Raising smart media consumers

A while back, my friend Mary was telling me about a song that her daughter “was addicted to.”  It was a song by a girl saying that she would do whatever she had to do to get her guy, including turning cartwheels.  Mary speculated that the girls probably just liked the fun, whimsical melody and the catchy chorus, but that she really didn’t like the message contained within the song.

As we discussed it, I shared with her what I have done with my kids.  Recently, she told me that she had taken my advice and found it helpful, so I thought I would share it here with you.

It turns out, if you completely deny a child her desire for something, whether it’s a toy gun or a princess dress, she will become obsessed by it.  We tell a boy “no toy guns” hoping his desire will just fade away.  Ironically, he just grows more and more obsessed with it.  The desire doesn’t shrink, it expands, until it takes on the dimensions of a fetish. 

Another friend once told me that a child whose parents had outlawed all toys in his house had come over to her house to play with her kids.  He approached her, feverishly clutching a Matchbox car, and asked, “Can I have this?”  She said, “Sure, you can play with it.”  He shook his head and said, “No, can I have it?”  When you’re starving, a crumb looks like a feast, and this child was starving. 

That’s how it works: thwarted wanted only increases the wanting.  When my daughter was 3 and 4, she desperately wanted Barbie dolls and princess dresses.  At that time, I didn’t understand about thwarted wanting, I just wanted to protect my child from the barrage of large-breasted, impossibly narrow waisted, long hair, high heeled, painted nail, makeup wearing female images that abound on toy store shelves and movie screens.  I thought that by isolating her from them, she wouldn’t know what she was missing and it wouldn’t matter. 

It didn’t work out that way.  She still saw the images and the toys, but because they were forbidden fruit, they took on a larger-than life halo. 

Eventually, I realized I had to give ground somewhere, because she was developing a full scale obsession.  So I decided that instead of buying a princess dress off the shelf – and thus endorsing what I so strongly opposed – I would make one.  It was orange, with a large pink floral “poof” on each side.  She loved that dress, and literally wore it every single day.  I had to repair the shoulder seams, not once but twice!  It was in that dress that “Bootiful” took place.   And it was in that dress that I realized it wasn’t the dress that was the problem, it was the dialogue around it. 

I figured out that if I didn’t talk to her about why I didn’t like the whole “princess” dialogue, she would have no other option but to absorb the one that was out there.  Namely, that princesses are “bootiful and thas it.”  (Princesses aren’t allowed to be smart, strong, brave, or solve their own problems.)  So I decided to change tactics.  I told my kids that I would let them watch a Barbie movie, but that they had to understand why I didn’t particularly like Barbie. 

We sat down right there in the library and had a discussion about how all the “beautiful” characters on Barbie look pretty much the same, with a super skinny waist, long – usually blond – hair, and light skin.  How they walked around on tiptoe all the time, with their arms held at an odd angle that caused them to walk funny.  We talked about all the people we knew, and how NONE of them looked like what you’d see on Barbie, but yet, they were still beautiful.  Then we watched it together, and they were able to see all the caricatures, taking great pleasure in pointing them out.  My son developed a pretty hysterical imitation of the “Barbie walk”

The point is, once we deconstructed the Barbie movie, took it apart and looked at it piece by piece (in an age appropriate way, of course) the movie was no longer a threat, either to me, or to my kids. 

This was what I suggested to my friend Mary: that she tell her kids, “You can listen to this song, but only after we talk about why I don’t like it.”   

What’s to lose?  At the very least, you might have a really good discussion!

Bootiful: Formation of my daughter’s self-image

 One day, three-year-old Kaya put on her princess dress and coyly asked, “Mommy, am I bootiful?”  Without thinking, I answered, “Yes, Kaya, of course you’re beautiful.” 

It was the first of several similar scenarios.  She would put something on, whether it was hair bows, necklaces, stick on earrings, or her beloved princess dress.  Then she would find me and ask the same question, “Mommy, am I bootiful?”  Awareness dawned slowly, but painfully.  My daughter had acquired an unremitting fixation on beauty.

 

As a thoughtful, deliberate parent, I had tried to expand my daughter’s understanding of what it means to be feminine, I had (I thought) taught her about her non-physical attributes, like intelligence, courage, toughness, cleverness, even being a fast runner.  Then I realized she only sought feedback about her physical attractiveness. 

