The Keri Croft Show
The Keri Croft Show
Why Girls Are Losing Confidence: Dr. Lisa Hinkelman Explains What We Can Do
I’ve been "bossy" the moment I popped out of the womb.
Loud. Confident. Opinionated.
And I'm lucky. Because somewhere along the way, I realized—none of that was actually a bad thing. Being bold and self-assured shouldn’t be something we’re taught to tone down. It should be something we protect fiercely.
That’s why this week’s episode with Dr. Lisa Hinkelman hit me so damn hard.
Dr. Lisa Hinkelman is the founder of ROX (Ruling Our eXperiences), a nonprofit that’s teaching girls how to take up space in a world that constantly asks them to shrink. Lisa and I dive deep into what it means to raise confident daughters when confidence is statistically tanking between the ages of 10 and 14—and doesn’t bounce back for most women until our mid-forties. We talk about “bossy” labels, girl drama, ghosting, why confrontation isn’t a dirty word, and what it looks like to finally unlearn being the nice girl.
If you’ve ever walked through the world feeling like you were too much—too loud, too strong, too opinionated—or if you’re raising a daughter who’s starting to dim her light to fit in, this episode is required listening.
🎯 Want to bring ROX to your daughter’s school or support the movement?
Here’s where to go:
👉 rulingourexperiences.org
👉 The Girls' Index Report (Read the stats—they’ll stop you in your tracks.)
👉 Shop ROX gear (Yes, I’m getting the “Bossy ➡ Leader” tee.)
Let’s raise the next generation to take up space—with confidence, clarity, and zero apologies.
Until next time—stay wild. Stay loud. And call the next man you meet bossy just for fun. 💅
#TheKeriCroftShow #DrLisaHinkelman #ROXGirls #ConfidenceInGirls #BigBossEnergy #StopCallingGirlsBossy #GirlhoodUnfiltered #RaisingDaughters #UnlearnNice
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Speaker 1:All right, lisa Hinkleman, welcome to the Keri Croft Show. Thank you, you are. Just if you could see what I'm seeing right now in terms of how well you go with like the backdrop. It's almost like I mean, you couldn't put it together any better. I love it. It's so good. It's so good to finally meet you. Good to meet you, too. Jump right into this because I love the fact that you have a nonprofit for girls that helps build confidence and teach them how to live in the world in a more, I guess, just confident way. Right, and I was looking at your website and looking at everything and I'm just I could talk to you probably for hours about this. What got you into this specific thing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think most of us as girls have experiences when we're growing up, that shape who we become right, and that could. Those experiences can make us feel better about ourselves or worse about ourselves. They can make us feel comfortable in our own skin or not, and I think I was one of those girls that was a tomboy at that time. That's what that's what I was called during that time, cause I was athletic and loud and I hit puberty early, so I was like bigger than all the other girls in my class and I had two older brothers, so I was always like looking for a fight or something, you know, and I just I moved to a new school fifth, going into sixth grade, and I just felt like I I didn't fit in, I didn't have any friends, I look different than people, the things I liked were different than the other girls, and it was just always this like trying to find myself and yet not wanting to make myself smaller, and that navigation was tricky for me and I felt like I didn't really find my people until much later in life, meaning women, friends, girlfriends, people who I could trust. That that would be my network and once I did, I realized what I had missed along the way. So many years of feeling like nobody gets me, nobody understands me. I'm the only one I don't. Girls are too much drama. I just rather hang out with the guys because there's they're just easier to get along with and and so so I think that was like part of the really like core base of this work.
Speaker 2:But I became a counselor in my career and, um, in that work it's really been centered around girls and women and the sense that when we go through experiences in our life, especially as young people, they shape who we become as grownups.
Speaker 2:And if those experiences include a lot of negative reinforcement, include a lot of pressure to make yourself smaller or different, include a lot of the internalization of what's wrong with you and what's not okay with you, we keep that and we change to become accepted by others, and for many girls and women we change in ways that are harmful, that don't help us actualize our full potentials. So I think it was a matter of, like personal experiences alongside professional experiences that made me think maybe we could do something for girls at an earlier stage of their life. So they're not the women that I'm seeing in counseling, but they're the girls who we can give the skills and the competencies to, to have the conversations early, to really start to shift their trajectories, because we're shifting their perceptions of themselves, what's possible, who they can become at the time where their self-confidence is most malleable. And that was some of the early integration of the thinking around rocks and rocks was born. That's when rocks was born.
