Brave Parents Conversations #003: Is your daughter a people pleaser?

Brave Parents Conversations #003: My daughter tries to make everyone happy and then gets upset when she can't. What should I do about this?

Transcript
There are so many little micro moment in our society.

That tell girls that they are responsible for other people's emotional,

well-being, and their behaviour. A really common one is making good girls sit next to disruptive boys in class.

Making the girl feel like it is her job to keep the boys in line. Or one that I heard just recently was a boys, basketball team that was getting thrashed every week and the boys were getting deflated.

So to make the boys feel better, the coach arranged for the boys to play against the girls team, so that they’d have a better shot at winning, which would give the boys a boost.

And it didn't even occur to this coach, or the parents that it is not the girls team’s job to make the boys feel okay about themselves.

But that is expected of girls all the time.

And the really extreme end of this which is not uncommon, but something that we, as parents of girls, really need to be mindful of, is women staying in abusive relationships because they believe they are responsible for the behaviour of the abuser.”

“If I was just nicer or more patient or more understanding, he wouldn't be angry with me.”

So unless we specifically and intentionally intervene and tell our girls that they are not responsible for other people's well-being, they will grow up believing that they are.

And when this happens, they are going to feel insecure and unworthy because it is simply not possible to make everyone happy all the time.

And if we allow our girls to grow up with the expectation that they can, and that they should, we are setting them up to fail.

Now just to be clear. We're not saying that you should raise your daughter to be inconsiderate or rude or have no of empathy.

Certainly not. Our girls need to be kind and respectful of everyone, but they do not need to please everyone.

That is an impossible task, and it's not their job,

Their job is to live their own values and their own standards.

And there’ll be people who do not like their choices, but that's too bad so sad.

We all need to be very clear in teaching our girls that it's not our girls job to solve other people's problems or to turn themselves inside out trying to please everyone.