Lecture Teaches Parents ‘Girls Will be Girls’

Chutzpah may be the key to helping little girls become confident women with high self-esteem.

"Let your daughter make mistakes, fall on her butt and get up," Joann Deak, PhD told a room full of more than 500 parents last night at Newman Elementary School in Needham at a talk entitled "Girls Will be Girls: Raising Confident and Courageous Daughters." 

Deak, past chair of the National Committee for Girls and Women in Independent Schools is an educator and psychologist as well as the author of several books on female development, was in Needham for the fourth lecture in the 2009/2010 ParentTalk lecture series.

And this talk drew a crowd that backed traffic up for blocks outside the school.  

"This is the largest lecture in the history of ParentTalk," Co-President Rebecca Tarantino told the auditorium full of parents, most of whom had at least one child under the age of 10.  

The talk, which followed a half-hour book signing and light snack reception, drew special attention at least in part, because of the Phoebe Prince bullying story.  Prince was the Irish 15-year-old who had recently moved to Western Mass. and hanged herself in January after being horrifically bullied at school.  

The children who bullied Prince are now being prosecuted and the story has brought bullying onto the national stage. Because of this, many attendees were particularly concerned with the social dynamics among young girls.

And Deak had a lot to say on the topic.

"The first two decades of our lives shape the brain—the emotional memory was designed to be built in the first 20 years," Deak explained, delving into why bullying at school is so significant to the emotional development of young girls and women.  

According to Deak, the female brain is very different from the male brain.  Girls are much more sensitive to the emotions and feelings of others, which is a positive in some ways: girls are more attune, they catch social signals boys miss.  But it can also be a negative.

Or, as Deak put it, "We hurt more."

In the past, Deak, who calls the ages from 10-20 years "the magic decade," has led workshops in bullying at the elementary and middle school level and always tells the children she works with that "(they) are the neurosculptor(s) of the kid you bully."  

It is not just the victim who is affected by bullying, either.  All of the children who watch the bullying are also affected.  Even the bully him or herself is affected.

"If you bully, you might as well wear a sign that says 'something is wrong with me,'" said Deak who went on to explain that there is no evolutionary explanation for meanness just to be mean.  In fact, according to Deak, there is no explanation for such behavior short of some sort of deficiency or problem on the part of the bully.

The talk lasted just under two hours, which for Deak—who kept the crowd laughing—was very short.  "I never accept speaking engagements under three hours," she told an amused crowd who listened intently as she explained the different brain chemistry that makes 80 percent of males and 80 percent of females.  Of course, in both sexes, there are also the "20-percenters."  

These "20-percents," are, according to Deak, more similar to the opposite sex in terms of interests and emotional development than their own.  For instance, a male "20-percenter" may be more attune to the emotions of others and be able to read faces while a "20-percenter" girl might be more pulled towards the blocks and building toys than the ones that help develop language.  

The key to helping both boys and girls develop emotionally is to go against their gender grain, to help them do the things that scare them or build the skills that might not have been as strong from birth.  "You must hug the monster," Deak joked.  For boys, this means talking about feelings.  

For girls, who release oxytocin—"the cuddle hormone"—when they are frightened, this means building the "fight response" or the courage that comes more naturally to boys.  

To illustrate her point, Deak showcased a photo of a 5-year-old boy leaping into a pile of raked fall leaves.  "He is wired to make this jump," Deak told the laughing crowd.  "Of course girls approach it differently."  They might poke the pile with leaves before they jump or, "wait until they see if he survives the jump."   

"It is smarter to think about it first in many ways," Deak said.  Still, her point to parents in the crowd was to encourage their girls to take big risks.  

 "A girl who does not take risks," she said, "will not build the resilience she needs."

ParentTalk's next talk on "Answering the Tough Questions Kids Ask" is scheduled for May 11 at 7 p.m. at North Hill in Needham.  For more information, see their website (www.parenttalk.info).