Speaker 1:Was rocks born before your actual daughter was born, oh well before.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I yes, so I was a professor at Ohio State in 2006. I I had actually finished my PhD at age 26 and started a career early in academia and the initial study and the initial work of ROCS the first ROCS program started in 2006. And we had 57 girls who participated in that first program in Columbus City Schools, and I would train my graduate students to implement the curriculum that we had been developing and to test and pilot it and to see how girls were growing and changing and evolving. And we were like this is working, this is actually working, and and so then we kept using that data to refine and enhance and improve and increase the, the efficacy of the program. And then my students would go graduate and say, hey, dr Hinkleman, can I keep running ROX? And I'm like, oh for sure, like just keep, let's just keep doing this, because it's like you love it, the girls love it, it's making an impact. And then, after five years of kind of this very organic growth, in 2011, I was like I think this could be something, and that was the year that ROX became a nonprofit and so we started scaling the work, building out a team, keeping the model where we train and license school counselors and social workers and educators, and then they take our 20-week curriculum back to their schools and they run it in small groups with girls.
Speaker 2:And so at this point, so that year one, 2006, we had 57 girls. This year we had 8,900 girls across 44 states and 500 schools that participated in ROCS. So it's been an evolution, and so what's so interesting and I'll get back to the question that you asked is I have done this work now for almost 20 years and I didn't have a daughter until 2020. So that has been so amazing, terrifying. Such a gift alongside tremendous pressure cause. I feel like people are going to be like, ooh, hey, expert on girls, let's see how your daughter turns out. What's the Hinkleman's daughter going to be like, you know? So I feel that, um, that intensity, and I'm just such, it's such a treasure to um have a daughter.
Speaker 1:I'm sure, and isn't that just so interesting that the story was written, that you would end up with a little girl, irene. Irene, how old is she now? She's four.
Speaker 2:So she's four. She'll be five here in a couple months.
Speaker 1:Is she like a hard charger, like you, like her mama?
Speaker 2:She's a wild woman. Good, she's an uncontrollable force of nature. Good, and I love wild woman.
Speaker 1:Good, she's, uh good, uncontrollable force of nature good and I love every minute of it. Okay so, and I love every minute of it. You'll say that again, and if you see me on my phone, that's why I'm taking photos of you oh, that's or um b-roll video. It's not because I'm okay on instagram and then say and I love every minute of it.
Speaker 2:And I love every minute of it.
Speaker 1:Okay. So, parents of girls, if your ears aren't already perked up, this is a very important conversation you should be listening to because you have a lot. You did the, so you wrote a book. Then you also did like a study the Girls Index, yes, where you know, like a study, the girls index, where you know you have very hardcore facts around girls and how they feel and how they're moving through the world.
Speaker 1:And there was one, there was several that I read, but the one where it's like, um, two out of three girls say that they don't speak up because they want to fit in. One out of two girls, um, something about being perceived as bossy, which, oh, can I feel that one Like ever since I came out of the womb. You know bossy and domineering, like all these negative words that you're labeled with because you're a female. Yes, I mean, how about? Just like force of nature, powerful, rooted in competence. You know all these positive things rooted in competence. You know all these positive things, um, and what you're doing is such important work because you're catching these girls in their formidable years where it's like, okay, like you said, malleable. So let's talk some statistics for parents at home, I got lots of moms, lots of dads with lots of little girls, so what, what the real core of? Like? Get right to the point of what would really impact them and they could take this away and go wow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think some of the most compelling statistics. So the study that you're mentioning is called the Girls Index and in the Girls Index we partner with schools across the country to survey their girls and it's a nationally representative sample. These aren't girls in rocks, these are just girls representative sample. These aren't girls in rocks, these are just girls. And in the last iteration of the study we surveyed 17,502 girls in grades five through 12. And it's the largest study of its kind.
