So how do you know if you have an innovator on your hand? Observe creative skills, explore their ideas and if that’s not enough encourage. In the meantime, here are insights on how to raise an entrepreneurial daughter.

Encourage your daughter to first set goals. The most important qualities that a child can have is to be goal driven. You can guide her to setting goals by starting simple. Ask her to come up with something she wants to learn or do. Then have her write down the steps to doing it and add how long she thinks it will take. Discuss what she’ll need to achieve that goal and then place it somewhere that it can be seen daily. Don’t forget to put a tracking system with it so that she can track her progress along with achievements or downfalls.

Letting her do things her way, when it comes to some projects with boundaries, is always a plus. This is also a tip that you normally would not hear from a parent. However, as a parent it can be tempting to rush in and explain how to do things “the right way”. Yet this approach can discourage kids from figuring out how to do things on their own. You need to give the opportunity to do things without hovering.

Another great tip is to maximize diversity with your daughter. Expose her to people and ideas from a variety of cultures and backgrounds. Having more diverse interactions can provide your daughter with a different perspective and a new way of looking at things that in turn can encourage opportunities. It will allow the potential for her to problem solve her style. Seek out opportunities to become more acquainted with other cultures via economic or social backgrounds as well as people.

My all time favorite tip is to celebrate risk taking with boundaries. A big part of nurturing a sense of innovation in your daughter is to cheer on her efforts. One thing I think adults tend to do is to be critical or harsh, which creates fear in a child. Which I think we all know that this can stay with us throughout adulthood. Encourage your daughter to take risk with boundaries. Through trial and error, kids learn how to develop their own ideas. That old saying of “get back up, dust yourself off and get back to work” was not created for nothing. As an adult it’s something that we all feel when we do something that’s not quite right.

Failure is an opportunity to begin again and again and again. It’s a chance to get it right. Make it better. Improve upon. I think you get my point. As a parent this is your opportunity to encourage creativity and demonstrate how it’s done. Now the big question is after encouraging innovation in your daughter what will she develop? Maybe the next cure for something….

Live, Laugh and Love
“Making a difference in the world one person at a time”