• go to The Respect Institute

Guest post by Vanessa Van Petten, author of You're Grounded!

"You can't write a book, you are just 17, and you are a girl!"

No. Way. I believe that you can do anything you put your mind to, and girls, especially have the power to change the world. When I was 17, I realized the gap between parents and teens was growing even deeper, and parents needed to hear from real teens about what their own kids were doing.

It took many months of late nights, spending all of my allowance and babysitting money and working really hard, but I finally self-published a parenting guide from a teen's perspective—called "You're Grounded!" That is when I realized that we can do anything we work hard at! Here are few ways girls, and parents of girls, can be encouraged to take leadership positions early in life—because you can make a difference:

1. To learn how to plan: Start small
Organize a family dinner or house project. This works especially well for younger girls. Parents: encourage your daughters to take the reigns for a family day and plan the activities, or make one meal per week. An important leadership principle is learning to plan and organize people. So girls, start in your own family and see if you can take an art project and plan the details of buying supplies, getting everyone together and sticking to a time schedule.

2. To learn patience: Think long-term
Do a three-month project. Leaders and entrepreneurs often must work on something diligently for a few months or even years before seeing results. Try to think of a project that you can work on a little bit each day or week, like growing a garden or building a blog with friends. This will teach you patience, persistence and flexibility to stay with a project—all important aspects of leaders.

3. To learn how to work with people: Plan events
Time to throw a party! Event planning, working with people and making something appealing is really important especially if you want to be a leader with something to sell or promote such as a cause or message. Plan a fundraiser at your school, organize a surprise party or family reunion…anything where you can exercise your planning skills and working with other people!

4. To learn motivation: Think passion
Do some soul-searching. Leaders love their cause, love what they do and are very passionate about something. Sit down and really think about what makes you tick. Find a cause, a person or idea that you want to work towards and make your goal sheet with specific goals and put them on colorful pages in your room to see them everyday!

5) To learn scale: Think who
Always think outside the box. True leaders never let anyone tell them "no," they just find another way. When people told me no one would publish my book, I took my allowance and self-published. When I couldn't figure out how to build a Web site, I found a friend who was a computer programmer and traded Spanish lessons for him to build my site. Never give up! Never take "no" for an answer! And never stop looking for ways to achieve your dreams!

Dream big, work hard and you will get there,
Vanessa

Comments (0) | by Courtney on March 20

email to a friend | link to this article

email this entry to a friend