Speaker 2:And so what we saw in this research is that confidence drops significantly between fifth and ninth grade and then it just sort of hangs out and it doesn't rebound during the course of our period of study and in other researchers who have looked at confidence in women and later in life, confidence stays pretty compromised for most of us until actually our mid forties. So it's like okay, in in fifth grade you're 10. And in ninth grade you know you're just emerging in your in the mid teen years and then you just lack confidence for the rest of your adult life. When so many critical decisions are being made Right, I mean, think between 10 and 45, you are making very significant decisions on your relationships, your education, your career, your friend groups, all of these things and I think so much of our decisions are rooted in places of self-doubt and we stay in places that we shouldn't, we stay in relationships that we shouldn't, we take pathways that we shouldn't because we don't believe ourselves as capable or confident enough to pursue those or to leave an unhealthy relationship or to take a new adventure or a risk. And if we could help girls keep that confidence that they have when they're young, or build it back up, the confidence that they've lost, how would we change the decisions that they make? How would we change the careers they would pursue? How would we change the success of their friendships and their relationships? Because they believe themselves to be deserving of something good and healthy and fulfilling and sustaining.
Speaker 2:So the confidence piece is probably the most concerning for me, because I believe that it impacts every domain of a person's life and um, and then we see it play itself out in unhealthy ways throughout, throughout all of our lives, um, so the confidence piece is, is core. I think the other uh stats that you were referencing, um, is the percentage of girls who don't speak their mind or disagree with others because they don't want to be perceived as bossy. And you're right, bossy is a word that we tend to only apply to girls and women. You don't hear boys being called bossy. Instead, it's like he's such a leader or he's really strong. He's such a leader or he's really strong, and so that that is troubling, that the perception of having an opinion or speaking my mind is something that wouldn't be welcome and would be perceived as negative. Can we change?
Speaker 1:can we start a? Can we go viral and just start calling men bossy Like hey boss, baby, you little bossy, baby bitch?
Speaker 2:Right, I mean cause we do a lot of things of like trying to, trying to take back that word and it just hasn't. It hasn't always gone.
Speaker 1:I'm going to start doing that. That's one of my nail art in 2025. And calling men bossy, that is my two like pinnacles.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we have a shirt at rocks and it says bossy, and then bossy, scratched out and it says leader. Yeah, because I think that it. Those are leadership skills, like having opinions, galvanizing groups in, you know, challenging perceptions, pushing back, engaging in discourse and dialogue, like those are all really healthy behaviors. But when they're exhibited by men, they're seen as strength and oftentimes, when they're exhibited by women, they're seen as abrasive or yeah, that's a that's a big, big old pile of bullshit.
Speaker 1:Right, there is what it is. We're gonna change that. I mean, I'm gonna change that 2025 and beyond I'm totally here for it because I think most girls are too right.
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely and to think that half of girls, more than half of girls, you know, believe that you know, and it is probably an appropriate time for me to bring up my favorite quote of all time, okay, and one of my favorite hip-hop lyrics of all time, by Lil Wayne confidence is a stain you can't wipe off. I mean that I love it so much because it's true. If you have inner confidence, that comes from I mean just really like rooted in your core, it's something so powerful that, like it shakes people. It does.
Speaker 1:It's crazy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that sometimes we get this sense that confidence is arrogance and it's not, and and some girls, I think, get the sense that they can't be kind and confident at the same time. And I think you, you totally can't Like I think that I'm a really nice person and but I also have boundaries Right, and so like I could be super nice and look out for you and and take care of you and and be empathetic, but like don't mess with me, right. And so I think that that sense of having a strong sense of self and setting up some boundaries so you don't get taken advantage of are it's confusing messages for girls, because we're often taught to be kind Right and be nice and people should like you and you shouldn't be too loud and you know kind of all those traditional things, and I think it's not a matter of not being nice, like you can be super nice, but it doesn't mean that people that you turn into a doormat.
Speaker 1:You know, let's dissect the word nice. Sure, because I have some opinions on that. Yeah, yeah, I would rather be called a lot of things than nice Because, yes, I'm a kind person. I'm very kind authentically when I for my people and in my ripple, and like I try to do kind things and I I know that about myself, so I don't have to walk around with this like I'm an empath, I'm kind, I just that's wild to me.
