REMINDER: Little Girls Become Grown Women
Backstory
Our mothers are the first women to teach us. We learn from her while we are still in her womb. We learn about her stress. Her thoughts. Her hopes. Her temperament. Her health. Her heroes. We learn these things because we feel her and hear her. Two of our senses that are activated in the womb for all children.
But as girls we share a very important asset, the XX factor. This is dictated by chromosomes in our DNA which are intentional and irreversible. It is the necessary blueprint to being born female. Females become Girls and Girls Become Women!
Intention of Action
The journey of womanhood is arduous at best. Girls look to their mothers as the model to follow, her blueprint and 'true north' guide. She mimics her mother until her decision making skills are fully formed (well beyond adolescence). What you see in little girls is her interpretation of her mother.
This mimicking is how she best understands and processes what she sees, feels and hears. Note here that she has added to her senses. She does not use reason and logic as those are skills that are learned behaviors. What she sees, she takes at face value and the actions are permanently sealed by repetitive actions and supporting habits. After 63 consecutive days she now has an addition to her personality and lifestyle. Praise and practice helps to reinforce the shaping of her character which is the interpretation of the mother's character through the lens of a child.
As she grows and enters the education system new senses come online. Her sense of smell and taste is activated. Her sense of smell and taste helps her gain a level of security in her environment. Because there is a direct complementary connection between these two senses they function as a unit to help us determine a sense of security. She is less likely to feel safe with others if the smell or taste from her mother is absent for long periods of time. The comfort of mom provides security and identity.
Little girls and growing girls are known to play with mom's things- shoes, clothes, make up, perfumes, ect. This is her way of imprinting on mom. Because her scent is an identifier she imprints the memory within her DNA as well as marks it as part of her own lifestyle.
Now fully activated, her body takes the journey into becoming a woman. Equipped with menstrual cycle, hormonal changes, imagery, personality, and modeling she spends more and more time in the world. She is testing her adopted modeling and through trial and error experiencing the world as an semi-independent "mini-me".
Often unsure of herself, because she is dressed in the modeling of mom, she learns what is socially acceptable. Sometime dependent upon how others validate or reject her, she adapts accordingly. She adapts because of our innate need to belong to social groups and the underlying mating called etched in our biology and division of hormones.
Solutions for Consideration
With all the changing, bending, tearing, and building happening in her and through her the images of women (outside of mom) and how they are validated and rejected in media (movies, tv, nursery rhymes, music, socially) all become a mega store of personality choices to shop from.
The "window" shopping is free but the price she pays for buying-into those choices often comes at a cost. She pays through rejection when her peers and social groups shun the choice. Then she is likely to return the choice or withdraw from the group. When they reward her choice she can potentially move up the social ladder or meets with a level of approval that validates her new found character and life direction.
Solutions for Consideration
These are just a few of the building blocks for little girls. I thought it prudent for those of us with daughters to remember our that our daughters are looking at us. They SEE us in a clear unbiased way. They imprint on us as the building blocks of their own personality. What they see is permanently recorded and stored in their database of character and personality.
It is essential that we strive to give and be our personal best. That we recognize unwanted and/or unhealthy behaviors and habits because our daughters "good" senses are activated. They know us and our temperament. They also model and mimic us as a foundation for who they can become.
We should be such a powerful image of good character and choices that they will be strong enough to endure. We should give them the healthy nutrients of self-respect, positive values, knowledge of positive affirmations, knowledge of order, and love. We should expose them to positive women. We should validate them by showing them in our lives. We should practice uplifting and forgiveness; boundaries and expectations; experience verses exposure. We should make sure they are literate and teachable. We should expose them to more than media but introduce them to nature and the world outside of their everyday.
When we are intentional with them of who we want them to model we grow those areas of the little girl in us too! But healing her we repair the breach in her DNA for a brighter future and a healthier woman.
