Thoughts on Raising a Daughter (repost)

I'm reposting Thoughts on bullying and raising a daughter from last fall. Yesterday I listened to "Girls and Gears with Danielle Musto" on Mountain Bike Radio. In this episode she interviewed endurance racer Sonya (sounds like lasagna) Looney. While neither of them touched on the subject of bullying, they both recalled feeling out-of-place as young girls and emphasized how mountain biking and the community of cyclists changed their lives for the better.

I also watched a clip of the newly released "Singletrack High" that featured the women that race on the high school mountain bike team. Here's a clip:


Singletrack High - Sisters Who Shred from Pedal Born Pictures on Vimeo.

These testimonies speak to the desire of girls and women to be something more. There is a community of women who long for the opportunity to show independence, strength, and endurance. We aren't afraid of doing something hard, getting dirty or beat up.

Sometimes the soccer team, the orchestra, or science club just aren't enough. Sometimes a girl needs to be in the wild with nothing more than the strength of her body and determination to see herself through.

Thoughts on bullying and raising a daughter . . . (10/19/12)

This week I took my daughter out of school for a day of mountain biking. There's the obvious reason for this: riding single track is the awesomest. But there are underlying, significant reasons for encouraging my daughter to mountain bike and allowing her to miss school.

I'm not that old that I don't remember what it's like to be a kid. I remember school being everything. I couldn't imagine what my life would be like after I finished school. Almost all of my activities revolved around it: being on the school newspaper, sports teams, and choir. All of my friends were a part of that school community. And as kids do, I was labeled. Everyone was. Some kids had it better than others. No matter what 'label' you received, it followed you. It was oppressive. But you could always go home for a short reprieve.

For a lot of kids, school is their main, possibly only community. With the advent of social media and its penetrating waves into our homes and pockets it now gives that community 24/7 access into our lives. Bullying doesn't stay at school anymore, it follows kids every where they go.

Reading sad and frightening stories of bullying in school and the tragic results recently in the news has me on guard as a parent. I worry for my children.

Unfortunately I cannot protect them from every mean and hurtful action that they will undoubtedly experience.

What I can do is try to provide them with the tools they will need to deal with those situations and, if nothing else, give them a brief escape. I can encourage and provide them with opportunities to build their self-confidence. I can help them discover that they are so much more than what their peers label them as. I can expose them to communities outside of school: communities of strong, confident and positive people. And while education is very important, school in itself is not everything.

The other night Snoose was crying while telling me about being teased by her classmates. I wish I could steal that moment away, but I can't. So I asked Snoose to tell me about the time she raced at Pando. What does she feel when she thinks about that moment? What about the time she conquered the log piles at Fort Custer?

She said she was so proud of herself, it made her happy!

I told her to remember those moments because it will help remind her of who she is: a strong, persevering, and capable person and not what someone else tells her.