Raising Girls: Why girls are different – and how to help them grow up happy and confident

Raising Girls: Why girls are different – and how to help them grow up happy and confident Gisela Preuschoff A warm and inspiring read for parents, this book explores girls’ emotional and physical development from ages 1 to 16.Every parent of girls aged between 1 and 16 will enjoy reading this informative and practical book. It focuses on girls’ emotional and physical development, their education, social conditioning and their relationship with parents and siblings.Psychologist and parenting author Gisela Preuschoff covers everything you need to know about girls from birth to teenage years, in this easy to follow guide which includes examples from real families.The book includes:- how girls and boys differ in behaviour and emotions- nurturing a girl’s self-esteem and reducing fears- breaking out of the ‘helpless girl’ syndrome- how society conditions girls – avoiding gender stereotypes in toys etc- girls’ experiences at preschool, single sex or co-ed- girls and maths and sciences – and how parents can encourage their daughters- teen issues and puberty- the importance of a father’s relationship with his daughter Raising Girls Why girls are different – and how to help them grow up happy and confident Gisela Preuschoff foreword by Steve Biddulph CONTENTS Cover (#u75e061ea-88ba-5cbc-8e5d-dea4e8980422) Title Page (#u858071e0-dd6f-5aa4-812e-e96eef964e44) Foreword by Steve Biddulph (#u40a3e9d8-de0f-5f9e-bd40-86ef0e92aeb9) Introduction (#u68c21aee-9355-5774-adcd-f94025ff8154) 1 Why girls are different (#u0227a816-f6c5-5f2f-8971-9609953bd754) 2 Developing your relationship with your new daughter (#ucc992b8f-0ffe-59be-9ca6-6da3ac1db798) 3 Her early years (#u23a4b6b6-dc17-5286-9d52-4a4d30e1f624) 4 Her emotional world (#litres_trial_promo) 5 How society conditions girls (#litres_trial_promo) 6 Schools and learning (#litres_trial_promo) 7 Becoming a young woman (#litres_trial_promo) 8 Relationships in the family (#litres_trial_promo) Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo) Notes (#litres_trial_promo) Bibliography (#litres_trial_promo) Index (#litres_trial_promo) Copyright (#litres_trial_promo) About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo) Foreword by Steve Biddulph (#ulink_d449bcba-f546-55ae-9195-b99c05d28f06) I remember the moment. It’s not an easy memory: I am sitting in on the Caesarean delivery of our second child, terrified for my wife’s safety, for my own powerlessness to help, and for this little life that is being prised out from the area that lies below the green surgical sheets. And then someone is saying, ‘It’s a girl!’ And amid the tears of relief are tears of joy, too, that catch me utterly by surprise. Our son is already seven years old; this new baby is long awaited. But had anyone asked me hours before, I would have given the old cliched answer – ‘I don’t care what sex it is, as long as its healthy.’ So why am I so happy? What had I been hiding from myself? A girl is something else – special to me as a man, wonderful in a different way from how a son is wonderful, and I will spend the rest of my life grappling with this, and happy to grapple, knowing it’s one of life’s gifts, a child who will become and then be a woman, and always, whatever happens, my daughter. For a father, a daughter is something powerful. For a mother, equally so, but for quite different reasons, and we rarely feel this so intensely as in the moment they are born. And so we sit in this place halfway between feeling so lucky, so blessed, and so terrified about getting it wrong, and not being up to the job. For help, we tap into one of the things that our culture does well – books, ideas, discussion, to help us broaden out our picture and learn from the lives of others. We don’t have elders, we don’t have a village to help us. But at least we have a questioning society that puts out so much chatter, and that brings us the thoughts from across the globe, that other people’s lives have gone into making, all for us to digest, use or discard. This book gets beneath the surface of you and me as parents of girls, because much of the trouble we still have with girls has its roots deep in our own experience, the wounded experience of growing up in a terrible century. Most of us, men and women, had odd and difficult times growing up: distant fathers did not teach us how to father, marital chaos and widespread divorce made us distrustful and unsure of how to form strong relationships and make them work. We had little in the way of spiritual depth: the old religions collapsed but only money and pleasure rushed in to replace them. We didn’t really know the deep peace of the earth and sky around us, only the chatter of television and the clutter of bedrooms full of junk. What we want to give our daughters, we often don’t even have ourselves. But the search is on. A baby girl in our arms, soft skin, bright eyes, sharp intelligence wanting to grow and reach out, calls to us strongly to get our act together, to focus and go looking for the tools and understanding we will need. This book is written by a woman on her own search, and has much that stirs up your thinking. Rather than giving you formulae, lists, bullet points and glib advice (the sure sign of a third-rate parenting ‘expert’) Gisela prods your deeper searching, so that things you have kept buried inside you come to the surface – beliefs, passions, forgotten memories that can help you and direct you to be a more wide awake, fully alive human being rather than some functionary who provides meals, drives the school taxi, checks off the school bags contents for another rat race day. What our kids will remember, and what will strengthen them, is the moments of closeness, honesty, and peaceful times that we spend in amid the scramble of life: the parts that we fence off and make special, where we refuse to dance to the commercial world’s tune, and build a garden for love to grow. Things have got better for girls. We need to remember that. There is a ‘Sooty’ video we found many years ago in a garage sale, that we enjoyed at the same time as being rather appalled when we watched it, and quietly put away on a high shelf. The compere gets children from the audience to come up on stage, asks them what they want to be. The boy will be a soccer hero. The girl will be a typist. Another boy a doctor. Another girl a nurse. This is progressive stuff – the girls actually want jobs! Twentieth-century culture crippled girls with narrow role possibilities, just as it crippled boys with inane pressure to be the brave soldier, the aloof father, the home tyrant, the frustrated wage slave. We had a revolution, and now girls can do anything they want to, though it’s turning out to not be that simple. The empire struck back, and ugly forces of commercial greed rushed into the vacuum created by the collapse of old values, and created for girls a whole new slavery: you have to be slender. You have to have big breasts (even if it means cutting your chest open and sliding in slabs of silicone instead). You have to work your whole life long, even if you simply long for some peace and quiet with your new baby, or to be creative, or have some time to just be. You have to have it all. We’ve made progress with girls, but as this excellent book points out, we have a long way still to go. And some quite new directions, promising and world changing, just as the changes of the sixties were world changing. For instance, there is a lot being learned about girls: That the apparently quiet time, the first year or so of life, is one of such rapid brain growth that everything important seems to be getting into place inside that little head and heart. The ability to love, to feel safe and relaxed, the ability to connect with another human being in empathy and trust – all happen in this first year, and we must not rush or abandon our daughter as if she were just a blob to be fed and stopped from crying. That the world we live in is very toxic to young children -the messages the media send, and the food on the supermarket shelves – so we have to show great care in what we put into her body, and her mind. That we parents also have plenty of cultural and psychological baggage