3 happiness helping, confidence creating and beauty boosting tips for your daughter

How much a young girl will value, like and feel good about herself will play a crucial role in her future development, happiness and confidence.

To help your young daughter strengthen her relationship with herself, as part of the upcoming Girls United course, I have created a series of workshops that will help her navigate her way through the murky waters that is self-esteem, body image and self-acceptance.

 Here are 3 happiness helping, confidence creating and beauty boosting tips that you can read and implement right now to help your daughter embark on her journey into awesomeness.

1 Happy Kid

Every daughter needs encouragement, praise and support to help her feel happy in herself – to like and respect herself. Focus on acknowledging and encouraging your daughter for her effort, progress and participation. However, too much praise can make her feel like she is only as good as the result or achievement. To help her develop a growth mind set – a mind-set that whereby she believes her talents and abilities can be developed through hard work-  think encouragement over praise.

Happiness is different for everyone and she should be encouraged to explore and pursue what she feels drawn too, regardless of who is doing it with her.

2 Confident Kid

You can raise a very confident daughter by playing with her, you will learn a lot about each other this way. The act of just giving your daughter this time will show her that you think she is important. Let your daughter initiate this play too, the simple act of an adult agreeing to the game she suggested will help increase her sense of self worth!  

Giving your daughter small jobs to do around the home will empower her with a sense of purpose, achievement and accomplishment as she explores and develops new skills and competencies. Celebrate all the effort she puts into the work and tell her all the things she did well to get the job done, not just the act of getting the job done.

3 Beautiful Kid

Given the value placed on beauty in our society and the ease of which you can make comparisons because of social media, TV and magazines it’s no wonder a young girls self esteem is closely linked with their perceived attractiveness.

If your daughter is self conscious about her body you can offer her comfort (and help her to comfort herself) by reminding her that she in unique and that to be unique is a gift that should be embraced. Reassure her that her goal should be to feel comfortable in her skin and not to look pretty, beautiful or perfect.

Resist comparisons and instilling or reinforcing beauty standards. Encourage your daughter to understand that beauty is a feeling and as a result comes in all shapes and sizes. Be mindful of how you behave or talk about your own body, food or exercise! Even the smallest slip of the tongue can be absorbed and reflected.    

3.1 Social Media

Forcing your child to abstain from social media can be impractical or unrealistic but you can encourage a very balanced approach. Show her all wonderful role models that are out there such as models with curves and wobbly bits, athletes, musicians etc.  Assure her that that if she doesn’t like what she sees and it doesn’t make her feel good then its OK to not  ‘follow’ or ‘like’.   

3.2 avoid reinforcing unhealthy body talk

Compliment your daughter regularly on all aspects of her being and avoid reinforcing unhealthy body talk. Body talk, whether paid with a compliment or a mean insult from a classmate, can lead to long term unhealthy behaviours by reinforcing standards and benchmarks (maybe your daughter only ever gets compliments when she is dressed up in pink for example)

However, its important to note that as a parent you can’t fix your daughters self esteem but you can give your daughter the tools she will need to fix it herself – you can’t feel your way to better behaviour but you can behave your way to better feelings.

My Experience

In my experience as working as a coach the best possible thing you can do to help anyone increase their sense of value and worth is to support them do things that are hard for them and offer them praise and acknowledgement for their effort.

Your daughter is one of a kind! She is beautiful where it matters most – on the inside! While her happiness will sometimes feel like a hard job never forget happiness will work when you work for happiness. Anyone’s confidence can take a hit but the healing nature of self compassion will serve you, your daughter and family forever.

We would love your daughters (aged 9-11) to join us for our 7 week course Girls United: A Journey into Awesomeness which starts Saturday 10th September and runs until Saturday 22nd October (15:00-17:00) where we plan to empower young women with self love, self-esteem, body confidence and a healthy view of sexuality.