How to inculcate confidence in your growing daughter?
Super cute Barbie with her size-zero looks, fair and lovely Sleeping beauty who slept for years to get her prince charming, beautiful and innocent Cinderella who met her fortune with the help of her Godmother, Rapunzel with her looooong hair fit for any shampoo ad. I am sure your little daughter must be already familiar with all of these charming ladies.
Have you ever thought what messages these characters give to your young daughters?
Size-zero is cool, fair is lovely, silky hair is pretty and if you are beautiful you get your prince charming and then everything is happily ever after.
Hmm…all wrong signals!
Not only the fairy tales they hear in their childhood, but also the school, friends, magazines, TV and the social media all give your daughter a lot of conflicting signals about who she is and what she can be. All these can confuse her, make her to loose her self-esteem and confidence.
Instead of giving these wrong signals and messages, shouldn’t we give our daughters examples of girls who are intelligent and smart; who have used their own wit and wisdom to stand up for themselves with confidence and have succeeded in life?
Yes, it is the responsibility of us parents to make our daughters understand that bold is beautiful and confidence is the best accessory for a girl.
Instill confidence in your daughter from today in these 12 ways:
Self-confidence is grounded in early experiences. So, it is wise to think about developing and promoting self-esteem/confidence of your daughter from her childhood itself.
You can’t do much to prevent your daughter from encountering discouraging situations, but you can reinforce her self-esteem by incorporating these strategies into your daily interactions.
Here’s what you can do to build your daughter’s confidence and resilience for the tricky years ahead.
1#. Choose your words wisely
Watch how you talk about other people: Are you judgmental of people’s appearances? Make sure you’re sending a message to your children that it’s what’s inside—especially how we treat others—that defines a person and makes us who we are.
2#. Encourage her to stand up for herself
Listen to your daughter and encourage her to speak her mind. Teach your daughter to express her needs. Encourage her to be proud of herself, to handle any peer’s belittling firmly and respectfully.
Your encouragement and support will help shape her into a poised and self-possessed woman.
3#. Don’t make assumptions about her strengths and weaknesses
It also doesn’t mean she won’t want to go fishing or try out for getting in a football team. Follow her cues to best nurture her strengths and work on improving her weaknesses.
4#. Boost her talents, but don’t give fake compliments
If you notice that your daughter is good at singing, encourage her. Enroll her for a music class. Give her a chance to shape her talent.
If you feel she is not good at something, let her know that. Never give fake compliments to just make her happy. But don’t stop her from trying again.
5#. Encourage competence
Don’t be too quick to step in if your daughter is struggling to figure out how a game works. When she asks you for help, suggest she spends a couple more minutes trying to work it out on her own. She’ll feel a real sense of achievement if she then cracks it. She’ll also realize that she’s much more capable than she thought.
6#. Compliment all of her good qualities—not just her looks
Compliment her for her good qualities.
Applaud her abilities and accomplishments, like spelling, drawing, being a good friend or helping her little brother.
7#. Encourage a healthy body image
With magazines, music videos and adverts all promoting images of women looking thin, flawless and sexy, it’s no wonder that girls are becoming more concerned with their appearance at an earlier age. Make her understand that looks are only secondary and being healthy is important.
Explain that the real world is full of girls and women of all sizes and shapes, and that what we see on TV or in magazines isn’t reality.
8#. No gender stereotyping
If your daughter likes to play cricket, encourage her. If your daughter is good at repairing electronics items, let her to do that.
Never stop her from following her passion just because she is a girl.
9#. Teach her about puberty before it happens
Puberty brings lots of physical and mental changes in your daughter. Sometimes it can be more than what she can handle. So talk about puberty before it happens. Make her understand that all this is normal and good.
10#. Create a safe, loving home environment
Kids who don’t feel safe or are abused at home are at greatest risk for developing poor self-esteem. A child who is exposed to parents who fight and argue repeatedly may feel they have no control over their environment and become helpless or depressed.
11#. Point out female role models
Point out examples of women like Mary Kom who have succeeded in their life just with the help of confidence. Take any chance you can to tell your daughter that women can be much, much more than thin or pretty.
12#. Be a role model
If you’re excessively harsh on yourself, pessimistic or unrealistic about your abilities and limitations, your kids might eventually mirror you. Nurture your own confidence and they’ll have a great role model.
Hope this article will help you to guide your daughters to the forefront.
Happy Girl Child Day!!
You can also read the 5 lessons my daughter teaches me and the 9 white lies I love to tell my daughter as a mom.
Share with us in comments how do you build confidence in your growing daughter?
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14 Comments
This article is really worth reading! But why raise only confident daughters? I think It’s Way more difficult to raise a confident son! No personal opinions…. But if there was a post for raising a son too? It would be helpful
Need of the hour, Anu. Thanks for a great article
Thank you Vandana
Amazing article Anu…. Keep writing more!!
Thank you Geetu
A strong post Anu 🙂 just read it today!! N loved the tweets too.. All the points are equally important and my favorite one being the healthy gal rather than the zero sized one.. In India it is often told that girls have to sacrifice or adjust or cope up with each n everything that they get in the path of life … These kinda articles should be read out to our beautiful and bold young ladies rather than the ‘plz sacrifice/adjust’ ones… Kudos to the writer 🙂
Yes Roshini, you are correct.
Adjusting and accepting to what comes in life is only what girls are expected to do.
But standing for their own needs or raise a voice for what they like is something different, it needs courage and confidence. Let us help the young girls to have confidence in themselves.
Thought provoking. I thought I had addressed this question somewhere in my blog but scrolling through, I realized that I’ve just mentioned needing to know myself in order to show her how to be confident. I haven’t talked or even thought about what she will need to be confident. Now I’ll need to figure that out.
Shailee
Hope this post helped you.
Just loved the way you written it Anu….tweets are just amazing… while reading the introduction part , my niece came to my mind.You got such a good talent of writing.keep it up and keep on coming up with interesting articles
Jayalekshmy,
I was also thinking of my own niece while writing this article….. she is 8 yrs of age and is too much addicted to these TV anchors…she even throws tantrums to dress like them… 🙂
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Great post anu 🙂
Very strong and inspiring ..
Thank you Anjana.