To raise brave girls, encourage adventure | Caroline Paul

Summary

In this talk, Caroline Paul shares her journey from attempting to break a world record in crawling to becoming one of the first female firefighters in San Francisco. She reflects on how society raises girls to be cautious and fearful, in contrast to boys who are encouraged to take risks. Paul argues that bravery can be learned through experience and highlights the importance of encouraging girls to face challenges and develop resilience. She calls on women to practice bravery themselves to empower the next generation to be confident and bold.

Takeaways

• 😀 Caroline's childhood ambition was to set a world record, and she attempted it by crawling 8.5 miles, though she didn’t succeed in breaking the record.
• 🤕 Her experience with crawling led her to discover her resilience, endurance, and ability to push beyond her comfort zone, turning what seemed like failure into bravery.
• 🚒 At age 26, she became a firefighter in San Francisco, one of only 15 women among 1,500 men, facing doubts about women's physical strength and bravery.
• 💪 After responding to a fire incident, Caroline proved her capability by tackling the fire herself, challenging the belief that women are less brave.
• 👧 She observed that girls are often raised to be more cautious, while boys are encouraged to take risks and master difficult tasks independently.
• 🔍 Studies show that parents caution girls more about risks, creating a perception that girls are fragile and need more help, which shapes their self-image as they grow up.
• 💡 Caroline advocates for teaching girls bravery, not fear, by encouraging them to engage in ‘risky play’ and explore their physical limits to build resilience and confidence.
• 🌲 She highlights the importance of encouraging girls to participate in activities like skateboarding or climbing, which helps them develop critical life skills like hazard assessment and delayed gratification.
• 🚴‍♀️ Parents should guide their daughters to face challenges with courage, helping them assess risks instead of making decisions based on fear.
• 🎯 Caroline emphasizes that bravery is learned through practice, urging both girls and women to consistently push beyond fear and embrace opportunities for growth.

Q & A

What inspired the speaker to attempt a world record in crawling?

The speaker was obsessed with the Guinness Book of World Records as a child and wanted to set a record. Since she felt she had no specific talent, she chose crawling because it required no special skill.

What challenges did the speaker face during her attempt to break the world crawling record?

The speaker faced several challenges, including denim chafing her skin, her knees getting chewed up, rain, darkness, physical exhaustion, and hallucinations from the cold and monotony. Eventually, she stopped after crawling for 12 hours and covering 8.5 miles, falling short of the 12.5-mile record.

What lesson did the speaker learn from her failed crawling attempt?

Initially, the speaker saw the crawling attempt as a failure. However, she later realized it was a story of bravery because she had stepped outside her comfort zone, demonstrated resilience, and developed confidence in herself.

What was the speaker's experience as one of the first women in the San Francisco Fire Department?

The speaker joined the San Francisco Fire Department as the 15th woman in a department of 1,500 men. She felt pressure to prove her strength and bravery, especially since many doubted women could handle the job.

How did the speaker demonstrate bravery during a firefighting incident with Skip?

During a fire, an explosion knocked the speaker and her colleague Skip backward. Despite being disoriented, the speaker picked herself up, grabbed the nozzle, and tackled the fire on her own. Later, Skip complimented her, surprised that she had been brave in that situation.

Why does the speaker believe that women are not typically expected to be brave?

The speaker argues that society often raises girls to be more cautious and fearful than boys. Girls are warned about risks more frequently and encouraged to avoid challenges, while boys are taught to be independent and take risks. This social conditioning leads to a belief that women are less brave than men.

What is 'risky play,' and why does the speaker believe it's important for girls?

Risky play refers to activities that involve physical risk, such as climbing trees or using playground equipment like fire poles. The speaker believes risky play is important because it teaches kids how to assess hazards, build resilience, delay gratification, and gain confidence—all essential life skills.

How does the speaker suggest parents should change their approach when raising girls?

The speaker suggests parents should encourage their daughters to take risks and avoid constantly cautioning them with phrases like 'Be careful.' This will help girls develop confidence, resilience, and bravery instead of being overly cautious and fearful.