and wounds that we can so easily pass on. I don’t want to scare you here, but simply to remind you that half of what we give our children is our own selves, and these need much rehabilitation. What else have we learned? That the twentieth-century idea of the father as the distant breadwinner, or the jokey stranger, has done enormous harm. We now know that fathers play an irreplaceable part in the confidence and self-esteem building of girls, a delicate role involving affection without invasion, fun with firmness, and care with strengthening levels of trust and freedom. Research into everything from anorexia to career choice, from sexual safety to educational opportunity, shows that a loving, involved dad makes a world of difference. That the rush to equality has caused much harm – through mistaking equality for sameness. Boys and girls grow differently, and should not be lumped together and expected to thrive. In secondary schools, especially, there are important reasons for separating girls from boys into classrooms where both sexes can be free from vulnerability to and pressure from the opposite sex; and free to learn and explore their fragile new identities without falling into the stereotypical and defensive pretence of being macho or sexy, cute or coy, aggressive or smart. Your daughter may be a newborn. She may be a toddler, or a little school child. She may be a teenager, vulnerable but with growing identity and selfhood. She may be a young woman, relating to men, making her own way in the world, needing you less and less, or so it seems. She may even be a mother herself, coming to you with a new sense of awareness of the linkages you share. Your parenthood never ends. The more you are awake, alive, and thinking and feeling deep into your own life – instead of zipping and rushing over its surface like a bug on a lake – the more you will have to give your daughter, and the more you will have to smile about as the seasons of both your lives pass by. Steve Biddulph Introduction (#ulink_f149d34a-7264-5b1f-8f9f-eb86cc0101bb) I would like to stimulate you to reflect with this book. What is really special about having a girl as a child? What kind of woman would you like your daughter to grow into? How important this consideration really is can be illustrated by the following story. Someone dressed a group of male and female babies in pink and light blue jumpsuits and then asked a group of dads to describe the children. They clearly treated the pink ones differently from the light blue ones. The pink babies were described as fragile, pretty, sweet and cute, although there were boys among them; in contrast, the ‘light blue’ ones were described as healthy, sturdy, strong and attentive – several girls also being among them. People react differently to a male baby than to a female one. And that’s quite normal, for there are of course differences. These are not only biologically conditioned but are based on social influences, expectations and premises – there has always been something like a girl culture or a culture of the feminine in all cultures and at all times. We can resist it, but never quite withdraw from it. Only when, as parents, we become aware of which images and ideas of femininity we carry inside us, and which of these images are socially effective, can we take a critical look at them, perhaps argue about them and take new paths or turn back onto the well-established paths. What do you want for your daughter? From what age is she to become a girl? How many months or years old will she be before she wears her first necklace? And when should her ears be pierced? Some parents have very definite ideas about this, and no-one will be able to dissuade them. Others have not thought about it at all, but probably carry unconscious notions around with them. However, one thing should remain clear from the start: children are not putty in our hands. They belong to themselves and bring their own personality and unique ‘life’s work’ into the world. As their parents, we are lucky to be allowed to accompany them for a while. In order for this to be successful, it’s also important that we understand our roles as mother and father. Each child is, in my eyes, a wonderful, unique gift. But individual differences notwithstanding, there are recognisable differences between the sexes. Women, for example, have more acute hearing than men and can better distinguish high tones – the frequencies that babies are known to use to cry. After just a week, female infants can distinguish their mother’s voice and the crying of another baby located in the same room, from other noises. Boys cannot do this. (#litres_trial_promo) Moreover, women perceive visual detail better – a skill that is of great significance in a toddler’s environment. These days, new research is revealing important differences between girls and boys, men and women. Are these biologically inherited or socially conditioned? I believe that parents of a girl should pay special attention to their own internal images of girls. They should ask themselves, ‘What does it mean to me that it’s a girl?’ This is very important, as it can help parents avoid burdening the child and her future life with a hidden agenda, for example, by saying, ‘She should on no account become like my mother’ or, ‘She’s not allowed to become as pampered as my sister’ or, ‘She should assert herself.’ If parents are quite clear in their minds about their internal images, they can choose to stick with them or to distance themselves from them. Their daughter then has the opportunity to later rebel against this expectation, or to consciously assume the role. Whether you have a boy or a girl, apart from wishing for children who are born healthy, it does seem to make a difference. The decisive questions we should ask ourselves are, what do we conclude from the sex of our child, and how do we deal with this? Even today, the question of ‘boy or girl’ still plays a significant role in family planning all round the world: According to surveys in Europe, more couples wish for a girl, not a boy, as their first child – maybe in the hope that daughters would be more likely to look after their ageing parents in later years. In China, parents may only have one child – and most prefer to have a boy. Girls are undesirable, and are terminated in many cases. In India infanticide of girls is common. What is your idea of a girl? Were you planning for a girl? If so, why? If not, how did you feel when a baby daughter suddenly entered your life? These are important questions that have a large bearing on how you view your task of raising a girl. Answer these questions and compare your opinions with that of your partner as well as some close friends. They relate to a very important issue: projection. By that, I don’t mean slide shows in the living room, but rather how we often project our own beliefs, attitudes and expectations on to others, often mistakenly. If you can become more aware of your ideas regarding these matters, you will be less likely to project your thoughts on to others, including your daughter. If you find this exercise rewarding, try the following ‘Self-awareness questions for parents’ to really get you thinking! Self-awareness questions for parents Here are some questions for you to consider. They are about you as a child and you as a parent, and a few ask about your daughter. You might like to simply toss them around in your mind, or you might like to write your answers down for future reference (which I would recommend). If you write them down, do so somewhere safe and private. You and your child(ren)’s other parent should both answer the questions. Just ignore the gender words that don’t apply to you. When you have answered all the questions and developed a relatively clear profile of yourself and your own childhood, talk about these things with your daughter if she is old enough. This conversation is likely to stay with you for many years to come. Then When you were a girl/boy, what did you look like? What were your favourite clothes? What toys did you have? What games did you play? What was your personality as a child? What did you like about being a girl/boy? What did you find difficult about being a girl/boy? What were you not allowed to do as a