Growing up - a journey

“Life is a journey that must be travelled no matter how bad the roads and the accommodations” Oliver Goldsmith

From the moment she is born, your daughter is on a journey of discovery – learning first to think, walk, speak and do. Later in life her discovery becomes more complex: who is she really? What is important to her? What does she want to do with her life? She learns how to make good choices, how to live a good life, and how to be the person she is meant to be: this is her journey of self-discovery.

Self-discovery means finding out about who she is deep down and why, what matters to her in life, and how she can determine the course of her life to ensure that she fulfils her potential and has a happy and satisfying existence. The more she knows about herself and understands herself, the greater the opportunities she will have to find happiness and contentment, and the more rewarding she will find her life.

You probably want above all for your daughter to have an amazing and fulfilling life journey. The key questions are:

What can you do to make sure that she makes the most of her travels?

How can you help her along the way? From the moment your daughter is born, she is learning who she is, and is beginning to carve out a path for herself. You have created her as a unique person who will have a unique journey, and the choices she makes on the way will help determine the direction and nature of this journey.

How does she learn how to make good choices?

Above all, your daughter will learn from her experiences. She will learn by what she sees, does and tries out. She will learn what she likes doing and what she doesn’t like doing. She will learn from her successes and she will learn from her failures. You can help create opportunities for experiences – for success and for failure, for risk-taking and for safe routine – to allow your daughter to test herself and develop resilience in a wide range of arenas of life.

Your daughter will learn not only from what she does, but also from your reactions to what she does. She will learn when she talks to you about what you think and feel, and this will help her consider what she thinks and feels in relation to these thoughts, ideas and emotions.

She will learn from her peers and from other female role-models, all the time comparing what they think and feel with her thoughts and feelings, to come to a deeper understanding of herself.

You can help her by talking with her and listening to her.

In today’s world, possibly the most important qualities that your daughter can learn to develop are:

• flexibility
• creative thinking
• the ability to seek out, find and take opportunities.

All of these require a certain degree of resilience. She will develop this from experience and from the support she receives from you and from others.

In other words, one of the most important things you can teach her is how to pick herself up after a fall – literal or metaphorical.

A word of wisdom: the thing about your daughter’s self-discovery is that it is precisely that: discovery by your daughter by herself of who she is.

You naturally want the best for your daughter, and don’t want to see her ‘waste’ her life. You want your daughter – for any number of reasons – either to take a different path from your own, or to follow in your footsteps, and almost certainly to do even better than you did.

If you are not careful, you may judge your daughter according to what you want, and not according to what she might want and need. This is the real leap that parents need to take. Your daughter is a unique creation, combining qualities, ideas and behaviours that you may well recognise from yourself or other members of your family, but in a way that is entirely individual to her.

If you are not careful you may make her journey more difficult; by trying to fit her into a mould that doesn’t work for her, hampering her development and her own growth of understanding about herself.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t do anything to support your daughter – it just means that you have to be honest and self-aware. It also means that you can’t always make her do what you want her to do – but then, you’ve known that since the days of those toddler tantrums!