Brilio.net/en - We have all been there. Being 13 and lost in the transitional phase of our life, drifting between childhood and adulthood in the strange time known as the age of teen. Everything from hormones to bodies, emotions and feelings, and even friends is in flux only that they feel the changes in their bodies, emotions and feelings, their friends changed too. As parents we sometimes forget that our daughters are experiencing this and can sometimes neglect to ask them how they are dealing with the changes.
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"Girls are at their fiercest and most authentic prior to puberty," notes Rachel Simmons, author of three books on girlhood and cofounder of Girls Leadership, the US nonprofit foundation that provides training, education and workshops to girls and supportive adults.
As posted at Mashable, below are the 7 skills your daughter needs from her parents in order to become a strong woman for the future:
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1. How to respect and express her feelings
People usually correlate girls (and women)as being in touch with their emotional side, and thus able to more easily communicate their feelings. But contrary to popular belief, this is a skill that needs to be learned and practised.
It is important for girls to have the emotional intelligence. It is, says Simmons, the ability to describe and convey the full range of human emotion. But in reality, girls often suppress certain feelings amidst growing up as they are taught to value being happy and liked over raw, authentic emotion.
As parents, it is our task to show our daughters how to "flex the muscle of expressing their strongest feelings," Simmons advised. To do so, they can express their own emotions with an expansive vocabulary by using words like happy, angry, excited, nervous, confused, scared, and frustrated.
This way, parents can help their daughters adequately express their emotions by honoring their experiences as opposed to diminishing or questioning them. Simmons says, When your girls express authentic emotions even if theyre difficult you take them seriously. You dont deny them or challenge them."
2. How to feel self-compassion
Simmons says, Girls get a lot of messages that it's important to please others. So when they experience a setback, it often feels like letting someone else down. Studies showed that adolescent girls might be exposed to more interpersonal stress than boys. That makes them more likely to ruminate on negative feelings, which puts them at a greater risk for depression.
To help prevent this cycle of suffering, Simmons recommends that parents teach their daughters how to deal with failure. "What we want is for girls to have is the capacity to move through a setback without beating themselves up," says Simmons.
This means teaching girls how to relate to themselves and practice self-compassion in a moment of crisis. It's important that instead of criticizing herself harshly, she focus on the universality of disappointment and practice self-kindness. By realizing others share the same experience, she'll be better prepared to treat herself compassionately and develop resilience.
3. How to develop a positive relationship with her body
In the world of selfies and reality show programs, the lines between self-objectification and self-empowerment are frequently blurred. Young girls might not know how to view themselves as anything beyond objects of desire.
Introducing them to sports is a way to help them develop a holistic, positive relationship with their body. The physical activity gives them an opportunity to see their bodies as capable of strength and stamina, rather than being valued only for appearance. Research shows that sports can directly affect a girl's self-perception and self-confidence.
But even girls who feel physically capable and confident might still feel ashamed of their body and its sexuality. Simmons recommends talking with girls about their bodies from toddlerhood so they are used to it and comfortable with it. Parents should know and use the right names for genitalia and do their best to "represent sex as a healthy, beautiful experience that should be had with joy and consent." It also means talking about what consent means early on and emphasizing that a girl's body belongs to her alone.
"When girls feel uncomfortable with their bodies," says Simmons, "they can also disconnect from how they are really feeling, and worry more about how someone else is feeling, or what they want, instead."
4. How to learn from friendships
Friendships are mostly paramount for girls, but we shouldn't take female friendship for granted, says Simmons. Relationships help girls learn to assert themselves, to compromise and set boundaries.
Parents should view friendships as an opportunity to show girls what healthy relationships look like and how they can relate to others and themselves. The parenting role that can help here is to ask them things that annoyed her when she has a problem with her friends, and work on with her for solutions. Encouraging her to communicate honestly and reasonably assert herself, says Simmons, provides her with skills that she'll need to push for a raise as an adult.
5. How to deal with bullying
No parent wants to learn his or her child is being bullied or has become the bully. Dealing with either situation is challenging because it involves so many factors: communication, friendship and a parent's own emotional intelligence.
"Girls will bully because they dont have the tools to deal with their feelings," says Simmons. And when girls are bullied, they often feel powerless to stand up for themselves. In both cases, Simmons recommends making sure they ask for help from an adult as needed and practice assertive but respectful communication. She admits, though, that approach won't always work, so girls must know when to step away from a situation that is "unkind" and "unethical."
These are critical skills to teach a girl, but many parents don't even possess them. Some will encourage bullying behavior or intervene every time their daughter complains about a difficult interaction. Parents, says Simmons, have to accept responsibility for their own role: "They have to set the tone early on for whats OK in relationships and not."
6. How to embrace her gender identity
From exposure to stars like Caitlyn Jenner and Miley Cyrus to Facebook's 50-plus gender identification options, girls are learning about gender identity and fluidity at increasingly early ages, says Julie Mencher, a Massachusetts-based psychotherapist and educator who specializes in gender diversity and LGBT issues.
The message they're hearing is that gender is not simply male or female anymore. This increased attention to gender, says Mencher, "gives us the opportunity to teach [children] that there's not just a spectrum of masculinity to femininity out there in the world, but inside each of us as well."
Mencher recommends parents use language that expands the gender binary beyond the traditional boy and girl notions in order to include identities like transgender, genderqueer, gender-fluid and gender-neutral. It's also important to describe human characteristics and emotions not just in gender-based terms, especially that girls are always emotional.
Parents should reflect on their own identities as well, noting how much they embrace their "female masculinity" and "male femininity." Creating this kind of openness in your language and relationship will help a girl develop confidence in her own gender identity no matter what that might be.
7. How to lead
We have more powerful female role models than ever before, but girls still find it difficult to develop leadership skills amidst the stigma of being called aggressive or bossy.
It's even harder when they don't know how to communicate their honest feelings, assert themselves, practice self-compassion, handle bullying or embrace their identity will probably have a tough time becoming a leader. That's why it's so important for a girl to cultivate a diverse set of life skills.
There are, however, specific strategies parents can use to encourage their daughter to take a leadership role. Fathers who evenly share household duties are more likely to raise daughters who believe they have a broader range of career options. Mothers can set their own example by taking on a leadership role at work or in a volunteer capacity.
Simmons says that sports offer another way to teach leadership skills to girls; it's a "pre-professional environment" that can help them succeed well past the season's end.
"There's a very powerful and painful unwritten communication code among girls that youre not supposed to say what you really think to someones face and you're not supposed to promote yourself," says Simmons. "Sports perverts all of that; they can do that and be rewarded for it."
These important skills aren't easy to master, but the more chances a girl has to practice them under the guidance of a trusted adult, the more likely she'll feel confident and self-assured as a teenager.
Source: mashable