Five Ways To Protect Your Daughter While Letting Her Chart Her Own Path
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Through neuroimaging, we know a mother’s voice activates reward circuits in a child’s brain. Amazing, right? Our voices imprint on our kids!
Even in utero, a baby recognizes and responds to a mother’s voice. Studies show the profound influence a mother’s voice has on her child’s cognitive, emotional, and social function even when her daughter has been adopted or she came into her daughter’s life at a later time.
A mother’s voice reduces stress and increases the hormone associated with bonding.
Because of the primary position a mother holds, a mother’s voiceprint has a tremendous impact on her daughter’s development.
It is easy to forget, especially when our daughter is chartering her own path or we have hit a rough patch in parenting, that our voices are powerful instruments in her development.
We all have ‘tapes’ that play in our heads.
The ‘tapes’ or voices in our heads become self-talk. Often those ‘tapes’ sound just like our mother’s voice. Often those voices help us make good choices, like when we hear our mother’s voice reminding us not to touch a hot stove. Other times, our mother’s voice, if highly critical, can mess with our self-esteem.
I cringe to think about the tape that might play in my daughter’s head. I said some pretty horrible things when she was younger. I was an imperfect mom. I was tired, frazzled, stressed, impatient, angry, and sometimes just plain hungry. I wasn’t Mary Poppins every day, that’s for sure. I was, and still am, flawed.
But, thankfully, our girls don’t need perfection.
They need our presence, our persistence. Our girls are resilient. You can change the trajectory of your daughter’s life by being perfectly imperfect, by being proactive, supportive, and loving. Our girls are still malleable. They haven’t been hardened by life or circumstances yet. They are still available for your love and guidance.
