Raising Worry-Free Girls
Raising Worry-Free Girls: Helping Your Daughter Feel Braver, Stronger, and Smarter in an Anxious World
By: Sissy Goff
[Fulfilled ‘Parenting book or book about relationships’ prompt as part of Shelf Reflection’s 2024 Reading Challenge]
[I’m not sure if this influences your interest in this book or not, but Sissy Goff is, as far as I know, not related to or married to Bob Goff.]
“It’s never been more important to talk about how the trouble your child will experience can lead to resilience. We want her to learn how she can see difficulties as opportunities. And, ultimately, how God can and will use hurt in her life—even big hurt—for her good and His glory.”
This is an excellent book and resource for parents to use to help their kids cope with anxiety and worrying. I can see myself referring back to it a lot over the years as different worries manifest for my daughters. I would definitely recommend owning this one and sharing it with your parent-friends.
You can also get the workbook that goes along with this that your daughter works through. There is one for younger girls and one for teens. I got the younger one and at first glance (she hasn’t gone through it yet) looks easy for her to follow and understand. I think she will like having her ‘own’ book.
This would still work for boys but I think the root of their anxiety may come from different places. It is written specifically for girls. David Thomas works in the same counseling practice as Sissy Goff and has written the book Wild Things and Raising Emotionally Strong Boys for boys that may be a good option if you’re a parent to boys. I plan to read at least the first one of those as well.
I should disclaim first as Sissy does herself in the book— this book is NOT meant to replace therapy or counseling for kids with severe anxiety disorders. Some kids may need extra help.
I will also say that I have plans to read Bad Therapy by Abigail Shrier and The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt that both talk about anxiety. I’m curious to see how those correlate (or not) with this book.
Sissy’s book is meant to provide tools and understanding for parents to handle their children’s anxiety and worries. She mentions how there is an epidemic of anxiety. When she started counseling she said maybe 1 in 20 kids came in wanting to talk about anxiety. Now it’s 16 in 20.
I believe Shrier and Haidt’s books speak to this epidemic and exploring what may be causing it. One of those reasons is the popularity and trend in being able to say you have anxiety or depression. It may be a parent’s overemphasis on their feelings and ruminating on them, trying to figure them out. I’ll learn more once I read those books.
In light of that, I think as you read Sissy’s book you should be careful not to project feelings on your daughters that they may not have. Sissy even says that just because they experience anxious thoughts or worries or sad thoughts, doesn’t mean they have anxiety or depression. Those are all normal things everyone deals with. We don’t want to make the worries bigger than they are. We want to help our kids as they struggle, but use your best judgment on whether your kids just need a few reminders or tips on calming down, they need more therapy, or they’re somewhere in between.
Raising Worry-Free Girls is broken into three parts: Understanding, Help, and Hope.
Understanding: These chapters talk about what anxiety/worry is and why she may be struggling with it (i.e. technology, peer pressure, genetics, environment, temperament, parenting styles, experiences etc.) It assures readers that this book will help create perspective for both the parent and the child which is essential for knowing how to move forward.
Help: These chapters talk about how ‘The Worry Monster,’ as she calls it, affects our children’s bodies (logic, reasoning, breathing, tummies, amygdala in the brain’s response), minds (catastrophic thinking, exaggerated thinking, underestimated ability, etc), and hearts (safety, comfort, bravery, etc). There are lots of practical tools/exercises/questions here to help her start fighting and ‘bossing back’ her Worry Monster.
Hope: These chapters look at what the Bible says about fear, worry, courage, trust, waiting, wisdom, etc. Anxiety is essentially a lack of trust. What bolsters our trust? Knowing the One who created us and this world, the One who holds it together, the One who holds us and our futures in our hands, and why that is the most comforting thing. And our ultimate hope is eternal and cannot be taken away from us. There is security in that.I like that she encourages your daughter to find her own verse that speaks to her heart and have her write it down and memorize it to bring back in troubled times.
She does talk a tiny bit about the Enneagram. I know there are mixed feelings about the Enneagram. I tend to fall on the side of not putting much stock in it or spending much time trying to understand or utilize it. I won’t get into that now, but if you’re like me, be assured, the foundation of this book is not founded on that material even though she mentions it. I didn’t feel uncomfortable with any statements she made.
