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Sowing the Seeds
8 Ways to Create a Perennial Mother-Daughter Relationship
By Kate Midden
Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.
– Doris Lessing, author
The secret to building a wonderful, lasting relationship with your daughter is to find and develop outside interests together that will continue through her teens and beyond. In early adolescence, your child is starting her journey into a new world that will become harder for you to enter or control. Developing safe places where you can work and play together will enable you to learn more about each other, keep the lines of communication open and allow you to share successes, failures, laughter, frustration and loads of love.
"Getting and keeping your daughter involved in outside activities is critical to the development of self-esteem and coping skills," says Erica Holmes, a clinical psychologist with a focus in children ages 8 to 13. "If you can be their guiding light through the cloudiness of adolescence, that's wonderful. If you can't, you need to find them an appropriate mentor."
Here are 8 suggestions for sowing those special relationship seeds:
Start small and let your garden grow. Lop the top of a pineapple and plant it; propagate a sweet potato or avocado plant or cultivate the seeds of your daughter's favorite flower.
Kathy Myers and her 10-year-old daughter, Lisa, planted an herb garden in pots on their porch in Knoxville, Tenn. They were so delighted by the added zest in their cooking that they expanded their garden to include tomatoes, squash, green beans and strawberries. Lisa, now 19 and living on her own, still visits regularly to help her mom and share in the bounty of their garden.
Stephanie Holdridge, 16, and her mother, Patty, of Sebastian, Fla., started gardening together when Stephanie was 10. They started small, picking their two favorite flowers: gerbera daisies and sunflowers. Their gardens now include a butterfly garden, a shade garden and a rose garden.