5 Confidence-Boosting Tips for Your Daughter // by Briana Beazley

[00:00:00] Carmelita (Cat) Tiu, Host: Welcome to Know Them, Be Them, Raise Them, a show about raising tween and teen girls to help mindful, growth-oriented, and busy moms stay informed and inspired so they can show up for themselves and their daughters the way they want to. I'm your host Carmelita Tiu. Today's article, Five Steps to Helping our Daughters Grow Up with More Confidence comes from Brianna Beazley.

[00:00:26] Brianna is founder of Nadia Girl, a tween girls clothing brand focused on empowering young girls by creating comfortable clothes that fit well, which helps them feel more confident. When Brianna's daughter was entering her tweens a few years ago, shopping for her was very discouraging and frustrating.

[00:00:44] There were limited options and the clothes were either not age appropriate, didn't fit well, or were poor quality. She saw how this impacted her daughter's confidence and decided to do something about it. Soon after that, Nadia Girl was born. She left a long career in advertising and operations and jumped into a new industry to design clothes that are high quality, sustainable, and have a proprietary fit made for tween girls’ changing bodies.

[00:01:11] You can visit nadiagirl.com. That's N-A-D-I-A-G-I-R-L to see the latest collections. Brianna continues to focus on how to help her daughter now 13, and other girls feel empowered and confident. Here's her article.

[00:01:33] If you're the parent of a tween or teen girl, you've likely seen your once confident, don't care what anyone thinks, little girl, change into a pre-adolescent or adolescent whose confidence has plummeted. There are so many changes for girls between the ages of 9 and 13. Their bodies are changing.

[00:01:51] Friendships can be challenging and confusing. They start middle school and their clothing and the statement it makes begins to feel more important. According to a survey done by Claire Shipman, Katty Kay, and Jill Allen Riley for their book, The Confidence Code for Girls Taking Risks, Messing Up and Becoming Your Amazingly Imperfect Totally Powerful Self.

[00:02:12] Girls were asked to rate their confidence on a scale of zero to 10. And from the ages of 8 to 14, the average of girls' responses fell from approximately 8.5 to 6, a drop off of 30%. A significant decrease and one likely to have long-term effects. When confidence begins to take a hit, it can be a struggle to gain it back as an adult.

[00:02:36] It's also a cycle in order to build confidence, there's a need to take risks and then succeed. That gives you more confidence to take the next risk. But for girls afraid to do that, their confidence can continue to be low into adulthood. And this issue is much more prevalent in tween girls than boys continuing to feed the gender gap issues faced in business.

[00:03:01] Here are five things we can do to help our daughters with a much needed confidence boost. Number one, encourage failure, taking risks, failing, learning from it, and then trying again until you succeed. Pursuing perfection never works and will only make her feel more inadequate. The idea of failure being a positive thing is commonly heard in business, but we should be applying the same strategy with our daughters.

[00:03:30] Number two, participation in sports or other extracurriculars. This can be dance, music, art, et cetera, anywhere where she can learn something new, fail, take risks, and improve on the skill. Can help her feel more confident. 

[00:03:48] Number three. Encourage her to speak her mind and stand up for what she believes in, give her the space to have a voice at home. Even if it's different than your own, this will help her have the courage to do so around others and as she gets older.

[00:04:03] Number four, give her the right amount of freedom. As our daughters get older, they need the ability to do things for themselves. The feeling of doing things for herself can be empowering. And that will lead her to feel more confident in her abilities. 

[00:04:22] Number five, help her find clothes she feels comfortable in. The clothing you wear can affect your mood, health, and overall confidence. Scientists call this phenomenon, enclosed cognition. When she likes what she's wearing, she's going to exude more confidence inside and out.

[00:04:42] Of course, in addition to these points, the most important thing is to meet our daughters, where they are and love and accept them for the amazing humans they are. If we do that, they will be well on their way to finding their own inner strength and the confidence to follow their dreams.

[00:05:03] I love this short and sweet article. I think it's so easy to recognize that this concern exists, but it can be hard to pinpoint exact steps to take, to try and counteract this confidence slide. Encouraging failure is a huge one. I am not someone that models this very much at all. As adults, I think that we tend to gravitate towards the things we like.

[00:05:26] We tend to do the things that we're good at. I'm pushing myself to be a model for my daughters by trying new things, expressing to them when I don't know how to do or I don't understand technology, but I'm trying to learn it. I know that's not what makes me sound so old and fuddy-duddy, but it is the truth.

[00:05:45] I have definitely phased into that portion of life where the new technologies that the kids are using. I'm a little bit out of touch with. So failure, taking risks, is a huge one. It could be as simple as having them order something new at a restaurant. You know, even if they don't like it, it's something that they learned from, and it can inform their decisions going forward and they realize that trying something new and not liking it isn't the end of the world.

[00:06:15] The participation in sports and other curriculars. I've definitely seen this play out with my daughters. One of my daughters is really into dance and has found a studio that she really loves. And I've seen that it's been such a positive environment for her to learn from other girls, work together to try and accomplish a common goal.

[00:06:35] And even just having a set of people, adults, and peers that are outside of her school context is refreshing, I think for her. I remember when I was growing up, I also took dance and my dance friends ended up being some of my best friends. It was nice to have that alternate universe outside of my school universe so that when things weren't going so great at school, I could look to that world for constellation and a little bit of stability.

[00:07:06] If things were tumultuous on the school front and vice versa. And I also really liked the point about freedom, giving the right amount of freedom. I made me like many moms have trouble figuring out how much to give them, but I do see the benefits whenever I let them stretch a little bit. It might be a little bit outside of my comfort zone.

[00:07:31] But whenever I let them do something on their own and they realize they can do it. And then I realize they can do it. We both end up feeling that much more confident and excited about new things and the future. And the last point about finding clothes that your daughter feels comfortable in. When I first read this article, I wasn't entirely sure that one was as compelling.

[00:07:54] But as in the year or two, since I've stumbled across this particular article, I've noticed how much of a difference that makes with one of my daughters, especially, she definitely does not like girly girl outfits, gravitates towards neutral colors, wears a ton of black, like I do. And I, I can tell that feeling comfortable in her skin is tied at this point in her life to also feeling comfortable in her clothes. Not all kids may be that way, but for her being able to express herself and feel like her clothing is an expression of her identity is important to her. This point definitely resonates now in a way it didn't a year ago or so.

[00:08:39] So to recap, the five points are encourage failure, participation in sports or other activities and extracurriculars, encourage her to speak her mind and stand up for what she believes in. Give her the right amount of freedom and help her find clothes she feels comfortable in.

[00:09:05] Thanks to Brianna for the quick infusion of actionable advice to shop the Nadia Girl collection. Visit www.nadiagirl.com. That's N-A-D-I-A-G-I-R-L and Nadia Girl is also on Instagram @nadiagirl. I hope you found some helpful information in today's episode. I want to applaud you and say how much I appreciate you for taking the time to listen and showing up as a dedicated and mindful mom. If you haven't done so yet, please hit subscribe so you can receive new episode alerts.

[00:09:40] And if you're enjoying the podcast, feel free to leave a review on Apple or Google platforms. You can also follow at @knowberaisethem on Instagram for inspirational quotes, advice and updates on upcoming episodes and feel free to visit the website.knowberaisethem.com again. Thank you from the bottom of my heart and here's to strong women, may we know them, may we be them, and may we raise them.