In her new book Thrivers, Dr. Michele Borba helps parents and educators teach the essential character strengths kids need to become young people who flourish in a rapidly changing, digitally-driven, and uncertain world. As a teacher, educational consultant, and parent for 40 years, Dr. Borba has never been more worried for young people than she is about this current generation of kids. Across the nation, student mental health is plummeting, depression rates among teens are rising, kids are reporting severe anxiety at ever-younger ages. When Dr. Borba asks a group of students to “tell me about your generation,” most respond with stories of stress, anxiety, isolation, and fear. But some young people aren’t struggling; they’re thriving. They cope with adversity, develop healthy relationships, and embrace change. They are ready for whatever the world throws at them, even in uncertain times. Dr. Borba calls these kids Thrivers, and the more she studied them, she wondered, What is their secret? And can it be taught to others? Seven Essential Character Strengths For her book, Dr. Borba combed scientific studies on resilience, spoke to dozens of researchers and experts in the field, and interviewed more than 100 young people from all walks of life. In the end she found something surprising: The difference between those who struggle and those who succeed comes down not to grades or test scores, but to seven essential character strengths that set Thrivers apart (and set them up for happiness and greater accomplishment later in life): Self-confidence: Healthy identify, using personal strengths to …

Rashida knew about periods. She knew she’d get one soon. It was a strange thing to think about. Nobody had spoken to her about blood and bleeding, breasts, and body hair. Not even her mom, who seemed to think the school would cover all that. Rashida looked down to wipe one Monday, and there it was. Red. Toilets have a way of making things feel incredibly routine, lonely, and unceremonious. And so it was. She waited until after dinner when her dad and little sister had left the room. In her head, she repeated her news as a way to build up the courage to tell her mom she’d irreversibly changed. She breathed deeply: “I got my period today.” Her mom stood up and left the dim room. Rashida was alone with her new blood again. Her mom returned, silently passed her a pack of sanitary pads. They were done. The girl had all she needed. Except she didn’t. Where Potentials Exist Pre-teen is a tricky time of teetering. Grown girls are about to become young women, lines transform into curves, and bodies turn cyclical. Overnight, body hair changes from meaningless to meaningful. If ever there’s a time to tightly hold your daughter’s hand and offer her all the wisdom of one who’s gone before, it’s at this crucial apex where potentials exist. She has equal potential to leap into a future-self timeline of self-loathing, confusion, and isolation or one of fierce self-knowledge, inner power access, and freedom. Two of the reasons this abyss-sized divergence …

When it comes to your girls’ creativity and development, some routines hinder, and some routines help. Routine basics, done regularly and with love, work. But over-scheduling organized enrichment activities could actually do more harm than good. Just because you can offer your child every artistic, physical, and social extra-curricular activity doesn’t mean you should. Things like enough sleep and nutritious food can seem rudimentary (even banal), but that doesn’t mean they should be taken for granted. Creativity needs both breathing room and structure. Understanding what a balance of each looks like is the difference between “looking like you’re parenting” and actually doing the rather unceremonious things that work. Connection Between Creativity and Routine If you can build a solid foundation of routine for your girl, everything else naturally falls into place. Daily routine fosters the same qualities that creativity requires: Safety and security Confidence and independence A container that encourages a flow state Healthy habits Consider Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, one of the best-known theories of motivation and often displayed as a pyramid. Your child needs you to cover the basics at the very bottom of her pyramid (physiological). If you do this, you’re gifting her with the confident structure required to succeed and space/support to move up her pyramid (safety, love/belonging, esteem, self-actualization). In other words, your girl needs you to hold down the fort with basic daily care routines. It’s deceptively simple. The Four Daily Care Routine Pillars  Sleep “Sleep is the Swiss Army knife of health” – Matthew Walker, scientist and author …

