Zack has called us both Mama since he could talk.
He just learned to say Ainschley and sometimes it comes out Mama Ainschley.
I guess this makes me obsolete?
Showing posts with label child development. Show all posts
Showing posts with label child development. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Second Generation Mean Girl
By Tracee Sioux
Just who is running the school clothes fashion show?
A reader's (Janet) comment on my column Kindergarten Fashion Show really provided some clarity about who is driving the fashion show in elementary school. Mommy, obviously.
Mean Girls are driving the whole thing. But, it’s Second Generation Mean Girls now. It’s the Mean Girls in our memory actually. Now that we’ve become mothers we’re trying to heal our own fashion wounds through our daughters. Or if you were the Mean Girl, perhaps you’re afraid your own Karma will work itself out on your kid. Perhaps you’ve developed a new empathy, or you just want to make sure your kid becomes a Mean Girl versus a picked-on Dork.
Mothers are really the only ones in the family ecosystem with enough power to drive the whole thing. Little girls can have a sense of taste and style of their own, my daughter certainly does. Yet, they don’t have jobs and therefore no money to make any actual decisions about what they wear. Dads couldn’t care less. Nor could they be trusted with something so important. It is also the mother who will be judged if her children look sloppy, unclean or trampy. Duh, all mothers know this. We take this seriously.
All perspective about the importance of a child's clothing is lost by Kindergarten. Which is why I feel like I’m sending my daughter into some hot bed of fashionistas in September. But, I now realize it’s not those innocent little five-year-olds. It’s their mothers.
I have had many in-depth conversations about the issue of kids clothes with women and every single conversation goes back to the mother’s empathy for her child. She remembers what it felt like to be wrong, out of place, not cool enough, not pretty enough, not stylish enough.
I have yet to meet a woman, whether she had been a Mean Girl herself or not, who hasn’t considered the issue in depth. It would seem parentally irresponsible not to consider the feelings of our children when it comes to clothing.
A reader's (Janet) comment on my column Kindergarten Fashion Show really provided some clarity about who is driving the fashion show in elementary school. Mommy, obviously.
Mean Girls are driving the whole thing. But, it’s Second Generation Mean Girls now. It’s the Mean Girls in our memory actually. Now that we’ve become mothers we’re trying to heal our own fashion wounds through our daughters. Or if you were the Mean Girl, perhaps you’re afraid your own Karma will work itself out on your kid. Perhaps you’ve developed a new empathy, or you just want to make sure your kid becomes a Mean Girl versus a picked-on Dork.
Mothers are really the only ones in the family ecosystem with enough power to drive the whole thing. Little girls can have a sense of taste and style of their own, my daughter certainly does. Yet, they don’t have jobs and therefore no money to make any actual decisions about what they wear. Dads couldn’t care less. Nor could they be trusted with something so important. It is also the mother who will be judged if her children look sloppy, unclean or trampy. Duh, all mothers know this. We take this seriously.
All perspective about the importance of a child's clothing is lost by Kindergarten. Which is why I feel like I’m sending my daughter into some hot bed of fashionistas in September. But, I now realize it’s not those innocent little five-year-olds. It’s their mothers.
I have had many in-depth conversations about the issue of kids clothes with women and every single conversation goes back to the mother’s empathy for her child. She remembers what it felt like to be wrong, out of place, not cool enough, not pretty enough, not stylish enough.
I have yet to meet a woman, whether she had been a Mean Girl herself or not, who hasn’t considered the issue in depth. It would seem parentally irresponsible not to consider the feelings of our children when it comes to clothing.
Wouldn’t it? Wait, what? Is the assumption that our parents just didn’t give a crap? Or that they didn’t understand? Or that they didn’t even know we were tortured at school for not having the Guess Jeans or the Swatch Watch? Were they that oblivious to our reality? Is it even possible they didn't know Gloria Vanderbilt jeans could make or break us?
