Raising Girls Related Articles & Blog Posts

Research has shown unequivocally that having strong, meaningful relationships contributes to our overall happiness, fulfillment, and well-being. Yet today children have many obstacles to healthy relationships. As we have seen, there is an epidemic of extrinsic motivation amongst our children causing them to believe their value and self-worth comes from the praise and recognition of [...]

A couple of weeks ago, The New York Times ran an article, “Puberty Before Age 10: A New Normal?” that begins with a story about a young girl hitting puberty at age six. After struggling to understand her daughter’s early development, the mother writes:

Question: My 8 yr old daughter is showing signs of premature onset of pubery; she has adult-grade underarm odor, blemishes, headaches, and a few hairs under her arms. I have researched out the possible reasons, ie: environmental(plastics & pollutiants) & dietary(hormones in meats & dairy, etc) causes, and am being/have been as cautious as possible. [...]

As a mother of a little girl I want to raise my daughter to be strong, independent, confident and comfortable with herself just the way she is.  Because she is a beautiful and amazing person just the way she is.  In the modern world, part of that means teaching her that there are all kinds [...]

Our world is becoming more and more crowded with media.  Whether in our living rooms, on our commutes or in our classrooms, every waking moment can be occupied by consuming media. Whether it’s looking up “what causes earthquakes” on Google with my eldest son Emmett and finding a video to explain it, or the news [...]

Tampons are something that every woman is intimate with, yet most of us rarely think about the materials used to make them. I know I didn’t until Seventh Generation, the company my husband helped start, began selling organic feminine care products a few years ago. That’s when I started reading the labels on tampons and [...]

As parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles we get so busy living life we forgot to live! Somewhere along the way we forget what it is like to be a child.

How do our children’s experiences compare to our own experiences at the same age? The 2008 Duke University Child Well-Being Index compared high school seniors from 1975-1977 to seniors 28 years later (an average of one generation apart).

Here are some tips: * Keep negative feelings about your own body to yourself.

You might not realize how important your own body image is to your children’s future. Our talk and behaviors greatly influence our children, especially our daughters. We may take for granted how much they take in, even at a young age.