How to model your daughter beyond yourself.

Most parents feel ill-equipped to raise and mentor their daughters. There is the common saying “no child is born with a user manual for their parents or guardians”. That says a lot.

You are their first role model and that comes with your successes and failures; joys and regrets.

We are our daughter's first reference point in life and that is a privilege we must not take lightly. However, in parenting our daughters, we feel responsible and even go as far as to say we are failures.

No one is perfect and that includes you and me but our imperfections are the materials we need to model our daughters.

There is always the initial desire to take ourselves out of the picture to model our daughters as parents or guardians. We look out for ourselves and judge ourselves to be bad examples and the result of this, is we withdraw from actively participating in the lives of our daughters.

You are good enough with your imperfections.

But I failed in school.

We are competitive by nature. Our eyes are constantly drawn to the success stories and results of others. The result of this is we begin to judge ourselves on the results of others. We are quick to discount our results and treat them as inconsequential.

Your poor academic results are no hindrance to modeling your daughters. Your strength is not in your past results but your understanding of your role as a model.

You have what you need to stir up the gifts and talents of your daughter. We must constantly refuse the lie that insists that our past results are the limits of our influence on our daughters.

We must distance ourselves from the excuse of using our past academic failures as sorrowful reminders of why our lives turned out the way they did. You are a parent/guardian, and you have been privileged to raise your daughter in life.

Do not allow the power and influence of your voice and presence to be weakened by your negative perception of your academic results.

Ben Carson grew up with his brother in a single-parent home with their mother. They were poor and Ben and his brother were doing poorly in school. This resulted in poor self-esteem and temper tantrums.

Ben Carson’s mum had all the risk factors staring at her that her children were doomed to a future of poverty, penury, welfare-dependent, and possibly.

Sonya, Ben Carson’s mum was uneducated however she was determined her sons will not go through the pathways that lead to pain and penury but would succeed and they both did. Read the book Gifted Hands

Ben Carson became the Head of Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine at the incredibly young age of 33. How?

But I have no moral standing.

We are all flawed candidates when it comes to mentoring our daughters. If the criteria for mentoring our daughters was a sterling moral standing, no one will qualify. I grew up hearing this phrase “A kettle on a coal fire, calling other kettles black”.

Mentoring is not an excuse to perpetuate bad behaviour, but we must avoid the slippery slope where no one truly can walk if a flawless character was a primary requirement to listen, learn and mentor our daughters.

Guilt and shame are effective silencers. They are quite able to remove our confidence and remind us why we are not “good enough” to speak into the lives of our daughters.

Guilt and shame will take everyone off the field of our daughters. No one will ever be good enough to mentor their daughters from their moral standpoint. We have all failed and to categorise and rank our failures is simply foolishness. Give it up.

We must remain authentic in our role as parents and guardians to our daughters. No one alive hits the moral mark all the time. We all fail morally and that is where the person of LOVE comes in.

Until we accept the person and see ourselves through the voice of the person of LOVE, we will struggle with self-guilt and come across to ourselves as hypocrites in our hearts.

But I have no time. I am a successful businesswoman/man.

Our first and primary investments are those we are privileged to care for under our roofs as children.

We often conflate our desire to excel, work long hours and provide for our homes by showing care and love for our household. I do not deny the sacrifices parents and guardians have to make, but it's no use pouring water into a bucket full of holes.

Time is a gift that enables us to share our lives with those in our world beginning from our household. Time reflects our choices and our understanding of value. The reason we spend time on our projects is because of their expected outcomes or rewards. How much more for our daughters.

Our daughters, children are our first and primary gardens we must cultivate. Every garden, not minding its initial beautiful and innocent state, requires attention and dedication to keep its shine and glow.

Our daughters are more than fields, they are precious and delicate gardens that need our tender care. We will need patience, and support to make our daughters what they were designed for in life.

Our daughters need our voice, our touch, our understanding, and our presence in their lives. The joy of seeing your daughter smile is indescribable. They are worth our time. Quality and quantity.

But that is the duty of the dad/male figure.

Every woman, mother, aunt, the carer has unique contributions a man can never bring into the life of their daughters.