 

Even more disturbing was the need to put something on before asking if she was beautiful.  One day Kaya spilled water on her princess dress and I told her to take it off.  She got an anguished look on her face, and started a frustrated sort of running in place, whining “But I won’t be bootiful anymore!”  It was apparent that Kaya believed “beauty” resided not in Kaya herself, but in her accessories.

 

I have worked hard to prevent Kaya from internalizing the images of unrealistically thin, perpetually beautiful women who are always nice and live only for their men (aka Disney Princesses and Barbie).  But despite my efforts, I was faced with the fact that Kaya had already begun her indoctrination.   

 

What to do? 

 

One day, on a whim, I decided to try something different.  When she asked me her usual “Mommy, am I bootiful?”  I answered, “Yes, Kaya, you are beautiful.  But you are also smart, clever, witty, assertive, strong, and powerful.”  This was my attempt expand her identity beyond just her physical attributes.  But Kaya’s whole demeanor instantly clouded over, and she responded, “No!  I’m bootiful, and thas it!” 

 

Needless to say, that wasn’t the response I was hoping for!  But then again, it did confirm that I was on the right track.  She had already recognized that girls are supposed to be – and desire to be – “beautiful and that’s it.” 

 

That’s when it occurred to me that maybe she was asking not just for confirmation of her beauty, but for confirmation of her correct enactment of femininity.  Maybe she wanted to show me that she knew how to “do” being a girl, correctly.  I realized that in order to address her beauty fixation, I not only had to expand her understanding of how to be a girl, I also had to make her realize that I required that expanded definition of her in order to recognize her as correctly being a girl.  This requirement would act like the “glue” I needed to make the new definitions “stick.”  I did this by making my affirmation of her beauty contingent on her acceptance of “the whole package” I was laying before her.  The next exchange went like this:

KAYA. Am I bootiful and thas it?

MOM. You’re beautiful and smart too.

KAYA. No.  I’m a princess.  I’m just bootiful and thas it.

MOM. Princesses can be beautiful and smart too, can’t they?

KAYA. No.

By rejecting my expanded definition of feminine identity, Kaya was saying that she knew the correct way for princesses to be, and clearly I didn’t.  It would have been cute, if I hadn’t found it so disturbing. 

Five minutes later, Kaya again sought me out.  Apparently, our previous exchange had left her feeling unsatisfied.

KAYA. Am I bootiful?

MOM. That depends.  Are you smart?

KAYA. Yeah

MOM. Then you’re beautiful too.

This must have still been problematic for her, because five minutes after that, she approached me again, but this time, my message had gotten through.

KAYA. Am I beautiful and smart?

MOM. Yes!!

Her persistence in asking the same question different ways to try to win back my approval confirmed for me that Kaya wanted to enact femininity “properly.”  Months later, we still have exchanges like these, but now they are more of a game.  It usually goes like this: Kaya approaches me with a big grin on her face and asks:

KAYA. Mommy, am I bootiful?

MOM. Yes, and what else?

KAYA. Smart!

MOM. And?

KAYA. Clever!

MOM. Annnd?

KAYA. Strong!

MOM. Annnnnnnnd?

KAYA. Powerful!

MOM. Great job!  Gimme five! 

———————————–

CODA: The preceding is an excerpt from my master’s thesis, written in 2005.  My daughter is now seven, and we’ve continued to work hard reinforcing her many fine qualities, and searching for strong role models in movies, books, and TV programs.  We especially love the Japanese anime from Studio Ghibli, including My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away.  They’re completely off-beat and have fabulous female characters.

So how’s it going these days?  Well, the other day, out of the blue, Kaya told me she really liked a character called Nausica.  I asked her why.  She said, “Because she’s brave and smart, like me.” 

No victory ever tasted sweeter!

Does telling stories about your kids count as backbiting?

Most of us know that backbiting – aka gossiping – is bad.  But Baha’u'llah, the founder of the Baha’i Faith told us that it’s more than bad, it’s actually  one of the worst possible things we can do.  That’s because gossiping is a spiritual crime that harms the soul, not just of the speaker, but also of the listener and the person being talked about.  My understanding is that backbiting is worse than physically harming another person, precisely because it is a spiritual crime.