How does the speaker recommend adults practice bravery in their own lives?

The speaker recommends that adults practice bravery by challenging themselves in small ways, such as speaking to someone they admire or trying new experiences. By practicing bravery, adults can model this behavior for younger generations.

What is the significance of the 'steep hill' metaphor in the speaker's message about bravery?

The steep hill represents any challenge or fear that a girl may face. The speaker encourages guiding girls to approach challenges with courage, even if they ultimately decide the task is too difficult. The goal is for girls to assess risks confidently and develop the tools to face future challenges.

Outlines

00:00

🏆 Childhood Ambition to Set a World Record

The speaker shares their childhood obsession with the Guinness Book of World Records and their desire to set a world record despite lacking any particular talent. They decided to break the record for crawling, which was 12.5 miles at the time. With no training, they and their friend Anne set off to crawl the distance. However, the journey was physically grueling, with chafing jeans, rain, and hallucinations from pain. After 12 hours, the speaker crawled 8.5 miles, falling short of the record. They reflect on this experience as a lesson in bravery, resilience, and confidence, even though it initially seemed like a failure.

05:01

🚒 Breaking Barriers as a Female Firefighter

The speaker recounts their journey to becoming a firefighter in San Francisco in 1989, one of only 15 women in a department of 1,500 men. Despite being physically strong, they still felt the need to prove themselves. In a significant moment during a fire, after an explosion, they took control of the situation and extinguished the flames. Their male colleague, Skip, was surprised by their bravery, highlighting that people, including experienced firefighters, did not expect women to be strong or brave. This incident underscores societal perceptions about gender and courage.

10:03

👧 The Impact of Gender Stereotypes on Girls

The speaker notices that many parents, including their friend, often caution their daughters much more than their sons, inadvertently teaching them to be fearful. A study involving a playground fire pole shows that girls are warned about risks and assisted by parents, while boys are encouraged to figure things out independently. The speaker argues that this difference in treatment leads girls to internalize fragility and fear, even though young boys and girls are physically quite similar. These gendered expectations persist into adulthood, affecting women’s confidence and bravery.

🪂 Fear vs. Bravery: Lessons from Paragliding

The speaker acknowledges that fear is an important and natural emotion, but stresses the importance of balancing fear with bravery. Drawing from their experience as a paraglider pilot, they explain how fear was present, but exhilaration and confidence often took precedence. The speaker emphasizes that while fear has its place, it should not dominate, especially when teaching girls. Encouraging bravery allows children to develop resilience, confidence, and the ability to assess risks, rather than growing up timid and fearful.

🌳 Encouraging Bravery in Girls

The speaker encourages parents and society to allow girls to engage in risky play, such as skateboarding and climbing trees, as these activities teach important life skills like hazard assessment and resilience. They suggest stopping the excessive cautioning of girls and instead guiding them to confront challenges with bravery. The speaker notes that women must also practice bravery in their own lives to set an example for the next generation. Lastly, they offer the metaphor of a girl deciding whether to ride her bike down a steep hill, emphasizing the importance of learning to face life’s challenges with courage rather than fear.

Keywords

💡Bravery

Bravery, as discussed in the video, refers to the ability to confront fear and take action despite feeling scared. The speaker illustrates this concept by recounting her experience as a firefighter and her reflection on setting a world record for crawling, emphasizing that bravery is not the absence of fear but the willingness to act despite it. This concept is central to the video’s theme of encouraging girls and women to embrace bravery in the face of challenges.

💡Fear

Fear is a recurring theme in the video, where the speaker acknowledges its natural presence but warns against allowing it to dominate decision-making. Fear, while important for safety, can become a barrier to growth if not managed properly. The speaker describes how women, particularly young girls, are often taught to be overly cautious, which hinders their ability to take risks and develop confidence.

💡Resilience

Resilience refers to the ability to recover from setbacks and keep going despite adversity. The speaker shares her own experiences of resilience, such as enduring 12 hours of pain while crawling and continuing her career as a firefighter despite skepticism. Resilience is portrayed as a skill that can be cultivated through practice and is crucial for overcoming challenges.

