TRANSCRIPT
Transcript: Maggie Dent on Girlhood, Self-Esteem, and Raising Girls to Be Healthy, Happy and Heard
And We're Rolling with Stephanie Hunt | Season 3, Episode 10
STEPH: You're an author, our favourite parenting guru, mum of four. You've obviously written amazing books about raising boys. But of course, you're a woman. You're a grandma. So what's behind the push for Girlhood?
MAGGIE: Well, Steph, I really was witnessing my beautiful granddaughters — I've got four of them. And there were things I'd never seen in my house with four boys. The colouring in and the gluing and the crafting that could take hours. The imaginary play that could go on for hours, and the depth of that imaginary world just blew me away.
And then their memories — the things they could remember that no boy I ever knew would remember. Their problem-solving capacity, their capacity to ponder things and think things through without being impulsive. I just thought maybe it's just because they're my granddaughters and they're clever.
But then there was Chanel Contos's survey with the most hideous stories of middle-class, well-educated women who had allowed abhorrent things to happen to them in intimate spaces with boys and men, and I thought: what is going on? That is not a journey I wanted for my granddaughters.
So I wanted to dive into — where do you get to where you lose your voice? Where does a female feel she has no power, no capacity to stand up and say, "This isn't okay"?
I thought I'd do a survey first, because it's not entirely my lived experience — other than the fact I am a girl. I had sisters, I had a mother. I taught co-ed, so I've taught exactly the same number of girls as boys. In my counselling, 75% were troubled girls. And then I'd forgotten that I'd run women's retreats for 15 years and heard all the stories of the broken child and broken girl within women.
I thought: I actually have a bit of skin in the game. The response was almost 5,000, and it really validated the areas that concern us when raising girls, and the areas we need to celebrate. I needed to shine a light on this. I'm not writing about adolescent girls — there are already a lot of fantastic, wise people writing in that space. But the foundation years, the neuroscience of the developing brain, building social-emotional learning and resilience — I've got something I can contribute there. And it might be the reason the book keeps selling.
STEPH: I'm reading the book at the moment and I love it. I've got a three-year-old and a five-year-old. I went and listened to you speak with some lovely mum friends, and I cried. I looked around and there were other women crying or pretending not to cry. For me, it was when you talked about the fact that we just need to dial it all down and realise we're not going to be the perfect parent. That being present and listening to your kids — that's all you have to do.
MAGGIE: And just protect that sparkle in their eyes. Don't rush them. You know, one of the things I've noticed — and I started having the boys back in the '80s — that whole notion of competitiveness amongst mothers just wasn't a thing. Some of it we can blame on social media. But I also noticed simple things, like we were sold a bit of a con, because parenting magazines — when they did come out — always had beautiful, gorgeous women who looked like they'd been at a day spa all day with a sleeping baby. I never saw the true image of a woman with bags under her eyes, eyebrows joined in the middle, hair needing a colour, spew all over her top. Complete raw honesty was not there.
And back then it was very much about being in control, and the aim was compliance in your children. Once the science of child development started, the lens began to shift.
And because I was a rooster orchid — feisty, strong, quite confident, a go-getter — I could keep up with any boy. I was a bit anti-girl because my sister above me was the perfect little girl. She had golden curls, didn't chew her nails, never swore, wasn't loud, always loved dresses. There was no space for me to back into that, because she had it covered.
Then the other side — and it's only in later years that I finally worked this out — is that I struggle in some social situations because I'm actually an introvert. Small talk just drains me. Stick a pin in my eye and I'd have more fun. And yet I could be dynamic in a classroom. The empath side of me also took a long time to work out — I'd lie awake at night worrying about a student and how I could change their life instead of worrying about myself.
What I recognised was that the conditioning that happened to me in the '50s and '60s still happens to a lot of girls: our natural tendency is to be a carer, and we often do that to the detriment of ourselves. And when we do look after ourselves, we're often triggered by guilt.
So many mums in this competitive space — someone once told me another mum was sharing photographs of what she wore to pick her children up from school. And another was sharing how she cut her children's sandwiches into star shapes. I kept thinking: if I'd had time to do that, I would've gone and had a wee in peace and finished my cup of tea. What are we doing?
