This Is What Happens When You Teach Your Daughter Acceptance

As a parent, you only want to teach the best to your child. In an ever changing society of today, it only makes sense to continue teaching them your viewpoints and ideals, some of which may not have been as common in your era, but are more accepted now. You teach them acceptance, to not judge people based on their outward appearance. Race does not matter and does not define character, nor does gender. Good people come in all forms…as do the bad.

You teach her to respect all people, but to expect to be respected in return. You, nor her, are any better than anyone else, but you also teach her to know her worth. Much attributed to her caring character, she learns to love in a way that even you could never have taught. Her love is so different from many of her generation because she sees no boundaries within it…but with that, she must learn the bad of the world, as well.

It’ll happen when she’s a freshman in high school. She’ll meet a boy who makes her happy in all the ways she’s never been before. And she sees it as just that. Happy and in love. You worry about her, not because of the boy, but because of the world around her. That’s what happens when you teach acceptance. She’ll fall in love with someone whom she can see no differences in, while the rest of the world may. You know she is not naive though. She hears the comments, sees the judgmental looks from people. She learns to overlook the ignorance of a close minded society and loves and is loved, for several years.

Later, she’ll go away to college and meet a whole new group of people. She’ll be happy and enjoy her time away, all while missing home and even that boy that she loved so much in the past. But with her time away, she’ll meet a girl who understands her in a way no one else has. They’ll become best friends, even soul mates, in the most platonic way possible. But people will see and assume otherwise. That’s what happens when you teach acceptance, you’ll make it impossible for your daughter to see her best friend as anything other than that, even if that friend happens to date within her own gender. That friend continues to help teach her acceptance though, allowing comments and derogatory remarks to become jokes in such a cruel and close minded society.

Eventually, She’ll come home from college, unsure of what to do with her time back home now that everything is so different since the last time she was here. She’ll miss her friends from college, the people she had from her past, but she’ll occupy her time with different things in hopes of keeping herself busy until August comes again. She’ll meet a guy while she’s back that makes her feel differently than she has in a long time. She’ll tell you about how happy he makes her when she gets to see him and you’ll nod your head and be grateful to see her happy. But, you worry about her again. You’ve already heard the comments from people and realize she’s now old enough to be forewarned of the issues she may face within her happiness. You tell her the things you’ve heard people say and she responds with a comment about how people are still so close minded in the small town where home is. But she’s un-phased. After all, she’s dealt with this sense of judgment before. She’ll continue to fall for this guy, even as her time home quickly fades away until she has to decide what her future will hold with him when she moves back to college.

Her heart may be broken, in more ways than one, in her young life, but that’s what happens when you teach her acceptance. She’ll learn to love people in such a special way that cannot be bound by societal standards. But, she’ll also learn to handle the ill-spoken words of the people around her and continue to choose her path, unscathed by how people view her choices.

That’s what will happen when you teach your daughter acceptance.