Entries Tagged 'Mother-Daughter Emotional Osmosis' ↓

Robin Marantz Henig and Jess Zimmerman (of Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty Fame) wrote a piece about bodies, fat and the mother-daughter relationship.

It pushed about every button I have. I’ve been in an internal debate with myself ever since I read it last week: as the mother, as the daughter, as the writer, as the health conscious, as the overweight one, as the girl advocate, as the typically aesthetic one, and as the spiritual being in a physical body.

I’ll encourage you to have your own emotional reaction when you read The Fat Fight on Oprah.com.

I invite you to come back to The Girl Revolution and tell me what you think. I’d love to hear what other readers, mothers and daughters think about the fat issue.

There appear to be a great many still-existing Brick Walls in front of girls and women. Take this article Guys Still Hog Role of Intellectual Heavy Weight, which examines my professional frustrations.

My own Brick Wall is generally in the form of The Family Budget. Sometimes I, unfairly, imagine my husband as the guard dog protecting the wall.

When we come on brick walls we need to ask ourselves some questions and teach our daughters to do that same:

Scale it?

Have someone give me a lift?

Hack away at it little by little?

Tunnel under it?

Go around it?

Jump over it?

Chisel a hole through it?

Bomb it with dynamite?

Melt it?

Deconstruct it?

Remove it?

Climb it?

Who can help me get over it?

Who can I take with me?

You get the picture.

Rethink your Brick Walls.

(Image here)

Is there a more complicated relationship than the mother-daughter relationship?

Criss-crossing between generations, clashing over the drastically-changing cultural expectations taking place over the last three generations, and always battling the temptation to strive for and expect perfection the mother-daughter relationship bares examination.

Several new books are attempting the feat and they are reviewed at Women’s eNews in Writers Advise High Tech Moms to Power Down.

Perfect, perfect, perfect! Why are we trying to be so perfect and demanding this odd-sort of perfection from our daughters? The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence by Rachel Simmons asks.

This book draws connects the dots between Good Mother and Good Girl roles. I agree, there is a direct connection.

Essentially, a mother holds herself to a standard of perfection and then inflicts the same harsh standard on her daughter.

Last year, I might have thought this had nothing to do with me.

This year, I can see this sort of girl culture and feminine generational inheritance with more clarity. To be honest, while reading this book I felt conflicted.

There are some very insightful passages like this one siting Deborah Tannen’s  You’re Wearing That?: Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation, “It is as if mothers are emotional lightening rods, absorbing and grounding the emotions — both negative and positive — that are swirling around the family.” My children do not share their emotions with their father. They rarely tantrum, they save it for me. All for me. At times it’s more bonding, at times its just emotionally exhausting.

Still, reading much of the book and the premises’ around angry emotions and girls’ lashing out, I kept thinking, does this woman even have children?” I find it difficult to take parenting advice from those who have no personal, first-hand experience.

The book is written primarily, from the point of view of the child. Which, while a valid perspective doesn’t always make great parenting advice.

“Before I began interviewing mothers, I assumed they would use the unconditional bond with their daughters to resist the Good Girl limits on conflict in relationships. Certainly, plenty do. Yet many mothers said their need to repair conflict with their daughters was just as powerful as, if not more unbearable than, the urgency they felt with other intimates. An angry daughter evoked fear and isolation. Several located their anxiety in the fear that their daughters didn’t “like” them. The sense of disconnection and separation was overwhelming.”

I find the sentiments in the above paragraph very frustrating to read. Before she began talking to mothers, she believed they were emotionally super-human and never had upset or negative feelings about their daughters being angry at them?

“The girls were communicating a need to be angry and in conflict, and their mothers could not fulfill the request.”

The talking back disrespectfully and aggressively, tantrum throwing, name-calling and door slamming is right. in. your. face. and. directed. at. you.

I want my daughter to learn to be happy. Not learn to be angry. Angry is easy, at least for me. Happy, as a skill, is both a lot more fun and a lot harder.

What happens to real women who don’t play by Good Mother, Good Girl or Good Wife rules? Just look at how many women hate Kate Gosselin.

Maybe I want to be a Good Mother and this book made me defensive. I know that I need to find a way to make Ainsley’s anger less painful and traumatizing to me.  Yet, I still have to parent and make her do chores and homework and eat healthy foods. Asking her to do these things sometimes provokes her anger. Obviously, I want to respond properly to that emotion. I’m not quite convinced of what the proper way is after reading this book.

There are, to be fair, some very good exercises to use when daughters are overreacting in their “freak-out voice,” teaching your daughter how to accept criticism, good communication strategies that work in any relationship.

Broadcasters and government officials have put the scare on about N1H1 virus reeking havoc on the new school year. There is still no vaccine.

I have only one solution to offer – Thieves. This bottle of essential oils combines the oils thieves and looters used to rob plague victims in France, without getting the plague.

This proprietary blend of Eucalyptus, cinnamon, clove, rosemary and others, was tested at Weber State University and found to have killed 99.96 percent of airborne bacteria. Rub 1 drop on your kids (don’t forget yourself and husband) or put a drop in their cereal before school and maybe they won’t get this flu virus that has everyone hollering pandemic.

I can’t promise anything, but my logic goes like this: if it can make you immune to the plague, what’s a little flu?

Email me or leave a comment and I’ll order you some for $41.78. (If I get a justifiable amount of interest I’m thinking of becoming an official distributor.)