girl/boy? What duties and chores did you have? Who were your role models? What was your dream? What did you often imagine? Which insulting comments can you still remember? On which occasions were you especially sad? On which occasions were you especially excited or thrilled? Now In which situations do you behave like a typical female/male? Which qualities do you particularly like in girls? Which qualities do you particularly like in boys? Which qualities do you particularly like in your daughter? What do you wish for your daughter? Which aspects of her life are you happy about? I hope that Raising Girls provides you with concrete guidelines on how to approach your daughter’s upbringing. I have drawn on experiences with my own daughter, scientific findings and the experiences of parents derived from my own research and consulting work. I have thought of the little girl I once was, and all the girls and women I have known during my life. Fathers and brothers also play a critical role in raising girls. The experiences a girl has with the male members of the family follow her all her life. A woman does not allow herself to be defined without a masculine counterpart (and, of course, the opposite also applies), just as there is no loud without soft, no light without dark and no large without small! And so there are no daughters without fathers, even when the latter – for whatever reason – live separately from their daughter and/or have completely broken off contact. You have a girl – who has her own distinct personality – and it really matters to develop this gift in the true sense of the word. I would like to accompany you on this journey. My point is to emphasise dangers and to prevent them; but above all, I would like to reveal an excellent pathway to cooperation. Apart from this, I would like this book to be a journey of discovery of your own roots and notions, during which you may recognise what opportunities the birth of a girl offers you personally. Gisela Preuschoff ONE WHY GIRLS ARE DIFFERENT (#ulink_eed6c60e-e3f3-5c46-91f5-f17c78dbd39d) All parents worry about their children. They want to do their best and do everything properly – or at least avoid big mistakes. These days, most parents’ expectations of their son will be very similar to those they have of their daughter. They merely want their child to be strong – strong in the sense of being socially responsible, independent, somewhat assertive, clever and affectionate. And they want their child to be able to handle all the tasks that she will confront in life. We’re all individuals… Long before a baby sees the light of day, a film is playing in the minds of the parents-to-be; they imagine what their life with the baby will be like, and they often have fixed ideas about the qualities a boy and a girl will have. This is completely normal – it is fun, and it increases their joy in their child. While she was pregnant with a girl, one woman wrote in her diary, ‘I have the feeling that I could just pull the finished picture, which is a perfectly formed little figure inside me, out of a drawer. She has already been born, because my imagination has already shaped her; she’s a beautiful, strong, self-confident, lively and intelligent creature.’ (#litres_trial_promo) On the other hand, the father of this little girl imagined a lovely, sweet, affectionate little girl he could snuggle up to and cuddle. Apart from these images, parents should try to remember that there are many prejudices with regard to the sexes, and that most children develop quite differently from what their parents imagined in their dreams. Girls are by no means always calm, loving and good, just as boys are not automatically wild, aggressive and intelligent. Each child is unique: each child brings a distinctive personality into the world, and each is also shaped by her or his environment. Most women who know they are expecting a girl identify completely with the unborn child. They see the baby as a miniature version of themselves and feel a strong symbiosis with the child in their belly: ‘We’re the same – we want the same things and are interested in the same things.’ The biological part of the story What do the biological facts say? In the first weeks of pregnancy, when women as a rule don’t even know they are pregnant, male and female embryos are identical, because they have the basic structures of both male and female sexual organs. They are only distinguishable through their sex chromosomes (XY for boys and XX for girls). The X chromosome originates from the egg cell of the mother, and the father’s sperm has either an X or a Y. If the egg is fertilised by an X sperm, it will be a girl; if not, it will be a boy. Most genes lie in the X chromosomes, of which there are around 2000, among them the intelligence gene. The reproductive genes romp around in the Y chromosomes. Purely statistically, more boys than girls are conceived, but more male than female foetuses are miscarried or stillborn. No-one knows exactly why this is so. It is assumed that either male foetuses are more sensitive to harmful environmental factors, or the mother’s immune system classifies the male foetus as foreign and tackles it, in error, as an ‘enemy’. Could that also perhaps have something to do with the mother’s thoughts? In the sixth week of pregnancy, the male Y chromosome gives the command to form male gonads; the X chromosome of the developing baby girl only induces ovary development from the twelfth week. During the course of the pregnancy, ovaries and gonads excrete sex hormones, which are involved in the formation of physical characteristics and also influence future behaviour. The ‘male’ sex hormones are called androgens, and include testosterone; the ‘female’ hormones are oestrogen and progesterone. I have placed these classifications in inverted commas because all these hormones occur in both the male and female organisms, though in differing quantities. When psychologists talk about a woman’s ‘inner man’ and about men’s ‘feminine side’, that is exactly what they mean. We all have male and female parts in us, and it is sensible to use both! If the embryo has enough androgens, a penis grows and the female sex organs waste away and disappear. A vagina, fallopian tubes and womb will grow in the female embryo, and the male sex organs will die off. The fallopian tubes of the female embryo already store 6–7 million eggs, but by the onset of puberty this number has fallen to 400,000. On the other hand, boys only produce sperm from puberty onwards. Between the ears With sexual differentiation, male and female embryo brains start to develop differently. The clearest distinction can be seen in the hypothalamus, the hormonal centre or ‘relay station’ of the front and middle brain. From here, numerous bodily functions – sexual arousal, hunger, thirst, feeling hot and cold, and fight or flight reactions – are regulated. Here there is also a pinhead-sized group of cells, the so-called ‘third interstitial nucleus of the anterior hypothalamus’. It is thought that this area controls sexual desire. The size of this group of cells is identical for boys and girls when they are infants, but it begins to grow in boys from the age of ten; and by the onset of puberty, boys have two and a half times more nerve cells here than girls. The most often debated difference between the male and female brain, however, concerns the band of nerve cells connecting the right and left cerebral hemispheres. This bridge, corpus callosum, is definitely larger in the female brain, and it may explain differences between male and female thought processes. Girls and women use both cerebral hemispheres simultaneously, while males use only one at a time. It has also been proven that girls’ left cerebral hemisphere matures more quickly than that of boys. As the speech centre lies in here, boys – as a rule – learn to speak later than girls. The right cerebral hemisphere, which is responsible for the solution of spatial-visual problems, develops later in girls, which is why young girls often have difficulty imagining objects from different perspectives and orienting themselves spatially. Birth differences As a rule, the birth of a boy lasts an average hour and a half longer than that of a girl, perhaps because boys