Speaker 1:But this whole idea of nice and it's like you're, who are you really? If your goal is to be liked by everyone and to be perceived as a nice person, who are you at your core? So, with my personality and my sage wisdom in this old age of mine, I'm looking at you, thinking, wow, this person really probably hasn't found themselves yet. But who are they at their core? And I'm not saying that in a way of like Ooh, who are you? It's like I can't wait for you to find you because you're spending so much time externally the optics of everything, so your head's on a swivel trying to figure out how to fit in, who you're not going to let down, whose agenda you're going to help fulfill, right, and you're exhausted internally, you're feeling really unaligned. But you don't know what it is. It just feels icky. It's misalignment. It's misalignment.
Speaker 2:And I think, for our girls right, when you're in those formidable years, you're trying to figure out who you are, and our girls now are trying to figure out themselves, in an age that was very different than when I was growing up, because they are getting incessant, constant feedback from the world in real time. And that layer of social media is I'm trying to figure out internal validation, but it's all coming externally, right. I can quantify the number of likes, I can quantify the number of followers, I can quantify the number of followers and friends. I can quantify that. And that level of necessity for validation has kind of changed the landscape of creating, self-creating.
Speaker 2:And who am I becoming and what do I care about? Because right now, so much of what we care about is infused, or it is. It comes from what other people tell us to care about, or what we should like. Or do you like this outfit? Let me see if I got enough likes, cause if I didn't, then I might not wear it again. Or let me post this photo, and if it doesn't get enough activity, then I'm going to pull it down, right?
Speaker 2:So so that sense of figuring oneself out is now so much more complicated than it's ever been before, and for girls who, like one of the one of the paths of adolescence is figuring ourself out right, figuring out who we are, who we're becoming, and that that is like one of the tenets of what it means to grow up, go through adolescence, figure, figuring it out, and I think our girls are in this really tricky spot right now. That's very different than it was a generation or two ago, and sometimes as adults, we don't know how to relate to what they're experiencing right now, and that is creating even more tension in our relationships and more difficulty in knowing how to support them. So what?
Speaker 1:how do we then with girls? Are you is rocks trying to get to girls like in the fifth grade, or are you, is that kind of where you guys are?
Speaker 2:That's where our programming begins in fifth grade, although I will say, probably the number one question I'm getting right now is can you start rocks earlier? This stuff is already starting and it's starting well before fifth grade. The confidence challenges, the, the competition or conflict with other girls is already starting and it's well established by fifth grade. So I we're we're paying attention to those trends and the realities of you know, girls are developing earlier, they're hitting puberty earlier, they're exposed to more adult content much earlier, and so in many ways they're getting older, younger. But currently our curriculum starts in fifth grade and it goes all the way through high school, so a girl could participate in ROCS at any of those points along the way.
Speaker 1:And what specifically would the experience be? So if there's parents out there like, wait, what is this ROCS you speak of? I'm interested, but give them some meat.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the ROCS program itself happens during the school day. So the facilitators that run ROCS programs are employed by school districts. Throughout the country, every kind of school that you can imagine has a ROCS program. There's more than 500 schools that run it, and public schools and private schools and parochial schools and charter schools in every kind of community and basically that school counselor, social worker, teacher is meeting with a small group of girls usually about 10 girls once a week for 20 weeks and they go through a curriculum together where they are doing team building activities. They're doing self-awareness activities. They're talking about challenges in relationships and developing healthy communication skills. They're learning the difference between passive, aggressive, assertive and passive-aggressive communication and what they might default to and how to use these different kinds of communication strategies in different parts of their relationship. They're learning how to navigate social media, how to set boundaries, how to stand up for themselves. They're learning how to create a path and a future for themselves that isn't restricted in any way by messages that they might be hearing or paths that they might have seen for themselves that they might not actually fit into.
Speaker 2:For us, we want girls to think about their future, their careers, becoming leaders right. So in those 20 lessons they'll experience career development activities of what am I good at, what do I like, what am I passionate about, and they'll think about leadership in a way that what are the traits of a strong leader? Do I see myself in those traits? What are my strengths that I could bring to leadership, and what does that look like for me?
