Hi, mom — welcome! I’m Sil.
I’m a mother, and now a grandmother (!) – a coach, a best-selling co-author, with my daughter Eliza and a co-teacher- also with Eliza- of The Mothering Course.
What lights me up the most is teaching mothers like you how to get smart and up your mothering game. You deserve to be supported.
Eliza is now 32 years old and a mother herself! She has created an amazing community for preteen and teen girls called BadAssGirls. She’s there and I’m here to help you go from overwhelmed to feeling calm and confident raising your preteen or teen daughter. I’m the mother half of the mother-daughter dynamic duo who created Mothering & Daughtering almost 20 years ago. Our book and our online course continue to support mothers and their adolescent daughters.
You struggle to connect regularly with your daughter — she doesn’t share with you like she used to about what’s going on with her life.
You’re feeling lost and ineffective with your parenting strategies — what you used to do so well to connect with her when she was a kid isn’t working anymore — now you’re more likely to get a shut door, a lit-up cell phone screen or a one word answer: “fine.”
Your daughter has started to give you ‘tude — AKA eye rolls or rudeness, or just seeming to be judgemental of you. It doesn’t feel like your daughter really likes you these days. Ouch.
You’re soooo tired of grumpy fights with her — conflict seems like the new normal all of a sudden — whether it’s about the cell phone boundaries before dinner, the outfit she wants to wear to school, or the two of you spending time together.
You’re worried she’s stressed and struggling more than she lets on — you know that: school is a lot, being a teen girl is a lot, having a social life in a digital age is a lot… and when you try to reach out to support her, she usually shuts down.
Oh, also, you’re busy. Just being on this page is taking up what feels like borrowed time. But you’re tired of feeling ineffective with your mothering — and Googling ‘how to communicate with your teen’ at midnight with your last drop of energy isn’t cutting it anymore. You’re ready to get some real support.
And, most of all, this one:
You’re afraid you’re losing your connection with
your preteen or teen daughter… or feel like you already have.
You remember that somewhere along the line you were warned about having a teen daughter. At some point, someone (maybe it was your friend, or your therapist, or your own mom) told you: “You just have survive it: the eye rolls, the slammed doors, the attitude, and then maybe one day, if you’re lucky, when your daughter’s an adult, she’ll actually want to talk to you again.” You know, something to that gist.
But you keep wondering… isn’t there a better way?
“If these challenges [between mother and daughter] are a generational thing, Sil has certainly broken the pattern with her own daughter.”
— Jane Fonda
ACTOR AND AUTHOR OF “MY LIFE SO FAR”
You want your daughter to know that she’s safe with you.
You want her to come to you to Share what’s on her heart.
You want to feel like you can Trust her and the decisions she makes.
You want to raise an amazing young woman who knows and LOVES herself.
You want to know how to handle complex communication situations with Finesse.
You want to feel confident and effective, like you know what you’re doing with this whole mothering a preteen or teen girl thing.
You want mothering to be meaningful, creative, interesting…
and actually joyful!
“Sil and Eliza offer a profound new understanding of the bond between mothers and daughters. Their work sets up mothers and daughters for a lifetime of health and happiness.”
— Dr. Christiane Northrup
NYTIMES BEST-SELLING AUTHOR OF “WOMEN’S BODIES,
WOMEN’S WISDOM” AND “MOTHER-DAUGHTER WISDOM”
Here’s where I come in — I support you to:
Talk and connect daily with your daughter.
WHICH MEANS:
- Learn your daughter’s language of connection and become a teen communication expert
- Rebuild trust in your evolving relationship so that she feels safe naturally coming to you to share and receive support
- Set boundaries around rudeness so that love can flourish
Turn conflict into open-hearted connection.
WHICH MEANS:
- Reframe your old conflict patterns that often result in painful disconnect and instead learn tools for effective conflict so that it can be an opportunity for connection
- Stop taking your daughter’s resistance and healthy
emotions personally, and be the mindful, grounded adult you both need in the situation
Reclaim your confidence as a mother.