I do not deny the role of fathers or the male figures in the lives of our daughters, but we (men) cannot take the place of women, even if we try.

You must appreciate your unique experience and personality as a woman. Your voice, touch, and examples excel that of any man. You must, with pride, look upon yourself as privileged to model your daughter. Do I deny this will be smooth sailing? No. But we can all begin by seeing ourselves in a more positive light.

Begin by listening. That is the first welcome attitude every daughter appreciates when you walk into their world. First, listen. Understand. Then listen reflect. Then suggest or give your opinion.

The methods may differ with the age of your daughter, but you must always have love dictate the content and manner of your speech. It is not about you being right and your ideas being true. If your conversation is not from a place of love, your truth will become an insecticide that damages some aspects of your garden, your daughter.

You are good enough and your contributions to the life of your daughter can never be replaced by any man, husband, or partner.

Go beyond yourself. You can.

We can become the greatest obstacle on our path in modelling our daughters. If all we hope to see in our daughters, is ourselves then we have failed.

We must refrain from moulding our daughters into our image. It is painful and a disservice to seek to replicate our personalities in our daughters. If our contributions are designed to have our daughters reflect our persons, we lack the understanding of the treasure of who a daughter is to us.

Go beyond yourself.How?

Listen. We are not always good listeners. I must confess, I am still a work in progress. My book details for dads the need to listen but the principles also apply to mums and women in the life of our daughters.https://www.justyoung.co.uk/get-involved

Your voice. The sound of your voice is important. In many homes, our daughters over time dread hearing our voices. In some cultures, they call this “holy fear”. No. That is absolutely a misguided concept. I used to believe that was true but I have since learned better from the person called LOVE.

If our voices result in a stampede in our homes, we have become a stranger to those in our “den”. You never see the pubs of lions running away in fear from their parents. Never. They play and have no fear but respect in their relationships.

Our voices must be reassuring, welcoming even in the discipline and correction of our daughters.

Your conversations. We all have our favourite subjects we love to talk about and even banter. But do we know what our daughter’s favourite adventure world is?

Do we know the place where they mostly find joy and peace of mind?

What is your daughter’s favourite pastime?

We must broaden our conversation beyond our comfort zones. This remains a challenge for me. What does she enjoy talking about?

Your outings. Where does she want to go? It does not have to be beyond your means and those beyond your means you can tag as items in your “bucket list”.

Books. Books are ideal vehicles that can convey our daughters to regions only their minds can reach out to and explore. Books are excellent tools of positive influence and motivation, but I advise you have a good understanding of the author's mindset.

Books can relate to an experience our daughters may shrug away from if we decided to tell them. Books can deliver a hindsight experience. Our daughters see the value of their persons and the impact of their choices on themselves and those connected to them.

Your faith.

There are other significant individuals you can introduce your daughter to. Your faith is the first “significant person” they must become acquainted with. You have chosen this pathway for a reason and that you must share and reason your faith with your daughter.

It is fallacy for anyone to think they can force their faith down the throat of their daughters. It never happens. Faith by coercion is pretense until liberty opens the cage doors.

Other role models. This may not always run true in every situation, but we can avail ourselves of those in our world- family members, work colleagues, known and verified personalities from different walks of life to occupy, on some occasions, the role of a mentor to our daughters.

It is healthy and wholesome to celebrate the success of others and appreciate them in your conversation and lifestyle.

My relationship with my daughter was greatly influenced by my mentor. I heard say “Always listen to care”. That changed my relationship trajectory with my daughter and those in my world.

In conclusion.

Our daughters are worth our efforts and investments in our quest to see them excel in life. You are not an accident that just happened.

They did not just happen, planned or unplanned. Life makes no such distinction between persons. Every daughter deserves our voice, validation, and love.

You are qualified and noting in your past can disqualify you. Nothing even if legally you failed.

There will be more “But’s”. Some of your past “Buts”, many will excuse, while your other “buts” will generate passioned contention. For me, no “buts” is good enough to keep you from speaking the truth into the life of your daughter, even if that means going to jail.

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