I think the answer is in disposable income. Our grandmothers had none and went to school in dresses made of feed sacks and dealt with it. Our parents had some, but the importance of school clothes never took the place of a retirement plan. My parents, I called and asked, said they had a budget and weren't going to put the overall picture in jeopardy by paying twice the jeans budget. My dad then recalled that he bought his own clothes in junior high because he had a job by then. I probably should have been grateful that I didn't have to ride my bike three miles to wash dishes in a Chinese restaurant like he did. But, I just didn't have that kind of perspective yet.
Today I know a ton of parents who willy nilly charge school clothes on credit cards. The importance of the fashion show has taken on an emotional significance in their memories. It trumps a retirement plan. I can think of quite a few families who talk about being in precarious financial positions with big things like their mortgage or the failure of a business, but their 12-year-old daughters carry THE Dooney and Burke Purse. That’s just wrong.
I don’t really know the answer to this dilemma yet myself. I do know this: if we try to heal our fashion wounds through our children then we will create wounds were there were none. A Second Generation Mean Girl is, I imagine, about 1,000 times meaner with more electronic weapons than the Mean Girl of my day. First Generation Mean Girl passed a note calling me a "slut," her daughters are snapping pictures of girls in the gym locker room with their cell phone, posting them on My Space with the words, "Porn Star" and an ugly guy photoshopped in.
Am I the only mother who worries that my own daughter has the potential to become a Mean Girl? Am I the only mother who wants to keep her daughter out of Mean Girl status and out of picked-on Dork status, without blending into the wallpaper? Not a single one of those are empowering places to be for a girl.
School uniforms would be one solution and lots of public schools are going that way. Myself, I would like to see all the mommies step back and rein it in. Maybe a national school clothes boycott would be my fantasy. But, that could have unforeseen repercussions, like economic backlash or even more viciousness from those who refuse to participate. If not a boycott of fashion all together, I would at least like to generate a discussion.
What do you think is the answer?
I don’t really know the answer to this dilemma yet myself. I do know this: if we try to heal our fashion wounds through our children then we will create wounds were there were none. A Second Generation Mean Girl is, I imagine, about 1,000 times meaner with more electronic weapons than the Mean Girl of my day. First Generation Mean Girl passed a note calling me a "slut," her daughters are snapping pictures of girls in the gym locker room with their cell phone, posting them on My Space with the words, "Porn Star" and an ugly guy photoshopped in.
Am I the only mother who worries that my own daughter has the potential to become a Mean Girl? Am I the only mother who wants to keep her daughter out of Mean Girl status and out of picked-on Dork status, without blending into the wallpaper? Not a single one of those are empowering places to be for a girl.
School uniforms would be one solution and lots of public schools are going that way. Myself, I would like to see all the mommies step back and rein it in. Maybe a national school clothes boycott would be my fantasy. But, that could have unforeseen repercussions, like economic backlash or even more viciousness from those who refuse to participate. If not a boycott of fashion all together, I would at least like to generate a discussion.
What do you think is the answer?
Saturday, June 9, 2007
What the $%^&*!
By Tracee Sioux
Fill in the blank with whatever you want to believe I thought. I didn't say it because my kids were present and I didn't want them to freak out. Inside, I was totally freaking out though. It was a parenting moment for which I found myself with no other response than What the $^#%! my head.
Sometimes my daughter sees me bite my son's nails. If you've ever clipped a baby's nails and cut him, you understand that it makes your gut lurch like you want to perform some kind of flagellation on your self as penance. I read that I should bite his nails to trim them in a baby magazine. My daughter is a little mommy. She takes quite good care of her little brother. Always making sure I am aware of his needs and taking care of him herself if I am blatantly ignoring them while writing these columns.
Today she was climbing over him to get out of the van and noticed his toenail needed trimming and bent over and pulled the entire toenail out of his big toe. He barely flinched. She wanted to know if we should save it for his baby box.
