EP 111: Building resilience in Adolescent girls with Kim McCabe of Rites for Girls

Speaker Names

Dr Olivia KesselHost

00:06

Welcome to the Send Parenting Podcast.

00:09

I'm your neurodiverse host, dr Olivia Kessel, and, more importantly, I'm mother to my wonderfully neurodivergent daughter, alexandra, who really inspired this podcast. As a veteran in navigating the world of neurodiversity in a UK education system, I've uncovered a wealth of misinformation, alongside many answers and solutions that were never taught to me in medical school or in any of the parenting handbooks. Each week on this podcast, I will be bringing the experts to your ears to empower you on your parenting crusade. Before we start with the episode, I'd like to invite you to become a member of our Send Parenting what's Up? Community. It's a private space designed just for us. Parenting neurodiverse children can come with its own set of challenges, but it's also full of incredible moments of joy and growth. So I wanted to create a space where we can come together as neurodiverse parents to connect, share experiences and offer support to one another with no judgment and a lived in understanding. If you're a neuro navigator like me and have felt alone on this journey, then this is the community for you. Join us as we navigate this unique journey together. Join us as we navigate this unique journey together. The link can be found in the show notes or you can direct message me on 078-569-15105, and I can personally add you in Looking forward to hearing from you in the community.

01:38

In this episode we are going to explore a very challenging time for girls the transition from primary school to secondary school and the onset of puberty. Girls are often picked up as neurodiverse during this transition, as masking and other coping mechanisms can't meet up with the increase in demand. It's a really challenging time for girls, both socially and with big feelings of anxiety, stress and not fitting in. Today we're going to speak with Kim McCobb, founder of Rights for Girls, which focuses on supporting girls through this transition period alongside their mothers. Kim is author of From Daughter to Woman Parenting Girls Safely Through their Teens. She's a child expert, has been interviewed on BBC and Sky News and she sets out to remind parents, and especially mothers, that they hold the key to making a girl's journey through adolescence safer, kinder and better supported.

02:34

So welcome, kim. It's an absolute pleasure to have you on the Send Parenting podcast today. You know really to discuss a very challenging times in young girls' lives. You know, when they're transitioning from primary school to secondary school, when they're starting puberty. You know, and especially if you're neurodiverse, it is a time of transition and change and I'm really excited to discuss with you today about rights for girls and to learn a little bit more about your background. I know you were a homeschooler and I know that that kind of led you on a convoluted journey towards founding Rights for Passage. So could you tell us a little bit about your journey with your children?

Kim McCabeGuest

03:13

Hmm, of course, thank you for inviting me. It's lovely to be here. I was not a parent who thought she would be giving up her life to her children. I thought I'd pop them out and carry on with whatever it was I was doing. I didn't know what that would be, but it was going to be something fulfilling for me. I was not the kind of child who grew up playing with dolls and couldn't wait to have my own children. I had no idea how that would change when I held my first baby in my arms, the love that I had for him, how much I would be willing to do for him. Little did I know that what that would mean would be.

03:57

I remember taking him to his first day at school. He thought it was wonderful. I went to leave the room. He came with me. It was kind of completely, why would I not stay? He was completely bemused. So I sat in the corner of the room knitting heavily pregnant with our second child, trying to be invisible, and he really enjoyed it when I was there. But the moment I left he didn't want to be there. So because he was young, I thought, well, we've got time, and he taught me really that actually what he needed for his own sort of development and growing up was to be in a much kind of bigger world than the world that school was offering him at that time, and that bigger world was basically my world. He just wanted to join in with whatever I was doing, and so we sort of fell into it. But it then became a lifestyle choice and we home educated our three children and it was that same boy I remember he was must have been then 1011.

04:55

I overheard him talking about what mothers do or what women do, and he basically described my life. So he said Well, what? What women do is they look after their children and they drive. Well, what women do is they look after their children and they drive them places and they make sure they have fun and they teach them the things that they want them to know. And they drive them places and they make sure that the children have fun and they drive them places. And I'm like, oh my goodness, this is not the education I want him to be giving. I don't want him to think that this is what a woman's life is. That's also a really important part of his education, so I'd better be doing something for me Other than driving him around.

