Cheri Fuller - What a Girl Needs from Her Mom

A mothers treasure is her daughter.

Catherine Pulsifer

When Erin first saw her baby girl on the ultrasound, her heart beat a staccato rhythm and she gasped in delight. A daughter! Compared to raising our boy, this will be a breeze, she thought. After all, Erin had been a young girl once and understood the stages her daughter would navigate. And it was smooth sailing for the first two years; Erin had fun putting cute pink outfits and matching headbands and bows on Emma and posting photos on Instagram. But after Erin saw her Emma walking around with one hand on her little hip and the other holding Moms cell phone to her ear talking up a storm, it took her aback. When Erins high-spirited, strong-willed daughter overpowered her big brother and barked orders, she thought, Uh-oh . Maybe this isnt going to be the cakewalk I thought it would be.

A few years later, Erin was picking Emma up at school one afternoon and observed a line of eight kindergarten boys leaning against the building, waiting for their rides while on their iPads. Erin could only shake her head about how quickly the world was changing.

Later she was baffled by questions Emma asked when only in the third grade: Mommy, what is an STD? and Why does Jenny have two mommies?

The older Emma gets, the more mystified her mom feels about the situations she and her peers are facing.

Erin is not alone in her puzzlement. Our girls are growing up in a different generation and culture than we did. Kathryn, a mother of three, told me she wasnt prepared for her normal-weight ten-year-old daughter to come home in tears and say she was fat and disgusting. Who gave you that idea? Kathryn asked.

The girls on the playground said I was. And they sent me a mean message on Instagram.

Kathryn had no idea what a big part social media played in her daughters school or how obsessed girls were with being thin.

There were movie stars when I was growing up, Kathryn said, but now these highly sexualized, super-skinny images of girls and women whose bodies and faces have been airbrushed to perfection are everywhere, constantly barraging our girls with false expectations of how theyre supposed to look.

Social media definitely wasnt around when I was growing up, said Maggie, a Texas mom. All the ins and outs of this very voyeuristic and affirmation-seeking culture mean Ive needed to have more conversations about where my daughters find their worth.

I never knew Id be discussing what they shouldnt put on the Internet, in terms of appropriateness or the way theyre portraying themselves, because its out there forever. Theyre only twelve and eight!

Maybe you have had similar thoughts as Erin did: I was a girl once; Ill know whats going on with my daughter. But at a certain point you realized that your daughter is growing up in an entirely different world thats technology-driven and changing rapidly. A world in which children are exposed to a wider range of experiences than we ever imagined. A world thats blurring the lines between adult and child, exposing children to situations that arent appropriate for their development level and to digital content that promotes self-harm, pornography, suicide, and even intense violence.

Many moms Ive interviewed find it distressing that they not only need to be present and involved with their childrens physical life (caring for them and keeping them safe and healthy in real time), but they need to be engaged in their girls Internet world . Moms are already crazy-busy just getting the daily tasks of parenting done. The digital revolution has produced a whole new need that girls have: for their moms to help them navigate the digital world.

And our daughters need our help in other, not-so-apparent ways too.

The Adventure of Raising a Girl

There was something familiar and natural about giving birth to a girl, but I soon discovered how different Alison and I were. And though I was pretty sure Id understand what it would be like for her to go through situations Id faced, like puberty, for example, what I found is that Alison approached each stage with a unique perspective and temperament that was often a polar opposite to mine.

Alisons late teen years and early twenties were rocky as we sought to reconcile differences and accept each other fully, but today we are dear friends.

Yes, raising a girl is a rewarding, sometimes puzzling journey full of challenges and joys, surprises and obstacles. There can be months or years of smooth sailing and then seasons of turbulent times with our girls.