Verified by 
In one month, my daughter heads to Kindergarten. Naturally, there’s a range of parental feeling sending a child off to what begins 12 years of potential formal schooling. Last year, on the first day of Kindergarten, a mom posted a picture that went viral of her jokingly having a drink in her bathrobe at 8 a.m. as her daughter leaves for school. Some thought it hilarious, others glommed onto it as a chance to be judgey. Moms have said to me—take the day off work on her first Kindergarten day because you’re going to lose it at drop-off, with the emphasis on lose it. There will be tears and the long goodbye, with the adorable back pack in view as she marches off to be taken care of by other people for a whole day according to their schedule. And we won’t start to talk about how schools feel more vulnerable, less safe, and more rigid than ever before.
In this cocktail of emotion, I wanted to give my daughter advice I wish I’d received. Kindergarten is supposed to be a joyous time. If you went to a non-struggling school, maybe you had a bunny in your class? Naptime with story? Cookies and milk? A kind teacher who seemed to know everything? Art projects galore? But too quickly these moments of seeming innocence lead to challenges for girls, especially, as gender norms close in.
Girls become obsessed with pleasing others, doing for others, performing for others—seeing themselves through others. Is it too early to think about gender in Kindergarten? As a gender scholar, I’d say no. It’s never too early to form strong girl habits that lead to strong girl identity. When I think back to myself in Kindergarten and look at photos from that time, I appear wilting and quiet. I don’t remember having moxie, gumption, spit. I was already a little too compliant and far too good. I want a freer, happier future for my girl, so these are the seven things I would tell her:
1. Be Useful, Not Pretty
Early on girls learn to look at themselves through a mirror, to be objects, not subjects. Being an object means looking at yourself through someone else’s gaze. Every girl can recite, “Mirror, mirror on the wall: who’s the fairest of them all?” The Evil Queen in Snow White is tragic not because she asks that question but because the viewer knows that the worst thing in the world for a girl to be is: ugly. To be ugly is to be cursed. Girls worry more about what other people think of them rather than whether they can solve problems in their community. Learning to be useful means you matter beyond appearance. Princess Leah or Carrie Fisher recently said it best when critiqued that she had the nerve to age, “Youth and beauty are not accomplishments. They’re the temporary happy by-products of time or DNA.”
2. Be Kind, Not Nice
“Be nice!” How many times have girls been told—with a finger wag—to be nice, which essentially means: behave. Be nice is an instruction for girls to not step out of their place, to be obedient but not defiant. “Be nice!” is a command to perform for someone else. Being kind, by contrast, means having empathy or the ability to “feel with” someone else. Being kind means not operating out of fear and learning to embrace those different from yourself. Being kind arises from the inside not the outside. Girls need instruction to be inwardly not outwardly driven.
3. Be Angry, Not Vengeful
Voice your anger. Don’t turn it inward into depression. There’s an established gender gap in depression: according to the Mayo Clinic, women are twice as likely as men to be diagnosed with depression. And don’t turn that anger on other women. Rosalind Wiseman’s book and then movie “Mean Girls” popularized the idea of “horizontal hostility” or when those who feel weak and disempowered turn their anger toward those equally disempowered. Instead show models of anger rather than suppression. Read Molly Bang’s book, When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry to show girls how to express real anger. Tell social justice stories in which anger gets used for the good like Susan Meyer’s New Shoes where black girls in the Jim Crow South create their own second hand shoe store after the humiliation of shopping in white-only shoe stores. Their anger is righteous and leads to not only their own empowerment but their community’s.
4. Be Curious, Not Reticent
Girls learn quickly to be cool is to be not smart. They display their smartness quietly and take up less space. Taking a seat at the table and raising your hand high, even as early as Kindergarten, is not just for Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In. Our house loves Doc McStuffins because she’s a curious problem solver. Prize knowing something interesting above appearing cool. When adult women do self-inventory, where are we reticent, withdrawing from a challenging situation rather than staying curious even if it’s uncomfortable? We can model curiosity for little girls. Author Lisa Bloom has terrific advice from Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-Down World. The next time you see a little girl, don’t comment on her clothing first. Don’t lead with that’s such a pretty dress or your hair looks so cute. Instead get down on her level and ask her a question about her mind that cultivates curiosity like: what’s your favorite book right now? What animals do you like? What’s your favorite game to play? Give her the gift of loving her mind and let it affirm your own.
5. Be Imperfect, Not Finished
Girls used to be sent to finishing school. My mom taught the “hospitality badge” or how to answer the phone, set the table, and write thank you notes. All those skills are valuable but I wish I knew how to tie knots and build a one match fire which I know the Girl Scouts do now. There’s new research on the plague of “perfectionism” for girls that leads to real mental health issues like self-harm or cutting, anorexia, and depression. Perfection is paralyzing because it makes girls risk-averse. The well-known Carol Dweck in Mindset urges us to have a “growth mindset” rather than “fixed mindset” about intelligence, understanding that intelligence can be cultivated with hard work and is not innate. Dweck did studies on girls facing STEM challenges in the 8th grade. What she found, I also see at the college level: girls have equivalent, sometimes superior, grades and intelligence to boys but when faced with a challenge, girl self-esteem plummets and they feel incapable and quit. We need to imagine imperfection not as flawed, a dud, a lemon, but as more captivating, intriguing, and ultimately more creative than perfection.
6. Be Funny, Not Sullen
Girls who make their own jokes, laugh loudly, and are witty are often considered unfeminine. Unfortunately, many comedians and critics still think that women are not funny. Comedy scholar, Dr. Gina Barreca tells us in a Forbes interview, “Conventional femininity in our culture is still associated with passivity; good girls are, like children, seen and not heard….Obviously, women who are funny are heard as well as seen: funny women are assertive because humor is assertive. Humor, listen to this! You’ll get a kick out of it!” A woman behind the microphone, behind the writing or drawing on the page or simply the one holding the rapt attention of those involved in a discussion is still a woman in a remarkable position: she’s in control.” When I spoke with Barreca, she challenged me with this question: how many women in positions of power, that you know of, are funny? I had a hard time coming up with names. I could, however, name numerous men in positions of power whose humor is essential to their leadership. To be funny means to stop thinking about yourself and take up space.
7. Be Valiant, Not Timid
As a young girl, I read the comic strip Prince Valiant and found it totally confusing. Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur, which is the full title that’s likely clarifying, is a comic started in the 1930s. It’s a lot of medieval fighting with many characters but few women. When my daughter was three a boy said to her, “girls can’t be superheroes.” She actually had to ask, “Can girls be superheroes?” We stopped foaming at the mouth to respond with a calmer, “of course.” There are still not enough heroic options for girls to choose from—I mean what would we do without Wonder Woman? Girls need to see themselves as valiant, as someone who saves a city, a kingdom, a world, a galaxy. Girls need to write themselves into their own lionhearted adventure.
These are my seven pieces of advice for my daughter before kindergarten. The truth is they still apply to me, the teacher. Edmond H. Fischer famously said, “a teacher fails if he (sic) has not been surpassed by his students.” I can only hope it’s true in this case: little girl, surpass me, please.
