Our authoritative 4 year old has been opinionated from the get go. She knows what she wants and she is not afraid to tell you – whomever you may be.
Girls like her are often labeled “bossy”.
Think about it: most people feel this word has a negative connotation to it. Though it is not an inherently bad word, we use bossy to refer to people who tell us what to do and society calls people who are quick to delegate or make decisions.
But no matter what our confident child does or says, we have decided to ban the word bossy from our household.
The words you use for your children matter.
Bossy is totally what we want to call her sometimes, however; we have chosen instead to refer to this trait of hers as “leadership skills”.
Why?
We do not want our daughter to think that being bossy is bad.
It’s not often I hear boys being called this when they try to exercise their authority yet bossy has been somehow made into an insult used primarily for decisive girls. The way we speak to our children shapes their self-confidence and personal worth. So isn’t it time we all ban the word bossy from our homes?
So what do I call my bossy child…?
As I said, I do not believe that being bossy is bad. Obviously, we can work to make being bossy into skills and fine-tune the approach. I am concerned that others see bossy as bad and will label our strong-headed daughters as such. I do not want them to be labeled negatively for the qualities they possess.
You will notice that I have used many adjectives other than bossy to describe her: authoritative, opinionated, not afraid, quick delegator and decision maker… you get the point.
There are so many other words we can use for our skilled, brilliant, creative, accomplished, brave, and curious children. Girls and boys alike!
It is never too late to start.
Framing the way we speak and think can take a lot of undoing but it is not impossible. As parents, we all want our children to be successful and confident. We want them to feel empowered to be the best version they can be. I personally believe we can even change the words to our children as they become adults.
At our household, we still work on this often.We are not perfect. I have let my tongue slip more than once. But now, we even have our 11 year old boy telling our little Ellie to “please tone down your leadership skills”.
And if her big brother can do it, so can you!
