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We live in a world full of choices.
This can be a wonderful thing as your daughter grows up because she can try so many different hobbies, sports, trends, career paths, books, technology tools, and more. However, with the plethora of choices also comes the challenge of encouraging her to make strong choices.
“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.
The decision we made while we were on Project Runway: Fashion Startup - not to take an investment - was a happy ending for Princess Awesome. We knew how much our business was worth. We knew how much equity we would be willing to give, and for what price. We had carefully calculated how much each investor would be worth to us, and how much we were willing to negotiate. In the end, we did not come to an agreement with any of the investors, and that’s ok. It’s still a happy ending for us - because no deal is a better outcome than a bad deal, for either party.
When adults speak to children, unless they are fairly well-acquainted, they tend to look for clues to the child’s interests on their clothing. How many times have I said to little boys, “Wow! A dinosaur shirt! You must like dinosaurs”? But I don’t often say that to girls. Why? Because very few items of girls’ clothing feature dinosaurs - or pretty much anything else other than flowers and cute animals.
But now we have collected anecdotal data about the kinds of conversations adults have with girls who are wearing Princess Awesome dresses. They're different:
“My daughter loves "tutus"(any twirly skirt). She also loves dinosaurs & rockets & planes & trains. Significantly, what she wears impacts the kind of conversations people have with her! When she wears her rocket dress- adults talk to her about being an astronaut & flying to the moon!”
In October of 2015, we got an e-mail out of the blue.
It was from the producers of a new show - sort of like Shark Tank, but just for fashion companies. Because it was totally new, they were searching for companies to audition for it. They had found us on Kickstarter and thought we would be a good fit.
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.
A guest post by Shannon Tennyson
As the mom of one tween and one young teen, I understand only too well the challenge of finding versatile, well-fitted clothing for young girls. To solve the problem that I (and many other parents) face on a daily basis, I created CALZICO – a fun and functional tween apparel line that encourages individuality, decision-making and personal style.
When my daughter was 2, she was given a big, fuzzy, neon pink box of generic princess dress-up clothes. She adored it. She (and practically every little friend who came over) wore the dresses constantly. My initial reaction to all this: Dread. Frustration. Fear.
What was my brave, smart little girl going to turn into? Was I a bad feminist for letting her prance around the house in these frilly, sparkly dresses? After all, it wasn’t too long ago that I had promised I’d never buy my daughter anything pink.
Then, one day, while listening to her pretend to drop her kids off at school and then go to work while wearing her pink princess dress and tiara, I had a realization. I harbored beliefs about what my daughter could or could not do while wearing a princess dress - but she did not.
Telling our kids “You can be anything” places them smack in the middle of the Paradox of Choice. Faced with the limitless opportunity to become anything, they can become fearful of making decisions that will close doors forever. “You can be anything” is not empowering; it’s paralyzing.
“You can choose your path.” We can remove the Paradox of Choice tension if we just reframe the nature of decision making. How is this phrase more empowering? For these reasons...
We asked Eunice to tell all of us a little more about her awesome daughter. Here’s what she said:
Name: Kate
Age: Kate just turned two!
The last thing she did that made you laugh: Kate asked me to sing a song about scared hats and food hats. She also has a Donald Duck impression she is working on. Kate makes herself laugh all the time and then says "Kate is funny."