05:30

Exactly, and that's really where Girls Journeying Together Groups was born, because at the same time, I was sitting around in circles of parents while we waited, having driven our children to places so that they could do exciting things, chatting about what the challenges were that we were experiencing, and I was always full of ideas and thoughts, and at that time I'd have to say I was full of advice. I know better now, but they said to me look, would you do something with the children? And so that's really where it was born. It was born in my front room, a small group of girls preteen girls equivalent to year six just on the cusp of puberty, a time of lots of change, where they were starting to struggle with things that they didn't find problematic before, and we met monthly for a year so that they would feel what monthly felt like as a preparation for when their monthlies would come. And whilst some of them were home educated, not all of them were, so some of them were making that big change from primary to secondary school, which coincides with the onset of puberty and these days not back then, but these days also coincides often with a child's access to a smartphone. That's all way too much, and so I wanted to support those girls as they made that transition. Now the neurodiverse girls amongst them, of which there are many in the home-ed world, were also really struggling with all of a sudden, the things that had worked up till then in their friendship groups, in their kind of relating with people, um, in their ability to mask, were not working quite so well. So they were running into real friendship problems and and self-identity issues. So that naturally also became part of the groups that we were running um, well, I was running at that time. Now there's women across the country who are running these groups, but it became.

07:31

An important part of it is that every girl in any group that we run whether it's our in-person program or online program feels like she belongs already, just exactly as she is. She doesn't have to change anything about herself to fit in. For many girls, neurodiverse or not, they don't have that anywhere else in their lives. And for the neurodiverse girls, that's a really unusual thing to be told that really you can just be you. What would it be like if you weren't masking? How would it be to be in a group of girls where what we're practicing is accepting each other just exactly as they are as each, everyone person is, and actually being curious about the difference and learning from each other.

08:12

And if you're going to accept others for being different, then you have to practice accepting yourself for being different. So, instead of making yourself wrong for being different, what if it was right? What if it was exactly perfectly right the way that you are and who you are? And so that's one really big thing that we work with with our girls, and, of course, in order to do that in our training with women, the women have to do that too. What if we were? There was nothing wrong with us. We weren't a self-improvement project that we had to somehow change in order to be better women or better parents or better facilitators for girls groups? What if who we were and how we are is exactly right and we could draw on the authenticity of that and draw on the strengths of who we are?

Dr Olivia KesselHost

08:56

Yeah, I mean it's beautiful really because there's not many places where you feel that way, you know as a woman, as a daughter, as a mother, as a, you know, as a female. So it's absolutely beautiful. And you talked to me about your vision of kind of why you did this in terms of girls become mothers and grandmothers, and you know how instilling that self-esteem becomes the scaffolding for the future and I guess your kind of mission or vision, so again.

Kim McCabeGuest

09:23

it was when I was pregnant for the first time. So my first boy. He was the pioneer. I made all my big mistakes with him, but it was when I was pregnant with him. I stopped being able to watch the news or listen to the radio. It was all suddenly. It was all too real. Everybody that they were talking about on the news was someone's child or was the parent to someone, and I found it unbearable, all the things that were happening out in the world. I couldn't bear it. And once my children were born, I started thinking well, I can't just disengage because this is the world that I'm bringing them up to live in. So what can I do? Well, I can take care of a little corner of the world.

10:09

I went to Cambridge University and studied psychology and child psychology, women's studies and criminology. So I had some theory, but it was divorced from practice, from the real world, and I started to think what if I married those two things up? What if I took my counseling training with disturbed teenagers? And I started to think about how I could make a difference. Well, what's the biggest difference I could make? Let me think Okay, girls, girls are going to become, many of them are going to become the mothers of the next generation, the mothers to all the girls and the boys of our future. Many of them are going to become the mothers of the next generation, the mothers to all the girls and the boys of our future. Many of them are going to become the leaders of our future. All of them are our elders in waiting.

10:51

So what if we supported our girls to grow up well and strong? What a difference that could make in the world. The ripple effect both immediately for those girls, but also for the society of our, the future of our society, and those girls. At the moment the statistics are horrific. You know, one in four of our 14 year old girls is self-harming, is clinically depressed. That's not just a little bit down, that's clinically depressed. So what if we could change that? What an impact that would have, not only on their lives and their futures and what they could foresee for themselves and what they would dare to then do, but also many of those girls they're going to be absolutely critical to the following generations. So that seemed to me mini-max. That seemed to me not only a really important thing to do now for our girls growing up, but also for our future.

Dr Olivia KesselHost

11:50

Yeah, absolutely, and it's sad that we don't have anything built into our society that does support girls, and even boys, going through that kind of period of time and, as you say, with all the additional kind of pressures they have with getting smartphones and other stuff like that. You know it's, it's, it is a. You know you could predict the kind of statistics you've just shared with us. So how has Rights for Girls met the need and could you describe to me your in-person program and what it is exactly that you do and how you support children?

