Maggie Dent’s New Book
How to raise your little girl well.
BY HEJIRA CONVERY, KINDICARE
As parents, we aspire for our little girls to be imaginative and curious, with the fortitude to follow their dreams and do well in life. And we know they can’t do this alone.
It’s our job to provide a safe, secure, loving and engaged upbringing, and although all the child-raising years matter, Maggie Dent's new book, GIRLHOOD, suggests that the first eight years of a little girl’s life are particularly influential.
Maggie is affectionately known as ‘Australia’s queen of common sense parenting,’ and she’s read reams of child development research, surveyed almost 5,000 parents and educators, and drawn on her experience as an author, educator, podcaster and parent to better understand how childhood shapes our girls, and what we can do to ‘scaffold’ their current and future selves.
Maggie Dent, Author of Girlhood. Source: Pan MacMillan.
There’s lots of illuminating stuff in the book, and by way of introduction, here are some key things Maggie’s gleaned about girlhood.
1. The early years of a girl’s life chart the course for the person she’ll become
An incredible 90% of a child’s brain development happens in their first five years, and there’s plenty of evidence that the early years of a child’s life are crucial for their long-term development.
Maggie explains that, “Our sense of self, our sense of identity, our belief systems, our mindsets, our self-regulating systems, and our social and emotional capacities are also developed” in the first eight years.
She explains that, “During this crucial developmental window, it’s not just physical, emotional and cognitive growth that’s happening. This is also the time when there is a sort of innate, child-like spirituality that can be nurtured or crushed.”
2. As parents, we play a key role in helping our little girls shine in these formative years
Our actions, opinions and choices during girlhood really matter, and Maggie says we can powerfully shape our daughters’ child-like spirit, “Through the books we read to our girls, what we allow them to see and hear, and how we treat them. Basically, in those early years, we are constantly shaping who our little girls are going to be.”
As parents, we need to ensure they’re healthy, happy and ‘heard,’ and, in practice, this means, “Protecting our girls’ childhoods by allowing them to grow at their own pace and resisting the societal pressures around consumerism, screens and early sexualisation.”
Maggie says, “It’s allowing your little girl to be imaginative, to play. It’s respecting her emotional world and being patient with her big feelings while she gradually learns emotional regulation. And it’s highlighting her strengths (which are not just about how she looks) and helping her to be accepting and brave in the face of failure.”
This article features edited extracts from GIRLHOOD by Maggie Dent, published by Macmillan Australia. Available now. Source: Pan MacMillan.
3. We need to lay the foundations that help our little girls cope with challenges later on
Some children are naturally resilient, and others are more sensitive to life’s ups and downs, but it’s generally agreed that teenagehood is tougher than childhood, and the tween to young adult years aren’t always a walk in the park.
Maggie says, “Some argue that girls’ confidence starts to plummet between the ages of eight and 14,” and “Once we get into the teen years, we’re seeing higher rates of anxiety, self-harm and low self-esteem.”
She says, “There are also social pressures on our girls from a young age to be ‘nice’, to be ‘people-pleasers,’ and that their value comes from how they look, rather than who they are.”
Fortunately, us parents can take positive action in the younger years to scaffold our daughters later on.
Maggie says, “To protect our girls from struggling with these things, they need to be connected to safe, loving, warm grown-ups. And if parents can be mindful of not validating those social norms it helps.”
“So, for example, be conscious of not just commenting on your daughter’s appearance, such as her hair or clothes, but notice when she’s kind, brave, solves a problem, speaks up for herself, if she’s good on the monkey bars, or whatever.”
And, of course, remember that every girl is different and is inspiring in her own way.
Personally-speaking, Maggie loves the way her granddaughters, “Have the capacity to be feisty and stubborn and creative and brave.”
And whether your daughter is shy, gregarious or somewhere in between, Maggie says the best thing you can do is, ‘Just be in their corner, with some helpful knowledge and awareness.”
