More so than at any previous point in history, we are living in an age where the strong woman is rightly celebrated as a role model. That means that for little girls — and little boys too — growing up today, there are more amazing role models to be inspired by and emulate than ever before.
With International Women’s Day coming up on March 8, this is as good a time as any to talk about some of these women who galvanise, educate and break boundaries in equal measure. Here are four who each exemplify a quality that children can learn from.
There is much to admire about 18-year-old environmental activist Greta Thunberg regardless of your opinion on climate change.
The Swedish teenager gained global recognition in late 2018 when she led global change campaigns and delivered stirring public speeches that minced no words.
She has only stepped up her efforts to spread the message of climate change since then despite the many obstacles in her way.
For example, rather than attempt to conceal her Asperger’s syndrome, a developmental disorder characterised by significant difficulties in social interaction and nonverbal communication that she has been diagnosed with, Thunberg chose to call it her ‘superpower’ instead. “Being different is a superpower,” she said.
Since her rise to prominence, Thunberg has also had to deal with a massive amount of negativity in person and on social media from climate change skeptics. But she has faced the criticism with an equanimity that belies her tender age, again choosing to focus on the positive instead of the negative.
In interacting with their peers on a daily basis, your child may have discovered that they are different from their classmates in a number of ways. They may also attempt to hide these differences in order to fit in.
What they can learn from Thunberg is the critical skill of reframing. There are always two sides to a coin. Rather than seeing being different as something negative, help your child focus on how the differences are the source of his or her unique identity and strengths.
And because Thunberg is still so young, she is a fantastic example to all children that they can both be different and make a difference.
Related: 3 Inspirational Lessons That Your Child Can Learn From TIME’s 2019 Person Of The Year
At 23 years old, our next role model is not much older than Thunberg. Malala Yousafzai, more often just called Malala, is a Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest woman to have received the Nobel Prize. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 as a 17-year-old.
The Taliban local government in the area of Pakistan she was born in at times banned girls from attending school altogether. This led to the precocious and outspoken Malala denouncing them in a public speech for denying her the basic right to education when she was just 11 years old.
She nearly died after being shot by a Taliban gunman in 2012 but after her recovery continued to fight for what she believes in most strongly.
Like Thunberg, Malala is also an inspiration for children everywhere that they can and deserve to stand up and be counted on matters that are important to them.
Malala’s commitment to advocating for universal education is a reminder too of the opportunities education provides children that we sometimes take for granted.
Thunberg and Malala actually met in late February in Oxford in the United Kingdom where Malala is completing her university studies. In reference to Thunberg’s school strikes, Malala tweeted: “She’s the only friend I’d skip school for.”
Love her or hate her, there is no denying that 39-year-old Serena Williams is the most dominant player women’s tennis has ever seen, and one of the most driven athletes of all time.
She has shattered gender and racial stereotypes en route to 23 Grand Slam singles titles, the first coming in 1999 when she was just 17, and the last so far in 2017 when she was 35.
And while most of her contemporaries are already retired professionally, Williams remains a force to be reckoned with through sheer willpower and determination.
But winning is only one half of her story. In one of her most quoted remarks she said: “I don't like to lose — at anything… yet I've grown most not from victories, but setbacks. If winning is God's reward, then losing is how he teaches us.”
Learning how to deal with adversity is an important lesson to learn for children. It is not a question of whether they will fail — failure is inevitable. But it is how they recover that matters. Having such a mindset will always stand a child in good stead as they move up in school and are exposed to new and increasingly complex material in the classroom.
Closer to home and a fair bit older than the others in this list, at 83-years-old, Singaporean Roman Catholic nun Sister Gerard Fernandez’s long life has been defined by her compassion for the suffering and the condemned.
She worked with the prisons here as a death row counsellor for more than 40 years until 2017, serving as the pillar of emotional support for 18 prisoners in the days and hours leading up to their executions.
Sister Gerard became the first Singaporean to make the BBC’s annual list of 100 influential and inspiring women around the world last year.
"It is most beautiful when they say: 'Yes, I have done wrong but I have hope'," said Sister Gerard, who calls all those she has ‘walked with’ her friends, in a 2016 interview with The Straits Times.
Showing compassion towards others is not a skill to be learnt but more of a disposition to adopt and live by. It takes a conscious and deliberate effort, as exemplified by Sister Gerard.
It means learning how to keep an open mind when meeting new people, and to always speak with kindness, things that we emphasise at The Learning Lab when encouraging our students to establish amity and listen attentively to their peers when it comes to the occasional group work.
At The Learning Lab, we believe that knowledge, skills and dispositions go hand in hand in bringing out your child’s full potential. We know that tackling life’s challenges require more than just academic skills, as the women above so admirably demonstrate.
We want to help empower your child with the right attitudes for success, nurturing in them a spirit of inquiry that is undaunted by challenges. Click here to find out how we can empower your child in excelling in all aspects of life.
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