Go Girls!

I have had girls on my mind lately. Specifically how to raise girls to have confidence and a good relationship with their parents and pride in their accomplishments and a positive sense of self and aspirations for the future. I am acutely aware of the mistakes I want to avoid with my daughters. All of this was on my mind when I picked Ariel up from school. We had 20 minutes to wait in the car at Adriana's bus stop and Annika and Dallin had fallen asleep, so I took the opportunity to chat. I wanted to start a conversation to get her thinking about her strengths. First I asked her about her favorite subject and it was hands down reading. She has discovered chapter books and reading for pleasure. I tried a different angle to start the conversation.
"Ariel do you know what talents are?"
"Uh, yeah," Her intonation was like, "Duh Mom, I'm not a baby."
"Well, who gave us our talents?"
"G-O-D, and Jesus," She is really into spelling things lately.
"Do you know why Heavenly Father and Jesus gave us talents?"
"So we could feel special," Now, that one made me think a bit.
"What would happen if someone didn't feel special?"
"They would be sad."
"And then what?"
"They would die."
"So people die if they don't feel special?"
"No, just kidding."
She may have been kidding, but there is something to it. Tomorrow I want to continue the conversation but explore other reasons why we are given talents (maybe to bless others' lives, or to become a better person), and help her identify some of hers. Lately I feel like most of the time I am telling her what not to do, or what to do, and I feel like she is getting just a lot of negative vibes from me, so I want to start replacing those with some positive ones.
I like that idea of replacing the bad for the good. On my mission when we were asking our investigators to start living new commandments like keeping the Sabbath day holy or paying tithing, or keeping the Word of Wisdom or the Law of chastity, they were most successful if they could replace old habits with new habits so that they didn't fall back into old ways. Whenever we taught about the Word of Wisdom, we always brought herbal tea with us because tea is such an integral part of the Ukranian diet. One lady actually said, "If you don't drink tea, what do you drink?" Uh, water.
Anyway, my point is that I want to build positive relationships with my daughters and teach them to turn to the Lord, because I think that is their only hope for surviving the adolescent and young adult years.

Here is an unrelated picture that makes me smile. Sometimes I wonder if I would be a lot worse mom if my kids weren't so cute. It is one of those survival of the fittest things right, that the young have to be cute so the adults don't throw them out because they can't fend for themselves.Just look at those toes!