Speaker 2:We also talk about sexual harassment and sexual violence prevention in ROCS, because unfortunately, that's a reality for about 30% of girls. About 36% of girls will experience sexual harassment during their high school years and about one in four will experience sexual violence by the time they're 18. And so what we do is help girls identify signs of unhealthy relationships and help them know how to stand up for themselves verbally and physically, and then also learn how to access a network of support. Who are the people I could go to to talk to if I'm feeling unsafe, if I'm feeling pressure, if I'm feeling like something's happening or has given me something in my gut that I need to get support from? So for us, it's about understanding the reality of girls' lives and giving them a safe environment to learn, to explore and to access more support from their peers, from a professional and then, from the network of others who love and care about and are investing in their futures.
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Speaker 2:I mean some of the things that came out in this most recent research that about 55% of high school girls said that they don't like coming to school because of conflict and girl drama. So that was something that I think we need to pay a lot of attention to is that girls' relationships with girls can get so high in competition and conflict that it impacts their desire to even want to be at school, and oftentimes we're like, oh, who cares what those girls think? You shouldn't even pay attention to them anyways, just quit looking at your phone, and then they feel like they can't talk to us about it because we're diminishing what their experience is. And so I think when girls are coming to us with things that we might think might not be that important, or like, oh, that's, that's so dramatic, or you're, you shouldn't care that much about them, or those girls aren't nice anyway, you're going to meet nicer girls when you go to college, or who cares what he thinks about you? Like we were coming from a good place of trying to bolster them or thicken their skin, but they're hearing it as like you don't get it, you don't understand my life and you don't care. So I think one of the things we have to pay attention to is how girls are actually experiencing their relationships, their environment, their desire to want to be at school and meet them there so we can understand it better.
Speaker 2:I often talk about letting girls be the experts on their own lives, and as adults we have a hard time doing that because we're like you don't know anything, you're not going to figure it out until you're 45. So let me just tell you and it's a really bad way to approach relationship building right, because we'll say things like well, when I was your age, I know exactly how you feel. This exact same thing happened to me. And they're like you are a hundred years old, you don't get it at all, my life is so different. And we and then we just try to convince them like how cool or with it, or how much we get it, instead of saying you're right, like it's so different.
Speaker 2:Now I know what it was like for me, but tell me what it's like for you. And that just shift in giving her a little more ownership of her feelings and experience and allowing us to be invited into the conversation can really be a moment of connection, because we're saying I don't get it, I don't know what it's like to live in your body, in your shoes, at this moment. I know what it was like for me, share with me, and even if we went through something very similar, I think sometimes it's like, oh yeah, well, this happened for me. You know, I lost this person at that age, or I got stood up the night before homecoming too. I know how you feel, and so I think we I think in general we shouldn't tell anybody that we know how they feel. We should just say gosh, I know what I would feel like, or I know what that felt like for me.
Speaker 2:Tell me what it's like for you. Um, I think girls what we also heard in the research is they just want to be listened to. They don't want people to judge, they don't want you to solve their problems. They're not always sharing something with you because they want you to barnstorm in and call the principal, and call the teacher, and call the coach, and call the other girl's mom and fix it. And I think that's often what we have this tendency to do. We get in this protection mode and we're going to like solve it. We're gonna tell them what to do, or why don't you just do that? Or you should tell them that or do this. And sometimes they just want to be listened to.
Speaker 1:I just want to get off my chest somebody, somewhere, said something so profound so profound that I don't remember who it was but, it always.
Speaker 1:It stuck with me. Um, like, when someone confides or comes to them, or they're in the middle of the throes of something like this, they'll say they'll qualify it. Are you looking for a solution? Are you just looking for an ear and like a heart to listen? And I think you know I've been so guilty of that. I'm a woman of action, if you will. My husband, it drives him crazy when I say that. But you know, find the solution and you know. So I have really thought a lot about that. When somebody, sometimes someone, just needs you to listen and to say you know what? I don't share that experience. I'm so curious and I'm here for you. Like, let's talk about it. Opening that up is so powerful. But I think I don't even know if it's hard to do. But I just think we need to maybe teach ourselves a little better to step back and look for those cues.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because we've got to kind of pause Right, right and to your point.