have an average 5 percent greater body weight at birth than girls. If a girl seems very contented as an infant, for example, it might be because her birth went smoothly and she had no traumatic birth experiences. In 1987 in Finland, it was established that newborn boys had a 20 percent higher risk of low Apgar scores than girls (the Apgar system is an index developed by the American doctor, Virginia Apgar, which states a newborn’s vital signs; measurements are taken of breathing, pulse, base colour, appearance, reflexes). Premature births, vulnerability to mental disturbances and infections, and likelihood of accidents are all distinctly lower with girls than with boys. (#litres_trial_promo) A girl’s parents are lucky: female babies are tougher and more robust than boys. We can only speculate about all the factors that contribute to this imbalance, but we can say that cortisol – the stress hormone – and testosterone, which boys build up, heighten the vulnerability of the immune system in male infants. Perhaps the fact that girls are more socially attuned after birth and maintain eye contact longer than boys is connected to this higher probability of good health for them. They also react more strongly to noises and to other people present in the room, cry less often and are pacified more easily. Even during pregnancy, the female body is three weeks ahead of the male in terms of bone development. At birth, female babies are already four to six weeks ahead of boys developmentally. At puberty, most girls are clearly and visibly at least two years ahead of their male classmates in development – clearly, these differences began very early in the piece. Developmental differences and their consequences Female skin is significantly thinner than male skin and seems to want touching more. The hormone that releases the need to be touched is oxytocin. (#litres_trial_promo) It is no wonder that women, whose receptors are ten times more sensitive than men’s, think it is so important to touch and hug their husbands, children and friends. Parents speak more often to their female babies, which certainly could explain why girls seem to listen more attentively. As little girls maintain eye contact longer than boys, they ‘demand’ that their parents devote more time to them, smile at them and talk to them. Every baby begins to distinguish women’s voices from men’s very early on. She knows her parents’ voices from when she was in the womb. With this, a more detailed classification process begins: for example, a deep voice means coarser facial features and rougher skin. The baby is gathering information that, years later, moulds her image of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’. At the age of six months, little girls are already more independent than their male companions: they can occupy themselves happily with toys and can comfort themselves with their thumb or a muslin. The most significant difference in the first months is the speed with which little girls mature. Their height and weight increase more quickly, and they cut their canine teeth earlier than boys. At the age of seven months, little girls can roll from one side onto the other (and often they can crawl already), are very skilled in handling a spoon, can draw lines and can pull up a zip. These developmental differences continue apace. At preschool age, girls’ fine motor skills are significantly better developed. Girls also start speaking much sooner and have more self-control (see page 33). Parents’ expectations and behaviour So there are distinct, biologically determined differences between boys and girls. These are strengthened or weakened by their parents’ behaviour and the whole environment around them. It is intriguing to know that in experiments, people faced with a group of infants clothed in yellow jumpsuits could not tell whether the babies were boys or girls. Even though they said they could! As soon as they learned what sex a child was, however, they reacted to girls differently from boys. One mother recorded in her diary – which deals with the first three years of her daughter’s life (she was born at the start of the 1980s) – that one of her girlfriends said, on seeing the newborn baby girl, ‘Katie will be able to twist men around her little finger.’ And the mother herself was sure that ‘to have a right to exist in this world of men, a woman must look good’. Is this still true these days? The pressure to be fashionable and beautiful has never been as great as it is today, and girls suffer more than boys if they don’t conform. I shall return to this later. Almost everyone notices that parents dress and groom their little daughters particularly carefully, and how a girl’s ‘natural’ predisposition to smarten herself up is welcomed and reinforced by adults. Female researchers have observed that parents look after their small daughters more tenderly than their small sons. This may have to do with the widespread illusion that ‘men’ must be toughened up, or that they are not as sensitive in the first place. As we saw, males are less physically sensitive than females, (#litres_trial_promo) but how did this biological fact become extended to include emotional sensitivity? Who you are is crucial Sometimes we forget that everything depends on self-awareness. What kind of person am I? How do I behave? What kind of example am I setting for my child? (To help you answer these questions, refer back to the ‘Self-awareness questions for parents’ in the Introduction.) The better you know yourself and understand your own anxieties, feelings and desires, the less likely you are to force your children into a mould or transfer your anxieties to them. Which means that the most difficult part about raising children – whether they are boys or girls – is the work you have to do on yourself. When you have a daughter, you must ask yourself what it means to you personally to be part of a female child’s upbringing, and what femininity means to you. You need to be honest here. Little children see through insincerity quickly. What does the subject of girls mean to you? Barbie dolls, curls, horses, high heels, pink jumpers and little cotton dresses? Or wise women, witches, grandmothers, female presidents, astronauts and taxi drivers? Femininity has many facets these days. What do you understand by it? Your ideas of femininity The examples of femininity that are being shown to girls today range from world-famous models to anonymous humanitarian workers. What matters to you personally? If you are aware of which forms of femininity you respect, which sorts you actually live by, and what tolerance you have for other forms of femininity, you’ll be able to more easily answer all the questions that arise as you bring up your daughter. For example, if you can, sit down with your daughter’s father (or mother, if you are the father) and make a list – each of you should make your own list – of the qualities and skills you value positively in a woman. (If this scenario won’t work for you, try to do it with a friend whose judgment and opinions you trust.) List all your images, expectations and value judgements! Do girls have to be good at mathematics? Assertive? Cuddly? What does a ‘good girl’ do? What does a ‘bad girl’ do? Are you supposed to make such a distinction at all? Is intelligence a positive female quality? How do you value being down-to-earth and the capacity for love? And how do intuition, empathy or sporting skills rate? How important to you are manual dexterity and good appearance? When you’ve finished, compare your lists. While you won’t be able to force your daughter to be the things that you have written down, the things you value – being technically talented, highly musical or talented at nursing, for example – it is important that you know how you think about girls and women. Your daughter will choose her own way, but your ideas and thoughts will also shape her in important ways. The types of girls Socially, there are two main girl types these days, and they are contradictory. One of them is strong, self-confident, able to deal with change and eager to perform; the other feels herself disadvantaged with boys, has a low level of self-confidence, and sees her prospects as narrow. Then there are girls and women who refuse