There were so many things wrong with this picture all I could think was What the F$%&!
What I said was, Ainsley, how hard did you bite his toenail? You pulled his whole toenail out. You are not his mother. You need to let ME do things like that. I am his mother. You must be gentle with your brother.
>
But, I said it calmly, like it was no big deal. Unlike when I've asked her to pick up the living room numerous times and I really raise my voice as if it's a life and death situation.
I bandaged it up in the gym nursery and went back out the front door to cry and call the pediatrician. Who never called me back.
What truly disturbed me about the incident was that he barely flinched. In fact, he very rarely cries for more than a few seconds when he gets hurt. He's fallen down stairs and didn't cry much. Yesterday, I tried to surgically remove a piece of glass stuck in his heel and he cried while daddy had him trapped in a blanket to keep him still, but the second he was loose he was over it. In fact, just the other day my husband was proudly bragging about Zack's pain tolerance and how we should really exploit that to push him to excel in sports.
But, didn't they pull people's fingernails out as a form of torture? When my daughter lost her thumb nail after smashing it in the car door you would have thought it was about as painful as natural birth. I thought back to that poor little girl I'd seen on Oprah who didn't experience pain at all, they'd had to remove her teeth because she would chew up her arm when she was nervous as a toddler. She would get serious injuries, like burns on her hands, because her brain didn't register when she was touching something hot. She had no pain.
I spent the next hour on the elliptical and treadmill fervently praying for health and wholeness and normal physical, mental, and emotional development for my son, and my daughter too.
Sometimes as parents, I think we wish our children could go through life with no pain. We don't want them to suffer because we love them. But pain is good for kids, it allows them to pull their foot back or remove their hand from fire. Or learn never to something that again.
But, I was extremely relieved as he gave a wail of pain when I poured alcohol on his naked big toe to disinfect it. I was also relieved that he stopped crying rather quickly.
Mr. Z is tough and Ms. Thornton needs to stop doing my job.
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Showing posts with label child development. Show all posts
Showing posts with label child development. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Obsolete
Zack has called us both Mama since he could talk.
He just learned to say Ainschley and sometimes it comes out Mama Ainschley.
I guess this makes me obsolete?
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Second Generation Mean Girl
By Tracee Sioux
Just who is running the school clothes fashion show?
A reader's (Janet) comment on my column Kindergarten Fashion Show really provided some clarity about who is driving the fashion show in elementary school. Mommy, obviously.
Mean Girls are driving the whole thing. But, it’s Second Generation Mean Girls now. It’s the Mean Girls in our memory actually. Now that we’ve become mothers we’re trying to heal our own fashion wounds through our daughters. Or if you were the Mean Girl, perhaps you’re afraid your own Karma will work itself out on your kid. Perhaps you’ve developed a new empathy, or you just want to make sure your kid becomes a Mean Girl versus a picked-on Dork.
Mothers are really the only ones in the family ecosystem with enough power to drive the whole thing. Little girls can have a sense of taste and style of their own, my daughter certainly does. Yet, they don’t have jobs and therefore no money to make any actual decisions about what they wear. Dads couldn’t care less. Nor could they be trusted with something so important. It is also the mother who will be judged if her children look sloppy, unclean or trampy. Duh, all mothers know this. We take this seriously.
All perspective about the importance of a child's clothing is lost by Kindergarten. Which is why I feel like I’m sending my daughter into some hot bed of fashionistas in September. But, I now realize it’s not those innocent little five-year-olds. It’s their mothers.
I have had many in-depth conversations about the issue of kids clothes with women and every single conversation goes back to the mother’s empathy for her child. She remembers what it felt like to be wrong, out of place, not cool enough, not pretty enough, not stylish enough.
I have yet to meet a woman, whether she had been a Mean Girl herself or not, who hasn’t considered the issue in depth. It would seem parentally irresponsible not to consider the feelings of our children when it comes to clothing.
