Just like a flower needs room to bloom, your daughter will need her own space to grow.

If your daughter has her own room, it should be fairly easy to find a place to be alone. If she shares with a sib or two, be sure to let her make a corner of the room her own and make it possible for her to be left alone even if only 10 or 15 minutes each day.

A Place to Express Herself
A room (or a corner) of her own can both visibly reflect your daughter's personality and her style but it is also a place where she can creatively and safely explore other ways to express her thoughts, her ideas, her dreams.

Whether she writes in a journal, belts out one song after another, works on a scrapbook, or sketches a self-portrait never to be seen by another set of eyes, she can do it safely and freely, without the potentially judging eyes of an "audience."

A Place to Daydream
For most of us, somewhere along the way to adulthood, daydreaming became synonymous with "wasting time." However, daydreaming is a valuable time for self-reflection, and thinking about current or future situations actually helps your daughter to process and to shape her own experiences, to explore her dreams and goals, to learn how to think.

A Place to Just Be
The world can be a very demanding place for your daughter, with many different expectations across different situations - home, classrooms, peer groups – that she tries to meet each day. Even just listening to music and resting on her bed is valuable "down time" that can give her the space and time she needs to relax or de-stress after a long day.

Give your daughter the personal space and time she needs to just be and she will have the room she needs to bloom.