Just A Girl

Image from Milwaukee Public Television site, www.mptv.org.

So…after the debacle of Black History Month, Viva came home this week and told us that her class is now studying women’s history.  Because March is Women’s History Month.

“But it’s already mid-March,” I said. “And Spring Break starts next week!”

“I know, right?” said Viva.  “But I don’t really care because I’m kind of sick of learning about history.”

 “Happy Women’s History Month Week,” I said, snorting. “Okay, I know you are over it because of Black History Month [which felt like it lasted 10 weeks in our house], but women’s history is pretty cool. And I doubt that Mr. B_____ is going to focus on anything particularly violent.”*

“Oh my God, let’s hope not,” Viva said.

“So who are you learning about?” I asked.

“Nobody yet. He made us do research to find three women who made a difference in history, and he made it really hard.”

“What was so hard about it?”

“He wouldn’t let us use any of the women we learned about during Black History Month! So you’re not allowed to use Oprah, Michelle Obama, Sojourner Truth…”**

“So who did you find?”

“I don’t remember their names. I think one was a lawyer?” Okay, I got on her a little bit about that, but I figured there would be more to the assignment and this would be reinforced.

And then, two days into Women’s History Month Week, her teacher took the rest of the week off, going out of town to start his Spring Break early. 

Sorry, Mr. B____, but you get a FAIL from this child of the ‘70s, Free-to-Be-You-and-Me loving,  Seven Sisters College-educated, 40-something feminist. I am the great-great-granddaughter of slaves, so I appreciate the Black History focus, but give my African-American daughter equal time to learn and appreciate the contributions of women to our history.  

 

By the way, I did a little Google research and found a variety of links about teaching kids about women’s history. Here’s one I think we’ll be using at home...perhaps during Spring Break, before Women's History Month is actually over. It's pretty incredible to me that in just a few minutes on Google I found lesson plan after lesson plan that her teacher could use, and yet it appears that the kids in my daughter's class are only getting two days of women's history.

 

* Which, my God, let’s face it –doesn’t mean he couldn’t focus on violence against women if he wanted to. Lord knows there’s enough of it. And let’s not forget that the violence that was perpetrated against African Americans during slavery and post-emancipation was certainly not limited to the men. It makes chills run up my spine to think about the horrors that were done to female slaves.

 

** Yes, she did say Oprah first. Lord, give me strength.

Rage Against the Pink

In case you haven’t heard, there’s a petition going around to get Hasbro to make a gender-neutral Easy Bake Oven. A petition created by a 13-year-old girl, McKenna Pope, whose 4-year-old brother loves to cook and wanted his own toy oven for Christmas. McKenna’s argument to Hasbro is that the commercials for the Easy Bake Oven only show girls using it, and that the over comes in only “gender-specific hues: purple and pink.” My only argument with McKenna is that she’s accepting the societal premise that pink and purple are gender-specific. I reject that assertion. However, my sympathies are naturally with her and her brother, who aspires (for the moment) to be a chef. I have had the same problem in finding a toy stove for my daughters to play with. My oldest daughter, who is now 9, received a red toy oven when she was about 3 years old. I searched long and hard to find an oven that was not pink. Last year, for my 3-year-old, I replaced the oven with a whole mini-kitchen* from IKEA, which is completely gender-neutral – perhaps because it is a Swedish company.

The Swedes are evidently known for their progressive thinking in this regard, because hey, looky here!

Boys can do housework, too!

I have to say, my reaction to the pinkwashing of the toy aisle has pretty much been not to shop in the big box stores and to look for alternatives online and elsewhere. I just figured I didn’t have the time to fight the power and so I just wouldn’t endorse these stores with my money. But I give props to McKenna Pope, because without challenging the existing structure, it’s only going to continue. And I don’t think it’s healthy for any of us.

I raise my glass of low-sodium Lemon Italian Sparkling Mineral Water to you, McKenna. Rage on!

* This picture is part of the IKEA ad. Neither I nor my child is depicted in this picture.

