Here is my stark mom confession. My flaws as a mother writ large! Do we have any control, or is that a joke a too?
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parents don’t know what they are doing anyway, might as well laugh about it
Here is my stark mom confession. My flaws as a mother writ large! Do we have any control, or is that a joke a too?
So true…they are a gateway drug. My daughter discovered Disney princesses at 2 and never looked back.
I was discussing this with another dad at a school birthday party last month. He and his wife had taken the same approach with their daughter as we had in trying to keep the princesses out of our houses. Somehow we had succeeded in keeping it a princess-free zone, whereas their daughter succumbed and became obsessed.
The approach both families took seemed to be exactly the same, so I’m not really sure what makes it “click” for one kid over another. Our daughter is usually quite susceptible to what the other kids are doing (plays the copycat card a bit), but not on this one thing. And can I say… thank god!
(BTW: We’ve also really worked to keep horses in the background. What’s up with the fascination with horses among school-age girls?!)
Oh, I know about this…from the other side. With the 3 boys, I took such caution to keep toy guns away. I wouldn’t even let them play pretend with the blow dryer.
And I actually hand snipped off all of the guns from of each and every of the 500 “bucket o’soldiers” from Toys R Us.
And what happens, one morning, at breakfast, my 5 yr old son has chewed his piece of toast into the shape of a handgun. “Pow pow.”
That was it, I hung up the scissors. Have at it kids, here’s the blow dryer.
well said Alexander. I remember a kid I grew up with in a similar circumstance. He had hippie parents and I’ll he wanted was to play with a toy gun. He would put two sticks together. And we are talking a 5 year old. Fast forward he became a Marine and now is a county sheriff. So, his gun interest was used for good and not evil.
Horses, the arm chair psych theory is that sometimes girls get into horses because there is a lack of strong male figure in their life. I dunno if that would hold up.
Vivien took an interest in mermaids and such before she ever saw the Disney movie.
Weird how it SEEMS that Madonnas kid never fell for it….and you would think she would be soooo privy to that kind of thinking.
Disney is an unstoppable force of marketing. I have tried to avoid them too but that just makes it MORE attractive. So the four year old party next week will be ‘under the sea’.
I can declare a small victory, as daughter thinks that each princess story ends “and they lived happily ever after — but first she went to college and got a good job.” (She has corrected babysitters and her father when they forget this important point.)
So true! When my daughter, Avery, was born I swore that I was going to be one of THOSE moms that made sure her daughter knew there wasn’t “boy” things and “girl” things…that she could like the color blue or red … she could play with tools…she could anything a boy could do. But…no matter how hard I tried, Pink and Purple are still to this day her favorite colors and princesses are everywhere. I always thought that we some how made our kids into the girls with pink and purple with princesses and puppies and boys who where blue and green who play rough…but now I’m starting think that we don’t have any control over it – it’s just who they are. And realizing that I’m losing “control” over my 4 nearly 5 year old daughter is a scary realization.
sorry that i’m responding to an older video – but I just found your website and really loved your opinion and thoughts – so I’m making way through your videos. keep up the good work – I really enjoy it and love to know that i’m not alone.