Speaker 1:You just said it so eloquently. We do want to tell, we want to beat the kid down with, like when I was your age, I walked to school in the snow, barefoot, nude, and I know this and you're dumb and that is the. You know your intentions are so good, but it's the opposite of what you know. I don't care how old your kid is, like even Dane, my son is six and a half and sometimes he'll be like you're not listening to my words, you're not hearing me and and I'm like, wow, he just, he really is trying to tell me like I'm not. I mean, and usually it's because he wants to go to Legoland or something, but it really is, um, take a page out, like take a page out of that book.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because they they want that support and they want us to listen, to try to understand them, not to respond, right? So I think sometimes we're listening to respond instead of listening to understand. Do?
Speaker 1:you know, what I also love about what you said about the program is that you're teaching them about like passive, aggressive, assertive and aggressive behavior, and I don't know if I'm just aging out like, if I'm just an old I'm that old lady on the stoop but I don't understand certain things happening and I'm going to explain a couple of them to you.
Speaker 1:Okay. So ghosting, okay, ghosting is the most cowardly bullshit, bass, ackwards way to present yourself in the world, and I don't care if it's on a social level, I don't care if it's on a dating level and I don't care if it's in a business level. I was ghosted on a business level recently. Now this is like I and I I couldn't believe it. I'm like this is some serial killer shit here, right and so for me I was like what did I do? I don't get the ghosting thing. And whoever out there in the interwebs and the cool app world made this a thing and now people can stand by it Like, oh, we ghost in this era, the fuck you do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's the, it is the again, it is such a cowardly way to present yourself. So I love the fact that you guys are talking through how to communicate that and being passive, aggressive. I'm also noticing with adults. If you come to an adult and try to kindly confront something, it is almost like you're bringing, like um, a courier to bring a note, like, like you did like the 1800s or something don't understand. If you try to kindly confront something, people completely lose their shit. Like a confrontation is so, and I, when I say confrontation, it does have a negative.
Speaker 1:When I, what I mean is if you and I are having a disagreement and I, we are friends and I really want to get to the root of it and I'm smart enough and astute enough to know that, like, my reality I've created isn't a hundred percent accurate. Yeah, I know that. Yeah, and your reality isn't a hundred percent accurate. So what I'd like to do is kind of come together and hash through it and then get to the other side and usually you're stronger than, of course. Yeah, but nobody will go there, they'll talk about it, you triangulate, they'll do all. All of that no one wants to. Like look at each other and be like look, we've been friends a long time. This bugs me. I trust my energy, what's up, so I'm so happy that you guys are doing that because it's so important. Next thing you know, you're 50 years old and you can't have a conversation.
Speaker 2:Well, and I think what we see happen is the ability, and we teach I statements, right, how to have, how to use I statements. When you did this, it made me feel this way, I need this in the future. Right, and it could be. When you posted that picture online that I didn't look good in and you didn't ask it, made me uncomfortable and I'd like you to take it down and not do that again. Or when you told me that the sleepover was canceled and then you posted all those pictures on Instagram with all the other girls except me, it totally hurt my feelings and right, right. So, being able to acknowledge and confront in with like kindness, right, and coming to the conversation with care, because you want to preserve a relationship that's important or you want to have a relationship that's important, or you want to have a brave conversation sometimes you just need a little template for that. And then you need to practice it in low-stakes situations, right, practice being able to tell the ask the teacher like hey, I think I got number six right on this test. Could you check it again?
Speaker 2:For some students that is like a mortifying I could never do that.
Speaker 2:That, and for others it's no problem, but what are the places that we can give girls safe places to practice safe scenarios so that when it comes to be something more high stakes I've already practiced it in these other situations had the chance to try my voice out in an environment where people are cheering me on, so that when I have to do it by myself, I have the self-efficacy to do that.
