On Daughters

Sometimes I forget that I have a daughter. Obviously I know Madeline exists. I did, after all, thrust her from my loins. One is not likely to forget something like that…for realsies, yo.

Yet sometimes, it’s like a lightning bolt hits me with this sudden realization: Whoa, I am a mother and I have a daughter, and I am responsible for the welfare of a whole separate human being. Someone brew me a second cup of coffee…stat!

When your child is a little baby, it’s easy to think of them as just another part of your own self. I viewed the whole first year of Madeline’s life from my point of view: what it was like being a new mother, what it was like staying up all night with a crying baby, what it was like having her sleep on my chest and seeing her smile at me for the first time.

Now that she’s older, motherhood extends far beyond my own limited view. She’s her own person. This is her life, not mine. She’s watching the world and thinking about the world and having feelings about the world that I know nothing about. Every new experience is shaping and molding her into the person she is and will be.

And I think that it’s such a wonderful gift I’ve been given to watch this beautiful little girl grow up and become her own person. Then I think of the tremendous responsibility of the whole thing, and it’s enough to knock the wind out of me.

Madeline was playing with another child yesterday and he pushed her. He’s just a little baby himself, and he doesn’t know any better yet. Madeline’s little face twisted with pain before bursting into tears, and it broke my heart a little to see my child hurt by someone else.

This small situation was a reminder that Madeline will experience many playground bullies, hurtful comments, and worse over the course of her life. Someday she’ll see that there’s a lot of ugliness in this world that cannot be explained. As much as I wish I could put a plastic bubble around her and roll her through life, I won’t be able to protect her from everything.

So how do you make sure your daughter has the confidence and ability to believe in herself? How do you teach her to tell off the playground bully? How do you teach her that she’s better than the hurtful comments? How do you teach her to look for the good in life and try her hardest to fix the bad?

I don’t have a son, so maybe I just am out of the loop, but I feel that there’s a special responsibility to make sure our daughters are confident and strong. They have to trust in themselves enough to not let the ill-intentioned men of the world damage them, and not let the mean-spirited women of the world walk all over them.

I look at my daughter and see the most magical, beautiful, sweet-spirited person God ever created, but I how do I ensure that she feel s the same way about herself as she grows up?