Cynthia Germanotta, president of Born This Way Foundation and mother of Lady Gaga, writes about raising her unique daughter and the Emotion Revolution, launched with Yale.
As a mom, it’s difficult to watch your child struggle. Whether the obstacles your child faces are physical, academic, or social, you want to do everything you can to help. But too often as a parent, you feel like you don’t have the tools you need to guide your child through the difficult experiences we all encounter growing up. This is particularly acute when the problems your son or daughter grapples with are emotional.
When my daughter Stefani—who most people know as Lady Gaga—was a child, she had to learn painful lessons about the dangers of cruelty and the importance of kindness. She was creative and unequivocally her own person, but her peers didn’t always appreciate the things that made her unique—and different. As a result, they would sometimes taunt, humiliate, or exclude her. It was hurtful for her to experience and heartbreaking for me to watch.
But this mean-spirited treatment did more than sting in the moment—it shook Stefani’s confidence. The persistent, thoughtless cruelty of her peers caused Stefani to question her identity and self-worth. That self-doubt, in turn, led to anxiety, depression, and destructive behavior. What in isolation may have been viewed as casually dispensed insults or “harmless pranks” accumulated over time, causing a ripple effect that ate away at her emotional well-being.
[For more of this story, written by Cynthia Germanotta, go to http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...tion-revolution.html]
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