Kim McCabeGuest

12:23

Yes, so it is girls that we work with, and that's because I was a girl once and I know how hard growing up was, and the women that we train have not only the experience of growing up but also can become role models for the girls that we work with. Now that's not to say that boys don't need it too Of course they do, but they need men. They need men to do that, that work with them. So we have two programs. We have an in-person program and an online program. They're very different, very, very different, but there are some things they hold in common. One is that we gather together small groups of girls of the same age and we help prepare them for adult life. What do girls need? What do all people need, actually? But what do they need? They need to have their hopes and dreams listened to and taken seriously. They need to learn about practical things like what do the letters and numbers on a bra mean and what do you do if you start bleeding for the first time away from home? How do you speak up for yourself? How do you not lose your voice?

13:28

So many girls go into their preteen years relatively strong and sure and quirky and uniquely themselves, and they lose that. They lose that uniqueness, that voice that they had as they go through adolescence. They try to fit in and conform, conform and they try to pretzel themselves into a particular way of being, and that's even now more exacerbated by social media. So one of the things we do is we help them see what the effects of social media are on them, because, unlike when I was little, growing up, where the adults were much better able to protect me, we now need the girls to be able to protect themselves, because that world online is kind of invisible to the adults around them. So they need to be able to learn how to take care of themselves, not just online but in every way, because isn't that what growing up is about?

14:20

It's more and more learning how to take care of yourself, knowing what you need, knowing how you learn, knowing what makes you feel good and sure and safe and confident, and playing a greater and greater part in making sure your world includes that. Playing a greater and greater part in making sure your world includes that. Our neurodiverse girls have a particular challenge because through the teenage years, they still don't have a great deal of say over who they're with and how they spend their time and yet many of them are experiencing greater and greater kind of challenge or dissonance with who they are and how they feel they're supposed to be. So our groups, whether it's online or in person, are about really helping them see the strengths that they carry, the value that they have in being who they are. And with the online program, it's over a year and it's only for girls in year six or year seven, so 10, 11, 12 years old.

Dr Olivia KesselHost

15:15

Is that the online or the in-person? In-person? In-person, you said online. Sorry. Sorry, I just caught you there.

Kim McCabeGuest

15:21

Don't be impacting me for that because the online is for eight to 18.

15:24

That's a much wider age range. Of course, they're still in the same age group, so all the eight-year-olds would be together, the nine-year-olds would be together, but that program's much shorter. That's just six weeks long. It's more immediate and it's more about resourcing themselves on the inside, like noticing and discovering what values and resources they have inside, building on the resilience they have, but also identifying who in their immediate surroundings can they call on for support. So resourcing themselves on the outside. Now, of course, we do that in the in-person group as well, but what the in-person group also has is they make really strong connections, lasting friendships, with one another over the course of the year, and for many of them, it's a very different kind of friendship than they have anywhere else. And you know, I've been working with girls in Girls Journeying Together groups for 13, 14 years now now, and I'm in touch still in touch with some of my original girls who are in their mid-20s now and they say that they're still friends. They've made friends for life.

16:24

But also it gave them, uh, an experience of what friendship could be like, what friendship should be like really healthy friendship a healthy friendship where you are more true to yourself but still you speak up and you speak your voice, but you do that with respect and kindness to others as well. It's not just about kind of plowing through the world and as a kind of robustly yourself. It's about it's it's it's also being able to listen to and take into consideration others, in a way that some girls are overdeveloped in and others are underdeveloped, but finding what suits them. And, of course, the training. When we train women to run these groups and a really important part of the training is it's much easier to give something that you've received yourself.

17:14

And whenever we're talking about our program, so many women say oh my goodness, how would my life have been different if I'd have had this. It touches people's hearts because, of course, I don't know a single woman who didn't encounter real challenges growing up. We're growing up into a society that isn't best designed for women necessarily. So part of the training is we take you through the program each of the sessions as your preteen self, so you experience it from the inside, which is then how our facilitators are going to then be able to offer it, but also it heals the girl inside of us so that we can really be there as an adult woman in the girls' lives, authentically with our weaknesses and our strengths, but able to model to them how all the different ways that a woman can be.

Dr Olivia KesselHost

18:07

And I suppose, like you know, having that insight and having walked in the path that they're going to then facilitate brings everyone kind of on the same page as well. And it must be really important too, because I've wondered, like you know, girls can be mean in a group, you know, especially at that age, and you know we've all experienced it and you know, not necessarily intentionally, but it can come across. So it must be really important in terms of those group dynamics that the facilitator knows how to guide the group and grow the group, absolutely.