One of the most valuable things we can teach young girls is how to empower other women. It’s essential to show kids that they can use their voices to help others and build female camaraderie. Teaching empowerment skills helps girls develop stronger relationships with important women in their lives and encourages them to take significant steps towards gender equality for all. Here are six ways to help girls lift up women of all ages and backgrounds. Teaching Girls to Empower Women 1) Identify Leadership Qualities in the Women Around You Nurturing ambition and celebrating leadership skills are so crucial for young girls. We need to show them empathy, communication, cleverness, positivity, and creativity all have value. Identify these traits in admirable women around them. Here is a simple yet powerful activity to do with your girl. Use this worksheet to identify great leadership skills in women you know. Help your little ones fill out this sheet, and then discuss who you chose for each quality and why. 2) Practice Active Listening We need to listen to women’s voices and show them their opinions matter. To help girls practice active listening: Explain the why behind it. Show them that sincere listening makes people feel valued and appreciated. Practice giving your full attention, not interrupting, asking questions, and responding with no judgment. Actively listening will encourage the same respectful behavior from others. 3) Give Genuine Compliments Another way to encourage girls to empower women is to enable them to complement with sincerity. Kind remarks on appearances are …

For young April, weekends were sometimes TOO peaceful. Peaceful looked like dad watching the game alone in the TV room. Sister cordoned off in her bedroom with a new book. Mom gardening. Her boredom meant one of two things: Routine is killing my imagination, but I am too young to articulate this. I am so lonely, but I think everyone feels like this and I don’t know how to reach out. Consider your own adult boredom and you’ll probably find yourself agreeing with the above. Sure, our themes mature into career paths, romantic engagements, and the meaning of a connected life but the bedrock is the same: We’re unfulfilled in some way We’re understimulated or require new stimulation We have nothing to look forward to We’re disconnected from ourselves because we’re not engaging our personal passions or vice versa Within the context of helping your child when she’s been slumped on the couch for hours and sighs, “Mom, I’m bored”, some detective work is required. Now, it is true that fixing your child’s boredom is not your solo responsibility (ultimately, they must self-lead). However, it does require the intellect and wisdom of a parent to decipher what’s going on beneath the “I’m bored”. If your child knew, their whines would be far more specific. Your own lived experience tells you that your child will face boredom many times throughout her life. Don’t underestimate the value of teaching her what lies beneath boredom, and how to move through it. It’s a life-skill that holds its weight …

The results of a Google image search for the term “creative person” are very colorful. Literally. There are brightly-dressed people holding paintbrushes and pens. There are rainbows of color bursting from heads, chests, and sketches of brains. One could say the overall results are “arty”. But when did the universe-encompassing noun, adjective, and verb: “creative” become synonymous with the word “art”? By definition, creativity involves the act of making something. An act of creation. Art is far from the only thing humans make, but I bet you’ve never thought of Marie Curie as a creative. Have you ever flicked a light switch and contemplated the phenomenal creativity that birthed electricity? Or is that rather “too sciency” in your mind? Consider Einstein then. You’re probably thinking intelligence, genius, inventor. Maybe E = mc2 or wild white hair. Why aren’t you including this physicist’s extraordinary levels of creative thinking, discovery, and action? Nurture Creativity: Thinking Inside The Box “She’s a creative.” Depending on your upbringing, this statement has the potential to make you nervous or envious. Nervous because society has confused creativity with inner turmoil, unstable lives, poverty, a penchant for whimsy, and, at best, a substance-fulled-but-soulless-but-successful career in advertising. Envious because of the permission given. Creative women can be wild and free. They can wear bright clothes, have bold ideas, and are able to deeply express those ideas at will because “art”. These concepts are misguided and harmful. They hold us back personally. Worse, they cause us to handicap, restrict and misperceive our children because: This …

Across the garden, on the other side of my neighborly wall, I can hear a young girl playing. There’s a lot of emphatic counting down, the odd shriek and wild splashing, despite the chilly and overcast weather. Would you believe me if I told you she’s currently undertaking multiple, self-induced practical learning experiences that involves leadership, imagination, resilience, problem-solving, debate, and self-advocacy? I can prove it with one quote: “Hey, boys! I’m going to go first this time. You follow me but be quick, the dragon is coming! Okay… 5,4,3,2,1.” Splash. Silence. Thud. “Ouch! My knee. But I’m good… Okay, Jesse also wants to play with us so we need a new game. Mom! Moooom, I’m cold now. I need a towel.” Compare this scenario to three kids lined up silently at swimming school, diving in when the teacher commands and getting out when the whistle blows. “One of the biggest problems with play is that adults tend to hijack it and tend to try and control play. Children are really the best judge of their own play.” – Irene Gunning, CEO, Early Childhood Ireland There are a few reasons for this: Contemporary society and schooling are running a performance-based agenda that’s leading parents to believe that rather than have two children under five playing around the house, they should be grooming tiny adults. Grown-ups are painfully adept at linear, time-based, goal-orientated tasks based firmly in reality. We’re practical. We want to efficiently nurture our five-year-old straight into that Harvard AI program, if it’s the …

