This past Saturday, my little from Big Brothers & Big Sisters attended a one day We Are Girls Conference hosted by GENaustin. I read about the conference and immediately knew I wanted my 12 year old little to attend. We’ve had conversations that involve serious issues in dating, unhealthy body image, bullying, etc and I really want her to feel more empowered. I also wanted more insight on how to navigate our conversations.
Here is part two of my recap. You can read part 1 here.
Empowering Your Daughter
Workshop lead by Barb Steinberg, LMSW, producer of The Wisdom of Girls documentary.
What causes our girls to feel disempowered?
- The Triple Bind of expectations (Stephen Shinshaw, PhD)
- We expect them to succeed in all these areas and make it look easy. They feel awful when they have to try hard to achieve these impossible standards.
- We tell our girls they can be anything but expect them to be everything.
- We reward girls for putting others first and reward boys for self-assertion.
- Girls could put on a mask of false cheer.
- Girls can erase their identities to fit in.
- Girls could overextend their schedules. (I’m still guilty of this!)
1. We expect them to be good at traditional “girl things” like empathy and nurturing.
2. We expect them to be good at traditional “boy things” like assertiveness and competitiveness.
3. We expect them to conform to narrow and unrealistic set of standards that allows for no alternative
Ten Ways We Can Empower Our Girls
- Encourage them to share their thoughts and opinions. Ask them what they’re thinking and feeling often. “What do you think about that?” is a simple way to initiate conversation.
- Encourage them to have quiet time. Ask themselves who are they? These answers can only come when they spend some time alone and quietly think. Start off with just 1 minute a day and work her way up.
- Teach her to self soothe. Create a list of stress busters. Share your own list.
- Experience both success and failures. Let your children see you fail. It teaches them to take risks.
- Nurture a connection to community, a connection to something bigger than her.
- Nurture passion and self-expression. Have her do what she loves. What makes her come alive?
- Expose her to other girls outside her peer group.
- Encourage her to develop a spiritual life. Barb Steinberg tells her girls to connect to their “wise self.” The wise self is the part of you that wants the best for yourself.
- Have loving adults in her life.
- Most importantly, role model empowerment. Children and teens can hear and feel your behavior more than your words.
Talk First!
Workshop lead by Kristin McDuffie, MPH, a Community Health Educator for Planned Parenthood. This workshop offers effective tips on how to talk to your child about sexuality and become an “askable” parent.
- Children need to know about sexuality to help cope with their feelings and with peer pressure.
- Knowing about sex helps them take charge of their lives and have loving relationships.
- Knowing about sex also helps protect them from sexual abuse and from becoming sexual abusers.
- Kids are exposed to confusing and contradictory messages about sexuality on a daily basis.
- Because sexuality is such an intimate subject involving family values, feelings, and communication, no one is in a better position to talk about sex with children than the parents.
- Convey that growth and maturation rates differ from person to person. Being different is normal.
- Discuss the important relationship between sexual and emotional feelings.
- Acknowledge that abstinence is normal and healthy, that sexual development is healthy and natural, and that, as they grow older, there will be many ways to express sexuality that do not include intercourse.
- Be open to conversations about birth control and be honest and accurate.
- It’s never too late to talk to your children about sex.
- Seek teachable moments. They’re all around us. Lyrics, TV shows, public displays of affection, and news stories. *Rosalind Wiseman, the keynote speaker, just put up a great blog post about speaking to your children about the Penn State sexual abuse scandal.