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Hi everyone.  I am a happy dad of a wonderful little girl and have come to learn already of the differences between boys and girls on building confidence.  I can only speak for myself, a man, but here's my experience.

My little girl definitely responds to mom better than me.  (A blow to my own confidence I might add.) She will often go to mom for resolution before me and go to me for knowledge before mom.  (OK, so I still have a purpose :)

I am enjoying fatherhood immensely, even this challenge to chance to learn a little more on emotional growth.  So here's my current take on the difference between girls and boys.

I think when girls feel an emotion it is intertwined with many other feelings.  These can be other emotions, memories, opinion, issues and more.  A boy on the other hand often experiences his feelings in isolation of other feelings.

As a dad, I often try to resolve issues by clarifying the problem, identifying what will fix it and saying OK try again.  This works for boys because the emotions are for the most part isolated to the issue at hand: solve that issue and you are done.  But for girls, the emotions are not isolated even though what triggered them may have been. There can be so many other issues, that any attempt to identify and fix it results in even more damage.. Girls may grow to feel the world will never understand my feelings.  They may grow to isolate themselve.  Work environments in particular may be tough because it has even less time for complexities.

But, my daughter is a girl and I want her to be her, a girl, and be confident. 

Thanks for the show!

Dad

posted 3 years, 8 months ago
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