5 Tips: How to Raise a Powerful Girl

Every girl has her own superpower(s)! And it’s our job as parents and caregivers to fuel them depending on what they may need – from amplifying their upstanding powers to encouraging them to challenge or break stereotypes to empowering their creativity as artists. To get specific tips, we turned to the powerful women on our Noggin team – both from our expert advisors and the moms on the Noggin team!

TAMMY CLEGG, PH.D.

Embrace and support their curiosity.

I often try to counter stereotypes that certain types of experiences, tools, and toys are just for boys and certain ones are for girls. When choosing gifts for my nieces and developing tools for girls in our youth programs, I often emphasize ones that will help my girls ask questions about the world, carry out science investigations, get excited about computing, build new contraptions, and explore every aspect of their creativity. I’ve spent lots of time in the aisles of shopping centers pondering the gifts that will counter norms of what girls can do. And I will tell the youth I mentor exactly why I chose the tools and gifts I’ve chosen for them! It’s then important to sit (or stand, walk, crawl, or run) and engage with them.

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On the Job: Astronaut

Expose them to positive examples – be the example!

It is important that girls see examples of women who are scientists, engineers, mathematicians, psychologists, authors, artists, designers, and more! Often, outside of the classroom in family and community settings, these aspects of our identity as women may not be as obvious to young girls. It’s therefore important to talk to young girls in our lives about what we do, how we do it, and why we love it. Be the example!

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Flor de Toloache

LASETTE CANADY

Inspire their creativity

I’m always in awe of how creative Novi is, specifically with storytelling. I love playing a game with Novi where I make up the beginning of a story (i.e. once upon a time there was a hamster who escaped his cage and jumped into Novi’s bookbag…) and then she takes over and makes up another part of the story before telling me to continue it. At the end of each story, I’m impressed with this incredible story we made together. I know I wouldn’t have been able to make up such an elaborate story with unexpected twists and turns if it wasn’t for her playing this storytelling game along with me. She enjoys it so much, we’ll play this during car rides or just while doing chores around the house, and we have a blast.

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Rhymes Through Times: Power in a Word

ALLISON BRISCOE-SMITH, PH.D.

Support our girls’ social and emotional well-being.

Just as Albert Einstein said, “A person who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” For little ones, making mistakes in an environment where they feel safe and secure can help them to build self-confidence in their own abilities, which will help them build the skills to thrive in the face of adversity. The secret here is to reframe everyday problems as learning opportunities and to encourage your child to express their feelings along the way! Say your child is struggling to complete a puzzle – simple words such as “Let’s try a different way” or “You are learning from your mistakes!” can help them to believe in themself as they tackle the problem at hand.

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Feeling Faces: Deema

BO YOUNG LEE

Encourage their upstanding power

My daughter can be very shy and reserved, especially in bigger social groups, and she has said that being an upstander in real life is so much harder than just talking about it in theory. So we practice by roleplaying different scenarios. Sometimes, she’s the one who has to stand up for a friend – other times, she has to stand up for herself. We also talk about how there are many ways to be an upstander. For instance, if she sees someone being unkind to a friend, she may not feel comfortable confronting the other person. But she understands there are many other ways to be an upstanding friend, like sitting next to them or asking them to play.