💡Comfort Zone

The comfort zone represents a space where individuals feel safe and unchallenged. The speaker highlights the importance of stepping outside one’s comfort zone to grow and develop new skills. In her example, attempting to break a world record in crawling and becoming a firefighter required her to face physical and mental discomfort, demonstrating how stepping beyond the comfort zone fosters bravery and resilience.

💡Gender Expectations

Gender expectations in the video refer to societal norms that dictate how men and women are expected to behave. The speaker explores how girls are often raised to be cautious and fearful, while boys are encouraged to be daring and independent. This gender bias limits the opportunities for girls to build bravery and confidence, and the speaker challenges these norms by advocating for equal encouragement of bravery in both genders.

💡Risky Play

Risky play is a term used in the video to describe physical activities that involve a certain level of danger, such as climbing trees or riding bikes down steep hills. The speaker argues that risky play is crucial for children's development, as it teaches them important life skills like hazard assessment and resilience. She stresses that girls, in particular, should be allowed to engage in risky play to build confidence and bravery.

💡Confidence

Confidence is the belief in one’s abilities to tackle challenges, and it is a trait the speaker emphasizes throughout the video. She illustrates how confidence grows through experience, such as her own journey from attempting to break a world record to becoming a firefighter. The speaker encourages teaching girls to trust their own decisions and to build confidence through practice and bravery.

💡Crawling World Record

The crawling world record serves as an example of how one can push beyond perceived limitations, even in the absence of traditional talent. The speaker describes her attempt to break the world record for crawling, highlighting the physical and mental endurance it required. Although she did not succeed, this experience taught her important lessons about resilience and bravery, which are key themes in the video.

💡Paragliding

Paragliding is used as an example of an activity that involves both fear and exhilaration. The speaker, who was a paraglider pilot, describes how she managed her fear by focusing on her skills and the joy of flying. This example illustrates her broader point about how fear and exhilaration often feel similar, and how we should learn to put fear in its proper place rather than let it dominate our decision-making.

💡Parenting

Parenting plays a significant role in shaping children’s attitudes towards fear and bravery. The speaker points out that parents often caution girls more than boys, which can limit their willingness to take risks and develop confidence. She suggests that parents should allow their children, especially girls, to engage in activities that challenge them, thereby fostering resilience and bravery instead of overprotection.

Highlights

The speaker's childhood obsession with setting a world record despite having no talent, leading to the decision to crawl as a record attempt.

The original world record for crawling was 12.5 miles, which seemed manageable to the speaker.

The speaker and her friend Anne started the crawl attempt without training, but immediately faced challenges like chafing from their jeans.

Anne dropped out, and the speaker's knees began bleeding, but she continued crawling for 12 hours, stopping short of the record at 8.5 miles.

Despite initially seeing the crawl attempt as a failure, the speaker now recognizes it as an experience that built resilience and bravery.

At age 26, the speaker became one of the first female firefighters in San Francisco, being the 15th woman in a department of 1,500 men.

A pivotal firefighting experience involved the speaker handling a fire after an explosion, which surprised her male colleague, highlighting assumptions about women's bravery.

The speaker notes how society often assumes women are more fearful, pointing out that male firefighters are rarely asked if they're scared.

The speaker observes how parents caution their daughters more than sons, fostering fear and timidity in girls from a young age.

A study showed that girls are often warned about the dangers of a playground fire pole, while boys are encouraged to use it, teaching different lessons about risk.

The speaker emphasizes that bravery is a learned skill, and that girls should be encouraged to engage in 'risky play' to develop confidence and resilience.

The speaker encourages women to practice bravery themselves, as it is difficult to teach bravery to girls without first learning it.

Bravery and fear feel similar, and sometimes situations of perceived fear are actually moments of exhilaration that can be embraced.

When girls face challenges like biking down a steep hill, they should be guided through courage rather than fear, preparing them for future life challenges.

The world record for crawling has since increased to 35.18 miles, and the speaker encourages a girl to break it someday.

Transcripts

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with the Guinness Book of World Records,

and I really wanted to set a world record myself.

