teach what you know

With Emma starting kindergarten I knew that some things would change, but I thought those changes would be more about me.  She went to preschool so it’s not like this is the first time she’s been away from home for a few hours and as far as she’s concerned that was school so to her, kindergarten isn’t that new of a thing.  So I thought it would mostly be me adjusting to this new 5 hour block of ‘free’ time I would have and the idea that my baby now goes to ‘big kid’ school.

And for the most part it’s been that way.  We’re getting used to getting up earlier every morning (we’re both kind of late sleepers), packing lunch, eating breakfast in a timely manner and walking to school.  We meet up with our friends who live nearby and I get to chat with them on the way home.

What I didn’t think about is that despite the fact that there’s only 20 kids in her class, she now has contact with the other kinder classes as well so she’s observing and absorbing attitudes from 79 other kids.

The charming parts are things like meeting a new friend in her class whose name is Jasmine.  She told us, “there’s a girl named Jasmine in my class!  She’s in real life, not in the movies!”  Of course, the other friend she has named Jasmine is in Disney’s Aladdin.

But then there’s the other things that I knew would be a part of elementary school life, but I just didn’t think it would happen in kindergarten.  Maybe because it’s been 30 years since I was there myself.  A boy in her class is quite overweight.  When Ray picked Emma up from school on Friday she told him how the other kids were making fun of him at lunch.  She told him ‘But I like him just the way he is.’

It occurred to me that while we’ve always told her that saying someone is ‘fat’ is not a nice thing to say we’ve never really explained that commenting on someone’s weight is not nice too.  We usually say ‘chubby’.  Since she pretty much has no more baby fat (and hasn’t since she was about 8 months old) when we tickle her tummy or squeeze her cheeks we would say we were pinching the chubs.  I’ve said how Mama has chubs or Ray will say he has chubs and we’ve never said it in a mean way.  When she says it, she’s not saying it to be mean, she’s just calling it like it is.

Then the other thought in my mind is how the mean spirited teasing has already begun.  Ugh.  You want to protect your children from everything without clipping their wings.  You want them to be able to stand up for themselves or let it roll off their backs without affecting them, but it’s hard.  It’s hard leaving her there every day hoping that she’ll have a good day and be a good girl.  That she won’t come back to me hurt.

I read an article yesterday about a French company, Jours Apres Lunes who have designed a line of lingerie for girls aged 4-12.  They called it loungerie as they say it is a mixture of lingerie and loungewear.  While that is disturbing to me, why do 4 year olds need bras and panties that look like sexy lingerie, what is most awful was the ad that shows some girls laying back wearing the loungerie and pearls bed headed or sporting sunglasses looking very adult.  To me, it’s fodder for pedophiles.  It was disgusting.

A friend of mine sent me this article after she saw my post on Facebook about the kiddie lingerie.  I couldn’t agree more.  And what can we do?  The best thing is to do my best with my daughters.  To teach them to be respectful to the people they come in contact with and to themselves.  To be confidant and strong, but not so much that the fall into arrogance.  To be compassionate.  To be heard.  To be fun.

Good luck to me.