“9 Things I Wish I Had Known About Raising A Daughter,” Tips From Moms Of Little Girls.

After having her third son, Mom Allison Slater Tate always thought she was destined to be a “boy mom,” but then she was blessed with a little girl and her entire family dynamic changed. She discovered that raising a daughter was surprisingly different than raising a son!

To help out other moms of daughters, Allison decided to put together the guide below for TODAY Parents. But– since all little girls are different and every parent has their own unique experience– Allison recruited the help of 11 other moms to form her top 9 tips for raising a daughter. Check out their advice below.

For many years, I thought I would forever be a boy mom. I had three sons and had been a mother for almost ten years before I gave birth to a little girl that would change our household forever.

I hesitate to ever make generalizations about children, because I have found each of mine to be surprisingly, wonderfully – and sometimes maddeningly – different from one another, whether they share the same gender or not. But the experiences of parenting a son and parenting a daughter have been different too, in big and small ways.

Today

With all my years of training from parenting three little boys, there are still a few things I (and other parents of girls) wish we had known about raising a daughter:

1. The social terrain gets rough early.

“My daughter is in second grade and experiencing social strife – namely, her beloved BFF wants some space and broke up with her in a note,” Chicago mother of two Christie O. Tate (no relation) told TODAY Parents. “It’s a heartbreaking situation for my kid, but every time I talk about it with other mothers, we revert to the single available narrative: how mean girls are. I didn’t realize it was our ONLY explanation for the complex social navigation our daughters do in these young years.”