When 80% of 10-year-old girls are afraid of being fat, here are ways parents can help girls develop a positive body image.

"'I’m fat.' Those are just two little words, five letters in total, but coming from your daughter, they’re enough to make your heart totally sink. How could a girl who’s typically so kind and accepting of others be so disparaging of herself?" According to the Girl Scouts, 80% of 10-year-old girls are afraid of being fat because "they’re constantly surrounded by both subtle and direct messages that curvier or heavier girls aren’t as well liked, aren’t as likely to succeed in business, and in general, aren’t going to have as much fun or happiness in their lives." So what can parents do to counteract such widespread cultural messages? In an insightful article, Girl Scout Developmental Psychologist Andrea Bastiani Archibald offers parents several tips on how to respond when your daughter says she's fat and how to build her overall body positivity. Continue reading → Continue reading

The top tips from experts on building girls' resilience to take on challenges and overcome setbacks.

Call it what you will — grit, determination, a can-do attitude — but it all comes down to the same thing: being able to keep going in the face of challenge and even failure is a major component of a child's future success. "The ability to persist in the face of difficulty may be as essential to success as talent or intelligence,” says psychologist Lisa Damour, Ph.D., author of Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions Into Adulthood. Moreover, with research showing that girls are more likely to feel the need to be perfect and to struggle with confidence when they make even small mistakes, it's particularly important to raise resilient girls. As Rachel Simmons, author of Enough As She Is, explains: "What we want is for girls to have is the capacity to move through a setback without beating themselves up." Continue reading → Continue reading

The seven essential body positive lessons every Mighty Girl should learn.

One of the most freeing feelings in the world is loving yourself just as you are — but in a world where girls are constantly bombarded with messages about what their bodies should look like, raising them to be body positive can feel like an impossible task. A study by the Girl Scouts found that 80% of 10-year-old girls are afraid of getting fat, and other studies have found that 85% of women and 79% of girls have opted out of activities due to a lack of body confidence. With kids and teens being exposed to narrow standards of beauty in media, marketing, and online, many adults may wonder what they can do to turn the tide. Continue reading → Continue reading

How parents can encourage mixed-gender friendships and help kids question gender stereotypes.

"Girl-boy friendships matter. They give kids a chance to explore themselves outside of constrictive gender scripts, and, ideally, question stereotypes," observes writer Elisa Strauss on CNN. "Girl-boy friendships can help undo some of these socialized gender constraints. When parents and teachers approve of these relationships, they are sending their children the message that it's not only okay to play with the another gender, but it is also okay to play like them."  Continue reading → Continue reading

The authors of the bestselling confidence guide for girls share advice for parents on how to stop the steep drop in confidence common among tween girls.

Katty Kay and Claire Shipman are on a mission: helping tween girls keep their confidence so they can be resilient, empowered adult women! As authors of The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance - What Women Should Know, they've helped millions of adult women understand how to build their own confidence, but they frequently heard from women who wanted to know how they could help their tween and teen daughters. Kay and Shipman worked with a polling firm to learn more about the issue and were shocked to discover that girls' confidence drops by 30% between the ages of 8 and 14. "Right until age 8, there's really no difference [between girls and boys] in confidence levels," Shipman says. "We were surprised at how quickly, how deep that drop is." Continue reading → Continue reading

These are critical phrases girls can use when their contributions to a discussion are interrupted or discounted.

There are ten words every girl should learn according to writer Soraya Chemaly — not vocabulary terms, but critical phrases they can use when their contributions to a discussion are interrupted or discounted. Practicing her three phrases — “Stop interrupting me," “I just said that," and "No explanation needed" — will help girls speak them in real life, and teach both boys and girls that it’s not socially acceptable to interrupt or ignore a female voice. Whether in the classroom, in the boardroom, or on the Senate floor, it's time for mighty girls and women to persist and ensure that their voices are heard. Continue reading → Continue reading

Girls' self-confidence often takes a big hit at puberty but these skills can help keep her confidence strong during the teen years.

“A pre-teen girl is at a unique moment in her life. The spark that is her potential grows more intense, yet she'll have to fight against gender norms that threaten to diminish it," observes writer Rebecca Ruiz. "There are countless ways she'll feel pressured to hide or change her authentic self.” Rachel Simmons, an expert on girls' development and author of the parenting book, Enough As She Is, agrees: "Girls are at their fiercest and most authentic prior to puberty." While research has confirmed that girls' self-confidence often drops after puberty, Simmons asserts that there are many ways parents can help girls keep their confidence strong during the teen years. To that end, she recommends "seven skills to consider teaching your daughter by the time she turns 13" that will help your Mighty Girl feel prepared for the challenges ahead. Continue reading → Continue reading

Easy conversation starters to show Mighty Girls that you care about her mind, her feelings, and her fascinating self!

'Tis the season for holiday gatherings, which means starting conversations with friends and family you don't see very often — including little girls. At such times, no matter how dedicated you are to girl empowerment, it's all too easy to fall into the stereotypical, appearance-based comments as a way to break the ice, especially with younger girls. After all, we've all spent years being taught by society that the best way to start a conversation with a little girl is to praise how pretty her dress is, how sparkly her nails are, or how cute she looks. However, with many girls developing body image concerns as early as 1st grade, it's time to move past a fixation on girls' appearances. And, of course, as we all know, girls have so much more to contribute to the conversation — all we have to do is ask! Continue reading → Continue reading

"My daughter's body is actually hers, not mine."

The many gatherings of family and friends during the holiday season give parents a special chance to teach their daughters an empowering lesson: you don't owe anyone your physical affection. "The ritual of demanding affection from children on cue is one of those tiny, everyday little lessons in which we teach children — especially girls — that they are to tailor their emotional responses to please others," observes blogger Kasey Edwards in a Daily Life op-ed. By letting kids decide whether to greet someone with a hug or a kiss, parents can teach the basics of consent and bodily autonomy as early as the toddler years. And, such lessons can have an impact for years to come as Girl Scouts' development psychologist Andrea Bastianai Archibald explains: "The notion of consent may seem very grown-up and like something that doesn’t pertain to children, but the lessons girls learn when they’re young about setting physical boundaries and expecting them to be respected last a lifetime." Continue reading → Continue reading

"We are so busy teaching girls to be likable that we forget to teach them that they have the right to be respected."

Most parents talk to their children about their emotions, but there's one emotion that people often leave out when talking to girls: anger. "I don’t remember my parents or other adults ever talking to me about anger directly," observes Soraya Chemaly, author of Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger, "Sadness, yes. Envy, anxiety, guilt, check, check, check. But not anger.... While parents talk to girls about emotions more than they do to boys, anger is excluded." In fact, from an early age, parents, caregivers, and teachers expect girls to regulate their emotions more effectively than boys, teaching them that expressing "negative" emotions like anger is socially unacceptable. In this blog post, we'll explore why it's important to let girls be angry – and how to teach girls to channel their anger productively. Continue reading → Continue reading