STEPH: What children still need hasn't changed, has it?
MAGGIE: Exactly. What children need to thrive and grow has not changed at all. It's just the world around our children that has changed — not just the digital world, but the competitive nature and the pressure of consumerism. You're expected to be a corporate lawyer, run the children, run a marathon, and probably be MasterChef in the kitchen. You can't do it all. That's why I keep saying: just lower the bar. Lower the bar. And one day there's plenty of room to push that bar up and go.
I didn't write my first book until I was 47. Menopause — I call it a pause, and then woof. A takeoff. I think we want to do all of it while we've got young children, and what those children absolutely need is human connectedness. It is the food of their mind, their body, their heart and their soul.
STEPH: The book is focused on those first five to six years. This is when little people are forming, isn't it? And it freaks me out — is it too late?
MAGGIE: No — and that's the really good bit. We're finding that teenage girls reading it think it's only written for little girls, but all the tips are benefiting them too. And older women can benefit from it as well. Ninety percent of the brain forms early. But it's our belief systems, our conditionings, our sense of place in the world. Our mind is a complex thing — it's not just your brain. All the experiences we have help our brain learn to predict how the world is going to turn out.
For girls like me who were a little bit loud, who were shut down and told not to have big explosive feelings — so many of us just held all this stuff in because it was never allowed to come out. Having big feelings was not being ladylike or a good girl.
When I left Year 12, I was captain of the basketball team, academically strong, on stage. Six months later, I nearly ended my own life because I failed my first essay, and I didn't have anything that could pull me through that. I just thought: there's nothing good about me now.
That was before Instagram. I grew up on a farm without it. The Woman's Weekly was it. So I hated myself and my body because I wasn't the thin thing I saw in magazines — and that was before they digitally altered the images. I've had to do so much therapy. I still remember one weekend workshop where I tapped into the rage inside me, and people in the room were genuinely terrified. Because I'd had to keep pushing it down for so long.
But the great news is that our brain is neuroplastic. Any of our beliefs can be transformed. Any of our perceptions of how the world's going to turn out.
My mum was quite an aloof mother. I obviously copped a lot of the beltings because I wasn't able to be contained. I figured she just couldn't love me — that there was something wrong with me. Crushing low self-esteem as a teenage girl is quite common even without that experience on top of it.
That's why what our girls need — if it's not Mum — is an auntie figure or a grandmother figure who has their back. Somewhere to turn. Someone who can hold them while they pull themselves back from the dark places we can find ourselves at times. Because for so many of us, the worst enemy we have in the world is the one in the mirror.
STEPH: You talk about how important it is for mums to model really positive behaviour — to say quite loudly, in front of everybody: "I'm feeling stressed. I've had a big day. I'm going off to have a bath now." And then actually go and have the bath.
MAGGIE: Totally. Our girls are picking up on everything, and what I noticed in the research is that they're watching the women around them, not just their mums.
I've decided I have a really responsible role with my granddaughters. My coping mechanism — which you wouldn't have believed — is a sense of humour, which I got from my dad. I'm incredibly irreverent at times and I laugh really loudly. I've taught my granddaughters to laugh really loudly in dark moments. It's a protective factor. If you can laugh, sometimes you actually release the cortisol instead of crying or screaming or slamming doors.
There were times when the boys were doing my head in and I'd go sit outside in a chair in the garden. They'd come out going, "Where are you? What are you doing?" And I'd say, "I just really need some calm-down time. I'll be back soon." I wanted them to see that there were times I really needed a break.
So much so that one of my boys, when he was 14, came to me one night and said, "Mum, I ran a bath for you." Because he could see I was getting to the edge.
In that system, we can teach our girls to read their own signs. We want them to problem-solve their own big feelings. What triggers them? What times are they most likely to be triggered? And what could they do in that moment? Whether it's grabbing a favourite teddy, finding the dog, going for a walk — we want her to discover what works so she holds that within her for her whole life, instead of getting lost in the abyss of big feelings.
