Building Connections with Our Daughters
How Do We Grow With Our Daughters?
Parenting is definitely the hardest job I have ever had (although being a good spouse has also stretched me!). To me, one of the most important parts of parenting a daughter is connecting with her and building a safe and open relationship. There is not a lot of guidance on this after early childhood. We read a lot about the initial bond with our children when they are first born and they “imprint” with us through smell and touch. Then we read books about the early years when our children grow into toddlers; they test our rules and depend upon us to set up playdates. As our daughters grow more independent and more social, our mother-daughter relationship can change. Instead of our daughters asking us our opinion, they are asking their friends. We sometimes lose our connection with them and need to reestablish our bond.
When our daughters hit middle school, forging a healthy mother-daughter relationship can be more challenging. Friends take center stage, and our daughters often spend less time with us and more time in their own thinking (not to mention on their phones). How do we grow and maintain an authentic relationship with our daughters from middle school to high school and into college? This blog explores some of the developmental needs of girls at different stages as well as some principles to consider when parenting your daughter.
Development
Do you remember being a 7th or 8th grade girl? I do! I remember feeling incredibly awkward, waiting for my breasts to grow (they never did) and wondering what the boy near me was thinking. I was self-conscious and very concerned about “my group.” Who were my true friends? What type of person was I? Was I still friends with my elementary school friends? Was I cool, smart, or athletic (or neither)?
When girls are in middle school, they often have complex feelings about their bodies and how their bodies compare to others. Often they deal with conflict and “drama” between girls. Their friendships are frequently changing. Some girls talk behind each others’ backs to process their feelings. Some try on their own to deal with the terrible feeling of being excluded or how to get others to like them.
Middle school girls are often learning how to regulate their emotions, how to be empathetic, and how to maintain friendships. Sometimes bullying and anxiety start now. Emotions change frequently at this stage. They might feel like they are on an emotional roller coaster, and you might feel that way too!
As girls mature and begin high school, peer relationships become even more important. You may hardly ever see your daughter! Some developmental researchers talk about adolescents operating with “an imaginary audience” where they think everyone is watching them, and they are constantly looking in the mirror performing for others. Emotions are BIG, and incidents that may seem minor to us are viewed by our daughter as “life-changing” or “catastrophic.” Of course, these large generalizations may not be true for your daughter; whatever she is going through, honor that!
When girls graduate from high school, they often feel invincible. Surely the dangers of the world will not affect them as they often think. As they search for their identity and their sexual identity, they may roll their eyes at our “old-fashioned” ways. Usually though, as girls matriculate through college, they circle back and seek more connection with their mothers (although maybe still with judgment). Don’t be afraid to reconnect with your daughter in a new way. They also may want to process some things they remember from growing up that are “your fault.” Remember, it is better for us to listen and then build forward; some mothers and daughters go to therapy to strengthen their relationship.
Ways to Support Your Daughter
The way I think about growing a strong relationship with my daughter is through a series of values that I must balance. There is no recipe for building a relationship. We are all unique mothers with unique daughters. I like to think about my relationship with my daughter as a series of connected seesaws. (Do they have those at playgrounds anymore?) You know, the long boards that operate as a lever where one person is up and the other is down, or you can balance it just right, parallel to the ground. There are two tensions that are my own seesaws that I try to keep balanced in order to have a strong relationship with my daughter. I try to balance (1) sharing and privacy, and (2) my needs and her wants.
Seasaw 1: Sharing vs. Privacy
One tension in the mother-daughter relationship that is tough to navigate is the balance between sharing and privacy. When girls are younger, they often share freely with us. We can even talk to our friends about issues between girls and help our daughters solve problems. However, as girls get older, mothers need to respect girls’ privacy more and more. Letting daughters have more privacy in their peer relationships gives them a chance to develop on their own. We can’t share our daughter’s friendships and also cannot call her friend’s mom and try to social engineer her free time.
There are times when I need to override my daughter’s need for privacy, especially in the middle school years. I often would say to my middle schooler, “I won’t read your texts all the time, but there will be times when I check them, so I need to know your passwords.” (Of course, as girls get older, they make other accounts that we don’t know about, and that’s a different episode topic.) As girls get older, some moms may lose out on hearing about their worlds. Other mothers still hear everything. (I try to be friends with these moms). I also try to “be around” and be ready to talk when my daughter wants to share. (Somehow, in high school, that is always at 10 PM!)
I also think it is important to maintain a balance between how much I share with my daughter and how much I keep private. Margaux, Vince, and I interviewed over 20 young women for this project. Some of the daughters talked about feeling burdened by their mothers’ problems. We as mothers need to think about how much we share with our daughters. Sharing is good, but too much sharing and vulnerability can make our daughters feel like they are responsible for our emotional health. So, there are things I don’t share with my daughter; instead I share with a friend– shoutout to my women friends! BUT, we do need to share some of our feelings and our weaknesses with our daughters. As they get older, we can share more of our thoughts and also ask for theirs. At the end of conversations, I take stock… how much did I share, and how much did she share? I think it needs to be a balance the closer your daughter gets to adulthood.
Seasaw 2: My Needs vs. Her Wants
The other tension related to growing my relationship with my daughter is about balancing my needs and her wants. I tend to pay more attention to others’ needs rather than my own. (I’m working on this one.) I often drop my own projects to help my children with anything they are struggling with, and I am not sure this is the best idea. Having a seesaw stuck in one position is certainly not fun. I need to balance my needs with making my daughter happy. As girls get older, they can handle waiting for their needs to be met. It is not good for girls to always have their mothers dropping everything to help them. I certainly see this at times with college students. As a professor, sometimes I encounter college students who are rude to me when I don’t respond fast enough to their requests or do not act in the way they “need for me” to act. Sometimes our overparenting and our over focus on our daughters leads them to believe that the world should be at their “beck and call.” This does not serve them well in the long run.
It is helpful for me to consider the balance between my needs and her wants when I think about parenting. For example, there must be rules. We must say no sometimes. We cannot feel guilty when we do something for ourselves and ask our daughters to be patient. At the same time, we cannot just meet our needs to socialize, workout, or escape and ignore our daughters. In order to have a strong relationship with my daughter as she matures, I need to be sure that I balance her needs with my needs.
Next Step
There are many ways mothers work to connect with their daughters. It is helpful to think about the social development of our daughters as well as some tensions within the relationship that need to be balanced. Tune in to Be On Her Side Podcast Episode 6 Growing the Mother-Daughter Relationship as Margaux and I discuss more ways to grow the mother-daughter relationship.