Kim McCabeGuest

18:38

And girls can be really mean and it comes from a place of hurt often, or ignorance and unawareness, and insecurities as well, and insecurity exactly. But that doesn't excuse it. I think often we hear bullies being excused for that oh, they're going through a really tough time, they're coming from a lack of confidence. Well, yes, but then they need to stop it. And of course it you know it bubbles up in our groups, especially at the beginning, when the girls are starting to learn this new culture, this new way of being, and absolutely the facilitators are extremely well trained to be able to guide the girls away from this relational aggression which we're actually trained in. You know, rather than daring to speak up, we kind of act it out a lot of the time, and that can be really cruel. So how can we resolve differences, resolve, express when we've been hurt, and this is now as women or as girls, in a way that can resolve the issue?

19:43

I think girls and women are particularly trained to value relationship over themselves, relationship with others over themselves, Pleasing, Pleasing, of course it's what we're trained to do and there's actually real value in it to have an awareness of other people, to want to kind of tend and have compassion for others, but not if it's girls. They do sacrifice themselves a lot for the sake of fitting in and having friendships and being able to be in relationship with people, and actually we don't need to do that. There are ways of being able to be true to yourself and be respectful of others and find your own friendship group. It might mean a bit of a rejigging of the friendship group. What is true friendship, you know, it's often not necessarily being in with the popular crowd, it's finding your own kind of your own tribe, your tribe exactly and your tribe might not be for everybody.

Dr Olivia KesselHost

20:55

I think that's you know. As I say to my daughter, I'm like you, know you find your tribe. You're not going to like everybody, not everyone's going to like you. That's okay, it's absolutely fine. You need to find the people that you connect with.

Kim McCabeGuest

21:05

And yet do you know what I'm thinking about? The end of one of my year long groups, there was a girl who came up to me and she kind of crossed her arms and she scowled at me and she said I like girls who I never thought I'd like. I said to her oh OK, how is that? It's all right Now. This was a girl who had no friends and was not befriended by anyone at school because she was quirky, because she was different. Befriended by anyone at school because she was quirky, because she was different. But in Girls Journey Together she was able to experiment with how to kind of temper that difference so that others could tolerate it better. She had an understanding of how it impacted on others sometimes and so could sometimes have an awareness of that and equally be herself and be liked for that.

21:57

One of the things we do in the in-person group is on the month of a girl's birthday, towards the end of the session, we hold up a mirror to her and tell her what we see, what do we like about this girl, and all the girls shout out all the things that they like and how they see them.

22:17

Um, and it can be quite touching actually to see how much the girls know each other in actual fact really well. They may not know practical things like what school they go to or whether they've got brothers and sisters. They certainly know if they've got pets. Uh, they will say, you know, there'll be things like you're really quiet and you hardly say anything, but when you do, it's really worth listening to. Or, um, I like you because you, you just say things how they are and I don't really dare do that, but I'm learning that from you. So the girls get a sense of what is special and unique about them that they bring to the group that we would all miss if they weren't there, that they are part of what the whole group is and they also, they form an important part of it, but also that to be a part of it the best they can do is be themselves.

Dr Olivia KesselHost

23:16

There's a beautiful authenticity to that as well, because the examples you've just given there aren't oh, I like your long hair or, you know, I like the shoes you're wearing. You know, it's actually seeing the person for who they are and complimenting them on what they see, which has that kind of raw honesty to it, which I think is really beautiful. So that's lovely. I mean, it must make a very, you know, a big difference to these girls. You say that some of them have come from, you know, not having any social interrelationships outside of school. What could you share, like maybe some stories of how you know because it's a year long program how it's really impacted. Maybe, if you have any like neurodiverse kind of case stories that you could share.

Kim McCabeGuest

24:01

Yes, actually I'm at the moment interviewing some of the girls who are in my earliest groups. Of course, we asked the girls straight after the year long program how they find it and 98% of the girls in both of our programs would recommend it to other girls. But of course, when you've just done it and you're still young, it's harder to reflect on it. So that's why I'm working with the Department of Education at the moment and they're really curious to know the long term impact of our programmes. So I'm going to some of our older girls who are much better able to look back over time and kind of go oh, do you know what? Much better able to look back over time and kind of go, oh, do you know what I've house shared with other women. You know when I went to uni or when I moved away from home and lived with other women and I could see that I was different in some ways. And actually my very first group got together during COVID on Zoom and they're now scattered across the world and we're going to chat for 40 minutes on Zoom and ended up talking for two, three hours and what they talked about was we're different, aren't we? How are we different, why are we different? And they got back to me afterwards because they said you know what we concluded, kim? We concluded it was that program we did with you all those years ago when we were 10 and 11. Because you, I found my voice and I've gone through life since then kind of assuming that my voice is important and that I should share it and that there should be a place for it. And I watch the other women around me and they don't necessarily know that or I see other girls or now other women as potential allies, not competition, and that's something that sets me different from the other young women that I'm at work with or I'm studying with, because they kind of see each other as the competition and I just don't. I see each other as a support, as a support network, and I think that's something I really learned at that really fundamental stage, as you're going into puberty and there's so much change in the brain, as you possibly know, when you go into puberty the brain goes undergoes massive changes and new neural pathways are made. So the things that we learn at that stage are really important, have a really profound effect. How many adults are still behaving as if the world is how it was when they were teenagers. I mean, how many I do myself? I'm still learning how not to behave as if I'm about to be bullied or whatever.