But there was just one small problem:

I had absolutely no talent.

So I decided to set a world record in something

that demanded absolutely no skill at all.

I decided to set a world record

in crawling.

(Laughter)

Now, the record at the time was 12 and a half miles,

and for some reason, this seemed totally manageable.

(Laughter)

I recruited my friend Anne,

and together we decided, we didn't even need to train.

(Laughter)

And on the day of our record attempt,

we put furniture pads on the outside of our good luck jeans

and we set off,

and right away, we were in trouble,

because the denim was against our skin

and it began to chafe,

and soon our knees were being chewed up.

Hours in,

it began to rain.

Then, Anne dropped out.

Then, it got dark.

Now, by now, my knees were bleeding through my jeans,

and I was hallucinating from the cold

and the pain and the monotony.

And to give you an idea of the suffer-fest that I was undergoing,

the first lap around the high school track took 10 minutes.

The last lap took almost 30.

After 12 hours of crawling,

I stopped,

and I had gone eight and a half miles.

So I was short of the 12-and-a-half-mile record.

Now, for many years, I thought this was a story of abject failure,

but today I see it differently,

because when I was attempting the world record,

I was doing three things.

I was getting outside my comfort zone,

I was calling upon my resilience,

and I was finding confidence in myself

and my own decisions.

I didn't know it then,

but those are not the attributes of failure.

Those are the attributes of bravery.

Now, in 1989, at the age of 26,

I became a San Francisco firefighter,

and I was the 15th woman in a department of 1,500 men.

(Applause)

And as you can imagine, when I arrived

there were many doubts about whether we could do the job.

So even though I was a 5'10", 150-pound collegiate rower,

and someone who could endure 12 hours of searing knee pain --

(Laughter)

I knew I still had to prove my strength and fitness.

So one day a call came in for a fire,

and sure enough, when my engine group pulled up,

there was black smoke billowing from a building off an alleyway.

And I was with a big guy named Skip,

and he was on the nozzle, and I was right behind,

and it was a typical sort of fire.

It was smoky, it was hot,

and all of a sudden,

there was an explosion,

and Skip and I were blown backwards,

my mask was knocked sideways,

and there was this moment of confusion.

And then I picked myself up,

I groped for the nozzle,

and I did what a firefighter was supposed to do:

I lunged forward,

opened up the water

and I tackled the fire myself.

The explosion had been caused by a water heater,

so nobody was hurt, and ultimately it was not a big deal,

but later Skip came up to me and said,

"Nice job, Caroline,"

in this surprised sort of voice.

(Laughter)

And I was confused, because the fire hadn't been difficult physically,

so why was he looking at me with something like astonishment?

And then it became clear:

Skip, who was by the way a really nice guy

and an excellent firefighter,

not only thought that women could not be strong,

he thought that they could not be brave either.

And he wasn't the only one.

Friends, acquaintances and strangers,

men and women throughout my career

ask me over and over,

"Caroline, all that fire, all that danger,

aren't you scared?"

Honestly, I never heard a male firefighter asked this.

And I became curious.

Why wasn't bravery expected of women?

Now, the answer began to come

when a friend of mine lamented to me

that her young daughter was a big scaredy-cat,

and so I began to notice,

and yes, the daughter was anxious,

but more than that, the parents were anxious.

Most of what they said to her when she was outside began with,

"Be careful," "Watch out," or "No."

Now, my friends were not bad parents.

They were just doing what most parents do,

which is cautioning their daughters much more than they caution their sons.

There was a study involving a playground fire pole, ironically,

in which researchers saw that little girls were very likely to be warned

by both their moms and dads about the fire pole's risk,

and if the little girls still wanted to play on the fire pole,

a parent was very likely to assist her.

But the little boys?

They were encouraged to play on the fire pole

despite any trepidations that they might have,

and often the parents offered guidance on how to use it on their own.

So what message does this send to both boys and girls?

Well, that girls are fragile and more in need of help,

and that boys can and should master difficult tasks by themselves.

It says that girls should be fearful

and boys should be gutsy.

Now, the irony is that at this young age,

girls and boys are actually very alike physically.

