Raising Worry-Free Girls (Helping Your Daughter Feel Braver, Stronger and Smarter in an Anxious World) by Sissy Goff
Faith-based tools for helping you daughter through worry and anxiety.
Raising Worry-Free Girls is a faith-focused book about how to guide our daughters through anxiety, from small, everyday anxieties to larger, clinical issues. Sissy uses her years of experience as a therapist, education and faith to illustrate ways to navigate worry and anxiety with your daughter. She included many tips that I could implement immediately (and have with my oldest daughter) including naming your worry which takes some of it’s power away as well as discussing how big the worry really is. She talks about how we, as parents, have to let our daughters experience the anxiety which is so very difficult because we want to take the suffering from them. The end of each chapter has a bullet point review of the discussion topics as well as questions to understand yourself and your daughter better. I found these to be quite insightful, especially if I was being honest with myself. She fills the book with honesty about the inevitability of suffering but follows that with hope that we can endure and overcome these issues, with God as our guide.
My honest review is that I thought this book had good insight, but for much of the book, I didn’t enjoy the read. I’m not a speed reader by any means, but this one took me some time. It may be because it is a subject matter that isn’t fun to read (or think) about. It may be that my daughter (thankfully) will show the signs of the worry monster at times, but hasn’t shown indications of clinical anxiety. Nonetheless, I did find some of the information and guidance to be of great value for parenting kids through worry, and also for dealing with my own anxieties. I give this book 3 stars. It was good. If this is a subject you feel you could use more guidance on (especially faith-based guidance), I think it’s worth the read. One quick note: When quoting the Bible, she used The Message. This may be nitpicky, but I wish she had used a version with a more literal translation. I understand why she would use it. There’s less work for the reader. That just wouldn’t have been my ideal choice.
