How to raise a confident girl

Our young girls are in distress and it’s easy to see why. With earlier generations, the biggest pressure of girlhood sometimes just meant ensuring your tamagotchi was fed enough to avoid pixelated nirvana. But today, demands of toxic social media and exam pressure, coupled with confusing messages on body image, are all causing girls anxiety and heartache.

Considering we’re living in a society where a man who stands accused of sexual assault was sworn in as the US Supreme Court justice, it’s not surprising that their happiness levels are falling.

According to the latest figures from the 2018 Girl Guides attitude survey, with only 43% of 7-10 year olds saying they felt very happy, compared to 57% in 2009. And feeling down can also negatively impact other areas of her life, like confidence, with 29% of 7-10 girls reporting this.

How, then, do we build resilience in our daughters so they grow up to become strong, empowered young women primed for taking on leading roles in our society?

“I think girls lives would be better if they felt more confident and if they want to do something then they should just do it! If you’re told no, don’t listen,” suggests one respondent.

Parents need to influence daughters to find their inner strength and embolden them with self-belief, teach them to call out injustices and find inspiring female trailblazers to show her how it’s done.

Here’s eight ways to raise confident, resilient girls:

Arm her with killer phrases

It’s hard to poke your head above the parapet and speak your mind, even as adults we find it difficult. But it’s so important to teach little girls how to speak up and speak out, so she can assert herself properly. “It's just about making that acceptable…..and modeling it for them all the times,” says consultant clinical psychologist, Dr Elizabeth Kilbey.

Arm her with the kinds of words and language she can use to be authoritative, knowing “what to say and who to speak to” is half the battle.

Remember that strength is part-attitude, so ban negative speech and undermining statements. “We have banned self-deprecating phrases such as ‘This may be wrong, but....’ when girls express ideas in lessons,” says Kirsty von Malaisé, Headmistress of Norwich High School for Girls.

Instead, get her channeling a positive inner monologue, what would her best friend tell her?  

Nurture her interests

We want girls to reach higher because “self-esteem comes from a sense of belief in your ability and a positive image of yourself,” says Elizabeth. It’s important for your girl to get a sense of who she is, where her passions lie and what she’s good at.

As parents, your job is to help find these interest ‘sparks’, as Psychologist Steve Biddulph calls them, and make pursuing them, easy. For some girls it’s going to be drama, for others it will be knitting or karate, it’s about giving them opportunity to explore what’s right for them.

Show her IRL female role models

More girls than ever want to be the boss. 53% of 7-10 year olds said so—according to the Girl Guiding Attitudes Survey 2018—compared to only 42% in 2016. But you can’t be what you can’t see, neuroscience proves that. When we witness someone else performing an action, our mirror neurons respond just as they would if we had carried out the action ourselves. Show your daughter examples of strong women in top positions to inspire them to strive for the same.

Role models can be anyone “from your grandmother to the leader of the football team,” says Elizabeth. Showing them relatable female figures, local or otherwise, tells your girl “they've got a place.” 

Are they into football? Find out where your local women’s league plays and spend a Saturday watching a match. Help her to be “curious about women” who’ve blazed the trail before now.

Psychologist Steve Biddulph agrees. “Once a girl sees how this is done, it becomes easier, in fact almost second nature.”

Allow them to fail, safely

‘Success is a journey, not the end destination’.  Sorry if that sounds corny, but teaching your daughter this could help toughen her up. Showing girls (and all children) that the end-goal isn’t what’s truly valuable, it’s the route from A to B, and the challenges faced along the way, will help build their resilience.

Think of it as “character learning”, says Elizabeth, “trying, striving, sometimes failing and trying again.” Make sure she understands what she’s gained in the process, ready for her next attempt, because “what we don't want is girls to back off.” Praise the effort she’s put in and the time it takes for your girl to get there, “...then you're much more likely to have young people who persist when tasks become difficult.”

Get her thinking critically too. Ask her what she’s learned, “Did you learn patience? Did you learn tolerance? Did you learn not to get cross?” By “stepping back, letting them make mistakes, allowing them to fall” your girl will be armed and able to face future hurdles, or haters, head-on.

Encourage flexible friendships

The girl squad is definitely having a moment. Whether it’s pictures of Tay Tay hanging with her supermodel crew, or the inescapable posts taking over our social feeds (#girlsquad has notched up a cool 620K Instagram posts), the pressure to be surrounded by an intimate circle of sacred women can be overwhelming.

For all the positives, close female friendship is, at times, challenging, particularly for little ones. Relational aggression, commonly experienced within female friendship groups, means more girl-on-girl cruelty can be sometimes be a consequence.

“Girls tend to do this kind of pairing up, much more chatty...more emotionally-based relating and it is quite cliquey,” says Elizabeth.

Encourage your daughter to not be so exclusive with her pals. Flexible friendships, based around things like play rather than just an “intense emotional connection”, can be fun too.

Helping girls cultivate inclusive, group friendships will mean they might feel less “anxious and think ‘I’ve got to cling to my one main friend.’”

Teach her mindfulness

The ups and downs of life are completely normal. But, if your daughter is regularly feeling anxious, mindfulness—a mind-body based approach to manage intrusive, negative feelings—can help her live more in the moment and have better control over her jungle of thoughts.

And as Steve Biddulph, in his 10 Things Girls Need Most, says “a big part of being strong means being in charge of your emotions.”

With over 5,000 UK teachers now trained in it, according to the Mindfulness Initiative, mindfulness is becoming more popular with schools. But what exactly does it involve? With breathing and focussed sessions, your daughter can ensure she  “listens to her feelings, but isn’t in their grip.”

In this way, “...she feels her anger, or fear, or sorrow, or exhaustion, or boredom, acknowledges them, but then moves beyond those and does what she thinks is right anyway.”

Explore the greatness of girlhood

Being a girl can be awesome, so make sure your daughter knows that, talk to her about being female in a really positive light. Make sure that your home is somewhere girlhood is always celebrated.

As she gets older, you can talk more explicitly about the realities and challenges of being a woman, “I wouldn't gloss over the barriers” says Kirsty, like “the challenges of being a mum and trying to hold down a career.”

Ask questions

Get your daughter to think big, and listen to her when she opens up. “Ask her what she thinks about something. Encourage her to vocalise her ideas and explore different viewpoints,” suggests Kirsty, rather than just sitting back, passively waiting to be asked.

Get them to reason through their choices to give them a better grasp of who they are and what they’re good at. Probe them, says Elizabeth: “I wonder why you didn't pick an astronaut or racing car driver?”