26:30

I made good decisions at that age too, but I made some pretty well. They were survival decisions at that age which are no longer appropriate for me as an adult. And of course, that's another important part of our training the women that we work with, for them to best kind of transmit this to the girls, because not only do we give them, you know, a great big folder of all the materials and the handouts for the girls and the program and the timetable and all the rest of it. Just as important is who is the woman delivering this, who is the woman facilitating, who is the mentor to these girls? And so when we go back as women and heal some of our past wounds, they become actually part of our wisdom. That enables us to really support the girls in the reality of what they're experiencing, which, sadly, I have to say, is even more challenging than when we were younger. But certainly, if we've had a chance to go back and revisit some of those decisions we made as children survival decisions, important decisions that are actually no longer relevant. We don't need to live to those kind of self-defined guidelines that we made up then anymore. We can relate to people differently now. The world is safer than it was then, but so many of us as adults have sort of left over kind of echoes of things that happened to us when we were little that we are still behaving as if the world is like that and it doesn't have to be, and particularly when we feel surer and stronger in ourselves as women. The girls just sense it. In fact, many of our facilitators suddenly, kind of when they've done the training with us, say I can be just standing in the post office queue and end up chatting to a teenage girl. How did that work? It's almost like they smell something in us. They can see that we are curious, we want to hear about them. So conversations get struck up and whether women go on to run girls groups or not, they find that they become better parents to their own children, better able to support the other young people in their lives girls and boys actually. But you know, just better, better support. And in fact you asked me how does Rights for Girls work?

28:45

Rights for Girls came out of my university studies of rites of passage. It's so important. We still, when a child is born, we welcome them, we celebrate the start of a new life. We will mark it when two adults join in some sort of union in the middle of their lives and we honour someone at the end of their life in some funeral or wake or some sort of service. But the rite of passage that used to be given the most time and attention, that used to be seen as the most important, is the one that we have almost lost, and that's the coming of age rite of passage, the puberty rite of passage. Some religions still have it confirmation, bar mitzvah, bat mitzvah but for the most part you know the prom or the sweet 16, it's like we've lost that.

29:33

So actually that's what our work is, is all the preparation work. You don't just rock up to a wedding and just suddenly have a wedding. It's all the preparation. It's the courtship, the getting to know the person, knowing that they're the right person, the bringing together of two families, the preparing for the kind of ritual, the ceremony. That's what our Girls Journeying Together groups are. Is all that preparation for a rite of passage?

29:57

Now, at 12, they're not the right age for a rite of passage, but it's the coming together with elders, connecting with the elders in their community, being led by an older woman in a peer group of other girls, identifying what your core strengths are, what your values and your purpose is, figuring out who you are and perhaps something of what you want to become. Who are your people? Where do you come from Learning the practical things that you need to know about becoming an adult, whether it be you know the practical things like what to do about spots and greasy hair, or how do I stand up for myself and what do I stand up for? What are my values? These are all the important things that form part of a preparation for a coming of age rite of passage, and it's in that, in the marking that this person is no longer a child, that they are seen as moving towards young adulthood by the elders, by everyone in their community.

30:55

Look, you see, the desire for it hasn't gone away. We see our teenagers in the absence of this self-initiating. They still want to prove to themselves, each other and the others around them that they're growing up. So they do it themselves. Unfortunately, they're not done it being held by their community in the sight of their elders. They do it by doing things that children don't do, that adults do do so drinking, driving, drugs, dressing how they talk, how they behave, risk-taking.

31:26

It's not always the best way of honouring and marking that someone is no longer a child and is well on the path to a young adulthood. It's unsupported. So we're bringing that back. We're bringing back the circles of community that support our young people as they make that difficult transition from child to adulthood, and we support the parents too, because that's also, you know, supporting a child. Making that transition is challenging. You know, parenting a teenager is hard work, oh my God, though it's a privilege, because our teenagers remind us of some of the most important things in life, because they question everything, and that can be challenging, but it's also very, very fulfilling and very awakening.