One thing I did work out from all 5,000 responses: our girls do have a heightened emotional intensity that can last a lot longer than most of our boys.
STEPH: I want to talk about the conditioning of girls. You push so hard for girls to have scraped knees, bruises — climb that tall tree, climb the jungle gym. Not to let that be only a boys' thing.
MAGGIE: Oh, this makes me so cross. One of my little grandies, who has always been very strong in the upper body — she threw herself out of a cot in a sleeping bag at 14 months — was climbing a big climbing frame, and they wanted me to get her down because it's "too high for her. She's a girl." That really pushed my buttons.
There's this conditioning, and you can talk to early childhood educators about it. When a child falls over in a setting, how do you speak to them? Because so often we do one of two things. If it's a boy, we go, "Come on, mate, you can get up. You're all right." But if it's a girl, we often bend down and speak really softly: "Are you all right, sweetheart? Can I help you?" We scoop her up. And that's where she starts learning that maybe she isn't as capable.
Instead, we say to both of them: "Oh, are you okay? Do you need a grown-up's help?" It's the way we speak, the voices we use, and the opportunities we give.
Thank goodness for the Sam Kerrs of the world. Our women's footballers and soccer and rugby players are changing something really important. They're modelling guts and grit for our girls. And it goes both ways — it's okay for our boys to be dancers and musicians. A sensitive, gentle boy is equally valid as the alpha male who has to win everything.
The patriarchal sat all over all of us. And sometimes older generations find it genuinely uncomfortable when their granddaughters speak up, have a voice, say no loudly. They seem to think boys have more capacity for climbing trees. Whereas the truth is: celebrate the bumps, the bruises, the ouchies, the torn dresses, the mud on the glitter dress.
I've got a gorgeous photo of one of my little grandies with her sparkle dress absolutely covered in mud. There was a moment where inside my heart I just went: yeah. You go, girl. We can wash mud out. But being able to go? That's everything.
STEPH: Social media and self-esteem. I don't even know where to start.
MAGGIE: Keep your girls away from it as long as possible. And when they do start engaging with it, make sure you have a joint journey. Whatever app they're on, let them connect with their girlfriends. They don't have to be on everything. I've known a couple of mums where the app is on Mum's phone, and there's a half hour to 45 minutes after school window — and that's it. They don't need their own phone to do it.
The difference between how girls and boys create their sense of self-worth is really significant. Boys judge an experience in their own eyes as to how well they did — "I did good, woo-hoo." Whether it's running or jumping or how big their Duplo tower is. Whereas girls tend to form self-worth based on other people's reactions and perceptions.
I saw that with my six-year-old recently at Book Day. She was all sorted with a lovely costume, came downstairs in the morning, and as a six-year-old suddenly said: "I don't want to wear this because I don't think my friends are going to like it."
Being liked and validated is enormous for girls' self-worth. So as soon as you put a like button on — as soon as tween and teen girls are spending hours altering photos with filters to create an image that isn't really their true image — and then for that not to be liked? What does that do to the core essence of who you are?
Our really big challenge is to let our girls work out who they are, and to be her — not a version the world says they have to be. Not defined by their appearance or their eyebrows. Whatever happened to eyebrows?
Self-esteem plummets from around 12 onwards. So our job is to build a strong foundation: constantly affirming, "These are your strengths. This is who you are. Your body is not the whole picture — it's what your body can do, what your heart can do, what your mind can do." It's not how you look.
I want there to be lots of mummies who wear no makeup quite often, stick their hair up in a quick bun, leisure wear on, probably no bra underneath. Modelling for their girls that it's absolutely okay to get dressed up for an event, but we don't have to be like that all the time. We can just be real, earthy women who still love a bit of glamour.
And complimenting kids for things that have nothing to do with how they look. "Gosh, you look strong when you run fast." "You climbed so high." If all they ever hear is how beautiful they look in their dress, that's the message — it's how I look that matters most in my world.
STEPH: I want to talk about the "don't get too big for your boots" conditioning — and the impact it's had on you personally.
