4 Tips to Encourage Resilience in Your Daughter
No matter how much you plan for what’s ahead of you, life can take you on an unexpected journey. Sometimes, the ride is bumpy and scary. Other times, it’s a tame little detour — and maybe a tad thrilling or entertaining. Either way, you’re better off if you know how to adopt a positive, resilient mindset.
Of course, this sounds good on paper. It’s much harder to actually believe that life’s curveballs might turn out to be OK in the end. That’s why I’m trying to teach my daughters how to develop the confidence to face change head-on instead of shrinking from it.
Why focus on our daughters? Our society has historically been very good about teaching boys to go with the flow. Any woman will tell you that she’s had to push back against dozens of narratives. Being able to make course corrections lets us exercise control and show strength even when facing difficult situations.
The phenomenon of women carrying untold burdens socially, psychologically, and intellectually is well documented. One Yale University study shows that women repeatedly get the short end of the stick at work. Not only are they 14% less likely to be promoted than their male counterparts, but they’re also perceived as having lower leadership potential than men. It’s not hard to see how resilience and reframing can be helpful in that situation.
For women of color, the situation gets even dicier. Women of color have difficulty finding mentors to help them climb the corporate ladder. They might have to force their way through glass ceilings, disprove stereotypes, and keep pushing to do what they want, such as becoming experts in fields reluctant to let them in. Again, having a resilient foundation keeps them from giving up and settling when they should be spreading their wings.
Helping Daughters Reach Their Potential Through Resilience
I’m not suggesting that you have to sit down every day and create resilience lesson plans for your daughter. What I do instead is try to guide my daughters so that they begin to develop a natural resilience. Below are some tips from my parenting tool kit:
1. Help your daughters learn skills necessary for resilience.
It is impossible to become resilient if you don’t have certain traits, such as adaptability. Help your child rethink how she interacts with others in her world. When she assumes she has no choice but to react one way, teach her that she always has options. She might feel angry or sad, certainly. Those are healthy responses. But she might need to understand how to deal with them better by taking advantage of social support or even therapy.
Let’s say your daughter comes home upset because she’s been told by her peers that she’ll never be a good doctor because she’s too girly. (Kids make foolish statements all the time.) It sounds silly to our ears but could be devastating to her. Talk with her about why she hopes to be a doctor and help her see that her life is dictated by her, not the people around her. She will probably still be upset, but this kind of conversation will start to flex her resilience muscles.
2. Try not to dwell on your own regrets.
Do you constantly talk about your regrets and the “what ifs” of your life? Though you might not think this affects your daughter, it could be sending the wrong message. It’s fine to say that you regretted something, but it’s best to follow up with a discussion about the lessons you learned.
I could easily go back and ask myself a boatload of questions regarding the decisions I’ve made for my company. What if I had spent more money on research and development last year? What if I had hired Candidate B rather than Candidate A? I might not like the paths I chose, but I have an obligation to dissect them to learn and grow from them. That’s why I’m very open with my daughters when it comes to sharing those types of epiphanies.
3. Encourage the art of trying new things.
We talk a lot about encouraging our kids to have new experiences. How often do you set the stage to make it easy and safe for your daughters to jump into something new so they can advance their knowledge? If you wait for your child to bring something new to the table, you might wait forever.
When you have conversations with your daughter, listen carefully. You might hear opportunities for her to try something new. I love the story of Reshma Saujani. She founded Girls Who Code and noted that the only reason she unlocked her current happiness was that she kept trying new things. She didn’t always love the outcomes, such as losing a race for a political position and spending almost all her savings in the process. Nevertheless, her resilient worldview was what served her well and advanced her to become a success.
4. Treat failure like a natural occurrence.
Some people catastrophize as a go-to response to even the slightest chance of failure. To be resilient, you can’t be afraid to take some losses. Shaquille O’Neal and Megan Rapinoe didn’t win every game they played. Sure, losses aren’t fun, but they offer up a chance to overcome what happened and try again another day.
This is where resilience dovetails with vulnerability. When you can be vulnerable enough to fail, you gain inner strength. We are all going to fail, including your beloved daughter(s). When losses come your family’s way, have the courage to face them head-on. It’s amazing how many wins you can get when you use a loss as a springboard to do something better or differently next time.
Gen Z and Gen Alpha daughters around the globe deserve to be happy and independent. A surefire route to accomplish that objective is if they can face their futures with one part of self-assurance and a dash of resilience.