Breaking Free

Taking a break for the moment from the “all Ceeya, all the time” tone that this blog has recently adopted to get us all caught up on that other child of mine, Viva.

Viva is in second grade. She has moved seamlessly from the private school where she spent most of her weekdays between the ages of 2.5 and 7 to the public school right down the street from us. If you were me, you might have expected more drama. You might have agonized a bit over how she would do in this new school, this new environment, this new sphere. Would she make friends? Would the teacher like her? What if this were a complete disaster?

Honestly. I worried about the class size. She was moving from a school where there were 12 kids in all of first grade. I worried about the quality of the education. She is extremely bright, gets bored easily, and is used to getting one-on-one attention from the teacher. I worried that she would have trouble dealing with “regular” kids (whatever that means). You know, I just worried, because that is my nature and I am her mother and I want her to be happy and have a great school experience.

So: class size? She’s in a gifted/talented magnet so there are 16 kids in her class, not the 35+ I was having hissy fits imagining. Quality of the education? Because she is in the magnet program, she is surrounded by other kids who are quick and curious and as eager to learn as she is. Their teacher, who is happily back in the classroom after three years in administration, says, “These kids came in like it was March, not September. They were ready to go, and I love it!” She is getting to know each of the kids and tailoring different projects to their interests. She is as thrilled as I am with the small class size and getting to spend so much time with each kid.

Viva loves her teacher, her class, and her after-school program. So school is going way more amazingly well than I could have hoped. Since there is no drama in that, let us move on. Viva has also, over the past few months, undergone a radical transformation.

Perhaps you know that Viva is a tomboy. She is a tomboy to the extent that most of her friends up to this summer were boys. Had you asked me to describe her up to now, I would have said something along the lines of: she plays sports with a fierce competitiveness; she has a true disdain for fairies and princesses, dresses, and anything sparkly; she abhors pink. She likes to play with superhero action figures, and when she comes home from school, she strips off her uniform and pulls on a pair of boy’s basketball shorts. She may or may not wear a shirt. If she does, it will be a boy’s undershirt or an oversized T-shirt.

Over the summer, at camp, Viva had a gradual awakening, thanks to a group of knuckleheaded little boys at her camp. “Boys are stupid,” she told me. “And you know, I don’t think I want to be a tomboy anymore.”

I was blown away. I said, “Maybe some boys are stupid.* Some girls can be stupid, too. But don’t let the behavior of some silly kids make you change who you are. If you want to try being a little more girly, that is fine with me. It’s fine to try on different ways of being as you figure out who you are. I love you if you’re a tomboy, and I love you if you’re not.”

When we began back-to-school shopping, she indicated that maybe she’d be interested in trying on a dress. I ended up buying her several knit cotton dresses and leggings, along with pants and nice shirts. She also wanted sparkly low-top sneakers that lit up when she walked. Do you know that every day for the first week of school, my “tomboy” wore a dress and sparkly shoes?

Children are amazing. Viva is never boring. I love that I am here to buckle up next to her and marvel at her journey. And that still, so often, she is still badgering me to come along. The years move quickly, you know. Sometimes I miss her even though she is still here.


* The fact that she even uses the word stupid is incredible, since just a couple of years ago the word stupid was equivalent (to her) to using a “bad word.” My, how times have changed. How lazy I have become in my language policing.

On the Mend

The Blah Blahs are recovering from whatever horrible ailment that was. And thus and so we have all returned to “normal” life, off to work and school and day care. Cily did not seem so sure about day care this morning. She had a rough night and her cheeks are kind of swollen, indicating to me that teeth are about to break through. Cily would not eat breakfast, and neither would Viva, and I fretted a bit about it in the car as we tootled off to begin our days, but then Viva could not stop telling me the entire plot of the Captain Underpants book she read last night, and Cily chimed in loudly here and there cheerfully, at times talking over her sister (she is not quite clear on conversational concepts yet, but would feel right at home with some of my closest friends who, and they know who they are, can’t quite ever let one get a full sentence out without bursting out with an exclamation) and so I managed to get over it, letting Viva out of the car at school with a Tupperware of dry cereal to munch on and handing a bottle to Cily’s day care provider as I handed her over. And then somehow I drank two cups of coffee at work and got to lunchtime and realized I hadn’t eaten breakfast either.

