Mothering and Daughtering

This is such a precious resource, and one I come back to over and over again. Sil and Eliza teach through experience of their own relationship and also all of the mothers and daughters they’ve served. Their wisdom is deep but practical, and has given me so much hope that the relationship I create and sustain with my daughter through her teenage years, which I was terrified of, can be different than the turbulent and painful relationship I had with my mother as an adolescent. It’s so helpful to be guided from both the mother and daughter’s perspective. Thank you, Sil and Eliza! You are gems, and so is this treasure of a book.

Read this book first!

Out of the hundreds of parenting books out there, choose this one if you are a mother of a daughter. Sil and Eliza achieve a delicate balance of wisdom and accessibility, in this mother-daughter call to arms… not weapons, but arms to put around each other in order to stay close through these dynamic years. As a mom of an almost 14 year-old adventurous daughter, I’ve made it a personal mission to defy the stereotypes that insist the teen years must be terrible, and this book is my companion in that mission.

Our society tells us that we need to “let our teens grow up” our intuition (or at least mine!) was telling me otherwise. This book has GREAT tips on maintaining your relationship with your daughter and growing your bond even stronger all while watching and “aiding” her as she becomes her true self. Multiple references to other experts in the field. I highly recommend this book.

This book is a game-changer. I read this book to help me with raising my 10 year old daughter. Mothering & Daughtering has completely changed my perspective of how i view my role as a mother and understanding my daughter. So much is changing so quickly as my daughter is evolving, maturing and exploring her own self, and Eliza & Sil’s expertise is a lifeline for me. I feel back in the driver’s seat as a mother and I am looking forward to actually embracing the teen years! That is something I never imagined and I am incredibly appreciative of their guidance. Reading this book helped me to understand that as they grow, daughter’s need connection and closeness within the framework of independence and separation. Read this book for their unique and expert approach. The tween & teen years can be wonderful!

After I finished Sil and Eliza Reynold’s book I bought copies for all of my friends with daughters my daughters’ age (age 10). Then I was talking about the book to my friend who has 3 boys, one of them an adolescent, and realized she would benefit from reading it too.
My daughter is not quite old enough to read the Daughtering part, but since I AM a daughter as well as a mother, I found it very insightful and healing to read the Daughtering chapters. Eliza’s advice about being a daughter is wise way beyond her years.
The Mothering chapters are SO valuable for all mothers, and I believe fathers, too. I love the definition Sil gives of mothering: “raising your daughter to become herself.” She encourages all parents to follow their own intuition when it comes to parenting. She gives very practical, real world advice about how to keep our children close as they go through the changes of adolescence. She gives real examples of what she did when she and her daughter disagreed on curfews, boyfriends, etc. She acknowledges it can be tough to stand your ground as a parent and explains why it is important. She explains in clear terms why it is important for children not to spend all of their time with their peers and how to put smart boundaries around this.
Sil also writes about her relationship with her own mother, and the importance for mothers of looking at the relationship with their own mothers and understanding it.
I love this: “I find it useful to think of parenting as the practice of holding a safe psychological and emotional container for our children to grow in. The parent’s job is to continue to adjust and readjust and enlarge and strengthen this container as the child matures developmentally. Conscious mothering is having the awarenss that we are ‘holding’ and monitoring (at gradually more and more of a distance) our child’s progress.”
I think healing the mother-daughter relationship is essential for our times and can’t recommend this book highly enough.

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