5 Ways to be a Great Role Model to Your Daughters

Being a role model goes hand-in-hand with being a parent. Your daily life revolves around the love that you have for your family, your daughters and more than likely you spend your free-time thinking and wondering how they will be when they grow up. What will they like to do? Will they further their education and have a career or decide to travel the world as a free-spirited soul? And as their parent, your heart fills with joy and pride even thinking about all the possibilities that await your smart and strong-willed daughters. Pride isn’t even a strong enough word to encompass the feeling that you get when you think about and talk about your daughters. They are your life. Everything that you do, you do for them. You smile for them, you work hard for them, and each and every day you try to be better than you were the day before…for them. And that is the groundwork for setting a strong foundation for them and their future. Everything that you do as their parent, they see. If you want them to be strong females as they get older, they need to have you as a strong role model to look up to.

5 Ways to be a Great Role Model to Your Daughters

• Communicate your thoughts. Teach your daughters to be open and respectful of their communication. If they love something, shout it loud and proud and if they don’t? Then teach them how to have those hard conversations as well. Communicating effectively with your daughters is a great way to teach them the importance of words and how universal language truly can be.
• Start each day with a smile. The hard truth is that sometimes, life isn’t all roses and smiles…as an adult, we are often surrounded by negative news, negative people, and negative vibes. It can be a bit draining to constantly be surrounded by that each and every day. The key? Your daughters don’t need to have that negativity trickle down to them. To them, you are their bright light and their positive parent. Don’t worry them about the stresses of the outside world when it serves no purpose that would have any sort of positive outcome. Instead, smile at them and smile at them first thing in the morning. Let that smile be the first thing that they see in the morning and the last thing that they see at night before they close their eyes. If you can show that happiness can start early and last all day, that’s a lesson that they will remember for their entire lives.
• Don’t try to appear perfect in front of them. Let them see you fail and then let them see you get right back on that saddle. The lesson that you want them to know is that everyone will fall, but what differs is how they get back up and try again compared to those who just curl up and quit.
• Walk the walk. Show them that outside beauty isn’t what makes up the core of a person, and explain to them that the beauty of others lies within. Break it down and simplify it for them. Go volunteering together and do something good for someone else. Show your daughters how simple and easy it is to do nice things for other people first.
• When your daughters talk to you, stop what you are doing and look at them. Teach your daughters the simple form of respect early in their life that when someone approaches them to talk, they need to stop what they are doing and listen. While it may not seem like a big deal, those who are trying to talk, notice and appreciate the kindness. And trust me when I say they notice everything. Some days ago, my eldest daughter told me she noticed her dad and I spend too much time on our phones but we need to listen to them more. Oh my! I didn’t even realize I spend that much time on my phone. Anyways I love the fact that she pointed it out and guess what, we are working hard to listening more intently. What of you?

Being a great role model to your daughters isn’t hard. After all, your daughters are already mini-products of you and more than likely have several of your characteristics already. Keep teaching them daily to show them how important respect, communication, and honesty are when it comes to their integrity and their core values, and show them those same core values daily in everything that you do. Remember that their eyes are always watching you and their ears are hearing every word that you say as well. Use that knowledge to make certain that you are giving your daughters amazing examples of how to be awesome by being their role model each and every day.