Dr Olivia KesselHost

32:14

Well, I think it's lovely actually how you combine actually the mothers and the daughters. You were describing to me how the mothers actually meet as well when the daughters meet in the in-person program, and you also discussed how there's that journey in the car there and in the car back. So can you tell us a little bit more about that? Because it's not just you're putting your daughter on this program, you're almost putting yourself on it as well as a mother.

Kim McCabeGuest

32:36

Yes, absolutely, because the girls can really feel the circle of mothers around them. And that's how it should be that feeling of you know, being held by a circle of women. So not only does the girl then have her own mother by the end of the year, many of them will say well, I've got lots of mums now and, especially as you're going through the teen years, sometimes your own mum is a bit too close. Sometimes you want to go to another woman, an older woman, for advice or just for her to listen, but not your own mum, because she'll freak out or you practice. I find the girls will often tell me things and they're practicing saying it before they tell their mum.

33:14

But also as a parent myself, you know when our children are little, because you have to be with them, so you're sitting around the edge of the soft play area or at the school gates.

33:23

If your child is at school, you naturally have this informal support with other parents which you lose at that really critical time when your child is suddenly demanding new and different things of you. As a parent, you suddenly feel very de-skilled as your child goes into adolescence and obviously that often coincides with going from primary to secondary school because they get themselves to school or they get themselves to their activities. You're not informally just hanging out with other parents in the same way, and yet it's at a time when parents really can and do well to support one another. So that circle of mothers is also to support the mothers in parenting their girls through this stage, which of course inevitably also means reflecting back on what it was like for them at that age and how they want to do it differently or how they want to do it the same, what they want to bring to their parenting of a preteen and an early teen girl. So yes, of course it's a journey the girls go on, but it's a journey that their mothers are on alongside them too.

Dr Olivia KesselHost

34:22

Which is fantastic, because then and there's also then that brings that connection between them, because you're going through something together, because often there can be a disconnect in the teenage years between mom and daughter and you know changing roles and expectations, but you're on the same page if you're, if you're going through and doing this program for a year together. There's a natural connection there.

Kim McCabeGuest

34:42

And the women become just the same. As the girls say they make friends for life, the women say they make friends for life and the women on our training say they make friends for life. But during the pandemic there was one girl who had been on one of my Girls Journeying Together groups, whose mother became very ill. And I got a phone call from her dad saying oh, can you put me in touch with my wife's women's circle. And at first I didn't know what he meant and then I realized it was the mother's circle he was talking about and he wanted to connect his daughter with these other mothers.

35:22

As it happened, during the pandemic this woman died and for three nights those women brought food to the house, just left it on the doorstep and lit candles in a circle around that house. And since then, whenever the girls were doing something, they would ring up and see if this girl wanted to come along. They stepped into the role of other mother. And that's just one example in which you know this is what we can do, it's what we can do for each other, it's what we can do for each other's children, it's what our children need. They need a whole village, not just two parents, or two parents and grandparents, whatever you know, they need us all.

Dr Olivia KesselHost

36:06

Yeah, that's beautiful. Give me goosebumps. Actually it's absolutely lovely and you know what a way to help them reach out to that young girl and you know to have that extra support. You know, because a lot of us are so alone I mean, a lot of my listeners are single mothers and they don't have any support and maybe their family doesn't agree with the way that they're raising their children so it can be a very lonely journey where you don't feel supported. So getting that support and getting that village around you isn't a given anymore in today's world.

Kim McCabeGuest

36:37

No, we have to put effort into it and that effort pays off. And you know, I don't know about you. I'm a natural introvert and I feel shy about reaching out and saying you know, do you want to meet for a coffee or would you like to come round and hang out? And you know. So we have to get over ourselves. We're able to get over ourselves for the sake of our children, even though we benefit.

Dr Olivia KesselHost

37:03

And how does that work with the online program? Or is that just the children that get paired up for six weeks? Does that involve mothers or not?

Kim McCabeGuest

37:12

No, not so much. I mean we do have a session before the program starts, with the meet the mentor session, so parents can meet the mentor and have a sense of who she is and what the girls are about to go on. But no, the online program is much more immediate. It was born out of the pandemic. We didn't go straight online in the pandemic. In fact, because of the nature of our work, we were allowed to continue meeting in person with girls, even in lockdown, because they recognize the value of it, and so for some of those girls, that was the only social contact they had with anyone outside of their family for that year or those two years. But the online program grew about a year later, where we were all seeing, not just us within Rights for Girls, but the people we were talking to teachers and other people, youth workers.

