Mentoring The Girl Child: A Mother’s Role

In a layman’s under
standing, a mother is that women who biologically gives birth to a young child while the word daughter refers to a female child biologically given birth to by a woman, motherhood  goes beyond the idea of having one’s  own child  biologically. By adoption, a woman also becomes a mother of a child.
Thus, the moment a woman begins to undertake the training and up bringing of a child, irrespective of who he or she is, she becomes a mother. However she could be referred to, as a foster mother.
In today’s issue, we are very much concerned about what should be the ideal, standard  relationship between  a mother  and he daughter.
Living amidst different homes and families one watches with dismay  the dramas  displayed on daily basis by mothers and their so-called daughters although, there are is no doubt that homes exist which understand what relationship means.
In  many families, it was witnessed or discovered  that mothers and daughters see themselves as rivals. A woman  carries her daughter along to the point of maturity and  from thence on she abandons her to her fate.
In such home, there is lack of confidence between the mothers and their daughters, so much that the daughters keep their feelings  far from  the understanding of their mothers, instead they confide in mothers outside their homes, and friends for solutions to their emotional  reactions.
The reason for this unseeming relationship  a seasoned family counsellor said, is because of the mothers initial actions  towards their growing  daughter. According  to her, most women think  that to  instill discipline in a child is to  create fear in her. So much  that a child now fears her mother more than  she fears her  school teachers.
Every action of the child is greeted with shouts and scoldings, no time is speared to know the problems  and feelings of a child in the house.
The result is that the child is resolved to  suppressing and keeping her feelings  to herself  and pretending to be in good form all the time.
Come to think of it, at fifteen yeas of age, a mother ought to be seeing  a friend, companion,  mate  and helper in her daughter. At this point the rod ceases to be the sole  corrective measure.
Advice and sometimes polite rebuke could take the place of the rod. The child should be drawn very close to the mother to the point that she too begins to see the mum as her first friend and companion, in whom  she could confide.
Mothers, from time to time, especially during kitchen time with their daughters should initiate  talks on issues that are regarded as no-go areas, this will help in great measure to bond them together.
The  understanding word here is openness. The  mothers should as much as possible be open to their daughters, initiate  questions that will help find out certain information from them from which  the children could be assessed as per their level of assimilation into the world.
On daily basis, it is the place of the mother to keep a close watch on the daughter and carefully query any strange behaviour from her,  she too, must be  given a sense of belonging by trying to provide and care for her so that no vacuum is created and so there will be no reason  for a yearning to fill a vacuum outside.
As a matter of fact, no  mother should create an impression that her daughter could be bettered by an external  hand No!
Instead the  maintenance of any growing girl should top the priority of the mother for that is a major way of saving her from external  influences.
Above all, no mother should hoard any vital  information from the daughter especially those that bother on life, and from time to time, create avenues for discussions on such life  issues where she could  be free to ask questions and no matter how silly the questions may pose. They have to be answered.
Mothers must  always expose  their daughters to good and  evil but emphasis must be placed on the need to choose good and the implication of choosing evil.
If need be, create  a big  phobia in their  hearts for evil acts so that they live to dread doing the wrong one.
The growing girl  needs love, and this first  love  must come from her mother  for it is what she gets from the mother she carries over to her  own home.  In due time,   the mother have no reason  not to be closer to her daughter.
Remember, closeness and openness are the key words in a standard mother-daughter  relationship.

Sylvia ThankGod-Amadi

A mother