I won’t re-explain all the tools she does in the book. It’s better if you read them yourself along with the real-life examples of girls she has seen in her office and how these tools helped them, but I will share a few of the things that stuck out to me.
“Much of a child’s response to trauma has to do with ours.”
“Children of anxious parents are as much as seven times more likely to develop an anxiety disorder than children who don’t have anxious parents.”
Even if your kids aren’t showing signs of anxiety now, if you are an anxious person, this book may be helpful for you to read before your own anxiety influences them! They learn how to respond to things by watching us. We need to do the work, ourselves, to manage our stress or worries and model for our kids a healthy perspective. It’s not just our emotional response or physical response but also the language we use around those things. It shapes how our kids understand and learn how to perceive their own struggles.
For that reason, I recommend this book to any parent regardless of where their child is on the anxiety spectrum.
Another way parents hinder their children’s ability to deal with anxiety is by helping them avoid the feeling.
“they rescue, they fix, they help her avoid the situations that trigger the fear. But when you rescue her, you’re communicating to her that she needs rescuing. You’re telling her the situation is a frightening one and she’s not capable of handling it.”
“If we solve our kids’ problems for them, they don’t develop the ability to problem-solve, which I believe is one of the primary deterrents of anxiety.”
Just like exposure therapy, our kids can’t learn how to handle something if they never experience it. It’s okay for them to feel fear and worry and anxious thoughts. Then we help them use their tools to navigate it. Avoidance will only make it worse and ingratiate in her the idea that she doesn’t have what it takes to overcome it.
One of the activities she suggests doing is creating a number scale (1-10) to help her identify where her feelings are on the scale— they initially feel like 10s, but using this scale helps her to see that most of her worries really aren’t that major. She leaves the scale open for our own creation, but I would have liked to see an example scale of what she would put for the numbers. I might see things bigger than I should too!
“Your pain is important, but you don’t have to make it bigger than it is just for me to hear you or to make it valid.”
I found this particularly convicting for me. I’ve been pondering how to show my kids I care without coddling them. I want to create in them perseverance and resilience. I’ve heard them say ‘You don’t care about me!’ because of my ‘builds character’ parenting style when it comes to hurts, especially ones that happen after adamant disobedience.
But there has to be a balance. This quote reminds me that if I remove too much of my attention from her, she may escalate her ‘pain’ to get my attention back or exaggerate her feelings or experiences to make it ‘worth my time.’ I don’t want to do that to her. I need to acknowledge and listen to her pain— not indulge it— but still let her know I will always listen to her so nothing gets blown up.
“Anxiety always involves an overestimation of the problem and an underestimation of herself.”
“The Brave Theory is where we want her to land— and it says she’s capable and strong and that God has already given her all that she needs. She can do the scary thing… We want her to use her smart brain against her worry brain and boss it back.”
This is really what it all boils down to. Giving her the tools and language she needs to identify what’s going on in her body, mind, and heart, and helping her stand up to the voice of lies and find her confidence in the Lord to do the hard things.
“The girls I see who live with anxiety are some of the most hard-working, caring, intentional, kind, and brilliant girls I know. Things matter to them. Everything matters to them which can make life hard. And it can make it hard to know when or how to turn that kind of care off.”
This is a good reminder to me as I deal with one of my daughters in particular. It gives me language and encouragement to use with her— that she struggles because she cares and caring isn’t wrong. But helping her not be trapped in looping thoughts of perfectionism and getting everything ‘right’ but giving her freedom to not be perfect. Perfection is an unrealistic expectation that will only cause more worry and disappointment.
Recommendation
I would definitely recommend this book to everyone! Really, I think even people who aren’t parents would still benefit from some of the tools she talks about. But in particular, this is a great resource for parents and gives direction to help them help their kids.
I love how Sissy combines both the psychology behind anxiety but also biblical principles. You can only do so much ‘symptom-treating’ without also having a hope and trust in something bigger than ourselves. Real security is found in Christ so that component is essential in any discussion about anxiety and worrying.
‘Do not fear’ is used enough times in the Bible to recognize that the cure for that is Jesus.
I’ll leave with one more quote which assures any parent— it’s not too late:
“There is always hope. It’s a journey. And not only are you and she still on it, but God is still going before you in it.”
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