I admit it, I struggle with this.  Not just because our (American) culture loves to gossip, but because sometimes I’m not sure exactly what counts as backbiting.  Some of it’s obvious – (Did you see her dress?  What was she thinking?  And that hair!  My dog could do a better job with a weed wacker!).   But unfortunately, some of it is less so.

Here’s my problem: I like to tell stories.  It’s how I deal with life. 

I usually try to “write” the stories so that they make the listener laugh, but sometimes I know it’s just for me to blow off steam.  I generally tell stories about myself, making myself the butt of the joke.  But as a mom, I sometimes (all right, often) tell stories about my kids.  And here’s the crux of the issue: does telling stories about my kids constitute backbiting?

I’m worried that sometimes the answer is yes. 

I suppose when I’m talking about something they’ve done well, it’s ok. As long as the listener won’t be offended by my “bragging.” 

The danger is when they’ve done something that I am, shall we say, less than pleased about.   I suspect that the answer can be found in my intention.  If I’m trying to get help or advice, and I don’t talk in a way that is disrespectful of my kids, then I’m probably all right.  But what about those times when I’m talking about how ridiculous my kid is being, or how obnoxious, or how out of control?  I think when this happens, I’m usually engaging in a game of parental one-upsmanship.  “You think that’s bad?  Let me tell you what Johnny did!”  Looking at it this way, it’s hard to argue that it isn’t backbiting.

Adib Tahirzedeh, a very wise and deepened Baha’i, was once asked how to figure out if you’re backbiting.  He answered, “When you start to enjoy yourself!” 

I guess I ought to apply the same litmus test I would use when talking about a friend: if I wouldn’t tell the story in front of her, then I probably shouldn’t be telling it in her absence.  Unless I am genuinely looking for advice on what to do. 

Whew.  This could be tough.  I’m not used to editing stories about my kids, but I can see that this is something I need to start doing.  ESPECIALLY when they have been particularly taxing.  

But Nature abhors a vacuum, which means that I can’t just NOT talk negatively about my kids, I have to find something to do instead when the urge hits me.  But what?

Baha’u'llah tells us that “a thought of hate must be replaced by an even stronger thought of love.”  In this case, it’s not hate but lack of respect.  So perhaps I should replace it with a thought of respect? 

Wow, what does that look like? 

Let’s take a hypothetical situation that we can all relate to: My child is throwing very dramatic temper tantrums. 

“Old Me” might say, “Wow, Sammy has been quite the drama queen this week!  The tantrums she can throw, it’s really quite impressive.  She tips over chairs, stomps her feet, and knocks things over.  It’s hysterical, really.  It’s hard not to laugh out loud!”

The words “mocking” and ”sarcastic” come to mind; definitely not respectful.  What would “New Me” say? 

Well, saying nothing whatsoever is always an option, but I could also say something like, “Wow, Sammy has been having a tough time lately.  She’s working on learning how to control strong emotions like anger, but you remember how hard that can be.  I wish I could help her, but when she gets herself wound up, there doesn’t seem to be much I can do to help her.”

Does that sound any better?  It feels more respectful, but is it backbiting?

I just don’t know.  Do you?

Stiff neck followup

I wanted to wait a bit to be sure, but my stiff neck is 95% gone.  The other 5% is more about me fearing it’s return than any real discomfort. 

I’ve also found myself being much calmer in the past week, particularly when the situation around me went haywire.   My son had to work on his big book report today.  He was just editing something he’d written last week, and was only reworking the last paragraph of it.  And yet, it took about an hour to finish it.  Mind you, if you took out the wailing, moaning and consternation, it was maybe fifteen minutes.  So for me to remain calm and detached throughout the remaining 30 minutes of tirades (and personal attacks on my personality), was actually a fairly significant accomplishment.  I was completely calm; even slightly amused.  I recognized that my son was doing nothing but creating suffering for himself, but that was all.  It had nothing to do with me.  Other than the fact that I chose to sit there and wait for him to get over it.

He has his lessons to learn, my daughter has hers, I have mine. 

And that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

An ironic coda to enlightened children

My first post was about relinquishing control over my children’s fates, and handing them over to God.

