I try to never judge another parent because as someone who has gone through some serious shit in my parental, personal and household life, you just never know what anyone is carrying so don't speak on it. What I do know is I have every right to not have my kid around those parents, families and children who have shown me that the way they run their household and raise they're children is so very different from my parenting goals that it may deter my child from being her awesome self.
There is one particular little girl in my daughter's aftercare and summer program that I would call an instigator, to put it kindly. To be fair, this kid has not had ideal circumstances for her life, as far as my understanding, so I take it all with patience and grace, or try. However, her mom said something so weird, and it was relayed to me by my kiddo, and although her statement technically isn't false, I just felt it should be better explained and more succinctly communicated.
My daughter said this little girl's mom said, "Sunscreen is poison for your skin." I asked my daughter to repeat and clarify. She said that the other girl's mom said the sunscreen we had was poison for your skin. Her friend corroborated. It was one of those moments where I literally hadn't the words so I said, "Well sunburn is bad for your skin too, we'll talk about this later."
Look, we live in a time where everything is bad for you, everything causes cancer and healthcare is more expensive than a mortgage payment sometimes. There is serious information overload. You WebMD and cough and wait for "cancer" to just appear and be diagnosed. This mother isn't wrong necessarily, I mean I see her point. There are some kinds of sunscreens and lotions that can have bad effects on the skin, but I'm raising an Irish redhead in Florida; she needs to have sunscreen to be allowed outside ever. I get sunburned walking from my car into the grocery store. So making this kind of statement into impressionable 6 year old ears, seems super...unthinking to me. There needs to be more tact.
In a perfect world I would have hoped this mother said, "Oh I read that that sunscreen isn't the best for your skin, you should tell your mommy to try a different brand." Or maybe even, "Sunscreen can be bad for your skin but sun burn can too so it's important to choose certain kinds and learn more." Kids over-react to EVERYTHING, so I think it needed to be more carefully explained.
It's like that scene from Little Miss Sunshine where the dad is giving his daughter the harsh truth about how ice cream has fat that can turn into fat on your body, which doesn't make beauty queens. He said it in such an asshole way, you hated him. All little kids should enjoy ice cream while they can. However, he's not wrong! There is just a better way to explain it. And that's our job as parents.
My daughter went on a 10 minute rant about Monsters being real or not last night, basically asking me if bad guys in movies and cartoons were real. She had a lot of ideas about this. I kind of leveled with her and said, most of the evil and bad stuff was pretend and didn't end up hurting anyone in the story, so she doesn't have to worry. It was funny though because she was telling me how real unicorns and My Little Pony characters are, and Disney monsters, like from Monster's Inc, those protect her, but other yucky monsters were pretend. I mean I told her that sounded okay to me. And NO ONE should correct her.
See, kids are so fantastical, that they over-dramatize everything so you have to watch those little ears and help them navigate their big fears. When she was 4 we went into the ocean on this perfect day and my daughter said, "Are there sharks in the ocean?" I said, "Yes, but not near where we are. They are way out there, not in this part of the ocean." My cousin said, "Nice lie, mom." If I told my daughter that shark attacks have happened in waist deep water in the gulf, she'd never go in. This is why my husband never tells me if he sees snakes near the house, I'd demand to move to Iceland or Hawaii.
Every parent is going to raise their children differently. Maybe some people are done with the Santa thing, but don't tell my kid Santa isn't real. Seriously I will throat punch any adult that ruins Santa for my daughter. You don't have to believe in unicorns, but we do. You can say that Disney Characters are pretend but she has pictures with most of them. And leave me in the Wizard World of Harry Potter for a day, I'll come back full wizard!
The swear words stuff doesn't bother me because she will learn to use them in her vocabulary as intended and everyone hears those words everywhere. Just a few weeks ago she said, "Mom freak is the 'F' word and we don't use it, right?" I said, "We do not use that word, no." Without a beat she said, "The other 'F' word is 'Fuck.'" My jaw dropped and I went to scold her but she calmly said, "Mom I'm not SAYING that word I'm just telling you what the other 'F' word is! I didn't actually SAY it." She had a solid point.
To me it's worse to fill my kid with info they can't quite process like the sunscreen shenanigans, than for me to accidentally swear around her. While that little girl's mom was probably crazy well-intentioned, I would just hope that other moms I know would over-explain things to get the kid to fully understand the scope, rather than just throw out commentary based on a Dateline NBC update or Today Show special. We have close friends whose children have certain gluten and lactose sensitivities. Rather than just say they are allergic to stuff, I've had many conversations with my daughter about how all little tummies process differently and while you can drink milk all day, for your friends it makes them sickie. This is so my kid can be sensitive to others, or so I hope.
If that mom doesn't like sunscreen, good for her, but I just wish people were more gentle, considerate and careful with little ears and big fears. During the election my friend's son heard about Trump's immigration stance, and he didn't understand what immigrant was fully, so he thought that just mean someone from another place or that lives in a place you weren't born. He heard his friend's parents talking about sending immigrants back where they belong, and he came home in full panic convinced his family would be separated and he would be left in Florida alone because he was the only one actually born in Florida, his parents were born in like Maryland and Ohio and his brother was born in Ohio or some such. That is what he thought it all meant! My wonderful mom friend spent the night explaining the whole thing for her 8 year old after these friend's parents had some heated political debate in front of kiddos. TACT PEOPLE! Little ears!
That's about enough for today's diatribe but it was about time, no?
No comments:
Post a Comment