continues her core building behind it. We also want to create environments in which girls feel safe enough for them to be stepping clear of the façade and showing this core self in action. When the core is out in the open it is easier to help at how she should grow. Every girl has to deal with the fact that boys her age are primed by nature and not by culture to assume girls are or want to be completely sexually active. Every girl has to deal with the realities of sexual culture and its consequences whether she likes it or not. Sex is without a doubt a key crucible event of adolescence. How it is handled shapes and molds a girl’s reputation, social needs, and style of handling relationships in life. You can make your point that you value abstinence during these teen years without closing the door on discussions of what life is like for her and how she feels and what her moral code is becoming. Investing your energy in creating a relationship with your daughter in which sexuality is a comfortable topic of conversation will ensure your continued participation in her thought processes and your influence will be much more powerful.
Whenever I have a chance to talk with a group of high school girls one of the questions I ask them, “What percentage of the girls in your school do you believe are virgins when they graduate”. Usually they guess around ten percent and what girls believe to be true influences their decision-making attitude and behavior. But for many teen girls it is the extension of the dating and their expectations of being with a boy for more than a few days. In some ways the pressure experienced in middle school to dress like and talk like and follows the group only now ratchets up several notches into the sexual world. Teen and screen media screamed to girls that having sex is fun, is expected and cool. Combine immature frontal lobes with hormones that affect body sensations, hormones and social pressure say yes but the frontal lobes are not strong enough to resist or wise enough to argue.
Just leave me alone, but don’t leave me alone tug‑of‑war happens so frequently with adolescent girls that it is a dizzying experience. In hindsight, and I think unpremeditated by my parents the core building part was the conversation at the dinner table. During and after dinner we shared our stories of the day. To this day it bothers me if someone jumps up after dinner to start doing the dishes or to pick up the phone. I still like to sit at the table after dinner and talk. One of the hardest challenges in parenting teens today is to have enough with them and enough conversation that occurs in the crises moment. A certain day or time is sacrosanct for the family like Sunday morning breakfast or the first two week of August for family vacations.
Ask, listen, discuss and decide together on as many issues as possible. Especially when you feel a knee jerk reaction coming on.
What do I love most about my mom? I just wanted to see her positive outlook on life. Her cup is always half-full if not full to the brim. She is usually able to find something positive in every situation. Reach for the stars and for the moon and remember that my heart will always be with you. In a very high percentage of cases the girls talked about their fathers’ sense of humor and how that helped them cope with life and also helped keep the father-daughter relationship healthy. When asked what they would change about their mothers a high percentage talked about such things as nagging less, worrying less, and mothers’ habit of focusing on every little mistake.
The hard part was keeping mothers’ from taking over the discussion by correcting the girls, interrupting them or getting heavily handed and trying to lead the discussion to the moral of the story they wanted to pound in. Some think that they cannot let their daughters express a thought without jumping. Once I heard that and became sensitized to it I realized how much I do it in everyday conversation in our home and I started trying harder to shut up and listen. Temperament is somewhat generic and is recognized almost from birth and is very resistant to change. The best way to analyze personality is on a typical day with the standard tasks - homework, cooking, shopping, discussing plans for the weekend or an upcoming event.
Some people are just born seeing the possibility when others see problems. Carol’s mother was a screamer and a harsh critic. Even when her temper was under control it was to hard watch their interaction. You could always when Carol’s mother was in the vicinity because Carol’s back would become very rigid. When she sat up straight she seemed to physically brace herself for her mother’s presence. How can I help you? My dad would fly home from business trips early just to be at my sporting event. I always look for him in the crowd until I saw his face I was not ready to play just knowing he was there made everything all right. Yes my Mom was there too but it was extra important to have my Dad there. I don’t really know why. Clinical observations and studies indicate that girls and women who have experienced highly critical fathers are very unlikely to have high self-esteem. It can take most of their lifetime for a woman to overcome the emotional scars and handicap to behavior achievement and life choices resulting from a domineering or critical father.
The thing I loved most about my father is he is always willing to help me. I like when he makes jokes. If there is something is bothering then he will me a hug and find a solution. My Dad is like one of my best friends; he watches TV with me, plays sports and helps me with my homework. If I could change one thing about my father I would change his temper. Sometimes he gets upset about things that are just not worth an argument. In general fathers do the active things with their children; playing, building things, and going to events. Generally mothers talked or read with their children. Girls and the women talk about how they did things with their fathers, how their father gave them the feeling that they could do anything. Schoolgirls frequently report that their fathers care about their grades, how well they do in sport. She talked about making a bookcase with her father in their garage when she was a preteen. Her father had matter-of-factly expected to be equal partner in building it and she had surprised herself by being just that. In both stories the fathers communicated inferentially not just high expectations that their daughter is competent and able to get the job done with an underlying high regard. Everything about the way they approached these girls assumed competence and communicated respect and the girls got the message. I will tell you why daughters drive father nuts because most men have never figured grown women out and here is this girl child and no matter how plain your policy was when she was little, suddenly one day she becomes one of them.
A father communicates a great deal in the way he responds the gender difference. He can use his daughter’s otherness as an excuse to distance himself from her; leave her to her mother; treat her as a why can’t a women be more like a makeover project or in another words criticize her way of knowing and being or he treat can her as an invitation to learn, be open about his ignorance and communicate a desire to understand and appreciate the female experience, most important her female experience. This connection is synergy investment. She is kind, interesting, fun to be around, and talented.
Hang in there even when a daughter says, “Oh, Dad!” with that tone, don’t let it push you away too far. Sometimes you have to blow ground but always come back and always keep talking and always keep doing things with her. For those fathers there is often a hard moment when they recognize their own patterns in their own complexity and see a daughter’s personality and temperament more objectively. Most girls can describe their own personality type and their father’s as well. I love how my father always says the wrong thing because he is my Dad and always makes me feel better. The fact that he is trying to help me lets me know how much he loves. He gives me advice on subjects that I know he could do nothing about and even if I don’t listen to what he says I know he is trying to help me. I talk with my daughter way more than I would think of doing with anyone else under ordinary circumstances because I know it is important to her; that’s her learning style.
Many fathers are still protective of their daughters. This can translate into controlling, critical, or driving behavior or daughters often perceive it to be that way. The older and more beautiful his daughter become more protective a father is because it is daughter becomes the more protective a father is because he knows what can happen as boys and girls enter puberty. He can force his daughter to react by taking dangerous risks and exercising poor judgment. A father’s seemingly minor critical or competitive comments which may have been meant as constructive and positive are often heard by daughters as more negative and deceptively critical. I see the deep hurting feeling of betrayal that girls have when fathers don’t show an interest in their lives or when they are unreliable.
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0786886579