Soup is the answer. I think it cures all kinds of ills.

GIST – Day Seven. Sunday, Sunday, SUNDAY!

1. I can not tell you how much I am enjoying Big Love this season. The plot twists are ingenious and completely believable. Only two more episodes until the season finale! Criminy! (When is Weeds coming back?)

2. Cily laughs now! I nuzzle her under her chin with my nose and she chuckles and chuckles irrepressibly. If you heard it I think your heart would swell up and burst out of your chest. So yeah, maybe you should stay away.

3. Called my sister and although we chatted for only a few minutes, I automatically felt better when I was talking to her. This is not to say I was feeling bad when I called her, or that we talked about anything particularly noteworthy. I think it is just a sensory thing, hearing her voice.

4. Weeded through Cily’s clothes and put a whole bunch of outgrown outfits in a bag to give away. Pay it forward.

5. Viva put together a rather complicated paper bag puppet show version of American Idol, with a frog, lion, elephant and cow squaring off. She told me she disqualified the elephant because it was a girl. I gave her a pretty stern (for me) lecture about how it’s not right to treat someone differently just because they’re a girl, which she rolled her eyes about. And then for the rest of the day I had “Suffragette City” playing in my head. I know, but that is just how my brain works.

More Powerful Than a Locomotive!

Today is Tuesday, and we are exactly a week away from Viva’s 5th birthday. We are not doing a HUGE party this year, but we are doing a small party at school (cupcakes, goody bags) and we are supposed to be taking her and her best friend C. to Disneyland* the weekend before the birthday – i.e. this coming Saturday. Now, I have called C’s mother twice in the past week and a half and left messages on both her home and cell phones. I offered to just take C. with us, or, if her mom was not comfortable with that, we would of course pay for her as well. NO RESPONSE. This is after I already ran it by her a month or so ago and she agreed to come. So now I am scrambling a bit and will probably see if one or both of my nephews can come instead. I know Viva is going to be really disappointed if C. can’t come – I fully expect big, drippy tears, veins standing out from neck, etc. – so I am pretty ticked off on her behalf.

At any rate, Viva decided that for school, she wants a Bat Cat party. Bat Cat is a fairly minor character in the Charlie and Lola series, so there is no such thing as commercially-licensed Bat Cat paraphernalia. I don’t have as much time on my hands these days as I did when I was home on medical leave and made the Bat Cat Halloween costume, so I asked her to compromise a bit and do a general superhero party. She was down with that, because lately she is crazy for The Incredibles and wants to be Dash (“He can RUN! ON! WATER!”)

and she knows the boys in the class (who outnumber the girls 2 to 1) would be cool with Spiderman and Batman masks and all. But as I am looking for goody bag stuff, etc., I’ve been smacked in the face again with how unbalanced all marketing crap is.

The only female prepubescent superhero that I’m aware of is “Word Girl” who appears on PBS:

She’s great and all, but she has a limited audience. There is no big-name girl superhero.**

This bums me out. Clearly, I am going to have to create one in my spare time.

Speaking of non-commercial superhero stuff for your kid (and we were, weren’t we?), check out Little Capers. Now I’m stomping off to finish a program budget, in a single bound.


*I know, this seems to completely contradict my hatred of all things Disney. But we live less than an hour away from D-Land and Viva has never been and wants to go. Sometimes for your kids you have to suck it up.

** Yes, I know Dash’s sister is a superhero, but she’s in junior high. She can turn invisible and create force fields, which is pretty handy, but she doesn’t have the punchy personality of Dash, so I can see why Viva is not so taken with her.