A reader's (Janet) comment on my column Kindergarten Fashion Show really provided some clarity about who is driving the fashion show in elementary school. Mommy, obviously.
Mean Girls are driving the whole thing. But, it’s Second Generation Mean Girls now. It’s the Mean Girls in our memory actually. Now that we’ve become mothers we’re trying to heal our own fashion wounds through our daughters. Or if you were the Mean Girl, perhaps you’re afraid your own Karma will work itself out on your kid. Perhaps you’ve developed a new empathy, or you just want to make sure your kid becomes a Mean Girl versus a picked-on Dork.
Mothers are really the only ones in the family ecosystem with enough power to drive the whole thing. Little girls can have a sense of taste and style of their own, my daughter certainly does. Yet, they don’t have jobs and therefore no money to make any actual decisions about what they wear. Dads couldn’t care less. Nor could they be trusted with something so important. It is also the mother who will be judged if her children look sloppy, unclean or trampy. Duh, all mothers know this. We take this seriously.
All perspective about the importance of a child's clothing is lost by Kindergarten. Which is why I feel like I’m sending my daughter into some hot bed of fashionistas in September. But, I now realize it’s not those innocent little five-year-olds. It’s their mothers.
I have had many in-depth conversations about the issue of kids clothes with women and every single conversation goes back to the mother’s empathy for her child. She remembers what it felt like to be wrong, out of place, not cool enough, not pretty enough, not stylish enough.
I have yet to meet a woman, whether she had been a Mean Girl herself or not, who hasn’t considered the issue in depth. It would seem parentally irresponsible not to consider the feelings of our children when it comes to clothing.
Wouldn’t it? Wait, what? Is the assumption that our parents just didn’t give a crap? Or that they didn’t understand? Or that they didn’t even know we were tortured at school for not having the Guess Jeans or the Swatch Watch? Were they that oblivious to our reality? Is it even possible they didn't know Gloria Vanderbilt jeans could make or break us?
I think the answer is in disposable income. Our grandmothers had none and went to school in dresses made of feed sacks and dealt with it. Our parents had some, but the importance of school clothes never took the place of a retirement plan. My parents, I called and asked, said they had a budget and weren't going to put the overall picture in jeopardy by paying twice the jeans budget. My dad then recalled that he bought his own clothes in junior high because he had a job by then. I probably should have been grateful that I didn't have to ride my bike three miles to wash dishes in a Chinese restaurant like he did. But, I just didn't have that kind of perspective yet.
Today I know a ton of parents who willy nilly charge school clothes on credit cards. The importance of the fashion show has taken on an emotional significance in their memories. It trumps a retirement plan. I can think of quite a few families who talk about being in precarious financial positions with big things like their mortgage or the failure of a business, but their 12-year-old daughters carry THE Dooney and Burke Purse. That’s just wrong.
I don’t really know the answer to this dilemma yet myself. I do know this: if we try to heal our fashion wounds through our children then we will create wounds were there were none. A Second Generation Mean Girl is, I imagine, about 1,000 times meaner with more electronic weapons than the Mean Girl of my day. First Generation Mean Girl passed a note calling me a "slut," her daughters are snapping pictures of girls in the gym locker room with their cell phone, posting them on My Space with the words, "Porn Star" and an ugly guy photoshopped in.
Am I the only mother who worries that my own daughter has the potential to become a Mean Girl? Am I the only mother who wants to keep her daughter out of Mean Girl status and out of picked-on Dork status, without blending into the wallpaper? Not a single one of those are empowering places to be for a girl.
School uniforms would be one solution and lots of public schools are going that way. Myself, I would like to see all the mommies step back and rein it in. Maybe a national school clothes boycott would be my fantasy. But, that could have unforeseen repercussions, like economic backlash or even more viciousness from those who refuse to participate. If not a boycott of fashion all together, I would at least like to generate a discussion.
What do you think is the answer?