MAGGIE: That cut me when I heard your story. It really, really deeply impacted you. And I realise it's still loud in my own psyche — the number of times I've been nominated for something and I've told them not to worry about it. Not because I need external validation, which I actually don't. But it's still feeding into the subconscious: you don't do these things, that's not your place in this world.
Because I still have that rooster in me, I was driven more by it. But what I've always been driven by is wanting to leave the earth a better place because I've lived. I got that wisdom from my dad. He was a community man who lived the same way.
I never cared about how much money I was supposed to earn. That's why my boys are in hysterics about how well I've done, because they studied economics and I was just hopeless with money.
And sometimes when you get a business coach who's focused on your dollar line, I'm going: no. I just want to know how much more I can make positive social change — especially for those who can't afford to buy it. Which is why I have enormous amounts of content online for free.
That started when I was running programs in remote communities where First Nations teenage mothers were saying, "I want this to be different for my children, but I can't read those books." Low literacy. So I thought: if I make short videos, would that help? And they said yes. I started making them well before anyone was making videos — but the reason was to reach those who couldn't afford to buy the books, and those who don't read much. And the irony is, it's actually a lot of dads who watch the videos, because they just want to know what to do — give me some steps — and they do it, and they're good.
STEPH: Did the books come from stopping, meditating, letting the words come?
MAGGIE: I burnt out, because you can't just work with a troubled teen without working with the whole family. I ran professional learning for teachers, had a training manual, and then completely fell apart. I wasn't charging enough, I was working endlessly, doing weddings and funerals around the edges, running four boys everywhere. I took a step back, pinched some of the housing loan, had a few weeks off, and thought: I'll turn the manual into a book.
It just literally poured out of me. I'd wake up around 4am and it was already writing itself. And none of mine take long — when I finally know I'm supposed to birth a book, it comes. I'm not even sure I'm the one writing it. It's a combination of everything I've read, learned, lived, counselled — all of it comes into one space.
I loved to write as a little girl. I loved poetry, I loved the arts. And no publisher wanted anything to do with the first book — I lived in Albany, the bottom of WA. I was a nobody. So I thought: I'll just do it myself.
Part of me worried: what if the psychologists don't like it? What if the teachers don't like it? What if the parents don't like it? Because it was really different. Nobody was talking about calmness and relaxation in homes or classrooms. Mindfulness was not a thing. Meditation was off in la-la land.
But in one week I got an email from a principal saying he wished every parent would read it, an email from a parent saying he wished every teacher would read it, and an email from a psychologist saying it had been really helpful for their work. And I thought: okay, it's all right.
When I started writing about resilience, it was about five or six years before anyone else was writing about it. Same with social-emotional learning. I don't know how that happens. But I now understand how great songwriters work — it's something beyond the cognitive intellectual mind. It has to involve your heart and your soul at some level to really change the world.
STEPH: I'm so excited that you're a country girl from WA who's come this far, stayed so authentic and true to yourself, and is helping others every day. It's amazing. Do you have a process before you get up on stage? Do you get nervous?
MAGGIE: I was terrified early on. Teaching adolescents is the toughest audience — great grounding! But getting up in front of peers is nerve-wracking. What I worked out is that when you're feeling anxious about something like public speaking, the physical response in your body is exactly the same as excitement. So I started telling myself I was just really excited. I'd say to my good bloke: "Gosh, I'm so excited I could wee myself." And eventually my mind just shifted.
I've also made so many public mistakes in front of audiences that I'm almost — no joke — beyond caring. I can't remember which actress it was who fell up the stairs at the Oscars and said, "I do all my own stunts." People don't judge you when you make mistakes. They probably judge you more when you're too perfect. I believe in that real, relatable space. Just own it.
The world is turning towards those people. And maybe I'm forcing a pathway for us all to be a little more raw and real and honest — and to turn up with a big heart for everyone.
And We're Rolling is produced by Habari Productions and Stephanie Hunt Media. You'll find all show notes and extra words of wisdom at stephaniehuntmedia.com. If you liked this episode, please share it with someone who'd get a real kick out of it, and follow, rate, and review. Until next time — be kind to yourself.
