I recently finished part one of Preparing Your Daughter for Every Woman’s Battle by Shannon Ethridge. While I don’t have a lengthy list of bullet points to share – in fact, I don’t think I underlined a single thing in the book – I *highly* recommend it to anyone with daughters. I spent the first part of the book with my mouth gaping open at the statistics she shared about the knowledge many of our girls already possess. It was shocking. Truly. Or maybe I live in a bubble. That’s possible, too.
I stopped at the end of part one, as part two is designed to be worked through together with your daughter. I am planning to start this soon with Grace.
The book covers a wide variety of topics including modesty, guarding our media intake, body image, and of course, boys. It opened my eyes to the need to be willing to answer my girls’ questions more directly. I’ve always been willing to answer but, in what I believe has been in an effort to protect their innocence, I would often abbreviate the answer as much as possible and I confess that I’ve used the “you’re not ready for that” answer for too long with a couple of them. There are still things I want to protect them from, but when homosexuality, pornography, and abortion are being discussed plainly from the pulpit on Sunday’s, it’s hard to avoid it forever at home. That, and when the oldest reads Genesis 19 in the NIV.
What about you? Are you having these conversations with your kids? How are you preparing them for puberty and beyond?
My Ears Are Tired 
What wonderful timing for me! Thanks for sharing. I know I need to start preparing Jessica (10 years, going into 5th grade). I’m not ready, but I know she is! I’ll definitely have to pick up the book.
Sara, I’m taking my daughter who is turning 11 this month away for a mom/daughter night for her birthday. I was planning on discussing some of these kinds of things with her. Do you recommend that book, is it something we could go through in an evening (overview anyway) or is it for over a long period of time? Wanting her to keep her innocence in some ways, but at the same time ME be the one to share information, let her ask questions, and discuss some things that need to.
Any insights?
This book is really designed to be the beginning of a lifetime of conversations. It convicted and convinced me that as much as I wanted to avoid talking about these things with my girls, I need to. It talks about maintaining their innocence while still preparing them for what they will encounter out in the world. I am also taking our oldest away this month for her birthday to begin these conversations. I plan to utilize the second half of the book as a sort of book/Bible study on a weekly basis with her beginning in September. I don’t know where I will fit it into an already busy schedule, but it’s important enough that I need to find a way.
I guess the shorter answer to your question would be that you certainly won’t cover everything exhaustively in one weekend, but I highly recommend reading the book before you go and then being prepared to continue the conversation for years to come.
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