Another chapter of parenting starts now, preparing my growing-up daughter to handle the stares of random men out there. Today my 10-year-old daughter came home from school and stated how an auto driver was staring at her and giving her a “strange” smile. She felt weird. My daughter is tall for her age and has started showing slight changes in her body, yet she is still a child. I had to tell her very frankly that this is just the beginning for a girl, that she will have to face many such stares, touches in the future, and that she needs to be strong. She needs to tell us always. She needs to fight it, yet sometimes ignore as one never knows what kind of antisocial element that man can be!
Asking my daughter to be fearless, cautious, and learn to live with the fact that these stares and “strange” smiles are going to be a part of her life from hereon now was not a nice feeling at all, yet I know that this is the truth which is inevitable.
Life and its different shades 