A favorite celebration for many, Random Acts of Kindness Day (Feb. 17), has many practices we can act on throughout the year. It also offers an opportunity to consider what exactly it means to be kind. We can all build our kindness muscles, and the benefits of doing so include improving overall wellness and solidifying essential relationships. What It Means To Be Kind We, as humans, thrive on compassion. It’s been argued that kindness is one of humanity’s most vital pillars. Everyone deserves a little empathy because the ebbs and flows of life are complex. Showing strangers and people within our inner circle kindness can build new relationships, and lets loved ones know they’re special. It’s also a two-way street. Being kind to others encourages them to be kind to you, boosting your mood and long-term health. Jane Goodall once said, “The greatest danger to our future is apathy.” Maya Angelou stated, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Think about these powerful words. Goodall’s suggests the moment we stop showing concern towards others, our society is at risk of falling apart. Angelou points out a time will come when we’re no longer around. People will only have their memories of us. Accomplishing accolades and generating wealth are popular life goals, but are those all you want to be known for? What about being remembered as kind? Our lives must consist of giving and receiving kindness. Here …

Conjure up an image of a powerful leader. Who do you see? Is it a man? Probably. Was that intentional? Doubt it. Significant? Of course. As female leadership maven, Susan R. Madsen explains in her Raising Girls To Become Leaders TEDTalk, when people are asked to draw an image of a leader, the default is almost-aways to draw a man. Now, much like eating a salad doesn’t make you a vegetarian, being male doesn’t make you a leader. Yet, as Madsen points out, by ingrained societal default, leadership is still considered a masculine trait. It’s 2021 and we’re still weird about women and power and powerful women. Normalizing and encouraging leadership traits, actions and dreams in young girls is how we shift this misperception. When girls are raised with inherent knowledge that they can lead, they don’t go around looking for evidence and permission to do so. Rather, they naturally embody the leader archetype, and the world reflects this back to them. Society still differentiates between “engineers” and “female engineers”. Wanting your daughter to be chosen, or hoping she’s granted permission to lead is like rewatching Titanic and willing the boat to not sink. Being an active participant in molding her identity into that of a leader can be life-changing. We don’t shift our personal generational narratives about women and girls by waiting for someone else to do it. Rather, it’s through our intentional daily actions and conversations that we raise our girls into leaders. Here are four easy, research-backed actions you can adopt to …

Renée Trudeau is the award-winning author of Nurturing the Soul of Your Family and The Mother’s Guide to Self-Renewal. A sought after life balance coach/speaker, her work has appeared in The New York Times, Good Housekeeping, US News & World Report, Spirituality & Health and more. Trudeau graciously agreed to share the following guest post with Girls That Create. As we begin a new year and set resolutions, Trudeau wants you to remember self-care is not about improving yourself.  Self-Care is Not About Improving Yourself One Sunday morning I was lying in bed reading from author Anne Lamott’s beautiful little book Small Victories. In one of her stories about parenting, she shares with a little self-deprecation, but mostly tenderness, how she doesn’t bake for PTA fund raisers, is often disorganized and sometimes forgets to follow-through on updates from her son’s school. Her ability to accept who she is is both endearing and freeing. Her story got me thinking how so many people I meet have a misguided sense about the concept of self-care. I often hear a lot of “shoulds,” and many confess they downright suck at self-care. A a life balance coach/teacher, I have studied, explored, written books about and taught self-care to men and women globally for more than 20 years. I can wholeheartedly share that self-care–a practice that has changed my life more than any other– is NOT about: fixing yourself or turning yourself into a “makeover version” of you trying to become someone who “has it all together” or who’s always …