How to raise a strong daughter

[AsMuchUseAsAMarzipanDildo]

Long time lurker on this board and reading the thread on pathological altruism got me thinking about DD.

Daughter is nearly 2 and I tend to follow an Alfie Kohn “unconditional parenting” approach. I realise it sounds ridiculous learning how to parent from a book, but abusive parents, no role models etc.

Anyway, a lot of it is about teaching empathy. So instead of barking “share” at her when her and other children fight over toys, I’ll say “Can you see that Amy’s crying? I think she was enjoying that truck. What could we do to make her happy?” and DD is so kind that she’ll go and give the truck to Amy.

But I also worry that it’s teaching her to be a pushover and notice that it’s always her sharing, never other kids. I’ve also noticed that boys seem to definitely get a lot more acceptance and less discipline from their parents when they snatch her toy or barge her off the slide.

How do I teach her to be kind but not submissive?

I’ve got a few books suggested on the Mighty Girl website. Obviously her comprehension isn’t at the stage to fully engage with them but we’ll chat about female explorers and scientists. She has what I think is a fairly ungendered selection of toys and recently we’ve been watching programmes like “Catie’s Amazing Machines” together.

Has anyone here had any experience with this? Also suggestions for clubs, activities etc for her when she’s older? I'd love to take her to feminist talks etc when she’s older.

Did you mean to be so rude?
Yes, I fucking did

That's not kind

I really don't think ^^ is the way to go. Why are we demanding our girls be kind?

I let her explore things with good supervision monitoring her actions from time to time, this is what I do to my daughter I have my eye on her always. I won't allow her to leave our house without bringing his GPS tracker.

My parents were great but I never was praised on beauty or cuteness. I grew up thinking I didn’t have those attributes, and decided I must be the opposite, which wasn’t great. I do tell my dc that they are beautiful, as well as all the rest.

I don't think that all that gentle "how do we think X is feeling? Why is Amy crying?" is a good thing, for young children, to be honest. They don't have the emotional maturity to deal with that, for developmental reasons, not because they haven't been taught it. I think, at that age, there's far more to be learnt from seeing an assertive mother deal with the situation. Telling kids to share, making them share, then when they are older, they'll be learning about empathy - both through their own experiences and when they are overtly taught it at school, and by their parents.

I also don't like this obsession with kindness. Girls don't need this rammed down their throats - it's generally boys that need this! Too often kind is code for "give way to someone else". I'd rather my children's default was to put themselves first, and when they have the emotional maturity to make a decision as to when being kind is beneficial. It's far more difficult to fix, and damaging to instill an attitude of prizing kindness at all costs in young girls - especially when kindness won't be reciprocated by many of the children they meet. This isn't to say that i want my kids to be vicious little tyrants who refuse to consider anyone else; just I want them to have a healthy sense of their own worth and importance.

Betrand - your daughter ending up in an abusive relationship is zero to do with your parenting and not an indictation you didn’t raise a strong girl. It’s and indication her partners parents raised and abusive entitled man.

It isn’t the job of parents of girls to raise girls not to end up in abusive relationships or not to be rape victims or to modify their behaviour to not be target of men. It’s the responsibility of the parents of boys to raise them not to be abusers, to not rape women, to use their male privilege to respect and value women not objectify and harass them.

It’s important to remember when raising girls that it’s not their job not to be victims and our inclination to raise them to be protected from male violence is an type of victim blaming in itself. We should teach them to call it out and stand up for each other certainly but it’s the job of parents of boys to ensure our girls do not become victims of male violence, and when they do it’s the failing of parents of those boys not us parents of girls.

Your opinions here are all correct, in fact not only for girls and not only for boys but for both of them. Let us be fair enough so that no one is prioritized what if one of them cannot be as good as your parenting this may lead to imbalance way of treating to both of them.

My kids are small (DD nearly 3, DS just turned 1) but I am very conscious about trying to expect the same behaviour from them. It will be an uphill battle as we live in SE Asia and there are clear differences in how boys and girls are raised. I'm a teacher so I see this first hand. My husband's extended family is almost entirely male (only 1 female cousin) and very sporty, quite 'macho'. I do not like the way they make assumptions about girls/boys. Like other posters, we have focused on strong and clever more than beautiful. We also expect kindness but I imagine I will see this as MORE important for my son, as society will teach my daughter to be kind and expect less from my son.

I also empathise with posters who feel it's important to emphasise a child's beauty if they don't fit the 'standard', e.g. black or mixed race girls in a white-centric culture. I absolutely see the importance of this for self-esteem. We have almost the opposite issue, as my DD is very fair-skinned, blue-eyed, and has curly, reddish hair. You can imagine how much she stands out in this part of the world! People literally stop and stare if we are out locally. Shenis constantly told she is 'cute'and 'beautiful'. She is one of 3 white children in her entire year group. She gets ridiculous levels of positive attention focused on her looks, and I hate this. Nothing we can do about it, but ignoring physical appearance is not realistic for us. We spend a lot of time pointing out other types of beauty. There are only 2 black students at her school and we know one quite well (she is about 12) and we have talked with her about how lovely her plaits are (and how MANY she has, whereas we only have one or two!) and how soft and shiny some of her Asian friends hair is. I know this doesn't fit with the OP about raising 'strong' girls but I do think it's important. If I was in the UK I like to think that, as a white family, we would try to ignore looks as much as possible, focus on what bodies do rather than how they look etc.

