Whether we have children or not, we are always in a position to change the world. Every day, we can choose to engage in ways that can inspire a younger generation. A few small changes in our own lives can make a world of difference to the girls who look up to us. We can teach the girls in our lives to take themselves seriously while continuing to navigate through a fun, playful life full of meaning and love.
Ignore More Mirrors
The time we spend plucking, primping, analyzing, pulling, highlighting, and altering our appearance in front of a mirror speaks volumes to our daughters. Learning to appreciate our own natural image will help our daughters understand the beauty in who they are- just as they are.
Read More Books
Engaging ourselves intellectually and emotionally through literature encourages our daughters to do the same. Books allow us to travel to exotic places and meet new people. More than that, however, books introduced us to topics and emotions that we may not ever experience through everyday living. With every page we turn, our daughters watch us elevate our worldview and sense of self-worth.
Explore Government
Becoming politically informed isn’t about conflict, left-wing versus right-wing, it’s about community. Demonstrating to our daughters that we know and care about politics puts into place a lesson in altruism- people and things exist beyond our own social circles and we should care about them.
Find A New Hobby
Learn a language, take a cooking class, start fishing, or camping, or painting, or playing tennis. Do something new, anything new. We help to open the world up for our daughters when we move beyond our own comfort zone.
Compliment Beyond Clothes
Move away from compliments that highlight physical appearance- that cute bow, those beautiful curls, new shoes. We can value our daughters with praise founded on their intellectual accomplishments, conversation style, and athletic or artistic feats. We can help our daughters move away from a life of being pretty and into to a life of doing good.
Calculate Tip Without a Calculator
More women than ever are moving into the math and science sectors of the workforce. Practicing mental math in front of our daughters make numbers and logic commonplace. Long division is nothing to be scared of!
Get Angry
Get angry. It’s not an emotion we should hide from our daughters. Things will upset us. We can let our daughters watch us experience anger without any shame or guilt attached to the emotion. We can also demonstrate to them how to process anger in a healthy, productive way.
Laugh
Laugh daily and laugh loudly. We can bring joy into our own lives by teaching our daughters that life is funny and lovely. Shining bright and living hard not only lightens up our own path, but may even illuminate the way for those following in our footsteps.
You can apply these anytime! Whether it’s working at camp or living your broader life, you can make a difference.
