Well. I've meant to blog about an observation I made in the park this weekend and have only now managed to get to it. So here goes.
We recently discovered a new park...don't know how I didn't know about it, we're going into our third year here. But anyway. I'm convinced it's one of the coolest parks I've ever seen. There's a playground that's probably 2.5-3 stories high (I'm not exaggerating, Ben backs me up on that) with bridges and tall twisty slides, and all sorts of climbing devices. Then there's a littler playground for toddler-sized kids. Add in a 10 foot pole with spiderweb-like climbing ropes and a ford where the water drains down, and it's just plain cool. So we went there to hang out after we went to the farmer's market on Saturday (where I bought raspberries AND flowers for myself, along with many things to make into Baby J's first foods).
While we were at the park I took to observing this family...I promise I wasn't being weird. The little girl was wearing an awesome hoodie, and I wanted to watch them interact to decide if the mom was the sort I could comfortably approach to ask where she got it (I decided that one was a no...you'll see why in just a sec). There was an 18-month-old or so little girl (the cute hoodie observation instigator), a 5-year-old boy (sporting a blue Batman shirt), a mom in her early 30s (very blonde and wearing exercise pants of the 'let me show you my exact figure' sort), and a dad about her same age (wearing 'I'm a cool guy' sunglasses and looking very much like he wanted to come across as a bad a**). They looked like a cute and happy family by all accounts. I don't want the story I'm going to write to come across as a sweeping judgment of their entire existence. It's just one incident. The dad was "helping" (here read literally forcing and physically manipulating the limbs of) his little boy up a climbing apparatus. The whole time, the cute, very sweet-seeming little boy (who I had watched kiss his little sister with no encouragement a couple of times) screamed "I want MOM, dad, let me DOWN, GET ME DOWN!!!" and similar things. Eventually dad hopped him down from the climbing wall and said "Stop acting like your sister!!"
I was so upset by the whole thing. Again, I don't think that this family is messed up, or that the parents do a bad job. I just think that whether he criticized the little boy's fear as being either effeminate or baby-ish, it's an inappropriate criticism. I get a little bit frustrated with this whole idea of needing to make boys be bold, fearless, physical...whatever you want to call it. And the idea of making little girls dependent. I think we just have to let kids be the way they are (unless, no matter the gender of the kid, it's destructive or dangerous) and help them be happy with it!
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4 comments:
I've seen stuff like that before and it always makes me sad. I still remember feeling upset a few years ago when I overheard a neighbor berating his two-year old for crying. Um, yelling at the kid won't make her stop crying. I let both my kids cry if they are sad or scared and try not to attach any labels to it. Yes, it's annoying and sometimes they have to go in their room to calm down, but I don't want either of them to feel like there's something wrong with feeling sad or upset. Or that it's something effeminate (and therefore 'wrong')
My parents had no idea what to do with a baseball-loving tom boy who refused to wear a dress (reference my first halloween dressed in a tutu).
So they bought be a mitt and a ball and signed me up for T-ball. The world needs more parents like that, no?
And that was a shameless shout-out to my parents.
Grrr . . . I'm gonna follow Vanessa's lead a bit and share that no one in my family had a problem with my youngest brother toting around a baby doll. He would wrap it up in a blanket, read to it, etc. and nobody thought it was weird.
a doll!
yet another posting from my childhood. that was my favorite song when I was 5.
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