Listening to: Pump up the Bhangra – Bali Brahmbatt
Mood: In a serious procrastination funk. I have family
coming over tomorrow and I’m pulling an ostrich
This post will be much happier than my last post where I
generally lamented that life raising kids is hard. Wah wah wah. Thank goodness.
I really get tired of hearing myself whine sometimes.
The other day I was watching my daughters play in my living
room. My youngest daughter, who is 4.5, was dancing to some pop tune that she
enjoys. Her movements were free and she danced however her body felt like
moving. I was so happy that she is able to express happiness in this way and completely
jealous that she was so un-self conscious.
Growing up, dancing was not only not encouraged at our
house, it was thought to lead to other unsavory things. I grew up in a Dutch
Reformed church with strict parents, what can I say? Anyhow, anything and everything
related to sexuality or our bodies in our house was quickly shut down. As I
grew older, I actually wished I knew how to be comfortable enough with my own
body to dance without caring. It has taken me a long time to get comfortable,
and to be honest, it still takes a lot of alcohol for me to be able to let go.
My daughter caught me watching her with a big smile on my
face. She immediately got embarrassed and commenced with the blushing,
stammering, and not dancing. I believe
she thought I was laughing at her or thought she looked silly. I immediately
told her to never be ashamed of dancing and that she was doing it just fine.
After a big smile aimed my way, my little pumpkin butt went back to dancing her
little heart out.
I hope she will always be so confident and able to feel
comfortable with her body. It always puzzles and upsets me that we try to trap
our daughters into feeling that they shouldn’t be proud of what they do, be
comfortable with their bodies and what they can do, and expressing themselves
however they feel like. How can we raise
girls who are confident enough to speak up for themselves if we can’t even
recognize that a little girl’s body is just a body? The same as every other
little girl’s body. If a girl gets joy out of dancing, or singing, or art for
that matter, why should we not encourage that?
I know there are plenty of people who think that having a
passion (heads out of the gutter please, a passion is anything you feel
strongly about and enjoy) leads to rebellious and precocious behavior. In other
words, if we let her follow her passion, she will end up using passion for
something we don’t agree with – i.e. she’ll end up sleeping with some boy when
she gets older. Ladies and gentlemen,
that may well happen, but not because she was encouraged to express herself the
way she liked. Teaching our daughters to be comfortable with themselves is a
huge lesson that is a hard one to teach these days.
We cannot avoid having out daughters pursue what they love
because of something that we are afraid will happen in the future. Teaching
your daughter to make good sexual choices when she is old enough is super
important. By all means, teach your daughter that along with encouraging her. But
this is not a sexual issue. In fact, giving her the confidence she needs in
herself and her own body will probably aid her in making wiser choices when she
does come to that point in her life and these lessons need to start when they
are young.
These are not easy times to grow up as a girl. We may have
made strides in getting equal treatment for girls, but in some regards, things
have not changed all that much. We all want our daughters to grow up to be
happy healthy adults, we need to help them develop the confidence to get there.
By all means daughter, dance.
How do you encourage your daughters to excel at what they
enjoy?
Becky
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