38:03

We were seeing a massive increase in anxiety and social reticence in girls and boys, but particularly in girls, and I wanted to see if I could create something that could support girls from the safety and privacy of their own home. But there's something that would actually make a real difference. There were lots of people who had online offerings. I didn't want to create something that was already being on offer. There was lots of really good things out there on offer for girls and boys. I wanted to see if I could do some, create something that would make a lasting difference, and so that's what we did. I remember piloting it and I piloted it with girls who knew me, who had already done Girls Journeying together with me, and I remember with my co-facilitator, the woman who co-created it with me, helena, kind of talking to her after each one and going I don't know how this is working. I'm getting no feedback. I can't. I want to be in the same room as these girls and and yet at the end of it, oh, my goodness, we were blown away with the, the, the feedback we got from the girls about how, how differently they felt about themselves, how differently they felt about the world, it, it, but it's a program that more connects them in with themselves rather than with each other. Um, because, because it's online, they can be anywhere in the world, so they probably won't get a chance to meet up in person. So it's much more about they go on this shared journey. They definitely get a feeling of of oh my goodness, it's, I'm not the only one. Maybe there's not something wrong with me. There's lots of kind of me too. Oh, I feel like that. Oh gosh, you know.

39:41

And the other thing about the online program is we recognize that for many girls starting it, even that's a challenge. So we say to parents your job, whether it be the in-person program or online, your job is just to get your girl there. You know her best in all the world, so bribe her, Do whatever you need to do to get her back, and then we'll take it from there. Because the first session of any of our groups is a taster session. How can a girl know if she wants to do something if she doesn't know what it is?

40:09

So that first session they get a chance to meet the woman who's running it, the other girls who are interested in doing it, and we give them a taste of what it's like. And in doing that they get to decide, with no pressure from us and also no pressure from parents. We ask but in the online program they don't even have to turn their camera on at the beginning or even chat. They don't have to even speak. They can type into chat if that's the way they want to first engage. And we've discovered that girls, even girls who actually do you know what. By the end they've all pretty much turned their cameras on and are talking. They can't stop themselves. But even girls who perhaps don't do that so much still get an awful lot because they're engaged, they're listening to the material, they're making their own personal connections.

Dr Olivia KesselHost

41:19

They're listening to the material, they're making their own personal connections, they're hearing the other girls. So actually it's a deeply non-pressurized, non-threatening, I would imagine, way to dip your toe back into realizing that it doesn't. You know, it doesn't have to hurt and it can be, you know something, a small baby step for someone to take that might not be able to take any other steps.

Kim McCabeGuest

41:36

Yeah, and absolutely, and they can get up and move around and fiddle as much as they want. You know, it's like a lot of the things that can't be tolerated at school because it's too disruptive. You know, when they and actually we ask them to turn their screens off for part of it, you know so they're free to. You know, lie on their bed if they want to, or kind of get up and move around, because a lot of people learn when they're in motion. So sitting still is not something that we need them to do.

Dr Olivia KesselHost

42:11

It's lovely and it's also it increases the age range as well in terms of people that can participate. So you said from 8 to 18, that's you know.

Kim McCabeGuest

42:20

Yeah of course they're only in with their own same age girls. But yes, and it's interesting because, again, when we're training mentors, they say, oh, we need you to teach us how we need to do it differently for the eight year olds and the 18 year olds. And of course we do absolutely. We make it age appropriate and there is training for that. And because they go through the program themselves, they realize that actually there's material in there that they, as a grown woman, are benefiting from, that they're learning things for the first time maybe that they're going to go on and then transmit to the girls that is of value to them, even at 30, 40, 50, 60 years old.

43:02

So I think some of what we need as girls or as women it doesn't matter what age we are when we finally get to it, it has a really lasting impact not just on ourselves but on all our relationships with everyone else. And so the women who train with us find their lives quite transformed. Um, because the way that they are in every relationship, whether it be at work or at home, in their parenting is, is changed, and then we're passing that on to the girls. Now just imagine if you get that at an early age, at the early stage of your life, what an immense impact that can have. So we're changing the world, we're changing the world, one girl at a time.

Dr Olivia KesselHost

43:48

Absolutely brilliant, kim, and I can't wait to. You know, you have to share with us the research that you do for the Department of Education, because I think that's absolutely fantastic, but your stories tell it all. I mean, it just sounds absolutely brilliant. It's going to be something that I'm going to look into the online program for my own daughter because you've inspired me and I just I can see such a need for it, you know, and it's just an amazing, an amazing thing you've done. So I hope your son now says you know, has a different view of what mothers can accomplish. I'm sure he does. Could you end us with three top tips that you would give listeners to put in their pockets and take away from them with them? Yes, I can.

