Girls Schools Association - Your Daughter

Chapter 1
Relationships

Families raise children but they are not the only source of influence or support. Particularly for girls, friends are crucial to happiness and sense of self-worth. Your daughter will be totally reliant on you in her early years. Together with her extended family, be they aunts, uncles and grandparents or step-families, you will nurture, guide and support her. She will find her friends in her neighbour-hood and her school, through her hobbies and interests. A warm, loving network is the foundation on which your daughter will grow and by which she will be shaped. She will take her role models from those closest to her as she grows until she begins to look wider afield. The overwhelming majority of girls say that their mothers are their most influential role models. This is a great tribute but with it comes a huge responsibility to set the best possible example, to guide and direct, to communicate and explain. As she matures your daughter will also be greatly influenced by her teachers and, above all, by her peers. The media will also have an effect, one which you will probably want to moderate by discussing with her those aspects which you consider admirable... and those you dont. It will not always be plain sailing. Everyone has to deal with disappointment and loss, with failure and heartache. At these times your daughter will rely on her relationships, with you and with others, to help her cope and to help her understand.

Family Relationships

The relationship between parents and their daughters can either be one of great stress and anguish throughout your daughters teenage years or it can be one of growing respect and developing friendship, as you both move from the parent-child relationship to the more sophisticated relationship of parent-adult. Watching your daughter blossoming into a young adult, who has her own feelings, thoughts, actions and values, is both daunting and exciting to a parent, but it is important to let her fly and to trust her. At the core of all relationships, especially the parent/daughter one, is open and honest communication. It is crucial to keep the channels of communication open at all times with the aim of developing a long term relationship based on mutual trust.

The importance of family

Girls relationships are typically far more complex than those of boys. In general, girls:

talk more, and unconsciously pass all their thoughts through a powerful emotional filter

are usually more emotionally manipulative than boys, and have advanced negotiating skills with their parents

are likely to be ultra-sensitive to any personal comment, particularly during adolescence when their self-confidence can falter

All these factors can converge to make them outstanding managers as adults, but they can also lead to strain within the family relationships as girls grow up.

Your daughter needs to have an individual relationship with each of her parents, or parent-substitutes, whether she normally lives with these individuals or not. If you are an absent parent, use chatty emails or texts; the subtext here is that you still love her unconditionally, despite physical separation. If you live at home with your daughter, you can develop a good relationship with her by ensuring you have regular time just the two of you for relaxed conversation for example, while doing the washing-up after supper one to one.

A girl generally needs to talk a lot! Just chatting in an engaged way on a regular basis, from the time speech begins, will get her into the habit of talking things over. This will allow you not only to help with simple things, such as homework but more importantly, to help steer her emotional growth, as well as to keep things going even when there are difficult times, especially at adolescence. It will enable trust to be built up between you during childhood, and for this to continue after puberty, when family relationships can become strained.

During adolescence, a girl is more likely to take up the values of her peer group than those of her family. Even if it can seem more like simply polite conversation at times, fraught with sensitive areas which must be skirted around, just keep on chatting. This way your daughter will know that, although she seems to be pushing you away, you are still there for her, and that the crucial unconditional love remains as she searches for her own personality and identity. She may often feel very lonely and lost during this stage, and its important that she knows she has not lost the secure love of which she was certain in childhood. Remember that in order for her to become an independent, mature adult, she first needs to separate from you.

If things get very bad, or you are worried that she is not in good emotional health, talk it over with your GP or another suitable professional. If your teenage daughter is caught up with others who are not well grounded, or whose family relationships are poor, she may need qualified emotional support or perhaps a loved and respected grandparent, aunt or godmother can help. She may turn to a teacher or family friend for adult support; if she does, you should not feel you have failed it is normal.