How to raise your daughter to be brave

I recently watched the ‘Teach Girls Bravery, Not Perfection’ TED talk with Reshma Saujani and it really got me thinking because I’ve had a personal war with perfectionism for as long as I can remember. Saujani believes that “we are raising our girls to be perfect and we are raising our boys to be brave.” She’s the founder of Girls Who Code and she wants to socialize young girls to take risks and learn to code, and more specifically, “get comfortable with imperfection.”

Many people, including Saujani, feel that boys are encouraged to take risks, while girls should play it safe. I wonder if my search for perfection was influenced more by society than genetics. My own daughter has always been a free spirit, never caring about standing out from the crowd and I hope this is partly due to how my husband and I have supported her as an individual, but now as she enters her teens I really want her to she holds on to that courage to be different from the norm and to take risks in her life.

To raise your daughter to be brave, you must teach her to take risks, not be afraid of failure, and make her own way in the world. You should consider letting go of your own preconceived notions of what girls can and cannot do.

change your attitude

As a parent, consider your own behavior first. Are you a helicopter parent or overly cautious when your daughter tries something new? Are you gender biased when it comes to certain sports and activities? Do you get angry when your daughter makes mistakes? If so, it’s good to be aware of these attitudes and keep them secret as much as possible. She’ll never get rid of those training wheels when she sees the scared look on your face, nor will she try out for the hockey team if you wonder why there aren’t other girls on it. Support her through everything and bite your tongue when your own hangups threaten to derail her decisions.

Give role models

Always try to model the confidence, courage, and determination you want your daughter to have: tell her about how you packed up your car and moved across the country to a new life, or the really tough interview you did to get accepted to college. . When she runs out of her own narratives, fill in the gaps with books and stories from other inspiring female role models. Read her stories of remarkable women with a purpose, even if it takes a bit of effort to weed through the myriad of princess books out there. More and more feminist books are published every day, such as the recently released “Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls” by Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo, which breaks traditional gender stereotypes and tells the stories of 100 heroic women from Elizabeth I to Serena. Williams. Look for time-tested classics like Astrid Lindgren’s “Pippi Longstocking,” which tells powerful stories of a girl who lives alone, causes trouble at school, and battles the strongest man in the circus; and Roald Dahl’s Matilda, with a tiny girl who discovers that she is more powerful than anyone could have imagined.

Encourage her to take risks

It starts with smaller things like overcoming her fear of the dark by taking a night walk in the woods, learning how to high board at the local pool, or trying a new sport when none of her friends join in. And more opportunities will come for greater risks, like taking trips without mom and dad or riding a bike to school alone. Giving her daughter lots of opportunities to try new things and helping her get out of her comfort zone will make her more apt to take on new challenges in life.

let her fail

You don’t always have to shield your little girl from life’s challenges. Although it’s hard to see her fail at something like not making a team or failing a big test, she needs to go through these negative experiences to gain the confidence to face the upcoming obstacles she’s sure to encounter.

Don’t let your daughter get sidetracked from her dreams by worrying about the little details. Teach him to be brave and keep going, even if things aren’t perfect. Taking risks in life is much more rewarding than being perfect all the time.