Speaker 2:But I think that what we know is what you're talking about exactly. That ability to navigate those relationship challenges is one of the core reasons that girls' relationships get high in conflict, because we don't learn how to have brave conversations and we see that interaction as aggressive. Right, and we're supposed to be nice, right, and so we'll be nice to each other's face and then be like, oh my God, she's so much Right. We'll do the passive, aggressive stuff, stir up the pot over here instead of saying what we actually need to say. And that passive aggressiveness, that hostility towards other women it's so detrimental to us individually and collectively when you wonder why you're riddled with anxiety and constant thought train.
Speaker 1:You know they're thinking about me.
Speaker 2:What are they saying? Were they just talking about me when they went over there and I wasn't included? And that that starts for girls, really young.
Speaker 1:And it continues into adulthood.
Speaker 2:So I said I have a four-year-old. This was um. She has glasses. She's the only one in her pre-K with glasses, and one of the other little girls told her last week that girls with glasses weren't invited to her birthday party.
Speaker 1:I had so many feelings about it I had so many feelings about it but I was like it's, they're four, it don't matter, you will fuck somebody up for your kid.
Speaker 2:Trust me, I it's, oh my gosh right. I'm not ready to make rocks for four-year-olds yet, but it just made me just so keenly aware of how early some of the exclusionary behaviors can start.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've had a couple of little playground, you know little interludes with a couple of five-year-olds.
Speaker 2:I'm like and that. I wasn't necessarily, I wasn't proud of it.
Speaker 1:Literally, there was like one moment with Dane where he was being excluded by these two little boys and the one boy was being particularly dickish and I was watching it and I was reminding myself like the, the, the carry, like the, the brain of my, you know, worried. Okay, the reasonable part of my brain was like carry their five, like it doesn't matter, right, and then the heart part of my brain, watching dane chase them, and like getting increasingly more upset, and so finally, this little kid was like just being an absolute asshole and like his mom was like over with, like two other kids, whatever, and I was like, hey, and he goes, we don't feel like playing with him. And I go, well, then you shouldn't come to a playground. And then I was like, uh, maybe this is one for me to like, get on the couch with my therapist, carrie. You cannot do this, you can't be this way.
Speaker 1:But you know yeah you're going to, of course, yeah, my God, with your kids, like you will like, yeah, and then you have to try to help her figure out what she's going to say back or how to navigate that.
Speaker 2:And you know, it's just, it's putting into practice so much of the intellectual work that I've done over the last 20 years and obviously it hits a little different, but it's those. Those patterns can start so early and and if we could catch them before we're 20 and 30 and 40, maybe we can set different pathways for these girls.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think maybe, like the word confrontation is, it just has a very scary um, I think, meaning to people, but I've always thought of it as it's like a. If you can get to that gentle, honest confrontation, then you really do get to the truth. And and for my own curiosity and my like cause, I beat myself up about things like what could I have done? What did I say, like I'll do that to me instead of externally doing it to the other person, I, I internally go after myself, which isn't any healthier. But I want to know I'm so curious what I could have done. What's on the other side of this so we can figure it out.
Speaker 1:I can never get there with 98% of the adults. Like, I don't understand. But if you saw it as an unlock, is it because a people are nervous or they don't really want to know? Cause I think a lot of people would rather like my. I'm comfortable in my narrative, I'm comfortable with my yes, people. This feels really good over here to alienate. But if I really jumped over to look at that person's perspective and maybe I'd see myself a little differently, I don't think people are really want to go there.
Speaker 2:I think there's, you know there is that walking in someone else's shoes and empathy, perspective, right. But then there's also, you know, the way you see yourself and the way others see you, and that there tends to be mismatches there and even as much work as we do for ourselves to try to be more self-aware, and I'm the same way I always look at like, ok, well, what, what could I have done differently there? How did I approach that? And and sometimes it can be kind of debilitating because it's like, oh my gosh, right, we beat ourselves up and we play conversations over in our head and we want to test something else out, or we just are like I totally screwed that up or what. I thought I did it right, but they perceived it totally different than how I intended it to be.
Speaker 2:You know, and I think that is, I think it's better to be on that side because we're at least caring about it Right, we at least have the awareness that we're trying. And I think a lot of people don't even have that awareness. They're not even thinking about like that differentiation in the ways that we communicate and build relationships. But I think when you become aware of the importance of relationships in your life and cultivating healthy support networks and support systems and having honesty and authenticity in those relationships, you increase your awareness of what you're doing, what you're giving, what you're taking, and I think that's something I don't know when we totally figure that out. I think it's got to be something that we're constantly working toward improving if we care about other humans.
