Raising a Princess

When did parents decide it’s perfectly okay to raise their charming little girls to become demanding big girls?  I find myself wondering that more and more as I work with the adolescent girls in my sixth-grade class.

  No one’s saying two-year-olds aren’t cute.   My own was adorable.  I remember her 2nd birthday party, attended by only adult friends of our fami­lies. She made everyone play Pin-the-Ears-on-Mickey-Mouse.  You should have seen my brother with his bottle of Coors Light stumbling toward that giant paper mouse as he tried to put those ears in the right place.  Cassidy couldn’t have been more delighted, pressing her “buzzer” and hollering in her two-year-old voice, “Next!”

  But come on!  At some point, you have to put those mem­ories away.  Ground your daughter in reality.  The rest of the world will thank you.

  Try to imagine, if you will, this child entering sixth grade.  “I don’t want to work on math.  It’s boring.  I want to draw balloons with gel pens.”

Or when you instruct your class to open their science books to page 136 so they can study the ecosystems of the earth.  “My daddy says I don’t have to.”

Really?  Is your daddy also going to support you when you’re living in his basement with your own ‘princess’?

Editor's note: this post is still under construction. Check back.