I'd like to think that I have always been a daring girl. And I know that the daughter who once stamped her feet because I wouldn't take her to Fred Meyer to
buy a parachute so she could jump off our roof is
most definitely a daring girl.
Or we used to be, anyway.
I've lost my ability to stand on the very edge of the diving board of life, close my eyes, and just jump, heedless of the consequences (concrete or water below? Let's just find out, shall we?) I'm much more conservative and cautious than I used to be, and I know it's due to the fact that I'm a single parent with primary custody of two kids who need me. So I can't take the job that doesn't have benefits if I have one already that does, for example. And I can't just dive into a great opportunity that'll suck up all of my free time and most of my attention - that role's filled, thanks to two active kids.
And my nine year old girl? She's been going through some
growing pains of her own lately, and her daring-ness has been a bit blunted as a result.
But I want - and she
needs (what with potentially self-esteem-destroying adolescence looming) - to get that daring edge back. So I thought we should both review
The Daring Book for Girls and see if we could get our mojo back.
When it arrived, I took one look at the cover - with that bold metallic silver lettering and all - and knew the girl would adore it. So I didn't even tell her it had arrived, and spirited it off to dinner with me on a kid-free weekend first. I sipped wine while reading tales of Cleopatra and Boudica, squinted at my palm in the dim candlelight in a vain attempt to see my lifeline, and took a few life lessons away from the section entitled, simply, 'Boys':
"Without a doubt, you have already received many confusing messages about what, if anything, you should be doing with boys." (Side note: truer words were never spoken - and the messages continue if you're a single mother even contemplating dating again, am I right?)
Authors Andrea J. Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz nimbly dance through this topic and others in a breezy, informational style that doesn't ever veer into simplistic 'you GO, guuurl' cheers or motivational 'be all that you can be' lectures. And by the time I got around to ordering dessert, I was deep into the 'How to Negotiate a Salary' section (confession: I skipped 'How to change a tire'; it didn't quite go with pumpkin cheesecake...)
Once I finished it, I handed it over to my daughter - and promptly lost all control. She devoured it. Took it to school, boasted to all of her friends, and even wrote her book report and delivered her oral presentation to her class last week on
The Daring Book for Girls. (Read her review
here.)
Did we get our mojo back? Weeeellll...I'm re-reading that salary section while I
contemplate my next career move (I finally managed to get the book back in order to write this, thankfully.) She delivered her oral report with style and panache, according to her teacher - and she's now strategizing just which of the Three Silly Pranks she needs to spring on her annoying older brother. So you tell me...!
Note: this is just one of a gazillion reviews of The Daring Book for Girls, courtesy of the blog tour coordinated by the lovely women at MotherTalk