This Simple Expectation Helped Me Raise A Confident Daughter
One who jumps out of airplanes, no less.
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How do you raise a confident Daughter?
My wife and I raised our daughter (and son) to accept responsibility, and respond to it with maximum effort. When she was young, responsibility was assigned to her through a fairly ridged set of expectations e.g. homework, chores, practice (music or sports), and ethical theory based on our religious beliefs.
We always expected maximum effort, which led us to focus more on that than the results. This approach allowed her to excel, fail, and grow. In each success or failure we helped her identify her strengths and even, occasionally, her weaknesses.
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As a couple, my wife and I are naturally about the most optimistic and enthusiastic individuals you’ll ever meet. As such we always reaffirmed our daughters actions, accomplishments, character, and personality (she’s most definitely turned into a social butterfly).
Her success in school, church, sports, heck in the different stages of her life, combined with our affirmation, helped to instill in her a confidence that has turned her into a young woman that carries herself with a quiet yet apparent confidence. She is humble, but honestly confident in her intelligence and not shy with her display of wit.
When she was college age and heading into young adulthood we reigned back on our relatively rigid boundaries and gave her freedoms she hadn’t had before.
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With this newfound freedom she learned how to make good life decisions. Early on these decisions were often made with guidance from us, which was requested. Soon though my daughter taught herself how to live as an adult.
The confidence my daughter gained in her childhood, and the freedom she earned as a young adult has culminated in a young woman I’m exceptionally proud to call my daughter.
Christopher Telles is a husband, father of 2, sailor, adventurer, free-thinking soul, and Bond and Godfather aficionado. Read more from Quora here:
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