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Ten Tips for Raising Girls |
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The following ten tips will help
parents, teachers, or leaders of girls' organizations to stimulate the development of
girls' self-esteem and confidence. Chrystal, a girls' club founded by Vera Holley in the Baltimore City Public
Schools to help prevent teenage pregnancies, has adapted Dr. Rimm's guidelines for their
program. For more information on Chrystal or organizing a girls' club in your area, you may contact Ms. Holley for suggestions on how to get
started.
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As parents, be coaches, not judges. Coaches
encourage, have high expectations, praise, criticize, and set limits, but children accept
coaching because they believe coaches are in an alliance with them and on the same team.
Judging parents direct their efforts at finding misdoings and punishing appropriately.
Parents who are continuously judgmental alienate their children because children feel like
they are against them. |
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Emphasize intelligence, hard work, independence,
sensitivity, and perseverance in your daughters. De-emphasize the importance of
appearance. Relationships that are appearance-based fade as may pretty appearances.
Relationships based on shared interests and values have much more potential for depth. |
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Set as high expectations for your daughters as for your sons.
Expect post-high school education whether or not you attended college. The American Dream
is real for women too. |
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Teach healthy competition. Encourage the exhilaration of
winning, but don't always let girls win. Winning builds confidence; losing builds
character. |
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Don't pressure your daughters to fit in socially. Many girls
feel different during adolescence. Help them to feel comfortable with their differences
and redirect their energies toward positive activities like music, drama, debate, science,
sports, or religious activities. |
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Encourage your daughters to be involved in all-girl
activities like Girl Scouts, and consider all-girl classes or schools if boys cause them
to lose confidence or distract from their learning. |
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Encourage your daughters to read stories about successful
women. The successful women in the study found such stories inspiring. Help girls to be
comfortable with math from preschool on including counting, measuring, and scoring. Teach
spatial skills through puzzles, games, and building activities. |
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8 |
Don't let birth order get in the way of giving each of your
daughters leadership opportunities, responsibilities, and some of your time alone. |
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Consider traveling with your daughters—the whole family,
mother-daughter, or father-daughter excursions. By high school, encourage independent
trips with school groups. Travel provides a spirit of adventure, enrichment, family
bonding, and self-confidence. |
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10 |
Be an active role model for learning and developing your own
career. However, regardless of how busy you are, preserve time to talk with and listen to
your daughters daily. |
©2000 by Sylvia Rimm. All rights reserved.
This publication, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without
written permission of the author.
Check out Dr. Rimm's other web site at www.sylviarimm.com
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