Submitted by Natasha in Alberta, Canada (To read more about Natasha, visit her website Becoming Something.)
I have an elementary school child who is possessed by the ghost of a valley girl teenager who probably unfortunately died while driving recklessly, in a 3-way conversation on her cell about boys, shoes, money, lipstick and why life isn’t fair because it occasionally requires effort. I can’t begin to explain how much this terrifies me.
I wasn’t that kind of teenage girl and I loathed looked down on those teenage girls when I was a teen. They are the same type of girl you see on The Bachelor, a few years older but the same degree of seemingly vapid. Whenever I’ve watched The Bachelor I’ve thought, “Little girl! You are making a fool of yourself! Stop giggling and saying words like “fabulous” and “amazing” to describe every little thing. Stop saying “like” every five words. It’s not cute when you get hammered and then do a mock strip tease, pretending that it was really the alcohol that made you do it when really you just wanted Mr. Bachelor to know that you like to move it, move it. Oh, forget it. This is a hopeless cause.” (For one thing, people on tv can’t hear you no matter how loud you yell.)
I never understood teenagers. I left home at 15 and just wanted to finish high school so I could get married and be a mom.
I imagined that my teenage girls would be sensible and strong. I imagined they’d be intelligent readers like the girls in Little Women. They wouldn’t care about the OHL hockey players that sit near them in the high school cafeteria and they would report the hockey players to the principal when they got sexually harrassed. (The hockey players would like them all the more for it anyway, TRUST ME.)
But here I have a child who does not resemble me at all and I’m afraid of what this implies for our future. How will I manage her if she continues to be this way only with more hormones and dramatic angst, when I can’t say I know how she feels?
Why do I say she is possessed by the spirit of an obnoxious teenage girl?
She has been obsessed with shoes since she was about 14 months old. Given the choice between a new toy and new shoes, she’d choose shoes.
Rarely is she content to just be at home. Every couple of days she asks to go to Tim Horton’s for donuts and the frequency of our McDonald’s patronizing suggests some sort of telepathic manipulation is taking place. Everyday she wants me to phone her friends’ moms to ask if she can play at their houses and I’m always hoping that the 153rd time I explain that it’s impolite to do that, she will finally understand: IT’S IMPOLITE TO DO THAT.
She’s always “BORED!” because there’s “NOTHING TO DOOOOO!”
Today she told me that I say “no” to “EVVVERYTHING!” (Can you hear the tears?) “I bought you that dress,” I replied. “I said yes to the new Christmas shoes. I said yes to gum.” “Yes, but you said no to candy.” Annnnnd there we go: focusing on the negative.
As well, she never has “ANYTHING TO WEAAAAARRRRR!” And once she even said, “Red is not my colour.” ??!?
She notices other little girls at stores or the park even if she only gets a quick glance. Her eyes are well trained to spot competition. She’s too innocent to be catty about it at this point. But she will notice and will say, “Mommy! That little girl has purple pony tails. I want purple pony tails!” Or, “She had braids. When we get home can you give me braids?” Or, “I saw a little girl in a pink coat.” Just a quiet observation… but she’s comparing herself. ALREADY.
She’s already asked for a cell phone. I DON’T EVEN HAVE A CELL PHONE.
The real kick in the teeth came one day when she said quietly as I was tucking her into bed, “I wish I was a teenager.”
KILL ME NOW. Anything you have on hand will do.
My other daughter is not like this at all. She has my personality and it’s much easier to imagine a happy relationship with her as she grows up because who would enjoy a child who whines and cries like her sister does so often?
Well, us, actually, because the flip side of her personality is delightful. She is dramatic and lively and silly and smart. She makes us laugh. She packs a big punch in her little body and I think she will grow up to be striking. She makes friends so easily that on her first orientation day of school, she was already holding hands with two little girls as they walked around for a tour. Her classmates sometimes give her a hug at the end of the day, before going home.
I just don’t want her to grow up to be like those girls from the Walmart back-to-school commercial. You know the one where the three girls are all on their cell phones, in different change rooms in a row, and their deep, existential conversation goes something like this:
“OMG, guess what I got?! Some cute jeans and this really great hoodie.”
“A hoodie? Like, SWEET. I got a tee and this skirt. It’s, like, totally adorable.”
“Awesome.”
“I know, right? It’s so awesome.”
“It’s awesome.”
It’s this horrible valley girl meets Beavis and Butthead thing.
Which basically translates to:
“My brain stopped developing at age 8. I find self-worth in worthless things. I believe that cell phones release vitamins. If boys think I’m hot, I think that helps me get to Heaven. We should change the Canada flag to pink and white… with mandatory rhinestones. I will never learn to spell words longer than three letters and I’m best when no vowels are involved. Handbags are my reason for waking up in the morning. In the name of Louis Vuitton, Amen.”
Last night the girls were having a bath, playing ponies and the ponies were talking to each other. Let me tell you, THOSE PONIES ARE SO CATTY. The pony plot was scarily similar to the movie Mean Girls.
“Whoa! We don’t “hate” people,” I said. “Where did you hear that?”
“Is it okay to say ‘dislike’?” asked Josie.
“I guess so.” ?
And then today Daisy came home with a DVD from school: Polly Pocket. They have this white elephant gift exchange at school where parents drop off their unwanted reasonably nice junk, fill out pages that say how many people are in each students’ families and pay 50 cents per person. The the kids go “shopping” amidst the reasonably nice junk and buy gifts for their family members and the money goes to some charity. It’s very cute and the kids get so excited for it. So, Daisy came home with this [sigh] Polly Pocket DVD for Lulu and she asked if Lulu could please open it today. So they both could watch it. Well. I had just endured many minutes of crying in the grocery store because I had a 3-year old on hand who stayed up two hours past her bed time. OF COURSE I SAID YES. Don’t act surprised.
Did you know that Polly Pocket is a mini-rock star? [Insert roll of eyes here.] And in the feature film that is Polly Pocket: Oh, no! Something Bad Will Happen and Then Be Resolved Exactly As You Think It Will, there were Mean Girls who were very concerned about their popularity. Every character around them had a ranking. They were very snotty about it. If I was a really devoted blogger, I would put the disc in and quote the Mean Girls exactly but I’m too tired. Suffice it to say, it was horrible and I was horrified but I didn’t want to deal with the auditory assault if I said they couldn’t watch it because I didn’t approve. Instead, I made sure to say here and there, “Wow! That was NOT nice!”
Because what if my kid is naturally someone who would more easily identify with the MEAN girls? I’m feeding her evil lingo. I’m teaching her attitude by letting her watch this.
I don’t want to raise Amish kids who feel left out of popular culture. But I hate how anti-intellectual Disney and Polly and Barbie and My Little Pony and yaddayaddayadda are. I just hate how all this gobblygoop (I’m trying to stop saying the word “crap”) teaches them next to nothing except to care about their looks.
I want my girls to want to look nice but I don’t want them to care that much. Clothing is not a topic that should sustain a conversation past a couple of minutes.
I want my girls to be social but I don’t want them to be unable to sit at home and be alone.
I want them to have confidence but not at the expense of anyone else and not in competition.
I just don’t know what to do, really. I don’t know how much influence I really have on my daughter’s personality and choices. I don’t want her to become a stereotypical movie character.
And MAN, she has that pout down pat.
Sigh.