WHICH MEANS:
- Treat yourself with loving kindness and have your own back when you’re a (perfectly) imperfect mother
- Grow your teen relationship tools to handle even the most complex communication situations from your calm center
- Deepen your understanding of our current cultural craziness about parenting/raising teen girls, and get hip to trusting yourself and your mother’s intuition to raise your girl in a way that works for you both
Feel invigorated by raising your preteen or teen daughter.
WHICH MEANS:
- Become an expert in your daughter’s developmental psychology so that you understand what is healthy and appropriate, and can roll with it without fear
- Allow your mothering of her to be a spiritual path: yes, full of opportunities for growth, connection, meaning and mindfulness with yourself and others
- Go from ‘mothering on empty’ to ‘mothering on full’ by finally learning key practices to be more kind to yourself and put yourself first when it matters
I started this work because I desperately needed it.
Meet my kick-ass co-founder — my daughter Eliza.
We’re a real mother-daughter duo who got determined to do it differently. You see, like you, we struggled; in fact, pretty much every mother and daughter we knew struggled to connect in the teen years.
I had a really difficult relationship with my mom when I was a teen: we stopped connecting, and stopped talking. It was awful.
When Eliza became a preteen and teen — and the eye rolls, frosty silence, and frustrated ‘mommmmmm’ angst began — I (1) panicked, and then (2) got real about it, and knew I had to do something differently. Eliza & I healed, and we’ve taught about about it for almost 15 years. Together.
“What Sil and Eliza teach mothers and daughters is profound, essential and revolutionary.”
— Geneen Roth
# 1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF “WOMEN, FOOD AND GOD”
Our Approach
Mothering & Daughtering was born out of our need for an approach to mother-daughter relationships during the preteen and teen years that values heart over discipline.
Research actually shows that conflict and behavior are most effectively addressed by strengthening the mother-daughter bond, aka our healthy attachment to each other. We have a radical belief: it’s totally possible for mothers and daughters to be close — even and especially during the preteen and teen years.
Along the way (and that’s almost 20 years ago), we wrote a best-selling book for mothers and teen daughters (which is also an audiobook that we narrated), we taught thousands of mothers and daughters in live sold-out workshops across the country, and we created The Mothering Course– an online video-based private “workshop”- so that moms of adolescent girls would always have access to our teaching.
If you’re a busy mother who wants a real, soulful relationship with her preteen or teen daughter, you’re in the right place.
(and we want you to join us)
As cis, white women descended from European colonizers we’ve got a lot to learn. We invite you, especially the white women in our community, to join us as students in becoming actively anti-racist.
Desiree Adaway is a consultant, trainer, coach and speaker building resilient, equitable, and inclusive organizations. She’s the Principal of The Adaway Group, which is a black woman owned consulting firm that brings together multi-racial teams to work on projects related to equity, inclusion and social justice.
Leesa Renee Hall is an author, storyteller, social historian, playwright, and creative word artist. Using the art of self-inquiry, she creates questions to help highly sensitive introverted leaders unpack their unconscious biases so they can be effective leaders in an increasingly diverse world. Sil also had the honor of interviewing her for We Thrive TV all about motherlines, healing and ancestry.
adrienne maree brown is author of Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds and the co-editor of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements. She is a writer, social justice facilitator, pleasure activist, healer and doula living in Detroit.
“Girls and their moms will find comfort and companionship from two people who are themselves walking the path of the often complex mother-daughter dynamic — and who offer strategies and wisdom that will help all of us become more aware, authentic mothers and daughters.”
— Rachel Simmons
author of Enough As She Is
Let’s connect in these ways:
Does it feel like your daughter is pushing you away?
Learn how to actually get closer in the preteen or teen years (just in a new way) with this free audio from Sil & Eliza.
Learn Morewhat if connecting could be… easy?
Check out The Mothering Course to learn specific strategies and communication techniques.
Learn More“Eliza and Sil Reynolds are a model for us all of shared, intergenerational leadership and the power of courageous communication.”
— COURTNEY E. MARTIN
AUTHOR OF “PERFECT GIRLS, STARVING DAUGHTERS” AND “DO IT ANYWAY”
