Blog posts for ‘Self-esteem’ 
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Inspirational body confidence campaign by teenagers in York
Thursday 16 May 2013
Categories: Growing up, Health, Media Influence, Role Models, Self-esteem
I was delighted to hear a group of 13 and 14 year old girls on Radio 4 Woman’s Hour recently, speaking about their campaign to challenge the use of “stick-thin models” on billboards and in shop windows.
The girls were articulate and spoke with passion and conviction: “we want more girls to challenge these fake pictures and the prejudices they feed. It’s not fair or right to pressure girls, especially at a vulnerable age, to look a certain way and change how we look….. this is...
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Blow your own trumpet!
Thursday 9 May 2013
Categories: Girls' schools, Self-esteem, Teenagers
Last year Wimbledon High School GDST caused something of a stir when they ran their own ‘Failure Week’, encouraging the girls to think about the positive aspects of failure and how much can be gained from taking a risk and learning from the experience, rather than simply trying to avoid failure at all costs. I thought it was a powerful and valuable message to emphasise, and wrote another MyDaughter blog about it at the time: Embracing failure
This year WHS has devised another special...
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Bullying - what is really going on?
Sunday 31 March 2013
Categories: Girls' schools, Politics, Self-esteem
I am fascinated, as many Headteachers must be, by the allegations of bullying within the Department for Education. The irony cannot be lost on anyone that the very institution which requires us to be on top of all such issues, seems to be falling foul of them itself.
The word itself, ‘bullying’, is hugely emotive and the onus placed upon schools to both spot and tackle this crime is, quite rightly, very heavy. We are required to have published policies, to record incidents and to manage...
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The secret of success...and how to help our children get there.
Monday 18 March 2013
Categories: Girls' schools, Growing up, Parenting, Self-esteem
‘Why Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character’ is a best-selling book in the US which has now been published in the UK. Hilary Wilce recently reviewed this in The Guardian, and summed up the book’s message as “Character matters. In fact it matters more than anything else when it comes to doing well in school – and life”.
This is not exactly a new message, but its author, Paul Tough, and Wilce clearly feel that it is a message which needs exploring...
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How do we protect our children from this rising tide of self-harm?
Sunday 9 December 2012
Categories: Health, Personal Safety, Self-esteem, Teenagers
The BBC reported last week that calls to ChildLine about self-harm had risen by 68% compared to last year, and this is a statistic that should alarm us. Most of the calls were from girls, and the age of many of the callers on this subject had dropped: self-harm has now become a leading issue amongst 14-year olds. All of this points to what Sue Minto, Head of ChildLine concluded: “It seems the pressures facing children and young people – particularly girls – are increasing at such a...
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Time to look beyond the mirror
Thursday 15 November 2012
Categories: Media Influence, Role Models, Self-esteem
1st November marked the start of Positive Image Month and the launch of a brilliant new campaign – to encourage each and every one of us to donate an hour to help someone else realise that it is who they are who matters, not what they look like. This isn’t an anti-beauty or anti-fashion campaign – it is just, quite simply, the start of an amazing movement to help us all recapture what really matters in life and to remember that it is not all about what we look like, but what we do and...
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Education and well-being go together....
Tuesday 10 July 2012
Categories: Careers, Education, Self-esteem
Last week BBC News reported on the results of research by the Office for National Statistics which suggested that people who are better educated are more likely to say that they are satisfied with their lives, and to feel that the things they do are worthwhile.
Among those with A level or higher qualifications, 81% rated their overall satisfaction with life as seven out of ten or more, and 85% felt positive about how worthwhile they felt the things they were doing were. Among those who...
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The road to resilience...
Friday 22 June 2012
Categories: Education, Growing up, Self-esteem
I recently met an old friend whose son Tom had breezed through his school career, amassing sporting and academic glories but at the end of his first year at University was devastated by failure in one exam. Tom had no strategies to deal with his first real set back; his instinct was to give up.
It made me think about the grounding we give our girls to develop the resilience they need to succeed in an increasingly challenging world. Resilience has been a key concept in child development...
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Embracing failure
Monday 6 February 2012
Categories: Education, Growing up, Self-esteem, Teenagers
I remember once standing up to speak at an A level Awards presentation at the school where I was the head, and beginning, ‘Today I want to talk to you about failure…’ I still recall the uncomfortable ripple that went through the assembled audience of Year 13 leavers, their parents, the staff and guests. It was a word we just didn’t use in school. We talked about success all the time, and, if we ever needed to talk about its opposite, we referred to ‘areas for development’ or...
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Body image - it's all about perception
Friday 27 January 2012
Categories: Health, Media Influence, Self-esteem
Young people have always been concerned about their appearance, but this generation is under greater pressure to look good than ever before. On average British children are spending between six and eight hours a day looking at screens, during much of which they are being bombarded with images of the “beautiful”. Men’s and women’s magazines present distorted images of human perfection. At present the average model weighs 23% less than the average British woman, so it is no surprise that at...