I am awake because I have awful leg pain waking me up. It’s not restless leg syndrome. Remember when you were a kid and experiencing “growing pains?” That’s what this feels like, only unlike last time I experienced this, I was able to suck it up because I was a kid and the trade-off is the growing part. Short people love that stuff.
I recognize that my trade-off here is my daughter, but for the immediate future, it’s simply a lack of sleep.
Anyway, at my husband’s Facebook page yesterday, he posted a link to his most recent blog entry about parenting a girl. This sparked some great feedback from friends, one of whom brought up the salient point regarding how important it is to decide the sort of parents you’re going to be, especially in light of a world that applauds and accepts babies wearing insipid onesies such as “My Mommy’s a Cosmo Girl,” with the picture of a cocktail on it, or “Princess In Training” or, my favorite, “Lil’ Diva,” which just says to the world, “My Parents Are Encouragng Me To Become An Insufferable Human Being.”
I have heard it said before that things such as clothing and fashion and peer pressure are out of our hands as parents. Surely, I agree on some level: you will always have a world that recognizes how susceptible little girls are to marketing and advertising, and as long as we are a country who values our members of the female species, solely on how they look, surely there will be parents who will trot them out to the mall for mani/pedis and buy them clothing that’s lightyear’s too mature for them to handle. But I don’t find a lick of that cute or adorable. I don’t find encouraging girls, at a young age, to value their worth as a human being in terms of what’s fashionable as responsible parenting. It is not, contrary to popular belief, out of my hands to not allow my daughter to wear clothing with words such as “Princess” on it. I can say “NO.”
Why is that such a foreign concept for people these days? The concept of saying no escapes normally rationally folks, seemingly out of fear that their kids may not like them, or it’ll be an ongoing battle in their house. I wonder, then, what those folks thought parenting was going to be like?
I think because I was raised in such a strict household, and see the value and merit in such an upbringing, that I find all of the chow chow about this topic so deplorable. And what’s funny is that for as much makeup as I couldn’t wear, as many miniskirts as I couldn’t don and as many boys who were not at all welcome to pick us up by solely honking the horn, it was always communicated to me as to why I couldn’t. My parents had the decency to explain to me their reasons, and while I couldn’t dress like a little hooker, I was allowed to have an opinion, which is way better, though at the time it was a bitter pill. I still could see the merit.
It’s only now, of course, that my parents and I can discuss why they raised us as they did. Oftentimes, my dad will point out examples of people who, as children, had parents who functioned more as friends than parents. All of them, many of whom I begged to emulate, have ended up in trouble in one way or another. One of the girls actually did end up becoming a stripper … not that that makes her a bad person, of course, but in the long line of professions you hope for your child, working the pole is not one of them.
I’ve signed up for several years of grand heartache. Of pain and screaming and hurt feelings and slammed doors. I know this. And I know I don’t even know the half of it. But I’m OK with this. I have decided that things such as the benefits of having your kids learn to participate in a family unit far exceed the pouting that will ensue once they truly understand I’m not budging from allowing them to have a personalized entertainment center in their rooms. Honestly. Where in God’s name is it written that in order to be a good parent you have to outfit your kid with a laptop, TV and unfettered access to a smartphone? Is it because the other kids have it? Do I actually need to mention the “If your friends jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge…” saying here? I am OK with all of this because 1) I’m old and set in my ways and 2) It’s my damn job as a parent.
I’m not saying my daughter won’t have any of these things. Of course she will. But there will be rules and consequences, because rules and consequences are part of the world, and she needs to learn those things at home at an early age. The kicker, of course, is that there is no guarantee any of this will work. But we’re not going down without a fight.
What’s just as important to me, and to Scott, is that we raise our daughter to have a deeper interpretation of what it means to be a human being, to be female, beyond subscribing to what’s fashionable or popular. This is no small feat, I’ll grant you, and we’ll falter along the way, no doubt, but if we want to raise our daughter to eventually be the sort of person others want to be around, then I can go ahead and start by putting my foot down now about her wearing clothing with cheeky taglines such as “It’s All About Me.”
Do people really buy that stuff?
Clearly I need to find a way to fix the painful-legs-in-the-middle-of-the-night problem.