Speaker 1:I agree, and I just think confrontation can lead to a really great space that you, you both, feel good about. You see some things you could have done better, and then the relationship can grow from there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wouldn't you say, the healthiest relationships you have are where you're the most authentic. Yes, yes.
Speaker 1:Yes, where you can be honest and you don't feel like there's energy or weirdness or noise, or what am I not seeing? Or why, where you can be honest, you don't feel like there's energy or weirdness or noise, or what am I not seeing, or why, why is the energy and like the behavior not in line with it?
Speaker 2:just I I don't know like.
Speaker 1:I don't think there's any reason for that.
Speaker 2:I think the the relationships where you feel like you have to walk on eggshells right or censor yourself or just totally be so mindful of everything that you say and do because you fear the other person's response is an unhealthy relationship, right, right and and a lot of girls are in friendships like that, where they're constantly thinking what are you going to think about me if I wear this, if I go here, if I do that, because just being me isn't okay and just being myself or saying what I think you're not going to accept that. And so we almost position ourselves to be in these unhealthy relationships from very early ages, because who I actually am, you won't like.
Speaker 2:And then I think we have to untrain ourselves ourselves and we do that by being around people who do accept who we are and who love us with all of our faults and challenges and who help us grow, because they help us see the things in ourselves that that we might not see, and and I think that those are gifts of relationships that we have. Like, I think we don't just need cheerleaders all the time, we don't just need pep talks and people who tell us how great we are and I'm just going to clap for you at every moment, cause we don't become better like that. We just get used to getting praised, and and that is problematic in our society, it's problematic for kids. If all we do is praise kids for being so great and you're so great and you're so wonderful, they just get used to getting praise. And so I think our most successful relationships are the ones that are generative, in the ways that they're constantly growing and evolving, because we're able to have those intense interactions and confrontations in the healthiest, most kind and loving ways.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, I love what you're doing and I want to be we. The reason why you and I even connected originally is there's a guy that I know from Lima, dominic Rose, who is such a great supporter of the show, and is it Megan that he connected with? Yeah, that's how we got connected. He said he wanted he was like you would totally want to volunteer or do something, or speak to the girls or do something.
Speaker 1:And I'm like oh, I need to know more about this. So I would love to talk to you offline about how I, could you know, clean up my cussing and like come in and talk to these girls or do add value, do something. Cause I just think what you're doing is so incredibly important.
Speaker 2:Thank you. I mean it is it's it's something I wished I would have had at you know for my younger self, and I think it's something that I I still need you know as as I'm growing up and as I'm an adult and as I'm impacting other girls' lives and raising a girl, it's like we don't grow out of all of the insecurities and all of the challenges necessarily.
Speaker 2:I think we're continually becoming and surrounding yourself with other people and women who are on that journey of self-awareness, but also like we'll, we'll stand with you as you as you do. This work is is so important, so I would love for that to happen too good, awesome.
Speaker 1:I've passed the snuff test. How can people find you like if they want, if they're like I want to learn more. I want my daughter involved in this. I'd like to help volunteer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, ruling our experiencesorg is our website, um, and on that you can find out information about our program. You could look. There's a map to see if we have rocks in your area or in your school district, in your state. You can pull down an infographic to see some of the high-level data. There's some webinars and resources for adults who have girls in their lives. We really try to keep all of our work central to the girl, but also we want to positively impact her environment, the teachers and coaches and parents who are mentoring and raising girls. We know that they need tools, they need support, they need to understand her reality so that they can best help her, and so that's why we've kind of built out our organization with the girls program and then the tools and resources and supports for the adults who have girls in their lives.
Speaker 1:I love that. Well, it's so nice to meet you, so good to meet you too, and hopefully this is only the beginning. Yes, I'm here for it, me too. And if you're still out there following your girl, follow me on YouTube, spotify, apple or wherever you get your podcasts. And until next time, please call the next man in your life bossy. We're going to start a revolution and keep moving, baby, you big boss, baby.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, I love it.
