As a mother of a teenage daughter, and coach to many girls, it is my strong belief that as women, we are responsible for creating a positive environment in which our girls have the best possible chance of success. But how do we do this and what actions do we need to take to make this a reality?

For me.. this starts with her education, and looking at what real education is for her. This blog shares some of my thoughts, ideas and practical action plans that you can implement to reimagine your daughter’s education.

What does your Daughters Education include?

Now when I say education I am not referring solely to the curriculum our daughters are taught at school. I am talking about all of the educational influences in the lives of our girls. Lets call the education our daughters receive at school as formal education and while it is vitally important, it is only one piece of the puzzle. In reality, we do not actually have any real control over what the national curriculum includes.

For me, its the informal education that really matters. This is where she really finds herself and the pieces of the jigsaw really come together.  This kind of education is not done in a traditional setting like school, but instead this education is received by our daughters from wider society. Informal educational influences might come from our daughter’s close friends, her best friend, her outer circle of friends, a coach or mentor, from social media, or television etc. 

Empowering your Daughter through Informal Education 

Since we have no control over formal education, we must try to ensure the funnel of informal education given to our daughters by wider society is having a positive impact on her. In other words, in school our daughters are taught to colour inside the lines but not to think outside the box. In school our daughters learn literacy and maths but they are not taught about money management or how to save effectively. School can also be a place that neglects creativity in children in favour of academic performance. This is not always the case but we must make sure to celebrate our daughters’ creative wins as well as just exam wins. It can be easy to blame schools for the holes we find in our daughters’ education. However we as parents can have a massive impact in our daughters’ education if we choose to and we can do so in a way that sets them up to shatter the glass ceilings of society, and not just the exam papers.

Body Image and Empowering your Daughter

I dont think we can avoid our girls being on social media. In fact, Id rather be brutally honest with her, talking about the good, the bad, the dangers and opportunities, than try to battle against its usage.

However it is very common for young girls to follow social media influencers/personalities who promote completely unrealistic beauty and body image standards. One survey of 11–16-year-olds in the UK by Be Real found that 79% said how they look is important to them, and over half (52%) often worry about how they look. In a survey of young people aged 13–19, 35% said their body image causes them to ‘often’ or ‘always’ worry.

If our girls are being fed disillusioned information about how their bodies are “supposed” to look or what is even physically possible to achieve in terms of body type, this can be counter productive to our daughters’ education. If we want successful, happy, confident daughters who shatter glass ceilings and break societal norms then we need to make sure they have a realistic, self accepting and compassionate view of body types and beauty standards. 

However this kind of self acceptance is not easily learned and you need to radiate the same self love that you want your daughter to feel. After all, how can we expect our daughters to love their bodies if we don’t even love our own?

Empowering your Daughter with Positive Role Models

Lastly, I want to talk about mentors and role models. These types of people can have a big impact on what our daughters aspire to be and what they think success looks like. This can be linked with my point on social media influencers promoting unrealistic beauty standards. It is important that we have converstaions with our girls about  who they look up to and the mentors and role models that influence their lives. We want our daughters’ role models to be the strivers and the thrivers, the ones who will push our girls forward, support them in thinking big and push them to be the best versions of themselves when we aren't there to do it ourselves.

For example, what about female entrepreneurs like Indra Nooyi, former CEO of Pepsi. Nooyi (Networth - $290 million) has featured on the Forbes list multiple times; for American Self-Made Women in 2021, and in 2017, for most powerful women (Forbes, 2021) Professional athletes like Serena Williams, one of the most accomplished tennis players of all time, also make powerful role models. Williams has won 23 Grand Slam titles (Tennis-X) and is widely regarded as the best female tennis player of all time. There are artistic role models for our creative girls as well, who use fame to empower women and promote body positivity. Take Emma Watson for example (actress), who was made the UN Women Goodwill Ambassador and is world famous for her role as Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films. Yes.. they can absolutly look up to any amounts of online C-lebs, BUT they HAVE to know where else to look. They MUST be encouraged to seek out women doing what they want to do, and where they want to go. 

Empowerment and Reimagining your Daughters Education 

This blog has included my top tips for how you can reimagine your daughter's education. We have covered filling in the gaps left by the school curriculum. Teaching your daughter important life skills, to think big, think outside the box and that exam results are not the be all and end all. We also talked about friends and social media influences. We need to make sure our daughter’s friends and media consumption is supplementary to our girls and not detrimental. This ties in to the last influence we covered, mentors and role models.

The main thing I want you take away from this is that school is where our daughters get the curriculum education but it is NOT the only source of education our daughters should value. If we want them to be great, to be leaders, to be brave and to strive for everything they want in life we have to try and supplement our daughters’ education with this knowledge as best we can.