Over the last couple weeks,  I’ve been troubled by a stiff neck that keeps getting worse and worse.  Fitness-wise, I’m stronger than I’ve ever been, and I work out at my physical therapist’s office, so if I were doing any of the exercises wrong, they’d tell me. 

 So what’s going on?

I’m a big believer in self healing, especially for something chronic and nagging like this.  I’ve learned that I create a lot of my own own suffering by the way I deal (or don’t deal) with the stuff that happens in life, and when that happens, the way to cure myself is simply to change the way I think about things.  I’ve found Louise Hay’s book, “Heal Your Body” quite useful in narrowing down my search.  Here is what it said about stiff necks: “The probable cause of a stiff neck is: Burdens, overload, trying to fix others, resistance, inflexibility.”  Gee, does any of that sound familiar?  How about ALL of it!

I’ve had my stiff neck for about the same amount of time as my son has been “amping up” his struggles against reading: about two weeks.  During that time, I’ve been reading and trying to apply to both my life and my children’s, the principles I’ve been learning from Eckart Tolle’s book, “The New Earth.”  I’ve been feeling stressed out because I got trapped in the thinking that there is a “right answer” out there, and as his mother, it was my obligation to find it.  

I did find something in Tolle’s book that has made things better, but ironically, it only strengthened my delusion that (a) there is  a magical right answer out there, and (b) that it’s my job as his mother to exhaust myself until I find it.    In other words, I’ve created a burden for myself by trying to “fix” my son, while the whole time my ego has been going head-t0-head with his ego.  No wonder I have a stiff neck. 

Yesterday, I started repeating the following affirmation for stiff necks and see what happens. 

“I lovingly release others to their own lessons.  I lovingly care for myself.  I move with ease through life.”

I felt a little better today, but not 100%.  We’ll see how I feel tomorrow.

Strange happenings in cyberspace

How very strange.  I googled my last blog entry to see if Google Blog Search had crawled it yet, and I found it…  sort of.  It was my text, but it wasn’t actually on my blog;  it was on someone else’s.  Check it out:

http://developping-distance.blogspot.com/2009/02/how-do-you-lead-child-to-enlightenment.html

Either I’ve been plagirized by Colin Fortin, or there’s something funky in cyberspace.

And my own blog did NOT show up on the Google Blog Search.

<sigh>  I’m so flustered, I’ve forgotten what I wanted to blog about.  I’ll try again tomorrow.

How do you lead a child to enlightenment?

 

Today, I realized that my children are not my Sistine Chapel.

 

They are not going to become great masterpieces for which I will be honored and memorialized forever.

No matter what I do, my children are not going to grow up without making mistakes. Nor would I want them to.

And there’s no way they will pass into adulthood without making me angry. Very, very angry.  On a regular basis.

I wish I had all the answers to help my children grow up into perfect, enlightened beings. 

But even if I were a perfectly enlightened being (which I’m not), it would be arrogance to think I could lead my children into enlightenment the way a sculptor molds clay.

 

I see now that enlightenment is a journey we must travel on our own two feet.  Although I can describe the signposts and landmarks I’ve passed on my own journey, ultimately my children are destined to use the free will God gave them to choose their own path. 

 

And yet, there is a strong feeling of responsibility.  I know I am only a temporary caretaker for my children, but while they are in my care, their education and training are my responsibility.   This is not a task I take lightly. 

 

As I write this, the word that comes to me loud and clear is: “TRUST”

 

I know God has a plan for me.  I trust that God has my best interest at heart, so even if things happen to me which are contrary to my desire, I trust that eventually I will see the wisdom of the experience relative to my whole life.  And if that is true, then God also has a plan for my children.  And if God has a plan for my children, then I should just as easily trust that God has their best interests at heart, and therefore, they are in good hands. 

 

In parenting, as in all other areas of my life, all I need to do is the best that I can do, and then have the courage to leave the rest in God’s capable hands. 

 

Wow, is that hard to do!  Why?  I guess because it  means I have to relinquish control over my children’s fate.  Or do I?  I don’t really have control;  I never did.  Isn’t that what I’ve been complaining about this whole time?   All I’m really doing is relinquishing the delusion of ever having been in control in the first place.

 

Somehow, that sounds much easier to do.  At least I hope so.

 

What do you think?