Rumson Country Day Girl Empowerment

The Rumson Country Day School (RCDS) brought noted girls empowerment and relationship expert, Rachel Simmons, to campus on Tuesday, April 16, for a healthy dose of respect, confidence, assertiveness and FLEC (fierce lady eye contact).

The accomplished author and speaker presented to RCDS girls in in third through eighth grades.

Simmons is the author of The Curse of The Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls With Courage and Confidence and Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls. 

A pioneer in the exploration of schoolgirl cruelty, Simmons contends that incidents of bullying could be avoided if girls were encouraged to assert their negative feelings more directly.

She believes this would empower them to negotiate conflicts and to define relationships in “new and healthier ways.” Parents, she says, should show their daughters that conflict-free relationships don’t exist.  

Instead of thinking conflict ends relationships, girls would then learn that they can’t survive without it and would not let fear control them, she said.

“I believe our task now,” writes Simmons in her book, “is to give every girl, every parent, and every teacher a shared, public language to address girls’ conflicts and relationships.”

During the student presentation, Simmons pointed to the fact that a girl's relationships with her friends, family and teachers are just as important as math, science and reading. She shared with the audience personal stories from her own childhood and adolescence that illustrated the ways she felt bullied, and the ways that she bullied others, through what she called "relational aggression."

Through gossip, emotional blackmail and disrespectful treatment of a friend's feelings, girls use relational aggression to get what they want, Simmons said.

She presented each group of girls with age-appropriate strategies to deal with relationships that are hurtful, and she discussed ways to tackle social media.

The focus on expecting friends to respect your feelings as a basis for all communication was the common thread throughout each of the sessions.  

The girls participated throughout the presentation by assessing their own friendships, evaluating their behaviors, and asking honest questions of the speaker. The overall reaction to the presentation from both teachers and students was enthusiastic and genuine. In addition to meeting with the RCDS girls, Simmons also shared her expertise with parents and teachers in separate meetings.

Rachel Simmons is the founding director of the Girls Leadership Institute and serves as a consultant to schools and organizations all over the world.

Simmons is a Vassar College graduate who has worked for Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and New York’s senior Senator Charles E. Schumer. She won a Rhodes Scholarship from New York and attended Oxford University, where she began studying female aggression.

* Provided by Rumson Country Day School.