Women often love to have a little girl. They want someone to become their mini-me and take after them. It also gives women a chance to pass down their words of wisdom. As your daughter gets older though, there are some things that you have to teach her.
Help with Body Image
The looks of women on TV and in magazines are enough to make any woman with good self-esteem feel mediocre. When it comes to impressionable children and teenagers, it’s easy to see why so many suffer from eating disorders and mental illnesses.
Help your daughter learn about body image and what looks good. If she is overweight, help her get to a healthy one—and the same if she is underweight!
Respect Yourself
If you have no respect for yourself, your daughter is going to model after that. She could watch as you let men put you down or model after the fact that you put others down.
She will become another version of you and that isn’t necessarily going to be a good thing. Teach her about respect and how important it is to give it to receive it.
Making a Relationship Work
Your daughter needs help in understanding how a relationship works out. If she just sees a happy family, she has no idea what you do to actually keep it that way.
If she constantly hears arguing, she may not even believe a relationship is worth having. You need to teach her about listening and communication to make that relationship with your partner work out.
When It’s Time to Walk Away
Relationships don’t always work out. There are times that it is better to walk away and she needs help understand that too.
Sit down with her and talk about bad relationships and when it is clear there is no hope. You should also go through the things to do to try and make it work before completely giving up.
Heartbreak Isn’t the End
Girls go through heartbreak all the time. It doesn’t matter how popular or beautiful they are, chances are they will suffer heartbreak at some point.
She needs to know that it’s not the end and there are things to gain from breaking up with someone.
Let her know that feeling the pain is good but she needs to look back and assess that relationship to learn from it.
Playing Games and the Chase
Teach her that playing games with anyone isn’t fun. She needs to treat people the way that she would like to be treated.
At the same time, she needs to look out for when she is being played. She may start pursuing love but it can become destroying to her.
Fairytales Aren’t Real Life
Girls are often brought up with fairytales, whether it is the Disney versions or those written in books centuries ago. As she gets older, you need to teach her that fairytales aren’t like real life.
Prince Charming isn’t going to come and save the day and really, Cinderella and her mice did all the hard work.