Part One: Guest Interview Gloria, founder of The Parent Coaching Institute (http://www.thePCI.org)(PCI) and author of Parenting Well in a Media Age (http://www.amazon.com/Parenting-Well-Media-Age-Keeping/dp/1932181121/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1370963883&sr=1-1&keywords=parenting+well+in+a+media+age), talks with PCI Coach Patricia Barros. Patricia, a retired pediatrician, who is the mother of three children, two daughters and one son. Patricia is a Lead Instructor for Parent Coach International and a PCI coach who owns her own coaching business at Insightful Parent Coaching in Cincinnati. Patricia can be reached at: [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) This podcast is about a vitally important topic: Raising girls who love themselves. Media images of the so-called “perfect” woman pervade the female consciousness from little on up. Sexualized and commodified, girls are constantly presented as objects of male desire. In fact, billion dollar industries such as fashion and cosmetics are built upon the assumption that women hate themselves. It’s important that parents give their daughters the right messages so that girls can grow healthy self-identities to withstand all the nonsense that can be taken as truth, if we adults don’t intervene. Have you heard of the latest trend, “the thigh gap?” Young girls want their thighs so thin that there is a perceivable gap between them. Let’s banish thighs that meet or, God forbid, rub together. Really. The message here is: Be thin—real thin—or you are not a worthy person. You are undervalued as a human, in fact. Parents can counteract distortions such as this through tricks that media use—such as repetition—repeat authentically our love; affirm our girls’ innate talents regularly. This podcast provides more practical ideas that can be implemented within a busy day to help grow our daughters’ healthy self-identity. We have the power to empower our daughters from the inside, where it counts! And when we do, they will love themselves unconditionally. Part Two: The Parent Coaching Corner™ I continue coaching Geri, mom of three boys, ages 13, 11, and 9 regarding self-management of their digital devices. In our last session Geri was in the middle of an important transition—back to school. Geri was pleasantly surprised to see how all her hard work with the boys this summer was transferring to help with the transition from summer vacation to start of school. That spurred Geri to think about ways to help the boys stay organized during the school year—starting with making the after-school schedule more visible to the boys. But as life would have it, something else crept to the top of her list over the last two weeks. It wasn’t the after-school schedule that became the most important thing. Stopping the boy’s participation in M-rated violent video games became a higher priority. And also, Geri had to make a tough decision to take away her middle son’s i-pad. Tune in to hear all she accomplished since our last coaching session. (Listen to the first nine podcasts to catch up with Geri.)