Thursday, November 18, 2010

Defining our Children

I recently came across Pigtail Pal on twitter, and fell in love with these shirts. I had to follow her on twitter. She has the best message, one I struggle to teach Serenity and Willow too as they grow. She is against defining our children into stereotypical roles Now my Serenity is very very girly.She loves dresses and baby dolls, she can't wait to grow up to be a mommy some day, and she LOVES princesses. But she will play in the dirt, climb (well try) trees, catches bug, and currently wants to be a doctor or a teacher when she grows up. And loves to chase her brothers, playing FBI agent trying to catch them for the crime they committed. I use to get very worried because she wanted to be a princess so badly, you know wanted a prince to come and save her and all that. Well, I quickly started teaching her that she doesn't need a prince to save her and that she can save the prince someday. And now she goes around singing, I don't want to be like Cinderella, by the Cheetah Girls. It is a song all about not needing someone to save her, and she only wants a Prince if they are riding side by side. I refuse to let my daughters fall into the trap of "This is who I have to be, because I am a girl".
Now the flip side, I also have 2 boys. I have one, Anthony, who is very sensitive, enjoys playing barbies with Serenity, is fantastic with babies, has mostly girl friends and hates sports. That is who he is, and that is fine too. Joey, loves sports, he is "all boy" so they say. He loves guitar, any sport he can find, doesn't like to play house, and tolerates the baby on his schedule, though he doesn't mind playing with her, her just gets bored with it quick, but he will play costumes for hours.

So what is my point. Well today I saw this on the Pigtail blog. It is a summer camp that girls go to be princesses and boy are explorers. I mean I have heard of themed camps before but you know science camp, computer camp, soccer camp etc.

I agree completely with Melissa, why couldn't it be castle camp and adventure camp including all the children. I never understood that.

In an effort to help spread awareness that we need to stop defining our children, I wanted to (have my rant) share this blog with all of you.

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