Easy parenting hack to build resilience and self-belief

As a society, we often reward girls for catastrophizing and acting helpless or fragile. This can rob our girls of their resilience and self-belief.

Let's shift the focus to rewarding our girls for their strengths and courage instead!

As a general rule: When girls stumble, give them more attention for getting back up rather than falling down.

Transcript

Catastroprising is making small stuff and sometimes even big stuff seem far worse than it is in reality. Girls, especially, are often rewarded for catastrophizing. They can get a lot of attention for acting helpless and fragile. Look around the playground and you will see girls cry when they are not particularly hurt because they get special attention. They'll fake their fear because they get even more attention when they're rescued. These behaviors are often played out in TV shows and movies where female characters are often squealing and passive. You can easily tell when someone's catastrophizing by the words they use. Listen out for words like can't, worst, never, always, devastated. The third power perspective parenting hack is to give more attention to getting up than falling down. Of course, there will be times when girls need our support and care for their legitimate fears and injuries. The trick is to distinguish the real concerns from the performances of weakness to get special treatment or because of a mistaken belief that this behaviour is expected of girls. As a general rule, we give our girls more attention as a reward for their strengths and courage rather than their weaknesses. We validate them when they try, and when they show persistence and courage. When they stumble, we don't say, oh, you fell over. Oh, dear. We say, you got back up. Well done.