to be slotted into one or the other group and are searching for their own position, their own path. The last millennium was mainly shaped by men. However, women will increasingly have a say in our future. Women will participate more in world affairs – but in what ways might this happen? Can you imagine your daughter one day becoming Prime Minister or winning a Nobel Prize? Regardless of which path your daughter takes, she will belong to a generation of women who will work with men to determine the future of this world. She will help weave the fabric of human history, either loudly or quietly. So what kind of future do you dream of and wish for your daughter? Will you tell her stories about it? In your opinion, how should women and men relate to each other in the future? Have you spoken to your daughter’s other parent about this? What makes girls the way they are? Female behaviour is not only inherited from a girl’s forebears, it is also learned, as every girl is born into a society where the relations between the sexes are already firmly established. Moreover, each family has its own culture and history, which is part of society’s history. For us women, our female antecedents are of special significance. But it’s not only girls who need to understand their roots – all children need to! What do you personally know about your origins? Which religion, traditions, belief systems and behavioural patterns that are part of your family tradition have you adopted, and which have you discarded? For instance, do you come from a family for whom hard work has always been a top priority? Or maybe you come from an alcoholic family, and have inherited some of the baggage that goes with that. Your home life as a child might have been very happy and nurturing, or else quite strict and stressful. These are some examples of family behaviour patterns. My own view When I think about what I wish for women who are growing up in this millennium, I think of qualities that have to do with original femininity, values that have largely been lost. How can they be dredged up, re-invigorated so that they find a voice again? I wish for empathy, cooperation, helpfulness, a sense of community, creativity, and for the power of imagination, intuition, wisdom… The editor of a well-known parents’ magazine recently told me that she’d love to be a mother – full-time. But she dares not say that aloud. She loves being at home and looking after her children, but when her girlfriends hear that, they think she’s reactionary. Must we women have a career? Do we have to become like men, act like men? For me, femininity is connected to life-giving forces. I don’t mean that I believe all women must bear children. They can decide that for themselves! But I believe it’s important that they devote themselves to life: that they give fiery speeches to the United Nations General Assembly against war and for justice and peace; that they resist violence; that they join groups that aim to preserve Nature and not participate in the destruction of our environment. We should make our daughters familiar with Nature in all its forms and teach them to respect life – and to acknowledge women’s achievements in all areas. Femininity, for me, means giving life, protecting it, going with it – and seeing it pass. It is about recognising that we are subject to a rhythm, being aware that death is a part of life, that time after time there must be a farewell and a new start. Let us show our daughters the moon. If we observe it closely, we’ll know a little of what it’s like to live on Earth. This is my personal opinion, not the truth. Do what matches your nature and your convictions – but do it consciously, and in the knowledge that you are a role model. If you want your daughter to be a strong woman, she will need strong role models. Being strong means being in harmony with yourself, expressing yourself genuinely, asserting yourself, and being able to structure your own life. Being strong means bidding farewell to the victim’s role and taking on responsibility for yourself. Whoever does not seize her own strength is helpless. You claim your identity through your actions. What we occupy ourselves with every day moulds us. Which possibilities do you wish to give your daughter? The first role models for a girl are her mother and father. If you are careful, alert, communicative and present, you can’t do anything wrong. In a nutshell Girls are different from boys, right from the start. Before we can think about how to raise our daughters, we have to know what we ourselves think about girls, women and femininity. Sometimes we also need to question that, and do some work to change our thought and behaviour patterns. Remember, other people will also have their own personal reactions to the news that you are soon to be – or already are – the parents of a baby girl. Be ready for some reactions you may not be comfortable with! Have a good look at the world today and take note of what women are now achieving and doing – all these things are possible for your daughter too. Newborn girls are different from newborn boys physically, and some of these differences become greater in the first few months of life: girls are likely to want to be touched more than boys; many can play independently and comfort themselves earlier than boys can; and they often crawl earlier than boys do. Boy? Girl? Human! When my wife was pregnant for the first time, we decided we didn’t want to know the sex of our child ahead of the birth. We wanted the full-on experience of pregnancy – no tricks of technology, no advance warnings of whether our lives were about to turn a distinct shade of blue or pink. As the weeks passed, we had lots of fun speculating on the boy/girl question – how I would have a willing and long-term football-kicking partner if it were a boy, and how I would protect her innocence against all would-be suitors if it were a girl. The funniest part of all this is that when the wee one actually popped out of my wife’s body, both wife and I were in a state of such transcendental awe that it took us a full minute (okay, maybe a little bit less) to get around to checking what baby’s sex was. In those irreplaceable first few moments of life, we didn’t care a jot about anything other than that our baby was there, out, with us at last. It was a girl. When my wife got pregnant again, we decided to find out at the amniocentesis test and scan what the foetus’ sex was. We wanted to do it differently this time, in order to have the complete experience – that is, once not knowing, once knowing. It was another girl. We stopped at two, not wanting to push the envelope too far! In hindsight, that process of guessing during the first pregnancy was very special: it was the only time in my life that I might have been about to have a son. Now I have two daughters, and of course I can’t imagine it being any other way. But the dreaming was good… Leo TWO DEVELOPING YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR NEW DAUGHTER (#ulink_81f02a88-7444-580f-a5de-8abf4cac8b1d) As soon as a child has been born, parents have a special task to perform: you must say goodbye to your ‘dream child’ and greet, accept and take on your real one – with her qualities, her appearance, her gender and her behaviours. The first step Step one is to forget your pre-birth expectations. This is particularly hard if the child you are holding in your arms is quite different from the one you expected. Charming babies who seem calm and satisfied from the beginning and look lovable have an easy time of it, even if they don’t match their parents’ dream. A screamer, however, who comes into the world bald and bright red, and who gives the impression of not wanting to become friends with this world at all, presents all kinds of problems. All the fantasies and illusions you created after seeing wonderful baby photos in magazines come crashing down. Perhaps your child became a girl when she ‘should’ have been a boy, and perhaps she was born too early and is still in danger of being disabled – or is already. People can achieve and change a lot, but we certainly don’t control everything. Having said all that, it is also the case that many parents experience the opposite: they are overwhelmed by their own capacity