Daughters. God has blessed us parents with the incredibly complex task of raising up little girls to fulfill their own enormous potential as the strong, capable, loving, tender, resilient, caring, discerning, nurturing, empowering, partnering women that God intends them to be.

No problem. Piece of cake.

We have only one daughter, Shelli (self-named from her given name of Michelle), sandwiched between her two best friends, brothers Dano and Kevin. As such, she has grown up somewhat along the tomboyish side of things, playing sports and competing against her brothers. She has never been a girly girl. It’s fun that she knows more about football and hockey than anyone in the family. Pink frill has never been her thing. Her personality is unafraid and competitive. She has grown up to be an extremely composed, mature, intellectually sound and morally strong woman. She is now one of the most genuine, compassionate and caring people we know.

However growing up, Shelli was a handful. Her willpower and desire for independence was often a challenge to us. Shelli’s strengths – her verbal ability, her competitiveness, and her uncanny ability to find the cracks in our parenting instructions  – if left ungoverned, would overtake her and create challenges for her and the family. For example, her verbal abilities sometimes led her astray insofar as she would have difficulty with the truth. She said to her friend’s mother that Daddy often traveled to Australia. Not true. Her competitiveness also caused drama. She used recently gained information as a weapon that she lorded over her friends, one time telling the neighbor boy that Santa didn’t exist thereby bringing him to tears.  The number of times she pushed her little brother’s buttons because she knew how was epic.

All this may sound like she was a monster, but no, she was a wonderful little girl that needed parenting guidance from mom and dad.  Fortunately, our marriage was strong, so we had the time and energy to bring “Words of Life”* to her development.  “Honey, you need to be more truthful.” “Sweetie, you need to think about Johnny’s feelings and not tell him about Santa. His parents will decide that”. “You need to set a good example for your little brother while you play sports and show him what a good winner looks like and what a good loser looks like too.” Our parenting was definitely firm and didn’t sugar coat the fact we thought she had erred, but we didn’t want to break her spirit which was a strength. We just needed her to be more other-oriented and gracious, developing self control to manage her strengths and weaknesses.

Here are a couple anchor points that we found in raising our daughter:

  1. Family Orientation: Shelli has a natural family orientation to her. She has always needed to know that Mom and Dad are a team and are safely and securely the foundation of the Marr clan. From there she could explore life’s dramas from elementary school to Grad School knowing to her core that there is a safe place to go where life is stable. The best thing you can do for your kids is love your spouse.
  2. God Orientation: Shelli has thrived being a part of God’s family. At every meal our family would show appreciation for the enormous blessings God has showered upon us. All five of us took turns (and still do) saying Grace which Shelli soaked up. Shelli has also loved being a part of the church environment.
  3. Self understanding leads to self control: As an example, it’s part of the female blessing that girls learn at a very young age the art of manipulation. All the “mean girl” qualities flower during middle school years and beyond. But by educating Shelli to this issue, it helped her begin to see what the drama around her was about and how to minimize the hurt from other girls and, in turn, her from hurting them.

Another example where Dave played a big role well prior to “the change” (around 10) was when he would go into her room for goodnight prayers and talk about how Shelli’s relationship with Mom and Dad was about to change. He mentioned that in the not too distant future she might start to get upset with us seemingly for no reason. “Oh no Daddy, I’ll never do that”, she would respond. As a result of it being Daddy talking about this for months off and on, Shelli was more emotionally prepared for the swings that eventually came. It was a part of life we could prepare her for before it became reality. This gave her advanced insight into her body and how it would affect her emotions. She therefore knew both mom and dad had insights to her life she didn’t and were available for her to talk to about the new things in her life.

  1. Future Orientation: Getting Shelli to develop self discipline around her life – playing sports, playing the piano, doing homework, gaining self control – was as challenging as anything. One technique that seemed to work was one idea that came up, again, during the nighttime routine. “You know Shell, there’s an 18 year old Shelli calling back to me right now saying, ‘Daddy, make sure I do my best; make sure 12 year-old me understands how important it is that everything she does affects me!.’ So Shell, that 18 year-old needs me to do what Daddies are supposed to do and that is to encourage you to keep trying, keep doing your best so that she, the 18 year-old Shelli, can have the benefit of all that great work you’re doing now.” This actually worked. It was motivating for her that there was some other girl in the future that really needed Shelli to hang in there.

Shelli, more so than the boys, challenged us to get it right. Because her spirit has been more delicate and complex than either Dano or Kevin’s, we needed to refine our parenting approach to accommodate her more subtle nature. She required of us to be more consistent and intentional in thinking through what was going on and how to respond. In that way, Shelli helped us grow tremendously.

Such is the blessing of raising little girls.

Lis and Dave Marr

* from Parenting from the Tree of Life