Kim McCabeGuest

44:24

Actually I have the benefit of. I run a parenting course, so I work with parents directly and it's taught me oh my goodness, how incredible parents are. It's taught me that my first tip is to trust yourself. Know that you are the world expert on your child and nobody, but nobody, knows better than you. Now there will be experts out there who can guide you in certain things and will be able to help you and assist you in your job. Nobody loves your child like you do, so trust yourself in knowing what's right for your child.

45:01

Don't give away and and feel de-skilled and think I need someone else to tell me what to do now. We all have moments where we feel like we want someone else to tell us what to do, and that's natural. So that's where, coming together with other parents and taking time out to think about what your child needs, you do know. You do know, and it's in conversation with other parents or with professionals or just with yourself, reflecting journaling, that you will realize you do know what your child needs may not be the answer that you want to hear from yourself, and that's often the challenge, because often we realise what our child needs is not something we necessarily want them to be needing, and that's the challenge. But my first tip I would say is to trust your own instincts and know that actually there's nobody better placed than you to parent your child through whatever life stage or challenge they're going through. So that's number one.

46:01

Number two I don't think this is a tip. I think everybody does this anyway but love your child, love them. But what I mean is love them exactly as they are, love them for who they are, not feeling like there's something wrong with them. What if you could trust them? That's it. That's the second piece of advice Trust your child. Trust your child that they are who they are and that there's a perfection in that, and they will be happier and better able to be themselves when they feel loved. And how does your child feel loved? Well, that's different for every child. Oh, now I'm going into the territing of my parenting course, but anyway, taking a moment to think about how your child feels loved is worth doing.

46:48

Some children it's because you give them time. Some children it's because you give them gifts. Some children it's because you really listen to them. So notice what helps your child know that you love them. You know that you love them, but how do they know that you love them and then you trust them to love them exactly as they are? So that would be my second piece of advice.

47:15

Third piece of advice here it is Know that in order for you to do your very best parenting, you need to take care of yourself first. And that sounds, feels, really counterintuitive, because many of us feel like we put our children's needs first. That actually isn't always the best way. If you are trying to give on empty, if you're under-resourced or you're stressed, your child is so tuned into that they will be picking that up. They will be and they're going to copy you. Oh, my goodness, so many of the girls that we work with.

47:49

One of the questions we ask is what are you looking forward to about becoming a woman? And at first they have so many things oh, I'm going to go where I want, to have as many pets as I want, I'm going to buy what I want, I'm going to go to bed when I want, I'm going to watch whatever I want. And then then they start talking about, they start describing oh my God, but I have to be responsible for everything and I'll have to do everything. And then we realised that actually, many parents, many mothers, aren't good adverts for motherhood. They aren't good adverts for womanhood, and we want to be good adverts for womanhood. We want our children to look at us and kind of go, I can't wait, I can't wait to be able to be like that.

48:33

So what is it that we're not doing? The ways in which we're not taking care of ourselves, because that's how we're going to be a best parent. That's when we do our best. Parenting is when we're not stressed. So what do you do every day and every week and every month that resources and nourishes you? Because that is an act of childcare. Self-care is childcare.

Dr Olivia KesselHost

48:57

Those are three really great top tips and I have to say it resonates with some of my other guests on the show. I think they're you know they are so key um to having a more balanced, happy family is to get those ones right. And if you can get those rights, you know, um, and even if you don't get them right, as long as you're trying to get to get there, that's all that really matters. But it's been an absolute pleasure, kim, having you on the podcast today, and I will include all of the links to Rights for Girls so that people can access you, because you're all over the country and then you have the online program as well. It's I have a feeling you might be inundated with calls because it's you know. You are an amazing woman and very visionary, as are all of your facilitators and all of your girls and all of your mothers. It just sounds like you're a big, huge hug of support for girls out there and women out there, so it's been a pleasure having you on the show.

Kim McCabeGuest

49:51

Thank you, I really enjoyed our conversation.

Dr Olivia KesselHost

49:55

Thank you for listening. Send Parenting Tribe. If you haven't already, please click on the link in the show notes to join us in the private Send Parenting WhatsApp community. It's been wonderful to be able to communicate with everyone in the community and for us to join together to help each other to navigate challenges and to also celebrate successes. Wishing you and your family a really good week ahead. Bye.

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