to love. They had never expected that a little creature, their daughter, could inspire so much love. They are surprised by the primal, deep force that rolls over them like a huge wave whenever they look at their baby. True bonding – the prerequisite for healthy development This farewell to the dream child is the first task for brand-new parents. You can then discover what a treasure you have in your real child. Your little girl is the way she is. She will grow all the better the more you love her. In concrete terms, that means, for the first few months, being there for her all the time – she needs you to give her skin contact, to caress her lovingly and massage her, to nurse her, talk to her, carry her around and sleep near her. Love is an action word, and in the first months with a baby, love is in fact a very strenuous activity. However, it is exactly this loving – and tiring! – behaviour that is the basis for a secure bond between you and your baby. And having a secure bond with her parents in the first few years of her life is a requirement for every mental and emotional stage of development she will move through. The impact of the ‘attachment theory’ John Bowlby investigated and observed war children and orphans in the 1950s and developed the so-called ‘attachment theory’ on the basis of this research. This theory states that children can only develop their skills optimally if they have a trusting, secure bond with at least one adult role model. Bowlby caused a worldwide sensation with his film about a 12-year-old girl who lived all alone in a hospital. We have him to thank for several things: the fact that mother and child are now rarely separated in the maternity ward; the fact that often parents can stay with their sick children in hospitals; and the fact that parents know how important a stable, close relationship with their child is. Even premature babies grow with fewer problems if they feel skin contact and human touch. It is interesting – and wonderful – that newborns are equipped with numerous powers that enable them to make contact with others and then to form a bond. Most parents react intuitively to these signals, and in this way the bond of love is strengthened even more. If you accept your child as she is, and if you look after her responsibly and give her total security by nestling her little body next to yours, you will be giving your child the stable base she needs for her development. You cannot spoil a baby – it is innocent and defenceless and dependent on your care. If you give her everything she needs and wishes for, you are doing the absolute best thing for her. Our knowledge of the powers that babies have, right from birth, has grown dramatically over the last few years, but parents don’t need to study any of this; all you need to do is observe your baby and give her what she wants. Just as the little girl in front of you feels an inner urge to grow and to acquire skills and knowledge, you as parents also have inborn skills to look after your child. Follow your instinct and intuition, and you will do the job properly. The ‘positive mother/father complex’ Psychologist Verena Kast calls this first, pleasant, close bond with the mother the ‘positive mother complex’. There is also a corresponding ‘positive father complex’. According to Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, a ‘complex’ arises from a meaningful interaction between two people. You probably know about the ‘inferiority complex’ that can develop when a person is systematically devalued by their environment. No person is worth ‘less’ than another, but when someone is told that they are a failure again and again, they eventually start to believe it. The opposite is also true. Making her feel ‘uplifted’ Girls who are shaped by a positive mother complex take their right to exist for granted, are creative and can ‘live and let live’. They know about everyone’s right to respect, to express physical and spiritual needs, to self-fulfilment, and to a fair share of worldly goods. They feel uplifted by life, and enjoy their bodies, food, sexuality and being alive. These girls, like everyone, eventually need to loosen their close bond to their mother so that they can develop their own identity and unfold their own personality. This task faces them in puberty – unless their mother dies earlier or leaves the family. The importance of the father Because of this inevitable separation from the mother (which boys do earlier than girls), it’s important for girls to also have their father present in their lives from the very beginning – so that they can develop a ‘positive father complex’. If girls’ early experience includes their father – or, if that’s not possible, someone who is not their mother but who also cares for them – they will find it easier to detach themselves from the mother-child symbiosis, and they will learn that relationships have various shadings: that Mum and Dad treat them differently, and that each parent has their own characteristics. What special things do fathers do? Fathers react to their children’s speech with speech, just like mothers do. But fathers differ in that they often prefer physically stimulating forms of play, clearly defined movements, and abrupt changes between active and passive phases of interaction. The play style of fathers is often more exciting than that of mothers, and is highly prized by children. There is a lot more detail on the importance of fathers in later chapters. Little girls who have both parents in their lives from the start soon learn different relationship patterns, and to attach different expectations to different relationships. This makes it easier for them to get involved in new situations: they already have a broader range of reactions than if they are dependent on only one parent. While a little girl experiences her mother as the same as herself, her father radiates the fascination of the stranger (which is significant from the start!). Most very successful women have had fathers who brought them up to be independent and self-sufficient. These women remember their dads as intelligent, ambitious, energetic and tolerant. Don’t give her everything she wants Many grown-up women have told me that it’s difficult for them to say no. It’s important to be able to say both yes and no in your family. If you accept other people, including your children, as individuals, you also accept that each of you can make personal choices and decisions – about all sorts of things. If your daughter wants hot chocolate for breakfast and you have none, for instance, you’ll have to tell her no. She’ll be disappointed and, if she’s small, she’ll whinge, cry and demand hot chocolate loudly. How do you feel about this? Do you say to yourself, it’s normal to be disappointed and to express disappointment verbally and demandingly? Or do you feel guilty about your daughter not having everything she wants? Do you get impatient and aggressive with her? Check your responses in these situations and remind yourself that it’s all right to refuse your child something. However, also remember that you must often say yes to your daughter, because a yes is always a positive for her development. Many children live with a lot of rules that harm their development. They are not allowed to: play in puddles climb trees mess around in mud unpack the saucepan cupboard experiment with glue handle scissors stand at the stove and cook something for themselves… But these are all things that children actually should do. Other children have no barriers, and they lose their orientation. When everything is allowed, children become deeply uncertain. Saying no to your daughter when she’d like to watch television or have a certain T-shirt doesn’t hurt. On the contrary. You might say no to playing with her if you’re weary and exhausted and need a break. Explain to her why you can’t play with her just now and when you will have time to. But remember, you should also accept a no from your daughter if she does not wish to put on the red jumper or to play the flute for her aunt. Try to be a family where no-one has to bend themselves out of shape to fit in with someone else. Everyone should be able to decide things for themselves. Set a good example Living with children means that you must constantly ask yourself, ‘What’s really important for me?’ If you can answer this question, if you know your values and benchmarks, you can set priorities. This has an effect on your entire life, but especially on your family life. What are your values? To help you answer this question, here are a few more to get you thinking: Which is more important to you, financial independence or good relationships with others? Do you pursue your own dreams or tend to adhere to social conventions? If you had to compile your own ‘Ten Family Commandments’, what would they be? What types of memories do you want to look back on when you are old? How would you like to be remembered by others, including your children? When my husband and I asked the participants in a seminar for couples to list their life values and compare them with their partners’, there was a commotion. Even people who live with each other often have different values. And there are typical male and female values. Do not criticise your partner if your values seem very different – just seek out the common values. Talk about what a particular value means for you and listen to each other, without judging. If you both listed humour, you’re already on track! Your children judge you according to the example you set. You will not be credible if you are a chain smoker and yet demand that they maintain a health-conscious lifestyle. And if you like to play with your children, you won’t have to explain that joy in living is important to you; your children will know that! Honesty is a quality that adults often demand from their children but don’t demonstrate themselves. Examine your conscience – when have you lied, and in what situations have you disowned your convictions? Your children will want to speak to you about this one day. In the wonderful book, Racism Explained to my Daughter, Tahar Ben Jelloun explains his values to his ten-year-old daughter, Meriem. Jelloun, a French writer of Moroccan descent, responds to his daughter’s queries about racism at a time when European nations were exploring how to absorb – or not – people from their former colonies. Jelloun examines the social, political, economic, and psychological aspects of racism, touching on discrimination, religion, genetics, stereotyping, immigration and xenophobia. What he is really talking about is values. The book is easy to read and has been translated into more than a dozen languages. I strongly recommend it to all parents. As long as you have children asking you questions, you will be challenged to reflect on your life and values. That in itself is important. Even if you hold a view on a particular issue that is completely different from your daughter’s, she will remember the conversation the two of you had about it all her life, if you treat her with dignity and respect. And though she disagrees with you today, it doesn’t mean she won’t agree with you in five years. Be a good role model I repeat, children need role models, people who set an example for them. How do you speak about others? Is your boss ‘an idiot’, your neighbour ‘a jerk’, the driver in front of you ‘a moron’? Observe yourself and be honest with yourself and your children, and that’s how they will be. A person who honestly expresses an opinion and stands up for their personal truth will always be respected. A role model in action Once, before my husband and I had children, a friend visited us unannounced, with his daughter, Anne. This was in the 1970s, before punks. Anne was wearing a shredded, ‘graffitied’ pair of jeans and a provocative top, and had brightly dyed hair – and probably a dog-collar as well, I don’t really remember. Her father treated her with dignity and respect throughout the visit, though I knew that her appearance was not something he much liked. I admired him tremendously for this. Without saying anything, he clearly showed us all what tolerance is. Eating with pleasure Eating often becomes a tricky family issue. That’s why I think it’s important to give young parents hints on it. Isn’t it remarkable, in the truest sense of the word, that in our muddle-headed, mechanised world, it is our natural needs – such as eating, sleeping and sexuality – that give us so much trouble? Shouldn’t it make us stop and think when, in a world of such surplus, so many people have an unhealthy diet and suffer from vitamin and mineral deficiencies? And why is it almost always girls who have eating disorders and are dissatisfied with their bodies in puberty? How does this all start – and how can we as parents stand by our daughters and help them? The best nourishment in the first few months of any child’s life is mother’s milk. It is the food that was designed for us, and there is no equal alternative. From about the sixth month, children should also start eating some solids – carrot pur?e, for example. Then, once your child can sit in her own high chair with you at the table, you should start thinking about joint meals. An important part of the ‘culture’ of every family is food – who cooks when, and with what ingredients. Of course you will have your own thoughts about this, but for the sake of the health of your child(ren), a couple of points are worth bearing in mind. Processed baby food cannot compete with freshly cooked vegetables in terms of nutrients – but then again, not all fresh vegetables are equally nutritious. Do you know if organic veggies are available close to where you live? Have you considered buying them? What about organic meat, and free-range eggs? Freshly prepared cereal, vegetables and fruit are the best food you can offer your child. Organic foods like these are grown naturally, free of chemicals and pesticides – whose long-term side effects are still not fully known – as well as genetic modification. This is the way the earth intended us to enjoy its produce. If, from the beginning, you avoid giving your daughter sugar (in the form of lollies, biscuits or fizzy drinks, for instance), you’ll be doing a lot for her nutrition – and her teeth. Moreover, this way you’ll have your child eating almost everything you offer her. If she doesn’t like a certain type of vegetable, don’t be concerned. As long as your daughter hasn’t got to know sugar and other processed foods (see below), she will choose what she needs out of the range of things you offer her. And remember, a healthy child also helps make her parents happy! Limiting sweets If you do not stock unhealthy foods in your home, no problems can arise. When your child comes into contact with sweets, stabilisers, emulsifiers and other harmful substances – in school, perhaps, or at friends’ houses – she will be less vulnerable to such offerings if you’ve already laid the basis for good nutrition. Parents have often disputed this with me, saying that their child will in fact go to neighbours’ or friends’ places to lay into the sweets there. First, if your child is still a toddler, she won’t be going to a neighbour’s house on her own, and will never be left alone there. So there is no reason why the adults there can’t monitor what she eats. And if, when she’s a bit older, she does eat sweets at her friends’ homes, don’t make a drama out of it. You’ve done your best, and that’s enough – because that’s all you can do. Anyway, if you look at the amount of sweet food your child eats in situations like this, it will almost always be the case that she eats less than her friend does. Children raised to eat healthy food do not, generally, choose to eat a lot of unhealthy food even when it is available. When your child is in childcare or school, as well as giving her food to take with her, you can talk to the centre’s staff and to other parents and ask for healthy food to be provided there. You may be successful with this. If you cannot get the centre or school to agree, at least you’ve shown your daughter how important healthy nutrition is to you. That helps her. And remember how important it is that your child knows your opinion, and sees that you know how to lead a happy life while following your own convictions. How much food is enough? Don’t be too worried about whether your child eats too little or too much. A healthy child eats exactly as much as she needs. But note that this rule applies only if your child is fed an almost sugar-free diet. An excess of sugar leads to a desire for sweet things, and from there it’s a slippery slope to deficient nutrition. Food and power If your daughter feels that she has power over you through her eating habits, she will exploit it. She’ll say something like, ‘I’m not eating that.’ She knows that you care about this issue, and that her nutrition is very important to you, so she might think that you will immediately start to prepare something else for her. The result of this kind of exploitation is fairly common knowledge: processed food like fish fingers and tinned spaghetti will alternate on the table night after night, and if this sequence is broken even once, the little one will require serious persuasion to eat anything at all. Don’t go down that path! She can help you cook Cook with pleasure, delight and love, and involve your daughter in the cooking. As soon as she’s old enough, let her help choose what to cook, take her with you to the supermarket, help her learn to tell good-quality food from bad, and allow her to help you prepare meals. You can show a two-year-old daughter the proper use of a kitchen knife – as long as it’s very blunt! These sensory experiences increase her interest in food and her familiarity with the taste and texture of different foods, and help to develop her intelligence. In the first few years, children learn only through sensory experience – imitation, touching, playing, sucking and exploring things with their whole bodies. When you allow your daughter to be part of such a sensory activity as food preparation, she will receive just the stimulation she needs. And if you think about it, preparing and consuming food engages all five senses – sight, sound, smell, touch and, of course, taste – like few other activities. On the other hand, if your daughter experiences mainly tinned or frozen food, she might reasonably assume that milk comes from a carton and carrots come from a freezer! If both you and your partner are working, try to cook with your daughter on weekends and shop beforehand. If you live in the city, you could drive to the country now and then and visit a farm, so your daughter can see how vegetables are grown and harvested. Don’t be too concerned about whether your child is eating enough – every healthy child eats exactly as much as she needs Mealtime behaviour This is at least as important as your choice of food. Meals should take place in a friendly, peaceful atmosphere, if at all possible. Anything else is unhealthy. Don’t criticise your child or partner during meals together, and don’t argue. If problems need to be aired, go for a walk or sit in the living room and talk after the meal. Find a quiet time to discuss with your partner what table manners you think are appropriate. Is your daughter allowed to leave the table when she has finished eating, or should she wait until everyone is finished? Can she play while she’s eating? Can she serve herself at a certain age? If so, what age? And must she then eat everything she has put on her plate? There are no fixed or right answers to these questions. You develop your own family culture by seeking answers together and emphasising the things that are important to you. In days gone by, for instance, a prayer was usually said before meals, children weren’t permitted to speak at the table – unless spoken to – and everyone remained seated until everybody had finished eating. In many families, things have changed: these days there are some families who never sit down together for a meal. What do you want for your family? How do you want to shape your family life in this respect? The moment your toddler sits at the family table, she learns something about food. What she learns is in your hands. Important points about food for you and your daughter Meals with the whole family are fun. We should be grateful for our food – the amount and variety we have available are not things we should take for granted. Healthy nourishment keeps us well. Everyone can help with preparing meals. Children learn table manners most easily through example and praise – not through criticism. Everyone’s body belongs to them – each person should therefore choose (from a healthy range of food) what and how much they eat. Fruit and vegetables should always be allowed as a snack. In a nutshell Accept and bond with the baby girl you actually have, not the one you might have been anticipating. You are doing your daughter a favour when you say no to her for a good reason. Good role models are vital for a girl’s healthy development. Your daughter is more likely to have positive, healthy attitudes to eating if you start her off with fresh, natural food and limited sweets. Not tied to the apron strings! Everybody was busy in the kitchen when I announced that, instead of receiving presents for Mothers’ Day, I would not be cooking for three days over the Mothers’ Day weekend. I wanted a rest. There was a sudden silence. Everybody looked at me, and then my two boys – aged 18 and 15 – and their father turned to the youngest, Jesse – aged ten, and the only other female in the house – and said, ‘Oh well, you’ll be cooking for three days, then.’ Jesse threw herself onto the couch, put her feet up and announced, ‘Sorry, I’m going to be a mother one day, so I need to rest now. I can’t do the cooking.’ Then on Mothers’ Day Jesse gave me a card she had made. It said: Happy Mothers’ Day, Mum Please don’t die until I get married Love Jesse I think she could see nothing but years of cooking for her brothers and father ahead of her. Lisa THREE HER EARLY YEARS (#ulink_8b2197c3-0c1e-5dd9-943c-09fb606dd0db) In this chapter we will look at important areas of little girls’ development, and see how parents can help this development. Again, the fundamental points here are that you should know what your own beliefs are, you should stick to them, and you should observe your daughter carefully and lovingly as often as possible so that you will know what she needs. Language development One area in which little girls are usually ahead of little boys is language development. According to one study, while girls can already speak three words at the age of ten months, boys the same age can only manage one. (#litres_trial_promo) At the age of eighteen months, half of all girls have a vocabulary of 56 words at their disposal, while half of all boys use only 28 words. These differences also appear in their passive vocabulary (that is, the vocabulary they understand but do not use themselves). At sixteen months, half of all girls understand 206 words, while half of all boys are getting by with 134 words. Boys catch up to girls around the age of 20 months. So overall, girls have greater language fluency: their left cerebral hemisphere is activated earlier, and this is where the language centre lies. This brings us back to the differences between the male and female brain. Interestingly, parents tend to respond to this difference quite unconsciously, encouraging their daughters’ speech habits more strongly than their sons’. An American investigation showed that the number of words parents direct to their child – in other words, the amount of communication they initiate – gives a fairly precise prediction of a child’s intelligence, academic success and social skills. (#litres_trial_promo) The more words, the greater the child’s ability in these areas. Without a doubt, speaking stimulates the brain and assists in building connections that are indispensable to a child’s intelligence, creativity and adaptability. The language acquisition phase is therefore shaped by interaction – a link that becomes far more noticeable during the following years. One language or two? If you are in a position to bring up your child bilingually, do it. Young children are able to acquire language very easily and naturally in the first few years of life – and it is never again so easy for them. This ability not only leads to an improvement in your child’s competency in her first language, it also has a positive effect on her overall intelligence. Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/gisela-preuschoff/raising-girls-why-girls-are-different-and-how-to-help-th/?lfrom=688855901) на ЛитРес. 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