In 'To a Daughter Leaving Home', how does the poet present the speaker's feelings about her daughter?

If asked this question by a student, I would suggest they tackle it by identifying the over-arching tone of the speaker's feelings, and then drawing out three differing aspects of this and expanding upon them. I feel this strategy is applicable to most poetry analysis at this level, and for this specific question we might focus initially on the sense of the speaker's care for their daughter presented. This can then be broken down into intimacy, concern, and loss. Below is a quick rundown of what one might say about each of these feelings. In 'To a Daughter Leaving Home', the poet presents an overall sense of the speaker's care for her daughter. We see feelings of intimacy, concern, and acceptance being enacted. The speaker's feelings of intimacy with her daughter are presented at the poem's opening, and may be seen in the first line, 'When I taught you'. Here, the proximity of the pronouns 'I' and 'you' clearly identifies the mother with her daughter, and the monosyllabic quality of the line as a whole suggests a parity between them as family members. Lines three and four expand this, as the poet writes 'loping along / beside you'. The use of the preposition 'beside' shows the physical proximity of mother and daughter, in turn enacting a sense of emotional proximity. We also see here a sense of the mother's concern for her daughter being presented. The bounding quality of 'loping' suggests an eagerness to keep up on the speaker's behalf, something reflected further in the past participle 'sprinted'. The assonance of 'crash' and 'catch' in lines 13 and 14 links the two, presenting the speaker's concern that her daughter may be harmed, showing the desire of the former to protect the latter. Finally, we see the speaker's feeling of loss that her daughter is growing up being presented. The simile of 'hair flapping / behind you like a / handkerchief waving / goodbye' projects the speaker's sense of loss onto her daughter's body enacting a sense of sadness.