I also hate 'gendered' toys and luckily school is the same. All toys for everyone, activities very mixed (except ballet, which I considered for the discipline aspect but decided against when I realised they were all put in pink tutus in the first class and told they were princesses!!)

Talking, exploring, questioning, finding fun in small things, making jokes. Walks in rain, sunshine, cold and hot. Being active and doing stuff - not dressing up to “look beautiful”, not making fun of 4 yr old DD for ‘having a boyfriend’ when she has friends that are boys.(seen this many times) Making no distinctions between girls and boys. She can have the Spider-Man bike, it’s not ‘for boys’ it’s for children who like Spider-Man. As my DD got older, I spoke to her about ‘sexism’ and history, reading books together with strong women characters or having a laugh at sexist drawn characters.

I am a SAHM, so talk to her about when I was working. Watching films together with strong female characters - thank heaven for Ray in Star Wars franchise, scarlet widow etc in Marvel films. She does karate which gives her confidence in her body. I NEVER talk about weight or dieting, I never put on make up in front of her. I do sometimes tell her she looks lovely, but I do the same with DS. I have never forced her to do anything - she has ‘choices’ and I encourage her independence, whether making her bed, cooking food, baking, doing some shopping, getting her own lunch, walking dog, same as with my DS.
Also importantly she sees my DH doing stuff like cooking, washing, ironing and basically sharing household stuff at weekend.

Giving them extra assignments after school. By weekends, the whole family with no exemptions, all should be active all should be part of family activities.

These threads really surprise me sometimes.

I think most people would agree there's more of a problem in society with toxic masculinity than with toxic femininity.

SO why on earth are all of the above posts focusing on making sure girls act like boys and 'put themselves first', not learn to share/be kind and generally imitate male behaviour, when male behaviour is often extremely problematic! Go to any toddler group and observe the behaviour of the boys vs girls (I say this as a mum of a boy and girl).

Surely we should be teaching our boys to take on more traditionally feminine traits/behaviour - consideration of others, kindness and gentleness, emotional intelligence etc. We've got enough bloody pushy entitled non sharers in society already!

The demonisation of traditionally female traits/culture under the guise of pseudofeminism on mumsnet really boils my piss.

For context:
I'm a medic. Caring for others and being kind is part of my job. I'm well paid and respected for it.

And funnily enough, I wore pink as a child, played dolls/princesses and my parents told me I was beautiful (I'm not )

I think it is about teaching boundaries. My dd is highly empathetic, so I'm not worried about teaching her to worry about other children's feelings. Instead I focus on letting her know that she does not have to accept poor behaviour towards her. I tell her it is absolutely fine to say no when a child is trying to take something from her or make her do something she doesn't want to. I have told her that it is unacceptable for other children to push her around and I have acted on that immediately if it has happened.

I encourage her to come to me with any problem, big or small and that we can work it out together. This may mean I speak to a teacher if a child is being unkind, I do not expect dd to just put up with it. I tell her it is wrong and to avoid that child if they aren't capable of being pleasant. Or it could be that I help her to be assertive in a situation that is making her uncomfortable.

I also never force her to give affection to people. It is up to her if she wants to hug or kiss someone. This allows her to make her own boundaries while I ensure they are respected.

None of what I do has stopped dd being kind. Her teachers tell me she couldn't be kinder to the other children and she is beautifully behaved. If she does not like something, she has the skills to politely explain why and will not just go along with it. She is strong.

Caring for others and being kind is part of my job and presumably your male colleagues are caring and kind, therefore kindness is not an exclusively female trait?

I don't think encouraging my DD to be an empowered, confident person is teaching her to be male...

I agree with Stormwhale re the importance of teaching boundaries. I hope she is learning that while tolerance is important she does not accept behaviour that impacts on her own boundaries regardless of the friendship. She is naturally empathic so my approach may well have been different with a child who was naturally more self centred. I want her to grow up to be resilient and steadfast in her own self belief.

That - it’s about balance. Kindness and putting others first is important, to an extent, as is being able to prioritise our own needs and put ourselves first also. Girls are pushed to the former by society, at our detriment, so mothers of girls need to readdress that balance.

I agree in general though that it’s the behaviour of boys and men that’s the problem (I did say that above in respect to another posters contribution) and that as a whole it’s parents of boys that should be working to change their behaviours. That said the op specifically asked about raising a girl, as I pressure she has only one child, this is what posters are contributing.

Being so kind and caring that it damages our own well being isn’t healthy, and actually op you might want to read the thread about reprogramming ourselves with regards to that- I can’t recall the exact name but it’s been on the first or second page for the last while, so easy enough to find I imagine even with my terrible memory!