Steve Biddulph’s Raising Girls. Steve Biddulph
family therapy and parenting education, but it also comes from talking to mothers, fathers and teachers in many countries. I never quite trust experts, unless what they say matches my own heart and passes the test of common sense. That comes from talking to lots of people. Eventually, the map becomes clearer. You feel like you know where you are.
The Five Stages of Girlhood
While each girl is unique, there is still a journey that all girls have to make to grow up well. Girls seem to be different to boys in the stages they go through, and the ages at which they happen. In the chapters to come, you can look up the age of your daughter and dive into more detail about what is happening for her. But first it’s good to get the big picture and see where you are …
Stage 1: Security – Am I safe and loved? (birth–2 years)
Human babies are the most dependent babies on Earth. Born totally defenceless, babies instinctively know that the adults around them have to love them, or they may not give them proper care. It’s not enough just to be fed and clothed; machines could keep a baby alive, but she would not develop intelligence or kindness, she would be a very strange being indeed. It’s through her parents comforting her tenderly, singing and talking to her, jiggling and tickling and loving her, that a baby girl comes fully alive, and decides that life is good. In this situation her emotional as well as her physical needs are responded to. Out of all this, she makes a fundamental decision about life: I am loved and safe. And she carries that inside her, always.
Stage 2: Exploring – Is the world a fun and interesting place? (2–5 years)
This stage is when a girl learns to be confident and interested in the world around her, to be smart and creative. It builds on the secure feelings from Stage 1; if people are going to stay close and care for me, I can relax and check out the toys, play in the garden, toddle out across the grass, mess about with dirt and stones and leaves.
Babies who don’t feel securely attached to their mum do not explore very much, they are too afraid Mum or Dad will desert them.
This is the age when your daughter can be shown how to paint, poke, build, create and enjoy the world of things, animals and people. If the people who love her share some of these activities with her, she will pick up on their enthusiasm and pleasure in making and doing. Her brain becomes permanently switched on to learning. You will have taught her that life is an adventure. Strange, new and challenging things will be a joy for her for the rest of her life.
Stage 3: People skills – Can I get along with others? (5–10 years)
Other children, other adults, as well as Mum and Dad, brothers and sisters, can be difficult but are mostly fun. Your daughter finds that she can have better fun by sharing a little, giving way a little, co-operating and playing together, than if she is just on her own. This isn’t possible until about three or four years of age, and even then it’s hard. But by learning first from Mum or Dad, and then other people, she can work out that she is not the centre of the universe. Other people have feelings too.
Right through primary school, this most complex of skills – valuing yourself, but also valuing others and treating them with respect – is gradually being learned. Again, it builds on the earlier stages: being treated kindly, you grow kind; being treated sensitively, you grow empathy; being treated honestly, you grow honest.
She decides that mostly people are fine. I like them. Let’s play! Your daughter will be a ‘people person’. For the rest of her life she will know how to be with people in a happy and helpful way.
Stage 4: Finding her soul – Can I discover my deep-down self and what makes me truly happy? (10–14 years)
With the coming of puberty, a girl starts to experience a much stronger sense of being her own person, a separate and private self. She is far from being a woman, but she is no longer a child either. Like a tree in winter, she is building up reserves for when she is ready to blossom. These are the years in which she begins to strengthen the ‘inside’ of her deep self – who she really is. It’s a time when she needs help to think about what she stands for, and cares most deeply about, and also what her interests and passions are. Often at this age a girl finds her ‘spark’ – something that she loves to do and which gives her joy, purpose and a creative way to make a contribution. A reason to be alive.
By gaining an identity through doing and believing, and strengthening her inner world, a girl will be freer from the need for approval that haunts many teen girls and makes them conformist and dull.
A girl’s soul is like a wild animal, powerful and savvy, but wary too. It needs time and quiet to emerge. As a girl finds her soul, she will be equipped to face the big questions of life: choosing intimacy on her own terms, choosing her career path, knowing which peer group to hang around with. A girl who knows her own soul may be a gentle girl but also one who has steel in her, not easily manipulated by careless boys or false friends. She will be loyal, tough and protective of those around her. And of herself.
Stage 5: Stepping into adulthood – Can I take responsibility for my own life? (14–18 years)
At 18 your daughter begins to be a woman, and so at the age of 14 the preparation for that huge leap has to begin in earnest. It’s mostly practical – here’s how you manage money, driving a car, time, eating, clothes, health, safety – but it’s also a powerful shift in attitude. Sometime between 14 and adulthood a girl needs some kind of marker event, a growing-up rite, an experience or even misfortune which teaches her that she is now at the steering wheel of her own life. That she literally holds her life in her own hands. This is a frightening realisation, but frightening in a good way. By steadying herself, and by receiving the welcome and support of older women, she can leave behind childishness or harmful gullibility, and be accountable, connected to consequences and proactive in making her life worthwhile. While life itself can deliver this realisation to a girl, leaving it to chance is a hazardous and unreliable way for it to happen. She might come to serious harm. Also, some people never grow up and their lives are self-absorbed and wasted; they drift in misery, blame everyone else and never take responsibility.
Girls have to be deliberately and proactively launched into healthy womanhood. When this is done well, the results are impressive. A girl takes charge of her life and makes her unique way in the world.
Each Stage Asks a Question
I hope you’ll find the five stages clear and easy to understand. Remember that each girl is different, so the stages can vary quite a lot according to at what age they happen. Also, they overlap, because nature is efficient and starts one lesson while the other is still finishing. I hope you can live with that!
The key point is that as your daughter completes each stage, she comes to a decision about her life, which is going to either help or harm her. For example, imagine a girlhood where all five stages go badly. This girl would arrive at the following five decisions:
1 Life is uncertain, and nobody loves me.
2 New ideas and things are frightening.
3 People can’t be trusted, and they are impossible to get along with.
4 I have nothing of value inside me, I am a nobody.
5 Growing up is just too hard. I don’t want to be an adult. I don’t have any power or any choice in what happens to me. Stuff just happens.
Those are pretty bad outcomes, but they are familiar to anyone who works with girls. Every parent can look at their daughter, and her friends, and other girls in their town and city, and see the