Girls

Being a mom of two girls is so hard. There are so many struggles they face that boys simply won't - breasts, menstruation, weight... the list goes on and on. Today, a thought hit me. One of the things I don't want my girls to learn that they unfortunately will is that girls just suck. I mean, I love being a woman and individual women are wonderful and intelligent and generous and loving and so many other things. But once you get a group of women together? We aren't all that great sometimes. Consider the group of three girlfriends. That old saying "two's company, three's a crowd" really happens all too often. Two girls can get along. They can argue and usually work things out. Throw a third girl in the mix and trouble's a brewin'. Sometimes, the third girl has to pick a side. Sometimes, the third girl wants to come between one and two. How can I explain to my girls that this is just the way the world works and that they have to learn to get along with lots of different people at lots of different times? Last night, I was surrounded by a group of women who are all leaders and are teaching girls about community service, friendship and becoming a woman. What a difficult job this is. How are we, as women and mothers, supposed to teach these girls about humility and fairness? How can we teach them not to be bullies? How not to constantly criticize themselves and others? Tomorrow, I will be surrounded by a group of women that helped shape my college years when I attend my sorority reunion. I wonder how these women have changed, how they are changing the world. But as I think about these ladies, I think about my own struggle with being a mom of girls. It was hard enough when I was a kid but girls today face even more scrutiny than generations before. How can I teach my girls to forgive bullies when I can't even handle feeling wronged by women that I trusted and considered friends? I can barely get my girls to be nice to each other sometimes - so can I make sure they will always be nice to other girls? Why don't guys have these problems? I wish all I cared about was baseball!