In fact, girls are often stronger until puberty,

and more mature.

And yet we adults act

as if girls are more fragile

and more in need of help,

and they can't handle as much.

This is the message that we absorb as kids,

and this is the message that fully permeates as we grow up.

We women believe it, men believe it,

and guess what?

As we become parents, we pass it on to our children,

and so it goes.

Well, so now I had my answer.

This is why women, even firewomen,

were expected to be scared.

This is why women often are scared.

Now, I know some of you won't believe me when I tell you this,

but I am not against fear.

I know it's an important emotion, and it's there to keep us safe.

But the problem is when fear is the primary reaction

that we teach and encourage in girls

whenever they face something outside their comfort zone.

So I was a paraglider pilot for many years --

(Applause)

and a paraglider is a parachute-like wing,

and it does fly very well,

but to many people I realize it looks just like a bedsheet

with strings attached.

(Laughter)

And I spent a lot of time on mountaintops

inflating this bedsheet,

running off and flying.

And I know what you're thinking.

You're like, Caroline, a little fear would make sense here.

And you're right, it does.

I assure you, I did feel fear.

But on that mountaintop,

waiting for the wind to come in just right,

I felt so many other things, too:

exhilaration, confidence.

I knew I was a good pilot.

I knew the conditions were good, or I wouldn't be there.

I knew how great it was going to be a thousand feet in the air.

So yes, fear was there,

but I would take a good hard look at it,

assess just how relevant it was

and then put it where it belonged,

which was more often than not

behind my exhilaration, my anticipation

and my confidence.

So I'm not against fear.

I'm just pro-bravery.

Now, I'm not saying your girls must be firefighters

or that they should be paragliders,

but I am saying that we are raising our girls to be timid, even helpless,

and it begins when we caution them against physical risk.

The fear we learn and the experiences we don't

stay with us as we become women

and morphs into all those things that we face and try to shed:

our hesitation in speaking out,

our deference so that we can be liked

and our lack of confidence in our own decisions.

So how do we become brave?

Well, here's the good news.

Bravery is learned,

and like anything learned,

it just needs to be practiced.

So first,

we have to take a deep breath

and encourage our girls

to skateboard, climb trees

and clamber around on that playground fire pole.

This is what my own mother did.

She didn't know it then,

but researchers have a name for this.

They call it risky play,

and studies show that risky play is really important for kids, all kids,

because it teaches hazard assessment,

it teaches delayed gratification,

it teaches resilience,

it teaches confidence.

In other words,

when kids get outside and practice bravery,

they learn valuable life lessons.

Second, we have to stop cautioning our girls willy-nilly.

So notice next time you say,

"Watch out, you're going to get hurt,"

or, "Don't do that, it's dangerous."

And remember that often what you're really telling her

is that she shouldn't be pushing herself,

that she's really not good enough,

that she should be afraid.

Third,

we women have to start practicing bravery, too.

We cannot teach our girls until we teach ourselves.

So here's another thing:

fear and exhilaration

feel very similar --

the shaky hands, the heightened heart rate,

the nervous tension,

and I'm betting that for many of you

the last time you thought you were scared out of your wits,

you may have been feeling mostly exhilaration,

and now you've missed an opportunity.

So practice.

And while girls should be getting outside to learn to be gutsy,

I get that adults don't want to get on hoverboards or climb trees,

so we all should be practicing

at home, in the office

and even right here getting up the guts

to talk to someone that you really admire.

Finally, when your girl is, let's say,

on her bike on the top of the steep hill

that she insists she's too scared to go down,

guide her to access her bravery.

Ultimately, maybe that hill really is too steep,

but she'll come to that conclusion through courage, not fear.

Because this is not about the steep hill in front of her.

This is about the life ahead of her

and that she has the tools

to handle and assess

all the dangers that we cannot protect her from,

all the challenges that we won't be there to guide her through,

everything that our girls here

and around the world

face in their future.

So by the way,

the world record for crawling today --

(Laughter)

is 35.18 miles,

and I would really love to see a girl go break that.

(Applause)