Chapter Two

       The Chance to be Wild and Time to be a Child

      “Even as young as two, the world puts limits onto girls. We have to encourage our daughters to be adventurous and brave, to help them stay in touch with their wild nature. And we have to fight the forces that want to steal their childhood away.”

      Get a group of parents together anywhere in the world today, and start them talking about girls. Within three minutes I guarantee you will hear these words: ‘They are growing up too fast.’

      These parents aren’t talking about the age-old feeling that our children are up and gone before we know it, but something new and much more concerning. In just one generation, many childhoods have been snapped in half by new forces, unprecedented in history. Effectively, girls have lost four or more years of childhood. You will see the effects of this everywhere you go – ‘adultified’ girls of twelve or thirteen with cleavages self-consciously displayed and faces covered in make-up, dressed to kill (possibly from pneumonia), stressing out over how boys might judge them. And being neither happy nor free.

      Mothers and fathers everywhere say that ‘fourteen is the new eighteen’. And given what we know about the massive changes in the brain in those four years, and all the learning that takes place – how very different we are at eighteen from fourteen – that has to be a problem.

      Think back to your own teenage years. At eighteen you were starting to make choices about sex, drugs and alcohol, your own safety, and so on, which were complex and difficult. You were dealing for the first time with unpleasant or unscrupulous people, outside the safe circles of family and friends. And you were finding it a challenge. Even at eighteen, being eighteen is hard. But at fourteen (or these days, more often, twelve) girls are so ill-equipped – unpractised in separating emotion from thought, their confidence based entirely on bluff, their brains still not properly formed. They will struggle to deal with these choices, and so, increasingly, their lives may fall apart at this vulnerable age.

      Let’s be clear – most girls still turn out fine. We help them, support them and arm them against the excesses of the culture, and they turn into wonderful strong women. Three out of five girls still do this. But one in five does not. They go so far off the rails that their adult life is really impaired.

      Another one in five goes through some sort of a crisis, which galvanizes their family to action, and they pull through. But that still means way too many girls having way too hard a time.

      A girl needs to be strong. Where that comes from is being tuned into her own nature, trusting her feelings and instincts. Having physical confidence. And growing slowly, getting all her abilities – mental and physical – unfolding as they were intended to through millions of years of human development. And it’s very early on – in the years from two to five – that we can make the most difference to her resilience. This is where we can sow the seeds of a girl who enjoys being the age she is, and isn’t rushed into fake grown-upness. If you grow slow, you grow strong.

      HOW FREE AND WILD WERE YOU?

      For younger mothers and fathers aged in their late twenties and thirties, some of these changes were already starting in your own childhood. We are not assuming here that the past was good. It’s important to look at what you bring to this stage from your own background.

      Can you remember the time in your childhood when you were most happy and free?

      What age was that?

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      What was great about it?

      What did other people do, if anything, to make it possible?

      Was there a time in your childhood when you felt you were NOT happy and free? What age was that?

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      What happened to make you feel that way?

      What could others have done, that they did not do, to have helped you at that time?

      It may be that this has reminded you of sad or hard times in your life. Breathe deep and notice that this was a long time ago. You are here now. Well done for having got through those times and becoming a loving and involved mother or father, wanting to do it better for your own girl or girls. Or it may be that you realized people really did pretty well in raising you. And you appreciate that more.

      There is nothing better to help us be a sensitive parent than remembering what our own childhood was like. If you do that, you will know so much more about how to be the mother or father your daughter needs.

       KEEPING HER FREE

      It’s important to think about how great girlhood can be, and not settle for less. Girlhood – before puberty comes along – can be a wonderful time of life. Unworried by concerns about the opposite sex – or totally dismissive of them – free in her body, bold in her actions, able to be creative without fearing judgement, loving the world of animals and nature, affectionate with friends of both sexes, enjoying her parents’ company. How we wish this time would last for ever. And there is no reason why it shouldn’t.

      But we parents have to do two things to make sure this is the case. First, we have to encourage and nurture her exploratory and wild self, so that it grows strong and lasts all her life. And second, we have to fence out the toxic messages that have sprung up around girls in recent years. This means we have to be choosy about what media we bring or let into our own home and even think about how our own attitudes can affect her without us knowing it. (For often the problems girls have also affected their mothers first.) Only by doing both these things-’powering up’ and ‘fencing out’, can we create the conditions for a strong happy woman to grow.

      The age range from two to five is where this needs to begin. But you can work to correct this at any age. Remember when you filled in the profile of your daughter’s girlhood back at the start of the book? If you rated this second stage – exploration – at three stars or less, then there is plenty you can do at eight or fourteen or even later to help her bring her strong, ‘wild’ self to life.

      In fact you may need to do some remedial ‘rewilding’ of yourself to be really happy as a mum or dad, and pass on this permission to your daughter as well.

      Let’s make a baseline assessment of how exploratory, adventure-loving and confident

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