empower series

The wonderful thing about aviation is there are lots of opportunities to combine your interests and passion. You can be a pilot for airplanes, helicopters, or fighter jets. You can be an air traffic controller that assists pilots during their flights. Do you like to fix things? You can be an aircraft mechanic, or an aerospace engineer. You can manage an airport and ensure its safe operations, or you can explore space and be an astronaut. There are so many options.

Both at Princess Awesome and GoldieBlox, we saw problems with the choices available for girls. These were problems many in the fashion and toy industries didn’t see, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. We decided to try to solve them - why not us, after all? If we can see the problems, and if we know what we want the solutions to look like, then why shouldn’t we try to solve them?

Dressed as Wonder Woman, I held my shoulders back and my chin up. My stride lengthened. I got up early and got an hour of work in before my family woke, then strode into my daughter’s bedroom to help her get ready for school like I’d just conquered the world. I stood up for myself more at work, though they couldn’t see my clothes on the other side of that computer screen. I love clothes and costuming, and even I was surprised to see what a difference a Wonder Woman print dress made in my outlook on life. 

To children - small children in particular - most of daily life is full of little mysteries. We can encourage a curious mindset by acting like a mystery writer. Instead of answering all their questions outright, we can give them that same slow drip of clues, guiding them through mysteries slowly and irresistibly before we reveal the solution - keeping their curiosity piqued.

Children often feel powerless (and sometimes they complain because of it). As parents we can show them that they always have the power to take some action, even if that action is acceptance. What can we do to help them regain a sense of control? We can help them learn to reframe their perspective as choice-based. We can show them that they can choose how to react to the problems they face by taking action or by letting it go.

More than any other measure, our passion for what we’re doing, combined with the determination to get better at it, predicts whether we will succeed. If we want to empower our children to achieve their goals, we can do two things: help them discover what they’re interested in, and teach them the self-regulation needed to stick with it.

“Why not me?” It’s the question that changes a dreamer into a leader. The problem is that many dreamers get stuck at “I don’t know how.” And from there, it’s just a short step to “...so I can’t.” We can empower our kids to push past their doubts and take the steps toward becoming leaders by encouraging them to cultivate some habits that all leaders need.

A recent scene from my house:

This was a watershed moment for me as a parent. I was so sick of telling my kids to stop calling each other names, I inadvertently turned the issue around on them - I felt guilty at first, like I was blaming the victim. But it worked! Brother 2 took control of himself and the situation. And I found a powerful way to help kids become resilient.

What can we do about the public feedback loop our kids experience even at a very young age? From the moment we take our kids out of the house, we are all bombarded with messages (subtle and overt) that we are either succeeding or failing to conform to others’ expectations. Combine that feedback loop with the nearly universal human need to feel liked, and maintaining one’s individuality can feel like an onerous daily battle.

That’s why making home a safe place for kids to be themselves is so important. It’s easy to say - but hard to do.

Have you taught your child to be afraid? Good - that’s what we’re supposed to do as parents. We need fear to keep us safe - fear of getting hit by a car, fear of crashing a bike and getting injured, fear of drinking dirty water and getting sick.

But now that we have encouraged healthy fear (and its ancillary, caution), how do we empower our kids to keep fear from controlling and limiting them? Once fear is learned, it can take over a child’s life and paralyze them into inactivity and anxiety. We can empower them to take back control by teaching them to practice fear’s antidote - courage.