Being a girl mom is extremely reqarding. I am blessed to be mom to a beautiful, confident and self loving pre-teen girl. Preparing for back to school requires lots of planning and preparation. Gone are the days where I make back to school list, walk into Target and buy all that I planned for her to use for the new school year.
Evolving As your Pre-Teen Evolves
Evolution is the name of the game with children, especially pre-teen girls. Here are steps I take to build and maintain a strong relationship with my pre-teen daughter.
Maintain Open Line of Communication with your Pre-teen
Communication is like magic. A Child who knows how to communicate effectively has the skills to change the world. On an episode of the What I Wish My Mother Taught Me, my guest Anna Scoby talks about effective communication.
Establishing and maintaining open lines of communication with your daughter from an early age, will enable both of you to have open lines od communications as she grows into her pre-teen, teen and adult years.
Open lines of communicarion is helpful when preparing for back to school because you can plan better, your pre-teen will feel comfortable talking to you about her needs, her concerns about the new school year, what she is lookign forward to in the new school year and so much more.
Embrace Who She Is
In order to direct and support your pre-teen, you must allow her authentic self to be front and center, then you can coach, guid, correct and help her be fully present to the world.
My pre-teen loves to look amaing, her hair must be well put togther, her edges must be done “on point,”, her skin care is important to her. Now it was difficult to accept th importance of these things, but I came to realize that she is who she is and I must embrace her love of all things beauty and fashion and support it.
Example of how to do this, we make testing of skin care products a fun excercise. I allow her to research beauty brands, purchase sample sizes and test them on her skin for a few weeks to ensure she likes the products and to test how her skin reacts.
You can also achieve this by celebrating the new aspects of the school year. For us, it’ll be my pre-teens first year as a cheerleader and a competitive dancer. To celebrate her talents and accomplisments; I plan on making baskets with little gifts to show love, support and my pride as a mom.
Allow Your Pre-Teen to Experiment
I am a conservative mother, certain clothes on my pre-teen girl, short shorts, crop tops, etc. make me uncomfortable. However, I understand that times are changing and my pre-teen has her own style and I have to be open to her experimenting with her style.
I encourage my pre-teen to keep and share with me a running list of clothing items she likes, with links so that I can keep up with her style and purchase the items she likes and I approve of.
What are your plans for back to school? share in the comments.
One Comment
Kacy Chambers
Pre-teens are hard. I have a pre-teen daughter. Thanks for the tips!!