8 Sure-fire Ways To Empower Your Daughters

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Eyinade Eweje

It’s a man’s world, therefore, to empower your girl-child to grow into an independent and outstanding woman who is able to hold her own, it’s important to painstakingly start laying the right foundation now. Don’t leave anything to chance! Find 8 major steps to steer you in the right direction…

1. Quality Education. Ensure your girl-child gets a quality education from start to finish. Always put extra efforts towards discovering the best schools available in view of your child’s needs and your budget. Encourage further education as well.

It’s helpful to try to start some savings or investment towards this goal. Also, take a look at your lifestyle and see what you can cut out to put aside more money. In the end, all your sacrifices will be worth it.

2. Let them know their dreams are valid. Teach your daughters to dream; to set future goals and start working towards achieving them. See how you can help them too. Let them know no matter how tall or far-fetched their dreams seem or how much their peers laugh at the possibility of achieving them, their dreams are valid.

Highlight inspiring examples around for lots of motivation.

3. Making the right friends. Teach them the importance of networking, making good friends and maintaining quality relationships.

Your daughter needs to learn to lose friends that contribute nothing to their lives or constantly pull them back with their negative vibes or mediocrity, and start associating with those who inspire them to discover hidden potentials/possibilities and keep getting better.

4. Encourage reading. Encourage your daughters to read wide, explore the web and visit libraries. You’d be amazed at how much this will boost their intelligence, shapen their perspective on series of issues and happenings around the world, as well as boost their confidence and eloquence in social circles.

Be a positive model in this regard so you can inspire them.

5. Mentorship. Surround your daughter with a lot of worthy female models who can mentor and inspire them to pursue their dreams and form appropriate values/standards. Having models who portray crucial qualities including hard work, self motivation, doggedness, independence, and so on, will inspire and empower them in ways you never thought possible.

6. Learning lucrative skills. Considering the current economic recession, teaching them to be entrepreneurial is perhaps one of the best ways to empower them. In addition to getting a quality education, let them learn a few lucrative skills (makeover, baking, styling, or others that appeal to them) and start making money now. With sustained interest, who knows what they’ll be able to achieve with that small business started in their teens.

This is also a good way to teach your teenage daughter about managing their own money, setting short and long-term business goals, creating viable savings/investment(s) and inculcating some financial independence.

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7. Boost their self esteem. A confident individual has the power to do and conquer anything, so, emphasize their strengths, be their greatest cheerleader, boost their body image (see useful tips here) and encourage always speaking up for rights and whatever they believe in, maintaining their stand.

Note that teaching them to be vocal starts from simply caring to hear them out always, even when they say seemingly inconsequential things or you don’t just agree with them, without trying to shut them up, mock them or impose your own views.

8. Discuss trending issues. Have frequent intelligent conversations with your teenage daughter about different trending topics or issues, including those affecting women such as gender inequality, domestic violence, and so on. Remember, you have to keep yourself well informed to do this.

The idea is to listen to them in order to unwrap their views, help shapen their understanding/perspective and spark the drive not to join the pack of complacent women.

Finally, there’s need to keep working on yourself too, as at the end of the day, your actions and inactions as far as your personal life is concerned may ultimately influence the kind of woman they perceive as ideal or acceptable and how they turn out.