Mothers, be good to your daughters, too …

My husband is out with friends for the day, my youngest daughter is in bed and my 6 yr. old daughter decides to jump on YouTube and have a little dance party.  I’m always down for a dance party and I’m actually not disappointed at her music choice – Katy Perry’s “Roar.”   It’s got a good beat and it’s easy to dance to LOL (future post dedicated to LOL coming soon …).

She starts to sing off-key, she’s moving awkwardly around the room (obviously gets that from mom) and overall loving life.  Her happiness in this moment is why I became a mom.   I decide to use the lyrics of this song to turn our mother-daughter time into a brief teachable moment.  As she screeches: “cause I am a CHAMPION, and you’re gonna hear me roaaaaar!” I chime in with “you know, babe, that strong women know how to take care of themselves and can do anything they want, right?”  Here I am, thinking I’m going to inspire a future philanthropist, medical researcher or UN ambassador.  Her reply: “do strong ladies always brush the teeth of alligators?  ‘Cause that’s what this lady is doing.” Fine, maybe she’s destined to be a wildlife conservationist or veterinarian.  All is not lost.

Next up is Katy Perry’s “Dark Horse.”  Don’t worry if you’re not familiar with these songs, you don’t really need to be … I’ll make the point and that’s really all you will need to know.  So, my biggest sweetheart says to me “this is a different lady singing.”  I respond with “no, babe, she is just dressed differently and is wearing a wig, it’s the same singer.”  I see her flick the computer screen.  “I just thumped her in the head for wearing a wig.”  I see no need to explain that it’s show business, make believe and people change their looks, their clothes and sometimes their personality and actions for the sake of entertainment.  What I learned from her in that moment is that she expects people to be who they are – no changes needed, no disguises, nothing fake.  I smiled at her.

See, my daughter is a truly unique young lady and it may sound cliche, but I truly admire the strength of her resolve at such a young age.  She knows who she is and while I know there are many changes coming in the future, the person she is today is exactly the person she wants to be and the person that it makes her happy to be.  For lack of any better description, she is a committed ‘Tomboy’.   To prepare for back to school and the transition from kindergarten to 1st Grade, I took her school shopping the other day.

While I entered the store and instinctively veered to the right, the girls section, I had a sneaking feeling that she was not by my side, or even sulking a few steps behind me.  Sure enough, as I turned around, I spied my beautiful little peanut on the boys side, checking out dinosaur t’s and blue crew socks.   My husband and I had decided a few years ago, when she first started showing a preference for all things “boy” that we would embrace it and help her grow as the individual she felt most comfortable as.  We do not encourage her to wear boys clothes just as we do not force her to wear dresses.  It’s certainly been a very slippery parenting slope as we navigate our way through raising a child that does not fit into the traditional norms.  Sometimes we disagree, especially when special occasions roll around.  For her Kindergarten graduation, she adamantly refused to wear a dress (surprisingly my husband was more upset by this than I was) and so we went shopping for a fancy pair of boys’ khaki shorts and a sharp blue and white pinstriped button down shirt.  She looked adorable.

I’ll be honest that I’ve noticed inconsistencies in my parenting that I’m not always proud of.  I do keep buying her dresses, knowing that it’s not likely they will ever be worn.  People without kids or with smaller children don’t understand my plight.  Their advice: “you’re the mom, you tell them what to wear, end of story.”  Thanks oodles and doodles for your unsolicited advice on the way I should raise a good human.  It just doesn’t work like that, and you will understand if you choose to have children.  There WILL be things you don’t agree with – they may not be the same things I deal with, but parenting is not easy.  Issues come up in your adventure to create the most amazing little people turned adults that you possibly can and it’s inevitable that you will fail in the eyes of someone else.

My daughter feels more comfortable in boys’ clothes and I have come to respect that.  On a recent trip to the zoo, we were passing a group of little girls, a little older than my lovey, when I heard one say “why is she dressed like that?”  Instinctively, my defences went up and I wanted to smack a 9 yr. old upside the head.  (I didn’t, for the record.)  Thankfully, my daughter did not hear and have to face this on that day.  But that got me thinking that I really should prepare her for “mean girls.”  So, one day I asked her what she would say if someone at school asked her why she dresses like a boy.  Her reply: “because these are the clothes I like.”  Good enough for me!  There was no hesitation, no second thought by her that maybe the way she presents herself is not “normal.”  If I’m being honest, I prefer superhero shirts to miniskirts and questionable female role models anyway.

I let my little girl wear what she feels comfortable in, assuming it is appropriate for the occasion, because situations come along that I cannot deny that I am proud of the loving, sincerely kind person I am raising.  After buying her the dinosaur t she was eyeing up, and one featuring a pretty rad dude on a motorcycle and another featuring a drummer in a rock band, and then of course a pair of sneakers that matched her dad’s, I took her out to dinner.  Girls night, what what !?!?

As we were leaving the mall, we were stopped at a red light before making a turn onto the main road.  There was a man with a sign standing at the corner “one day at a time, any help is appreciated” I read to her.  She asked why he was there and I explained that he has no place to live and nothing to eat.  I felt uncomfortable as he looked into my car and I KNEW I had no money to pass out the window, I don’t carry cash unless absolutely necessary.   We got into a conversation about how some people have more than others and sometimes people just have bad luck and need others to help them out.  She asked if he was asking people for money so he could be rich, I reassured her that being rich was the last thing on that man’s mind.  He simply wanted to be safe and have food in his belly.

As we sat in Pizza Hut, it became clear that we would not finish what we had ordered and I gently suggested that maybe someone else would appreciate the food we did not eat.   She immediately thought of the man at the mall and was excited to pack up a box and bring it to him.  The city we live in is ~unfortunately~ full of people, down on their luck and passing through, looking for a few dollars or perhaps a meal on their travels.  We were hopeful that we would find him in the same place and as we drove closer, we were happy to see his bright yellow shirt at the intersection where we first saw him.

We pulled back into the mall, made a quick U-turn and I put the car in park, activated the hazard lights and tried to make a quick exchange of pizza & a couple of cold drinks before we held up 5:00 midweek traffic.  But my untraditional, amazingly kind-hearted daughter wanted to give this man his dinner.  We were certainly inconveniencing many by blocking traffic but not a horn sounded.  My 6 year old jumped out of the car and handed a stranger, someone she knew nothing about except that he needed something we had plenty of, a cold bottle of water and her leftover pepperoni pizza.

He was thankful and she was proud of herself.  It was her first experience with solidarity.  We are in this together as humans, he did not care what the little girl filling his belly was wearing.  I’m sure he was more appreciative of what was in her heart, as am I.

As I am writing this, she is cruising around the yard on her black Spiderman 4-wheeler, wearing a Batman shirt, blue socks up to her knees and white and pink sneakers – wait, those must be a hand-me-down – and I couldn’t be prouder of the little person she is.