Let Her Write Her Own Story: On stepping back so she can step forward
Every parent carries a story about their child. It begins the moment she arrives. We gather evidence for it daily: the things she is good at, the things she finds hard, the kind of person she seems to be becoming. We tell this story to grandparents, to teachers, to friends. We tell it, sometimes, directly to her.
This is natural and mostly wonderful. Being known by the people who love you is one of the deepest comforts a child can have. But the story can, without meaning to, become a constraint. She becomes “the sensitive one” or “the academic one” or “the one who struggles with change.” And she learns, gradually, to live inside the story we have written for her rather than to write her own.
“She is not the story you tell about her. She is something larger, more curious and more surprising than any story can contain.”
Children are profoundly influenced by how the significant adults in their lives see them. If we see them as capable, they tend to become capable. If we see them as fragile, they often perform fragility. This is not manipulation; it is simply how identity forms. We grow into the shape of the expectations that hold us.
Holding the story lightly
Letting your daughter write her own story does not mean withdrawing or becoming indifferent. It means holding your story about her lightly enough that she has room to surprise you. It means noticing when you are about to say “she always” or “she never” and pausing to wonder whether that is still true, whether it was ever entirely true, or whether she has quietly outgrown it while you were not looking.
It means being genuinely curious about who she is becoming, rather than simply checking whether she matches who you expected her to be.
The power of open questions
One of the most generous things you can offer your daughter is a question that has no expected answer. Not “Did you have a good day?” (which invites a yes or no) but “What surprised you today?” Not “How did the test go?” but “What was the hardest part, and what did you do with it?”
These questions communicate something important: that you are interested in her actual experience, not a performance of how things should be going. They give her permission to be complicated, uncertain, contradictory. To be, in other words, fully human.
She is writing a story that will take her whole life to finish. The best role you can play is not editor but reader: attentive, devoted, and genuinely unable to predict what comes next.
Gillian Panton – Head of Junior School
Sydenham & Dulwich Girls · Raising Empowered Girls · Parent Thought Series