My twin 10-year-old daughters sauntered into my bedroom recently while they were getting ready for school. They love to get dressed with me in the morning. I think it’s hilarious that my twins are already doing so much priming and prepping.
One of my daughters looked at me in the mirror and said, “Did you know that girls are going to take over the world”. I looked at her in astonishment, smiled and said, “Absolutely, there is no doubt about that in my mind”. She said her cafeteria-monitor at school, an older gentleman, told her and a group of friends that during lunch. “There are more females graduating from college than men these days, he said.” Then he gave the girls a quiz to test how they smart they are. I asked my daughter how she and her friends did on the quiz. She said, “Mom, we nailed it of course!” I thought to myself, Isn’t it cool that a cafeteria monitor is instilling in these young girls such a positive message.
Lately, my three girls have gotten into watching educational YouTube videos. The other day they invented what I thought was a weird way to paint rocks. They gathered a bunch of rocks from our backyard and got out their crayons. They wanted to put the rocks in the oven with the crayons on top. I immediately thought, Oh no, this is going to be a good mess! But they insisted that their “experiment” would be successful and showed me the video on how to do it. Their rocks came out of the oven absolutely beautiful. I asked my girls what they learned from that experiment. They said, “How you can use nature to make beautiful things”. That lead to a discussion about all the beautiful things in nature and led to a discussion about what we can do to protect the environment.
We came up with a list of environmental projects that we could do to make a positive impact on our environment. One of my daughters turned to me and said, “I want to do something when I grow up to help the world”. Wow! A project to color rocks with crayons turned into a conversation about what we can do to protect our environment, and a declaration by one of my daughters to step up to help the world. Another daughter is teaching herself how to play the piano on YouTube. She wants to be a pop star when she grows up. I have encouraged her big dreams, and she is putting in the work at age seven to pursue them.
Now, do I believe that women are truly going to take over the world, or even that would be a good thing? No. What I do know is that we are seeing more and more women in leadership positions impacting the world. I believe the nation’s new female leaders will counterbalance male-dominated executive positions. Women serving in leadership roles offer diversity in thought and approach that will help our society move to the next level and help men in senior-level positions make more balanced, well-rounded decisions. Our children are our future leaders. Our nation and our world will soon depend upon a new generation of bold, creative leaders to help steer and manage our destiny.
By instilling confidence in our young children – male and female – we will arm them with a potent weapon — the unwavering belief that they can actually impact the world.