Girls' Club Corner: One Mom’s Journey with Girls’ Club
WIT spoke recently with Ann, a mother who has been involved with several girls’ clubs through the years. Here are Ann’s thoughts on how girls’ club helped supplement the education of her daughters: We have three daughters whom I wanted to have the girls’ club experience, not only as young girls, but also as counselors. We live far from centers of Opus Dei – the nearest one is a day’s drive away – so the activities I provide are the only Opus Dei activities in the area. Thus, we did girls’ club four different times, giving each daughter a chance to be both a girls’ clubber and a counselor. I ran the club for our first daughter; she ran it for daughter #2; #2 ran it for #3; and #3 ran a club for the younger sister of a friend. When the girls are young, they are like sponges, happily soaking up the formation they receive in club. They are grateful for the attention they receive, and they’re excited about learning grown-up skills, like making their own lunches and doing laundry by themselves. While it can be exhausting, working with the younger girls is quite straightforward – give them a fun activity, delicious snacks, time with their friends, and they will learn whatever you put before them. The older girls, the counselors, are more complex. I think they actually need club more than the younger girls. They are in high school, steeped in an environment that runs counter to much, or sometimes, all, of what club teaches. The opinions of their peers matter a lot to them, so to admit that they spend a Saturday every month teaching little girls how to be responsible, caring, and generous can be socially challenging. To recruit friends to help as counselors, they have to be brave and unafraid to push against the current flowing around them. However, the experience of doing that, and knowing that the younger girls look up to them, is so formative. All of our daughters wrote about being a girls’ club counselor in their college applications. Taking the initiative to help form younger girls, to strengthen them for the challenges of being a teen, and to give them skills to use in adulthood helped our daughters tremendously as they grew up. I also benefited from our experiences with girls’ club. When I was pregnant with one of our younger daughters, the club moms gave me a baby shower. Years later, when another of our babies was ill and in the hospital, a club mom organized weeks of dinners for our family. Aside from these generous acts of moms grateful for the formation of the girls’ club, I also learned to be more intentional about finding fun ways to teach our children about service and leadership. By the way, the definition of leadership I used was, “Doing the right thing, every time, no matter what the cost.” Girls’ club, with its focus on friendship, leadership, and service, has tremendously benefitted our family, and it is an experience for which I will always be grateful.
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