I recently watched the TED talk ‘Teach Girls Courage, Not Perfection’ with Reshma Saujani and it really got me thinking why I’ve had a personal war with perfectionism for as long as I can remember. Saujani believes that “we are educating our girls to be perfect, and we are educating our boys to be brave.” She is the founder of Girls Who Code and wants to socialize young women to take risks and learn to code, and more specifically, “to get comfortable with imperfection.”
Many people, including Saujani, feel that boys are encouraged to take risks, while girls must play it safe. I wonder if my search for perfection was more influenced by society than genetics. My own daughter has always been a free spirit, not caring about standing out from the crowd and I hope this is partly due to the way my husband and I have supported her as an individual, but now as we enter her teens, I I really want her to hold onto that courage to be different from the norm and take risks in her life.
To raise your daughter to be courageous, you must teach her to take risks, not to be afraid of failing, and to blaze her own path in the world. You should consider setting aside your own preconceived notions of what girls can and cannot do.
Alter your attitude
As a parent, consider your own behavior first. Are you a helicopter parent or are you overly cautious when your daughter is trying something new? Are you gender-biased when it comes to certain sports and activities? Do you get angry when your daughter makes mistakes? If so, it’s good to be aware of these attitudes and keep them a secret as much as possible. She will never ditch those training wheels when she sees the scared expression on your face, or she will try out for the hockey team if you wonder why there are no other girls on it. Support her in all things and bite your tongue when your own complexes threaten to derail your decisions.
Give role models
Always try to model the confidence, courage, and determination you want your daughter to have – tell her about how you packed your car and moved across the country to a new life, or the really difficult interview you managed to get accepted into college. When you run out of your own narratives, fill in the gaps with books and stories from other inspiring female role models. Read their stories of remarkable women with a purpose, even if it takes a little effort to eliminate the myriad of princess books out there. Every day more and more feminist books are published, such as the recently released “Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls” by Elena Favilli and Francesca Cavallo that breaks with traditional gender stereotypes and tells the stories of 100 heroic women from Elizabeth I to Serena Williams. . Look for tried and true classics like Astrid Lindgren’s “Pippi Longstocking,” which tells powerful stories of a girl who lives alone, causes trouble at school and battles the strongest man in the circus; and Roald Dahl’s Matilda, with a tiny girl who discovers that she is more powerful than anyone could have imagined.
Encourage her to take risks
It starts with smaller things like overcoming the fear of the dark by taking a night walk in the woods, learning to dive on the high board at the local pool, or trying a new sport when neither of your girlfriends is joining. And more opportunities for bigger risks will follow, like taking trips without mom and dad or riding a bike to school alone. Giving your daughter lots of opportunities to try new things and helping her get out of her comfort zone will make her more likely to take on new challenges in life.
Let her fail
You don’t always have to protect your little one from life’s challenges. Although it’s hard to see her fail at something like not being part of a team or failing an important test, she needs to go through these negative experiences to gain the confidence to face the next hurdles she is sure to encounter.
Don’t let your daughter stray from her dreams worrying about all the little details. Teach him to be brave and to keep going, even if things are not perfect. Taking risks in life is much more rewarding than being perfect all the time.