Girls Will be Girls, or They Should Be

By Anastacia Mott Austin

Do you remember what girls used to do before cell phones or iPods were invented?

When I was a girl…..I walked three miles to school, uphill both ways, barefoot, even in the snow.

Wait, that was my mom.

Okay, when I was a girl I read books. A lot. I sat in the treehouse in our yard, eating apples and reading books about other young girls across the world doing exciting things.

I made paper cootie catchers with my friends that predicted who we’d marry or what we’d be when we grew up. We sat in circles and played with a Ouija board, told ghost stories at sleepovers, and looked for scary animal shapes on the ceiling.

I used to run down to the creek at the end of my yard and just watch stuff. Like how the water coiled up and made its own miniature dam against a trapped leaf before going under the little bridge I sat on, or how water bugs skated so lightly on the surface, how frogs would sit like statues for what seemed like hours.

I also acted in community children’s theater, played the flute, and competed in Scottish dancing. I guess I was a busy kid, but when I was younger I also seemed to have a lot of free time to just observe the world and get dirty.

Girls today, especially during those tween years when they’re not little kids but not yet angsty teens, seem to lack for opportunities to get dirty and tell stories with their friends. They’re too busy trying to negotiate for cell phones and computer time, seeing how fast they can grow up without looking back.

Luckily for them, authors like Andrea Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz decided to take matters into their own hands, and wrote "The Daring Book for Girls." Modeled after the similar "Dangerous Book for Boys," by Conn and Hal Iggulden, this book includes everything a girl should know before getting too old to care.

Included in its chapters are things like "Every Girl’s Toolbox," (which includes the standards like a claw hammer, screwdriver, drill, safety glasses, nails, pliers, etc), "How to be a Spy," (including whistle signals, secret codes, and how to learn to pay attention to details), "God’s Eyes" (those yarn and popsicle-stick things), and "Handclap Games" (with the basics like "Down by the Bay" and "Say Say Oh Playmate").

Other chapters cover important girl-skills like how to run a lemonade stand, basic first aid skills, math tricks, how to change a tire, and yes, even cootie catcher basics.

Interspersed with these essential skills are chapters on daring women and girls of history, like famous queens and spies, and important things to know like the Bill of Rights and Robert’s Rules, and state capitals. It also includes the rules of sports like basketball, baseball, bowling, and darts.

Girls today absolutely need this book. When I was a kid I learned a lot of this stuff just by being a kid, but as a culture we’ve lost our compass as far as what is important in childhood. Nobody seems to have time to just sit with a kid and tell them any of this – we’re all too busy working or frantically checking our email.

Can you imagine a world where a girl wouldn’t have ever run her own lemonade stand, made a daisy chain, or camped out in her own backyard and told a ghost story with a flashlight under her chin?

We’re getting there, people.

I’m not a shill for Andrea Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz, I promise, but mothers and fathers, run out today and buy this book for your tweenish daughter, right now. Trust me, she needs this way more than her own phone or Croc widgets. If you have a boy, buy the similarly-themed "Dangerous Book for Boys."

If you don’t have kids, buy these books for every kid you know. The world is on the verge of losing its knowledge of handclap games and cootie catchers. Once gone, we can never get it back.

Rather like childhood.