Studies show that, whether big or small, celebrations matter because they offer opportunities to reflect and show gratitude. Enjoying big and small celebrations adds a little ceremony to life, and birthdays, in particular, matter because they signify your beginning and the joy of life. With our birth, we are given a chance to fulfill our unique purpose, and those moments are worthy of recognition. But it is the collection of thousands of small cheerful observances that builds the habit to celebrate, which in turn helps to hardwire these virtues and values into our children.
Though a child’s environment can fuel motivation because it may offer praise, not all children will receive that recognition or be in supportive environments that salute them. Therefore, it is essential that all children have self-affirmations and pride in themselves to boost their self-esteem and improve their self-efficacy—that is, their capacity to create change outside of themselves. Celebrating and honoring themselves will put girls in an ideal position to feel good about themselves, conceptualize ideas, and feel capable of leading initiatives.
Feeling like you are a person of worth—having good self-esteem—is essential for all of us, but especially for girls. Having high self-esteem gives girls the confidence they need to be joyful, which in turn helps them feel powerful enough to want to change the world.
Very young girls often have a high valuation of themselves that declines over time. In our work at SuperCamp we find that elementary school–age girls have good self-esteem; they do not have difficulty identifying and naming the things they are good at and things they like about themselves. They are unabashed. Without shame and often with much pride, they quickly and easily respond to probing questions about themselves. “I am a really good speller.” “I can run faster than everyone in my class.” “I am really smart.” “Every time I get a good grade I dance around my room.” They enjoy and celebrate themselves consistently.
As girls move from elementary to middle school and further into puberty, their positive self-evaluations decline; their self-esteem decreases. They become more self-critical and more aware and cautious of the ways they are perceived. They are concerned about being seen as too self-congratulatory, so they wait for others to congratulate them. The internal power they had when they were young begins to wane as external evaluations begin to have more value. This process continues as they age; by the time they get to high school, girls have to be reminded that it is okay to feel good about their own skills and talents. Though the self-confidence of tween and early teen girls plunges, they continue to outperform boys academically. Consequently, many people mistake their success for confidence.
ASSIGNMENTS
Help your girl develop a positive self-talk habit. Help her create an affirmation.
To get started with creating more positive self-talk, help your girl develop and choose affirming and motivational mantras she can use throughout the day and again at night. This could be a simple private declaration, such as “I am powerful,” or the mantra “[Insert her name], you got this.” At the end of each day, ask her to share with you something about herself that she is proud of. Routinize these small celebratory moments until she starts coming to you, screaming out: “Wanna hear what I did today? I am so proud of myself for . . .” The more she is able to see herself as the subject of her story, the more confident she will become. These moments are not about self-aggrandizement. The focus should be identifying and recognizing the power of her own agency and her ability to overcome real or imagined obstacles.
Create and surround your girl with positive mental images or visualizations of success.
- The phrases and words we choose should be those that can propel us toward our goals. These mental images create visual pictures of ourselves doing exactly what we say we want to do, and they create imprints in our minds. Fundamentally, they tie our beliefs to our actions.
- Take a few minutes with your girl to visualize yourselves doing the things you want. Focus on the feelings you want to have at the end of an activity or experience. Let your thoughts linger on these images until the emotions become real for you. Practice these visualizations daily. They are useful in your fitness program, for your courageous conversations, on a work project, etc.
- Use these visualization exercises to create a yearly vision board. A vision board is an excellent way to help you and your girl identify, define, and clarify what you really want in your lives. Focus on goals and empower your girl to create the life she imagines through the identification of goals.
- As a reminder, the purpose of these boards is to help you and your girl generate a new plan, develop different outlooks, and formulate alternatives.
For your girl’s next birthday, ask her what she wants to do.
What may be celebratory to parents may not have value for their daughters. Plan your girl’s party together, the refreshments, party favors, guest list, theme—all of it. Make the process as collaborative as possible. Begin this practice as early as five years old, and over time, share with her your budget so that she is aware of the parameters. Develop an annual tradition of creating this special day together so that, no matter what, she feels special about her birthday. It is also important that she understands that her birthday and the celebration of her birth may not happen on the same day. Celebrations of her life can happen on the weekend of her birthday, the week before, or the week after. The only way she will understand this nuance is if you explicitly explain it to her. So begin now; start talking with her.
Note: She will learn how to celebrate herself if you provide her with an example. For your next birthday, plan a party with a purpose. Birthdays will come every year, like it or not. But you can decide what your birthday can mean to you, and how it should be celebrated. In 2011, I celebrated my birthday by planting the seeds for GrassROOTS Community Foundation. Having fully celebrated myself for so many years, I now wanted to share the bounty. Months before the big day, I had decided that, for my birthday, I would host an event to raise funds to support girls who currently live in poverty. Eighteen friends across seven states and I organized a party that would have a social justice purpose. I called on an old friend and Philadelphia neighbor, Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter from the band The Roots and a regular on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, and he agreed to headline the event. (Tariq had lived upstairs from me while I was a graduate student at Temple University.) Though I had no money to pay him, he nonetheless agreed to travel from New York City to the venue in Philadelphia to perform. With the help of word of mouth, fifty dollars’ worth of promotional flyers, and lots of fundraising pledges, we held the party on a rainy Friday night in West Philadelphia. People showed up from all across the United States. We charged $20 as the entrance fee, and by the end of the night had raised a total of $28,000. And, just as my friends and I had promised, we gave it all away. The celebration of my life helped me discover my passion for giving. In the book We Gave Away a Fortune, Christopher Mogil maintains that, when we give, we gain far more than we lose. This assessment is so absolutely true for me. We used the funds raised by my birthday party to support an after-school program for girls in Philadelphia and to start the GrassROOTS Community Foundation.
