4 Tips on How to Teach Your Daughter to Command Respect

The world needs more women who have the courage to step into their full potential.

Right now, women only account for around 13% of the top leadership positions within politics, and only around 15-16% of top leadership positions within corporate America.

These numbers have been the same since 2002. 

Women are just not making it to the top… anywhere.  

As parents who are raising the next generation of young girls, it’s our responsibility to  help instill self-confidence in our girls so they can dream big and accomplish anything they set their minds to. 

Whether your daughter dreams of being an actress, a professional athlete, a politician, or starting her own business… she’ll need to develop the leadership skills necessary to go all the way to the top. 

Commanding respect is important to teach at a young age, so that your daughter has the fundamental skills to achieve her dreams. 

Here are some tips on how to help your daughter grow up to be trailblazing, confident women who command respect and take charge of their futures… 

1. Teach her to believe in herself.

The more self worth and confidence your daughter has the easier it will be for her to command respect. 

When you believe in yourself. You command respect. 

The way to help our young daughters to start believing in themselves is to get them to step outside their comfort zones.

You can start small and work into the more intimidating steps. 

So, for example, if your daughter wants to be an actress, but she’s shy or doesn’t feel comfort doing auditions, you could:

1. Google a script from a play or movie she’s interested in.
2. Set up a phone or camera in her room and have her practice looking at the camera and memorizing the script.
3. Once she’s ready, have her perform for the family.

These simple steps can help your daughter get over the fear of putting herself out there and start to build confidence. Developing confidence will help your daughter believe in herself and her abilities, which is the first step to commanding respect. 

2. Teach her to be worthy of respect. 

Being worthy of respect starts with an important mindset: You're no better than anyone else. Nobody else is better than you.

There are a lot of sad things that are happening in the world… some of those things are rooted in entitlement. 

To help with this, be sure you are teaching your kids that nobody is better than anybody else, no matter how much money they make, or what they look like -  everyone is equal. 

Some good ways to teach your daughter how to earn respect are: 

1. Teach your kids to keep their commitments and do their part.
2. Show up when they’re supposed to show up.
3. Remind them - actions ALWAYS speak louder than words.

When your daughter is putting in the work, and following through with the commitments she makes, and working hard… she’ll feel it. She’ll know that she is worthy of respect, and she can command it. 

3. Don’t let her down play her success. 

Unfortunately, society tends to place women into two categories: You’re either humble… or you have an ego.

And oftentimes when women are vocal about their success they’re labeled as having an ego, so we tend to be meek and be humble, and downplay our successes. 

With our daughters, it’s SO crucial that we praise her process and help her accept compliments. 

If she worked really hard to get a good grade on a test, it’s important to praise the hard work. 

So, if you catch someone giving her a compliment, “Great job on the test” Her nature inclination might be, “it’s no big deal” 

Teach her instead to say, “Thank you so much, I worked very hard for that”

Teaching her not to downplay her success, will help her exponentially in commanding respect later in her life. 

4. Teach her to have confidence through body language. 

We’re moving into a world with less and less one on one contact. Everything is online, everything is over live videos and Zoom. 

Body language is so important in corporate America. It’s going to help your daughter say what she wants to say with conviction and help convey her confidence to others.  

Teaching your daughter how important it is to look directly into the person’s eyes when she’s talking to them, and how to shake hands, and other ways to posture herself - will come in handy when she walks into her boss’s office and asks for that promotion one day. 

We need to raise our girls to command respect, put themselves out there, ask for promotions and know their worth and what they truly deserve so we can change the huge disparity in leadership roles between men and women. 

And you don’t have to do it alone! Inside the Courage Academy we give you a community to lean on and all the skills and resources taught by trailblazing women, to help your daughter on her path to success.