A few years back a good friend gave me a book, “The Mother Daughter book club: How Ten Busy Mothers and Daughters Came Together to Talk, Laugh and Learn through Their Love of Reading, by Shireen Dodson: May 7, 1997. I started reading this book and decided to take on the challenge, realizing that a few of us, all coincidentally mothers of little girls were rapidly losing touch with our daughters as they grew every day. The mother daughter relationship can be both turbulent and hectic; it is also in my opinion one of the most beautiful relationships available on this earth.
So thanks to this book and my desire, to not have a typically contentious relationship with my daughter, and being African therefore advocating fully “it takes a village to raise a child” I embarked on creating my “village” a collection of mothers with daughters of a similar age, pre-tweens (age group 9-13).
- The idea was to learn about our children, how they feel about matters, in a fun, non-confrontational way
- A chance for us to spend time together,
- whilst helping our daughters begin forming their own “village” where they have a network of girl friends that they can share and experience with, and refer to for assistance and guidance,
- To give the mothers an opportunity to bond for the well being of our daughters, and in the process bond as friends and share in each other’s experiences of raising little girls.
Inspired by the book “The mother daughter book club” and our own sad attempt at establishing an actual mother/daughter book club, which by the way was not successful, getting a collection of mothers and daughters together in the same place at the same time, proved difficult. However “no retreat, no surrender” so we may not be able to meet physically, maybe virtually we will have more success?
I will state at this juncture that fathers with daughters are welcome to partake in this process. I will apologize here that we did not take into consideration little boys and their mothers or their fathers, it was not a malicious exclusion; just that as a mother of a little girl this is where my strength lies. I hope that following our example other mothers with sons or fathers with sons may also be able to set up their own “villages” for themselves and their little boys.