I don’t really know the answer to this dilemma yet myself. I do know this: if we try to heal our fashion wounds through our children then we will create wounds were there were none. A Second Generation Mean Girl is, I imagine, about 1,000 times meaner with more electronic weapons than the Mean Girl of my day. First Generation Mean Girl passed a note calling me a "slut," her daughters are snapping pictures of girls in the gym locker room with their cell phone, posting them on My Space with the words, "Porn Star" and an ugly guy photoshopped in.
Am I the only mother who worries that my own daughter has the potential to become a Mean Girl? Am I the only mother who wants to keep her daughter out of Mean Girl status and out of picked-on Dork status, without blending into the wallpaper? Not a single one of those are empowering places to be for a girl.
School uniforms would be one solution and lots of public schools are going that way. Myself, I would like to see all the mommies step back and rein it in. Maybe a national school clothes boycott would be my fantasy. But, that could have unforeseen repercussions, like economic backlash or even more viciousness from those who refuse to participate. If not a boycott of fashion all together, I would at least like to generate a discussion.
What do you think is the answer?
Saturday, June 9, 2007
What the $%^&*!
By Tracee Sioux
Fill in the blank with whatever you want to believe I thought. I didn't say it because my kids were present and I didn't want them to freak out. Inside, I was totally freaking out though. It was a parenting moment for which I found myself with no other response than What the $^#%! my head.
Sometimes my daughter sees me bite my son's nails. If you've ever clipped a baby's nails and cut him, you understand that it makes your gut lurch like you want to perform some kind of flagellation on your self as penance. I read that I should bite his nails to trim them in a baby magazine. My daughter is a little mommy. She takes quite good care of her little brother. Always making sure I am aware of his needs and taking care of him herself if I am blatantly ignoring them while writing these columns.
Today she was climbing over him to get out of the van and noticed his toenail needed trimming and bent over and pulled the entire toenail out of his big toe. He barely flinched. She wanted to know if we should save it for his baby box.
There were so many things wrong with this picture all I could think was What the F$%&!
What I said was, Ainsley, how hard did you bite his toenail? You pulled his whole toenail out. You are not his mother. You need to let ME do things like that. I am his mother. You must be gentle with your brother.
>
But, I said it calmly, like it was no big deal. Unlike when I've asked her to pick up the living room numerous times and I really raise my voice as if it's a life and death situation.
I bandaged it up in the gym nursery and went back out the front door to cry and call the pediatrician. Who never called me back.
What truly disturbed me about the incident was that he barely flinched. In fact, he very rarely cries for more than a few seconds when he gets hurt. He's fallen down stairs and didn't cry much. Yesterday, I tried to surgically remove a piece of glass stuck in his heel and he cried while daddy had him trapped in a blanket to keep him still, but the second he was loose he was over it. In fact, just the other day my husband was proudly bragging about Zack's pain tolerance and how we should really exploit that to push him to excel in sports.
But, didn't they pull people's fingernails out as a form of torture? When my daughter lost her thumb nail after smashing it in the car door you would have thought it was about as painful as natural birth. I thought back to that poor little girl I'd seen on Oprah who didn't experience pain at all, they'd had to remove her teeth because she would chew up her arm when she was nervous as a toddler. She would get serious injuries, like burns on her hands, because her brain didn't register when she was touching something hot. She had no pain.
I spent the next hour on the elliptical and treadmill fervently praying for health and wholeness and normal physical, mental, and emotional development for my son, and my daughter too.
Sometimes as parents, I think we wish our children could go through life with no pain. We don't want them to suffer because we love them. But pain is good for kids, it allows them to pull their foot back or remove their hand from fire. Or learn never to something that again.
But, I was extremely relieved as he gave a wail of pain when I poured alcohol on his naked big toe to disinfect it. I was also relieved that he stopped crying rather quickly.
Mr. Z is tough and Ms. Thornton needs to stop doing my job.
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